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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
By
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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