Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed the complete occupation of Gaza.Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
There is a tendency to the categorical in any discussion of Israel and Gaza. The obsessive focus of so many critics on Israel’s sins, real or alleged, as if it were the only such offender, or the worst, or even remotely comparable to the bestial dictatorships aligned against it, is met by an equal and opposite insistence that all such accusations are based on propaganda, or betray a lack of understanding of the complexities of the situation, or are evidence of deep-seated bias against Israel, even of antisemitism. Israel is guilty of genocide, or it is a blameless victim. Those would appear to be the only choices.
Certainly the amount of attention devoted to Israel’s prosecution of the war against Hamas – a war that, unambiguously, Hamas started, with the terrible attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 – is, as usual, out of all proportion to its actual significance, compared to other, bloodier wars that have attracted a fraction of the outrage. By the most credulous accounts, taking Hamas’s figures at face value, some 60,000 people have have been killed in Gaza to date, though how many were civilians and how many combatants is unknown. At least three times as many have been killed in the civil war in Sudan over roughly the same time period. The ongoing Yemeni civil war has claimed nearly 400,000; the Syrian civil war, 600,000.
Neither is the Gazan death toll, heavy as it has been, evidence in itself of a crime, let alone a genocide. Any attempt to root out such a deeply entrenched and fanatically motivated enemy as Hamas – an enemy that is not only willing to use civilians as human shields, but positively delights in civilian casualties for the propaganda opportunities they present – was bound to result in a horrific number of deaths.
Such a fight was nevertheless unavoidable: October 7 was not only an atrocity in itself, unprecedented in its scale and ferocity, but a declaration, if any were needed, of Hamas’s unswerving dedication to the destruction of Israel. Against such an existential threat any national government has not only the right but the duty to act in defence of its people. That right, if it is to be more than the usual pious disclaimer (“Israel has the right to defend itself, but…”), means the right to use its army, and to go on using its army until the threat has been extinguished – that is, until the enemy has been defeated, or at least is incapable of the same level of carnage.
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Does the right to self-defence justify any amount of slaughter in response? No. But the proportionality that counts – in military law, but also in common sense – is not between the number of dead on either side, but between ends and means: between the military value of an attack and the death and suffering, particularly on the part of civilians, to which it is likely to give rise.
For some of Israel’s critics, any amount of civilian deaths was too much: the country was facing charges of genocide almost from the beginning of the campaign. Too many were too willing to believe every Hamas horror story, no matter how far-fetched; infamously, these included ministers in the Liberal government. In fact there is abundant evidence that the Israeli military goes to unusual lengths to minimize civilian casualties, including repeated advance warnings of attacks, not only meeting but exceeding the requirements of the laws of war.
Nevertheless the question continues to hover over the campaign, and the longer it goes on, the more difficult it is to justify. To say that the Israeli military has broadly observed the laws of war does not mean that it has done so in every respect, or at all times. No, what is going on in Gaza is not a genocide – as it has been said, Hamas has the intent to commit genocide but not the means, while Israel, though it easily has the means, lacks the intent – but it would not be surprising to find, in the course of such a long and bitter campaign, that war crimes had been committed.
Israel should not be held to a higher standard than other countries – or other democracies, at any rate (we should expect more of democracies than dictatorships) – but neither should it be held to a lower standard. If Israel’s critics were too quick to accuse it of excesses in the war’s early going, its defenders seem too willing to excuse or look the other way at what is happening now, nearly two years on.
Much of what comes out of Gaza is Hamas propaganda. But not all of it is. It is implausible to think that all of the images of starvation and destitution that have so horrified the world in recent months are manufactured or misleading, and abhorrent to shrug it off as unimportant. Yes, it is unusual to hold one party to a war responsible for feeding its enemy’s citizens. But this is an unusual conflict in every sense.
Hamas is an unusual combatant, for starters – part terrorist group, part proto-state – with a greater capacity for destruction than most terrorists but less than most states. That justified Israel in taking more severe action against it than would be warranted in dealing with most terror groups, but it was never possible that Hamas could prevail in an all-out war with the Israeli military; the best it could hope to do was survive. Israel soon asserted control over much of the territory of Gaza, beginning in the north. As such it assumed many of the obligations of an occupying power, including keeping the population from starving.
