Gaza And 'Proportionality"

Israel's Dilemma

Reporting on Israel for 20 years, has taught me one thing about the conflict - Palestinians and Israelis have spent decades dehumanizing each other to the point any kind of violence seems accepted by either side, in their splintered goals to win.

Win what? I’m no longer sure what they want, accept it seems to annihilate one another and the last 8 months has gone a long way towards that goal.

Israel should be celebrating the incredible military operation is launched over the weekend in spectacular fashion, inserting special teams into Gaza, acting on the finest intelligence to track and free 4 of it’s citizens held hostage since Oct. 7.

Instead, Israel blundered into another bog of criticism and condemnation because that operation, while successful in releasing Noa Argamani, 25, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Shlomi Ziv, 40, and Andrey Kozlov, 27 was apparently brutal in it’s execution, killing as many as 274 Palestinians (that’s their claim) and wounding another 700 people in the operation that was centred on the Nuseirat refugee camp.

***Israeli claims those numbers were vastly exaggerated stating under 100 were killed.***

I think Israel had every reason to act, indeed every obligation, to free it’s own people taken in a bloody Palestinian attack launched on Oct 7, with Hamas killing some 1200 Israelis and taking more than 200 back into Gaza as hostages.

Israel shouldn’t have to justify a raid to free Israeli’s spirited away to Gaza against their will from an Israeli music festival, where many have been beaten, raped, starved and tortured by Hamas.

But even if the Israeli hostages were held in residential apartments with Palestinian families assisting in their confinement, the deaths of so many Palestinians in the area during seems to be beyond the limits of so-called ‘proportionality’ in war.

In condemning Israel EU foreign minister Josep Borell called it “a massacre” stating Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza must end.

But let’s be clear, this war started with Israel being attacked by Hamas, and Hamas carries much responsibility for civilian deaths in Gaza.

Palestinians may cheer Hamas seeing it as some kind of force fighting for freedom, but Hamas has tried to blow up peace efforts in Israel for years, and even violently took over Gaza from the Palestinian authority leading to the stagnation and isolation of Gaza.

If it wasn’t for Hamas, Palestinians might have a state by now, and a continuous peace of geography with Gaza linked to the West Bank. Instead Hamas ushered in decades of violence and conflict, spurred on by Iran’s extreme mullahs sending money and weapons for the “resistance”.

Palestinians have been used as human anti Israel proxies, by evil leaders of Hamas and Iran with no thought to the millions displaced and denied a normal life in Gaza.

Within Israel dark radical right wing forces, have used the Palestinian violence as an excuse to roll back peace efforts, and some of those people are now in powerful position including P.M. Netanyahu’s Government itself.

Radical Israeli’s have attacked Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and justified any kind of force in the name of Israel’s security, and none more so than Netanyahu who has no vision for ending the war in Gaza and what tomorrow should deliver for Jews and Arabs.

Thus, Benny Gantz, a more moderate member of Israel's cabinet, announced his resignation on Sunday, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of mismanaging the war effort in Gaza and putting his own "political survival" over the country's security.

If anything has been learned and relearned over the last 8 months, it’s that Israel’s conflict with Palestinians is as much a conflict between Jews and Arabs, as it is a conflict within Israel between the right and moderate Israeli’s who see long term peace as something deliverable, if only Netanyahu would resign and allow new elections.

The hostage release was a huge victory for at least the four people who got to go home, after a living nightmare in Gaza.

But the stark fact is more than 100 Israeli’s remain prisoners in Gaza, in those dark tunnels, or possibly held like these four were in apartments with Palestinians all around them.

And the only way to get them out may be through negotiations to end the war and withdraw Israeli forces.

It’s just that Netanyahu’s government is the last vehicle to arrive at a ceasefire and begin discussions of long term peace, so the war in Gaza rages on month after month tragically with no end in sight.