The tragedy when a regime uses its citizens as tools of war
Fania Oz-Salzberger
December 31, 2008
IMAGINE your next-door neighbour — with whom you have had a long and bloody feud — pulling out a gun and shooting into your windows from his own lounge room, which is densely packed with women and children. In fact, he's holding his daughter on his lap as he claims he will not stop till your family is dead. Police are unavailable. What should you do?

One option is to do nothing, or little. You try this for a while. After all, your neighbour is poor and traumatised, and you must bear some of the blame. Finally, as one shot hits your child's bedroom, you decide that enough is enough. You pull out your far superior gun. You attempt a surgical strike: aim at the shooter's head, try to spare the innocents.

In an abstract sense, this is what Israel is doing. But there is nothing surgical about the blood and agony that has engulfed Gaza since Saturday. Try as it might to target militants alone, Israel cannot achieve this. Civilian bodies are being pulled out of the rubble of military bases — because, like our metaphorical gunman's home, militants and civilians inhabit the same urban space in the Gaza Strip.

Gaza City and Rafah are towns doubling as army camps. Fighters train next to schools and rockets are stored in the basements of multi-storey family homes. Western aid money, diverted to buy weapons for Hamas, is now buried under the ruins. Over a million Palestinians, unable to flee either to Egypt or to Israel, have for years been ruled by a military junta that prioritises the killing of Israelis, across the international border, at all costs.

So much for conventional war, for the sand-table battlefield. No military strategist in history envisaged this monstrous, deliberate mingling of armed fighters and civilians, this novel doctrine that pitches infantry among infants and babies as barricades. Of course, civilians have always been in the line of fire and conquest, from Troy to Berlin. But no regime ever used its citizens so deliberately as tools to arouse world sympathy, as hostages to modern sensitivities.

Theories of "just war" tell us not to hurt non-combatants. But Hamas and its military arm have made a conscious decision, banking on global humanitarian concerns, to make sure that Israel hits as many civilians as possible.

Even if Israel's current war against Gaza is a just war — after eight years of rocket attacks, a unilateral Israeli retreat from every inch of Gaza, a forced evacuation of thousands of Jewish settlers, and attempts at limited and "measured" retaliation — it is therefore a very dirty war too. There is a sad zero sum game between Palestinian suffering and Israeli sovereignty, security, and normal life.

Within a few hours, Israel may switch from aerial bombardment to ground invasion. In this case, the civilian death toll will surely rise. As world opinion slowly awakens from its holiday slumber, it is likely to turn against Israel. After all, it is the strong guy, the former occupying power, the better shooter. Even Russia, its boots still covered with Georgian dust, has joined the choir of double standards.

Israelis are used to this kind of blanket accusation. It is the kind of message that unites them, in grim resolve. Most agree with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that enough is enough. What, they ask, would other nations do in their stead?

Does the enemy's civilian suffering trump Israel's sovereignty? Does it trump the real, if less bloody, agony and fear of hundreds of thousands Israelis over long years?

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, and Livni have cast aside their political rivalries in order to orchestrate an answer. Israel must fight off the Gazan rockets. A vast Israeli majority currently supports them. Political tables are thus overturned in a uniquely Israeli way.

Don't count on Israel's unity for long. It is a democracy, not a one-voice nation. If the Gaza campaign turns Lebanon-like, with humanitarian catastrophe, ongoing bombardment of Israeli civilians, or both, domestic criticism will be loud and clear. But even the greatest opponents of Olmert's second war must face the blunt fact that Hamas is lethal.

To the detriment of their own people, its leaders, Haled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh, want neither peace nor compromise. Like their friend President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, they want Israel dead. It's as simple as that.

Some good news arises even at this dismal juncture. Moderate Arab leaders, including Egypt's foreign minister, have openly blamed Hamas for the current Gazan predicament. Here is a serious ray of hope: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are willing to broker peace, and perhaps save the Palestinians from their own worst leadership. Israel has gone a long way since the Arab world set out to kill it off. For the first time, prominent Arab voices acquit Israel of the wholesale blame that some Western critics still lazily throw at it.

So here's the real challenge for Israel's next leader, whoever he or she will be: talk to the Arab League. Its proposed peace plan will require tough Israeli negotiation, but it is a start. It could prevent future wars, including just wars. Give it a chance.

How about we complete the analogy by making it a little more realistic. The man and his family have been relegated to a little corner patch of his former home, whilst foreign invaders have take over about 90% of his former house and land. He and his family are trapped in a tiny little pen in the backyard, where it's almost impossible for the man to not be amongst his women and children 100% of the time. They have no water, no food, their kids are sick and in desperate need of medicine, but are being held hostage by the foreigners.

Now the picture is a little more complete, and anyone with half a shred of humanity, would see it for what it is.

abu....  please don't regail us with your propaganda and ignorance... or is it bias of the ME and in particular Palestine.

rotflmao


If you bothered you'd know there was no such thing as a palestinian till the british mandate was formed.

Then if you weren't so ignorant or biased you'd mention that their arab brothers in Jordan occupy 75% of what was the mandate.

But Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo.....

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Likewise there was no such thing as a Syrian, a Lebanese, a Jordanian, a Saudi Arabian, an Iraqi etc.

If you had half a neuron in that useless head of yours you'd know all those lands were a single empire prior to the colonial invasion and all their citizens were known as uthmani (ottomans)....

Nevermind though, we'll leave the thinking up to those who actually have the equipment required for basic intellectual activity.

oh dear blown a fuse have we abu?

Know all about the tribes and the Ottomans thanks.  Moot point.

75% of the mandate of Palestine is Jordan, populated by fellow arabs.

Like I said...  you are biased or ignorant...  at least if you were ignorant it would be seen as an innocent mistake not a dieliberate attempt at dishonesty.

BTW...  being a pseudo intellectual doesn't impress me nor does the academic snobbery you continually espouse.

Iran has/had a aid ship on the way to Palestine. If the Israeli's block it, well then we know exactly how much consideration they have for civilians, considering the hospitals in Palestine are critically short/depleted of medical supplies.

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Arabs killed Jewish immigrants from the get go. They didnt wait until they become 40% of the population. So does that mean I can kill Arabs in Lakemba from the get go according to you? Or do I have to wait until they get to a certain percentage of the population as far as you are concerned? Just let me know what the number is that you'd think might be a fair thing before you'd recommend the slaughter starts. The Arabs in the BMP started as soon as the first Jews arrived.

As for literature about starting their own states, Jemiah Islamiah has stated that Australia should be part of the great Asian Caliphate. I think that this literature applies to all muslims in this part of the world, as Jemiah Islamiah clearly speaks for them too. So when do we get to arm up and clear out the invaders?