This is what made the decision to cut off international food aid this spring so catastrophic, both in moral and strategic terms. Yes, Hamas has often blocked or commandeered aid. But the greater the degree of Israeli control of Gaza – it now claims to occupy 75 per cent of the territory – the more it must be held to account for the suffering of its citizens. Indeed, Israel has acknowledged as much by the replacement of the UN and other international aid agencies, corrupt and compromised as they may have been, with the U.S.-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose record has if anything been worse.
All of which is to say that the situation is very different today than it was when the war began. The losses Israel is suffering in the propaganda wars are a sort of backhanded tribute to its military successes, not only in Gaza, but across the Middle East. Most of Hamas’s senior leaders have been killed, along with thousands of its fighters. Its sister terror group, Hezbollah, has likewise been decapitated, by means of the brilliant exploding-pagers exploit. Iran, sponsor of both, is very much on its back foot, having lost dozens of senior military and security officials in the Israeli attacks in June.
The more Israel has degraded Hamas’s capability, the more it faces the prospect of diminishing returns. Earlier stages of the invasion achieved significant military gains, at relatively little cost in civilian lives. But continuing the campaign now – still less pressing on to the complete occupation of Gaza, as Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is now proposing – promise the reverse: relatively little military benefit, huge civilian suffering.
That’s not only the judgment of Israel’s critics. It is increasingly the view of Israelis themselves. These include two former prime ministers (Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak) as well as one of Israel’s leading authors, David Grossman – and, perhaps most tellingly, senior military and intelligence officials. More than a dozen former leaders of Shin Bet and the Israel Defence Forces released a video this week calling for an end to the operation. Mr. Netanyahu’s own IDF chief is said to oppose his plans.
Israel, they argue, has achieved the bulk of its military objectives; nothing of any importance is to be gained by continuing the campaign. It is not going to extinguish the last of Hamas’s fighters, or not at remotely acceptable cost. Neither will it save the remaining October 7 hostages, of whom just 20 are thought to have survived. It is time, in the immortal words of Senator George Aiken, to “declare victory and get out.”
Of course, what “getting out” would mean in this case is unclear. Simply handing the territory back is out of the question, so long as Hamas remains a threat. Neither does a formal ceasefire seem imminent, not least because of Hamas’s intransigence. But the dominance Israel has achieved ought at least to make possible a period of consolidation – and a real effort to feed the people.
There is reason to think Mr. Netanyahu knows all this. There is also reason to think he does not care, or does not dare: his coalition government, and with it his hold on power, depends on the support of the Israeli far right, who dream of permanently occupying Gaza, as well as the West Bank, and otherwise thwarting Palestinian ambitions of statehood. Once out of office, moreover, Mr. Netanyahu might finally have to face the prosecution for corruption he has so determinedly staved off until now.
I think we have to look at the recent decision of the Canadian government, and others, to recognize a Palestinian state in this light. The kneejerk response is to say that this amounts to “rewarding Hamas” for the October 7 attacks. Two years ago, or even one year ago, that might have had some validity. Today it does not seem so clear.
In the first place, the conditions attached to the Canadian declaration – reform of the Palestinian Authority, fresh elections in Palestine, demilitarization, recognition of Israel’s right to exist, etc. – are such as to call into question how much our position has really changed.
Second, it’s difficult to see how this would reward Hamas. Not only has it been decimated by the war, but it is abundantly clear it will be excluded from any post-war settlement. That’s not just Israel’s democratic allies saying it. It was the substance of a declaration endorsed by the 22 members of the Arab League last week (“In the context of ending the war in Gaza, Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority”).
More to the point, the appalling situation on the ground in Gaza has made it necessary to shock the Israeli right out of its fantasy of total victory. Hamas should not be rewarded for the crimes of October 7, but neither should ultranationalists seeking to exploit them for their own purposes.