If
Israel has the right to use force in
self defence, so do its neighbours
The
west appears to insist that only one side in the conflict is able to
intervene militarily across borders. That will never be accepted
Ahmad
Samih Khalidi
July
18, 2006
The Guardian
Much has
been made in recent days - at the G8 summit and elsewhere - of Israel's right to retaliate against
the capture of its soldiers, or attacks on its troops on its own
sovereign territory. Some, such as those in the US administration, seem to believe that
Israel has an unqualified licence to
hit back at its enemies no matter what the cost. And even those
willing to recognise that there may be a problem tend to couch it in
terms of
Israel's "disproportionate use of
force" rather than its basic right to take military action.
But what
is at stake here is not proportionality or the issue of
self-defence, but symmetry and equivalence. Israel is staking a claim to the
exclusive use of force as an instrument of policy and punishment,
and is seeking to deny any opposing state or non-state actor a
similar right. It is also largely succeeding in portraying its own
"right to self-defence" as beyond question, while denying anyone
else the same. And the international community is effectively
endorsing Israel's stance on both counts.
From an
Arab point of view this cannot be right. There is no reason in the
world why Israel should be
able to enter Arab sovereign soil to occupy, destroy, kidnap and
eliminate its perceived foes - repeatedly, with impunity and without
restraint - while the Arab side cannot do the same. And if the Arab
states are unable or unwilling to do so then the job should fall to
those who can.
It is
important to bear in mind that in both the case of the Hamas raid
that led to the invasion of Gaza and the Hizbullah attack that led to the assault on
Lebanon it was
Israel's regular armed forces, not
its civilians, that were targeted. It is hard to see how this can be
filed under the rubric of "terrorism", rather than a straightforward
tactical defeat for
Israel's much-vaunted
military machine; one that Israel seems loth to acknowledge.
Some of
this has to do with the paradox of power: the stronger the Israeli
army becomes, the more susceptible and vulnerable it becomes to even
a minor setback. The loss of even one tank, the capture of one
soldier or damage done to one warship has a negative-multiplier
effect: Israel's "deterrent" power is dented
out of all proportion to the act itself. Israel's
retaliation is thus partly a matter of restoring its deterrence,
partly sheer vengeance, and partly an attempt to compel its
adversaries to do its bidding.
But
there is also something else at work: Israel's fear of acknowledging any
form of equivalence between the two sides. And it is precisely this
that seems to provide the moral and psychological underpinning for
Israel's ongoing assault in both Gaza and Lebanon - the sense that
it may have met its match in audacity, tactical ingenuity and
"clean" military action from an adversary who may even have learned
a thing or two from Israel itself, and may be capable of learning
even more in the future.
There
has of course been nothing "clean" about Israeli military action
throughout the many decades of conflict in
Palestine and Lebanon.
Israel's wanton disregard for
civilian life during the past few days is neither new nor out of
character. For those complaining about violations of Israeli
sovereignty by Hizbullah or Hamas, it may be useful to recall the
tens of thousands of Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty
since the late 60s, the massive air raids of the mid-70s and early
80s, the 1978 and 1982 invasions and occupation of the capital
Beirut, the hundreds of thousands of refugees, the 28-year-old
buffer zone and proxy force set up in southern Lebanon, the
assassinations, car bombs, and massacres, and finally the continuing
violations of Lebanese soil, airspace and territorial waters and the
detention of Lebanese prisoners even after Israel's withdrawal in
2000.
It is
unnecessary here to recount the full range of Israel's violations of Palestinian
"sovereignty", not least of which is its recent refusal to accept
the sovereign electoral choice of the Palestinian people. Israel's
extraterritorial, extrajudicial execution of Palestinian leaders and
activists began in the early 70s and has not ceased since. But for
those seeking further enlightenment about Hamas's recent action, the
fact is that some 650,000 acts of imprisonment have taken place
since the occupation began in 1967, and that 9,000 Palestinians are
currently in Israel's jails, including some 50 old-timers
incarcerated before and despite the 1993 Oslo accords, and many
others whom Israel refuses to release on the grounds that they have
"blood on their hands", as if only one side in this conflict was
culpable, or the value of one kind of human blood was superior to
another.
If there
ever was a case for establishing some form of mutually acknowledged
parity regarding the ground rules of the conflict, Hamas and
Hizbullah have a good one to make. And if there ever was a case for
demonstrating that what is good on one side of the border should
also good on the other, Hamas and Hizbullah's logic has strong
appeal to Arab and Muslim public opinion - regardless of what the
supine Arab state system may say.
Indeed
as George Bush and other western leaders splutter on about freedom,
democracy, and Israel's right
to defend itself, Tony Blair's repeated claim that events in the
region should not be linked to terrible events elsewhere is looking
increasingly fatuous.
The
slowly expanding war in Afghanistan, the devastation of Iraq, the
death and destruction in Gaza and the bombing of Beirut are all
providing a slow but sure drip feed for those who believe that the
west is incapable of taking a balanced moral stance, and is directly
or indirectly complicit in a design meant to break Arab and Muslim
will and subjugate it to untrammelled Israeli force.
Contrary
to what Blair seems to believe, the use of force is unlikely to
breed western style-liberalism and moderation. What is at issue here
is not democracy but the right to resist Israeli arrogance and be
treated on a par with it in every respect, including the use of
force. If Israel has the right to "defend
itself" then so has everyone else.
Furthermore, there is nothing in the history of the region to
suggest that Israel's destruction of mass popular
movements such as Hamas or Hizbullah (even if this were possible)
would drive their successors closer to western-style democracy, and
every reason to believe the opposite. Israel's invasion of Lebanon
in 1982 did away with the PLO and produced Hizbullah instead, the
incarceration and elimination of Arafat only served to strengthen
Hamas, and the wars in Afghanistan, the Gulf and Iraq gave birth to
Bin Ladenist terrorism and extended its reach and appeal. And we
should not be surprised if the summer of 2006 produces more of the
same.
However Israel's latest
adventure ends, it will not produce greater sympathy and
understanding between west and east, or a downturn in extremism.
Indeed the most likely outcome is that a new wave of virulent and
possibly unconventional anti-western terrorism may well crash
against this and other shores. We will all - Israelis, Arabs and
westerners - suffer as a result.
·
Ahmad Samih Khalidi
Senior associate member of St Antony's College, Oxford, a former Palestinian negotiator and the
co-author, with Hussein Agha, of A Framework for a Palestinian
National Security Doctrine (Chatham House, 2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1822923,00.html
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