global culture: critical analysis summation

Chapter Title: Israel Has the Right to Defend Itself Book Title: Gaza

Book Subtitle: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom

Book Author(s): Norman G. Finkelstein

Published by: University of California Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv1xxxwn.15

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211

e l e v e n

Israel Has the Right to Defend Itself

on 8 j u ly 2014, isr a e l l au nch e d Operation Protective Edge. It marked the longest and most destructive of Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza; indeed, it was “the most devastating round of hostilities in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967.”1 Operation Cast Lead (2008–9) lasted 22 days, whereas Protective Edge lasted fully 51 days (it ended on 26 August). Some 350 children were killed and 6,000 homes destroyed during Cast Lead, whereas fully 550 children were killed and 18,000 homes destroyed during Protective Edge. Israel left behind 600,000 tons of rubble in Cast Lead, whereas it left behind 2.5 million tons of rubble in Protective Edge. What’s more, Protective Edge “impacted an already paralyzed economy at a time when socioeconomic conditions were at their lowest since 1967. Th is operation therefore had a more severe impact on socioeconomic conditions compared to the previous two military operations in 2008 and 2012.”2 But in contrast to Cast Lead and the 2006 Lebanon war, Protective Edge was not preplanned long in advance; the decision to attack resulted from contin- gent factors.3 Israeli offi cialdom also thought twice during Protective Edge before making those brazen incriminating statements that got it in legal hot water in the past. On the morrow of Cast Lead, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni

1. United Nations Country Team in the State of Palestine, Gaza: Two years aft er (2016). 2. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, “Report on UNCTAD

Assistance to the Palestinian People: Developments in the economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory” ( July 2015), paras. 27, 42 (2.5 million tons).

3. Julia Amalia Heyer, “Ex-Israeli Security Chief Diskin: ‘All the conditions are there for an explosion,’ ” Spiegel Online International (24 July 2014). On the preplanning for Cast Lead, see Chapter 2; on Lebanon in 2006, see Benjamin S. Lambeth, Air Operations in Israel ’s War against Hezbollah: Learning fr om Lebanon and getting it right in Gaza (Arlington, VA: 2011), p. 97.

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212 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

publicly bragged about the criminal orders she issued, but she then found herself the target of criminal prosecution.4 Sobered by this brush with the law, Livni sang a diff erent tune as minister of justice aft er Protective Edge: “When the fi re stops, the legal fi re directed at Israel, its leaders, its soldiers, and its commanders will begin. I . . . intend to stand at the frontlines in this battle . . . and will give each soldier and each commander in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] a legal bulletproof vest.”5 Still, many of Israel’s tactics— provocations, massive force—conformed to a decades-old pattern. Protective Edge also ended on a familiar note: Israel was unable to claim decisive mili- tary victory, while Hamas was unable to extract concrete political gain.

Protective Edge traced back to yet another reckless display of Hamas prag- matism. At the end of April 2014, the Islamic movement and its secular Palestinian rival Fatah formed a “consensus government.” Th e United States and the European Union did not suspend engagement but instead “cau- tiously welcomed” the Palestinian initiative, adopting a wait-and-see approach.6 It was evidently payback time, as Israel had aborted the 2013–14 peace initiative of US secretary of state John Kerry.7 If only through a back door, Hamas had won unprecedented legitimacy, but it also made an unprec- edented concession. Th e United States and the European Union had long predicated diplomatic engagement with Palestinian leaders on a trio of pre- conditions: recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence, and recognition of past agreements.8 Hamas did not object when Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, speaking on behalf of the new unity government, reiter- ated his support for the preconditions. As these developments unfolded, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu erupted in a rage.9 Th e pros - pect of “Palestinian unity” was a “red line” for Netanyahu (and Israeli leaders

4. See Chapter 3 and Chapter 5. 5. B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories),

Whitewash Protocol: Th e so-called investigation of Operation Protective Edge (2016), pp. 4–5. 6. Peter Beaumont, “Palestinian Unity Government of Fatah and Hamas Sworn In,”

Guardian (2 June 2014); “Why Hamas Fires Th ose Rockets,” Economist (19 July 2014). 7. Nahum Barnea, “Inside the Talks’ Failure: US offi cials open up,” ynetnews.com (2 May

2014). 8. See Chapter 1. 9. Jack Khoury, “Abbas: Palestinian unity government will recognize Israel, condemn

terrorism,” Haaretz (26 April 2014); Jeff rey Heller, “Netanyahu Urges World Not to Recognize Palestinian Unity Government,” Reuters (1 June 2014); Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, “Th e US Stance on the Palestinian Unity Government” (Doha: 19 June 2014).

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 213

in general), so he refl exively sought to sabotage it.10 In the event that the Palestinian consensus held, he could no longer invoke standard Israeli ali- bis—Abbas represented only one Palestinian faction; Hamas was a terrorist organization bent on Israel’s destruction—to evade a settlement of the con- fl ict.11 Th e prime minister’s ire was yet more aroused as the United States and the European Union had already ignored his premonition that Iran was intending to visit a “second Holocaust” on Israel. Instead, they had entered into diplomatic talks with Tehran to obtain an agreement on its nuclear weapons program.

