The Gaza War

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The war in Gaza started three weeks ago and ended two days ago, and I've finally figured out what I think about it. So here is my opinion, in the detail and length it has to be to do justice to the all-important nuances.

My main approach to evaluating the war is through international law. Especially since the accusations being thrown around - true and false - use terminology like "proportionality," "war crime," and "excessive force," it's important to understand what those terms actually mean and what their technical application is. The emotional nature of the conflict is making people a little crazy and preventing them from thinking clearly about the issues. That's why I find the law to be such a useful instrument; it's very clear and impartial. In particular, the important documents are the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention on the laws of war. There are many treaties that comprise international humanitarian law, and they're all available here if you're interested.

If you read nothing else, read ACRI's official position paper, which was released with a bunch of other human rights NGOs. It's a bit out of date since the cease-fire, but it lays out the general issues. It also might be useful if you're trying to get a pulse on the Israeli left. The right has been pretty outspoken, but Western newspapers have a tendency to miss what the left is saying, and this is the combined opinion of several of the most prominent human rights organizations that work in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Ok, here's what I personally think about the war. I wasn't opposed to the idea of Israel launching some sort of military response in general. International law doesn't prohibit waging war in general, and Israel did wait until the previous cease-fire expired before launching an attack. Hamas broke the cease-fire by launching rockets into Israel, so Israel actually would have been within its rights to attack Gaza even before the cease-fire was up. So in terms of the law, the attack itself was completely above-board. Also, for the first few days of the war, the IDF was doing very well about hitting only military targets and avoiding civilian casualties. They even dropped leaflets warning civilians to evacuate areas they planned to bomb, so according to international law, Israel was doing everything right.

Where I started having problems with the war was when, a few days in, the IDF ran out of clear military targets and started attacking borderline targets and mounting up the civilian casualties. International law is both very specific and very vague on the legitimacy of targets for military operations. It's not true - as some people seem to assume - that civilian structures like houses, mosques, and schools are totally off limits all the time. If you have reasonable grounds to think that these structures are being used for military purposes, they become legitimate targets. The vagueness, as you might have guessed, comes in with the "reasonable grounds." The same goes for civilian casualties; they are to be avoided as much as possible, not always and at all costs. If a civilian is being used as a human shield, or happens to be unlucky enough to be so close to a legitimate military target that destroying the target will kill the civilian, you are allowed to kill the civilian - on certain grounds. Basically, if the military advantage you will gain from destroying the legitimate target outweighs the loss of civilian life, and you have tried all reasonable alternative measures that don't involve killing civilians, international law allows you to go ahead and kill the civilian. So you can't kill a hundred civilians who stand in the way of destroying a single rocket launcher when you could easily go around the other side of the hill and destroy it with no civilian casualties. But you can kill two civilians standing between you and the bunker where the entire enemy command center is located. You see where I'm going with this? But just like the legitimacy of targets, the necessity of killing civilians has to do with specific facts on the ground - facts we can't know at this point. So we can't know whether the targets the IDF has been bombing are legitimate targets, or whether all the civilian deaths were necessary until the war is over and there's an inquiry into the methods used during the fighting. (I do support such an inquiry, by the way.)

But even though we can't know for sure whether the IDF was attacking illegitimate targets and unnecessarily killing civilians until there's an inquiry, we can make some educated guesses. Given the absolute and relative numbers of Gazan versus Israeli casualties, it seems that the IDF is doing everything it can to protect its own people, but not enough to avoid civilian casualties or destruction of civilian infrastructure. Basically, the IDF was probably using the safest possible methods in terms of avoiding casualties on their own part, and that meant a lack of reasonable precautions. If there was a good chance a mosque was being used to store weapons or a school was housing combatants, they went ahead and attacked it, even though a good chance is not the reasonable grounds required by international law. Similarly, they probably tried some alternative tactics to avoid civilian casualties, but not the alternative methods that would have placed Israeli troops in more danger than the commanders were willing to risk. If those things are true, then they are violations of international law. But I want to stress again that the mere fact of civilian casualties does not automatically mean Israel violated international law. Everything depends on the situation on the ground at the time, and what measures the IDF took to avoid killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure.

