In the West there is rightly astonishment and disgust at the Hamas massacre in Israel. Nothing can justify or relativize such an excess of cruelty. Neither the continuation of the occupation in the West Bank since 1967 with its wave of violence, nor the emergence of Jewish suprematism, which was previously relegated to the margins of Israeli society before being glossed over by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nor the abandonment of… the Palestinian question by the Arabs countries, the United States and the Europeans. On the other hand, these three factors cannot be ignored at the beginning of a land operation. They determine the response of the Jewish state.
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Israeli society is stunned by the horror of the terrorist attack. The government and army are discredited for their failure to prevent this attack and are now under enormous popular pressure. We must react. We have to punish. You have to strike. Here Israel stands on the brink of an abyss. The Hamas attack is also a trap. It destroys the deterrence at the core of Israel’s security doctrine and forces it to radically rethink its traditional methods of militarized management of the enclave. This attack, in its premeditated nature, involves a disproportionate and indiscriminate response with contempt for the two million civilians who live in Gaza. The price the Jewish state could pay for a major operation exceeds the human cost. His alliances, regional security and his soul are also at stake.
The endless repetition – even if this principle is unquestionable – that Israel has the right to defend itself does not answer the question of the purpose of a land invasion. The law of retaliation cannot replace military strategy. The army claimed on October 12 that it had already dropped 6,000 bombs on the enclave, a purely quantitative approach that only reinforced the idea of indiscriminate attacks.
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Benjamin Netanyahu promises that every man in Hamas is a dead man. Other Israeli officials claim they are “changing the reality in Gaza.” The Palestinian territory “must be smaller at the end of the war,” demanded Gideon Saar, one of the new opposition members of the government. Without even mentioning the impending phenomenal cost to civilian lives, no one on the Israeli side has the time or inclination to think about “the day after.” If we destroy everything, who will live there? What will emerge from the ashes if not more fires?
Guarantee of great torment
An uncalibrated operation, poorly explained to the Israeli public and resulting in collective punishment that cannot be justified under international humanitarian law, guarantees great torment. Eternal Counterinsurgency Dilemma: How to Distinguish Combatants from Civilians?
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