Gaza
Posted by Carl\ on December 30th, 2008Stories of violence between Israel and Hamas dominate the news these days. How should we look at this violence and what does it have to teach us about our own national policies?
It is generally agreed that one of the basic responsibilities of nations is to take all reasonable and moral actions available to protect their citizens from harm. We see this principle in practice in the actions of police forces, homeland security officers at airports and may other ways.
The Israeli government has used this principle to justify its air attacks on targets in Gaza. Israel’s claims of regular rocket bombardment from Gaza directed at southern Israel are no doubt true. Based on the generally agreed upon principle of self defense, Israel has an obligation to do what is reasonable and moral to protect its citizens from random rocket attacks.
Unfortunately, the protection principle requires a measure of proportionality that is missing in this conflict. It’s moral base is in the old principle of “an eye for an eye.” Yesterday’s counts indicated that over the past two weeks there were four deaths in Israel caused by rocket attacks launched from Gaza. The count of the dead from three days of Israeli bombing in Gaza is about 350. The argument is that Israel seeks to make any attacks on its citizens so very costly to Hamas that Hamas will suspend the attacks. A 4 to 350 ratio of dead is hardly “an eye for an eye” and loses the moral high ground for Israel.
Further, this policy is profoundly flawed from a pragmatic perspective. While it may intimidate Hamas into a short term reduction of violence, its longer term results will be to harden the rage in Gaza and to multiply the number of persons who are ready to attack Israel. For every enemy the policy kills, it creates ten new enemies. Short of wholesale genocide of the entire population of Gaza, Israel is not going to reduce the numbers of its enemies by killing folks, many of whom are civilians.
In an age of terrorism, this is a lesson we must learn. Policies that increase anger and resentment among people who have grievances will not decrease terrorism. Policies that further victimize the desperate increase the desperation. It is people who feel a high degree of desperation, either for themselves or for their group, who resort to terrorism. Military action against a people who have little capacity to resist worsens the problem rather than making things better.
Peace in the Middle East cannot come until there is a sense of economic, political and even spiritual hope in the hearts and lives of all the groups who live there. With unemployment running at nearly 50% in Gaza and bombs raining from the skies there will be no peace.