Another often-discussed claim is that Israel’s attack on Gaza was “disproportionate.” There has been some confusion on this point, which I would really love to clear up. Proportionality has nothing to do with the relative magnitudes of respective military action. The word “disproportionate” has been used to mean something like, “Oh come on, it was only a couple of rockets. Don’t you think a full-scale invasion is a bit much as a response?” And that may well have some truth to it. But in international law, proportionality is about something else altogether. The principle of proportionality is what I talked about at length with regard to civilian casualties. An attack creates disproportionate loss of civilian life if and only if it is launched on a military objective in the knowledge that the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. So like I said, it may be true that Israel has violated the principle of proportionality. But it has nothing at all to do with the relative sizes of Hamas’s and Israel’s military operations.

So with regard to civilian losses in Gaza, it's certainly possible – even likely – that Israel violated international law. And if it did, it should probably bear some responsibility for rebuilding Gaza. On the other hand, in the frenzy to find out whether Israel violated international law, a lot of people seem to be forgetting that Hamas definitely did so. Launching rockets at population centers with the stated goal of killing civilians is obviously a war crime, as is storing weapons in and launching military operations from civilian population centers. I am not saying - as some IDF spokespeople have - that Hamas is solely responsible for the civilian deaths in Gaza. But by using civilian infrastructure to store, manufacture, and launch weapons, Hamas illegally put its own population in danger. It is unfair and irresponsible of the international community to condemn actions on Israel's part that it allows on Hamas's. But more than that, such a double standard is racist.

I’m not saying that criticism of Israel is disguised anti-Semitism. Quite the opposite; I think it is racism AGAINST THE PALESTINIANS that makes the international community hold Israel to a higher legal and moral standard than Hamas. By ignoring Hamas’s breaches of international law while condemning Israel’s, the international community is making a statement that it is only to be expected that Hamas will misbehave, while Israel ought to know better. This is a form of the old “noble savage” brand of racism. We (the American and European left) feel sorry for the plight of the Palestinians and outraged at the injustices committed against them, as we should. But by holding them to a lower moral standard than we hold Western nations, we demonstrate that while we pity them, we do not truly respect them. Standing by while Hamas does things like target civilians and use human shields without condemning such actions or demanding that they stop is tantamount to assuming that the Palestinians and their leadership are less civilized than we are. Such an assumption is unacceptable. If we are to take seriously our own claim that all people are equally worthy of respect and self-determination, then we must hold all people equally morally accountable. War crimes are war crimes, whether it is Hamas or Israel that commits them.

To summarize, I think the war itself is morally and legally neutral. I think there ought to be an investigation into the methods employed by both sides, and if either side is found to have violated international law by targeting civilians or causing disproportionate loss of civilian life and destruction to civilian infrastructure, they should be held accountable. Hamas has definitely violated international law in these ways, and Israel probably has as well. But neither side’s violations justify retaliation in kind.

At this point, it seems to me that the absolute priority should be humanitarian relief to Gaza, and an immediate start to rebuilding infrastructure. Saudi Arabia has already offered $1 billion for reconstruction, and other countries should follow suit. Israel must allow in all humanitarian aid, and consider bringing the most seriously wounded into Israel for treatment. Rebuilding is strategically important, as well as morally. If Israel – or the US and Europe, for that matter – have any hope of Hamas’s rule in Gaza weakening, they must step up and provide necessary humanitarian aid and civilian infrastructure. France has agreed to help patrol the border, but it goes without saying that both sides should respect the cease-fire and refrain from resuming hostilities. Ultimately, Israel and Hamas should do their best to come to an agreement about a truce in their talks in Egypt. This war has helped no one, and it is in everyone’s interests to make sure it doesn’t resume.

Well, I think that’s about all I have to say right now. The situation is both tense and fluid, and it’s taken me a long time to decide where I stand on all of this. And who knows; I may change my mind again in light of further information. Looks like we live in interesting times, doesn’t it?