I am not a military expert, so I will abstain from judging whether the Israeli bombardments of Gaza could have been better targeted, less intense.
Since I have never over the last decades been able to distinguish between good and bad dead people, or, as Camus said, between victims and “privileged executioners“, I am obviously terribly upset by the images of Palestinian children who have been killed.
This having been said, and given the craziness that seems, once again, to reign in certain media as it always does when the subject turns to Israel, I would like to recall a few facts.
1. No government in the world, no other country aside from this Israel that has been lambasted, dragged in the mud, diabolized, would tolerate thousands of missiles falling over a period of years on its cities. The most extraordinary aspect of this situation, the truly surprising heart of it, is not the “brutality” of Israel, but rather its restraint.
2. The fact that the Qassam and, now, the Grad missiles of Hamas have caused so few deaths does not prove that they are hand-built, harmless, etc., but that the Israelis must protect themselves, that they [too] live holed up in the basements of their buildings, in shelters : a nightmare existence, on borrowed time, on a background of sirens and explosions – I’ve been to Sderot, I know.
3. The fact that the Israeli missiles, conversely, kill so many victims does not signify, as yell the demonstrators of this last weekend, that Israel is conducting a deliberate “massacre”, but rather that community leaders in Gaza have chosen the opposite attitude and voluntarily expose their civil populations: an old tactic of the “human shield” that has lead the Hamas, like Hezbollah two years ago, to install its command centers, weapons stocks, bunkers in the basements of buildings, hospitals, schools and mosques – an efficient but repugnant strategy.
4. Between the two positions there is, in any case, a capital difference and those who wish to have a fair-minded view of the tragedy and ways to end it do not have the right to ignore it: the Palestinians fire on cities, that is, on the civil population (which is, in international law, called a “war crime”); the Israelis are aiming at military objectives and cause, without aiming to do so, terrible effects among the civil population (which is, in war language, known [infamously] as “collateral damage” – which, even if hideous, reveals a true strategic and moral dissymmetry).
5. To get right down to it, one must remember once more a fact that the French press has surprisingly poorly disseminated and for which I know of no precedent, in any other war, on the part of any other army: the units of Tsahal, during the military air strikes, systematically telephoned (the English-speaking press writes of 100,000 calls [sic; I can't confirm the number]) to the residents of Gaza living near a military target in order for them to evacuate the premises; even if this gesture obviously does not change any aspect of the depair of the families, the broken lives or the carnage, it is not a completely irrelevant detail.
6. And with respect to the famous full blocus, imposed on a starving people, lacking everything and precipitated into a humanitarian crisis without precedent (sic), this is not factually exact either: the humanitarian convoys never ceased to cross, until the beginning of the land offensive, through the Kerem Shalom passage point; for the one day of January 2nd, 90 trucks of food and medication, according to the New York Times, went into the Territory; I also remind certain readers, as they seem to require reminding, the fact that Israeli hospitals continue, to this moment, to receive and provide daily care to injured Palestinians.
We all hope that combat will cease very quickly. Let us also hope that certain commentators will come to their senses very quickly as well. They will discover that day that Israel has committed many errors over the years (lost opportunities, long denial of the nation-building aspirations of the Palestinians, unilateralism) but that the worst enemies of the Palestinians are these extremist leaders who have never wanted peace, never wanted a State and have never thought of any other existence for their people than that of an instrument and a hostage (horrid image of Khaled Mechaal who, on Saturday, December 27, 2008, when the desired Israeli reprisal strikes were imminent, could only exhort his “nation” to “offer up the blood of other martyrs” – and this from his comfortable exile in a Damas hideout…)[my link may not be to the right part of the interview; Arab speakers may correct me].
Today, there are two outcomes possible. Either the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza rebuilds the truce they broke, and while they are at it, declare null their charter based on the pure refusal of the “Zionist entity”: they will thus rejoin the vast party for compromise that has not ceased – thank God – to make progress in the region, and peace will be established. Or they will only, stubbornly, consider the suffering of Palestinian civilians in terms of how it fuels their warmed-over passions, their insane, nihilistic hate, that goes beyond words to describe. And if that is the case, it is not only the Israelis, but the Palestinians, who will need to be liberated from the dark grip of Hamas.