In June 2014, a gift dropped into Netanyahu’s lap. A rogue Hamas cell abducted and killed three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank. Netanyahu was aware early on that the teenagers had been killed (not captured for a future prisoner swap) and that Hamas’s leadership wasn’t responsible.12 “Th e gov- ernment had known almost from the beginning that the boys were dead,” J. J. Goldberg, the former editor in chief of the ( Jewish) Forward, observed. “Th ere was no doubt.”13 But never one to pass up an exploitable moment, Netanyahu parlayed this macabre “boon”14 to break up the Palestinian unity government. Feigning a rescue mission, Israel launched Operation Brother’s Keeper in mid-June. At least fi ve West Bank Palestinians were killed, homes were demolished and businesses ransacked, and seven hundred Palestinians, mostly Hamas members, were arrested, including many who had been released in a 2011 prisoner exchange.15 Th e rampage was patently tailored to elicit a violent response from Hamas, so as to “prove” it was a terrorist organi- zation. Netanyahu could then, and in fact later did, rebuke Washington to

10. Th e imminence of a Palestinian unity government in 2006 precipitated the identical Israeli response. Jean-Pierre Filiu, Gaza: A history (New York: 2014), p. 295.

11. Idan Landau, “Th e Unfolding Lie of Operation Protective Edge,” +972 (15 July 2014); Avi Issacharoff , “PM: Palestinian unity government would kill off the peace process,” Haaretz (18 March 2011).

12. Amos Harel and Yaniv Kubovich, “Revealed: Behind the scenes on the hunt to fi nd kidnapped teens,” Haaretz (1 July 2014); Katie Zavadski, “It Turns Out Hamas May Not Have Kidnapped and Killed the 3 Israeli Teens Aft er All,” New York (25 July 2014); “Hamas: We wouldn’t target civilians if we had better weapons,” Haaretz (23 August 2014); Amos Harel, “Notes from an Interrogation: How the Shin Beth gets the lowdown on terror,” Haaretz (2 September 2014).

13. J. J. Goldberg, “How Politics and Lies Triggered an Unintended War in Gaza,” Forward (10 July 2014).

14. Landau, “Unfolding Lie.” 15. Human Rights Watch, “Serious Violations in West Bank Operations” (3 July 2014).

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214 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

“never second-guess me again.”16 Hamas at fi rst resisted the Israeli provoca- tions, although other Gaza factions did fi re projectiles. But in the ensuing tit-for-tat, Hamas entered the fray and the violence spun out of control.17

Once hostilities broke out, Israel faced a now familiar dilemma. Short- range projectiles of the kind Hamas18 possessed couldn’t be disabled from the air; they had to be taken out at ground level. But a ground invasion would cost Netanyahu either too much domestically, if many Israeli soldiers were killed fi ghting Hamas street by street, or too much internationally, if Israeli soldiers immunized themselves from attack by indiscriminately targeting the civilian population and infrastructure as they advanced.19 Unable to carve out a safe path through the thicket of political unknowns, Netanyahu initially held back from launching a ground invasion. But then two more gift s dropped into his lap. First, former British prime minister Tony Blair apparently contrived, while Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi20 formally presented, a cease- fi re deal (on 14 July), according to which Hamas would stop fi ring projectiles into Israel and Israel would ease the blockade of Gaza when “the security situation stabilizes.”21 Th e prior cease-fi re agreements Hamas had entered into with Israel did not contain such a “security” caveat.22 Insofar as Israel desig- nated Hamas a terrorist organization, the security situation in Gaza could stabilize only when Hamas either was defeated or disarmed itself, in the absence of which the siege would continue. It surely didn’t come as a shock when Hamas rejected these cease-fi re terms. Whereas el-Sisi’s proposal did not bring a halt to armed hostilities, it did hand Israel a credible pretext for a brutal ground invasion. What choice did it have (Israel could protest) in the

16. “Netanyahu to US: ‘Don’t ever second-guess me again,’ ” ynetnews.com (2 August 2014).

17. Christa Case Bryant, “Ending Détente, Hamas Takes Responsibility for Today’s Spike in Rocket Fire,” Christian Science Monitor (7 July 2014); David C. Hendrickson, “Th e Th rasybulus Syndrome,” National Interest (29 July 2014); Nathan Th rall, “Hamas’s Chances,” London Review of Books (21 August 2014); Assaf Sharon, “Failure in Gaza,” New York Review of Books (25 September 2014).

18. Here as elsewhere, Hamas is used as shorthand for all Palestinian armed groups in Gaza when referring to Palestinian military actions and capabilities.

19. See Chapter 10. 20. In July 2013, el-Sisi had replaced Egypt’s democratically elected government led by

the Muslim Brotherhood in a bloody coup. 21. “Th e Full Text of the Egyptian Ceasefi re Proposal,” Haaretz (15 July 2014); Barak Ravid,

“Secret Call between Netanyahu, al-Sissi Led to Abortive Cease-fi re,” Haaretz (16 July 2014). 22. “Israel and Hamas Ceasefi re Begins,” BBC (19 June 2008); “Ceasefi re Agreement

between Israel and Gaza’s Palestinians,” Reuters (21 November 2012).

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 215

face of Hamas’s intransigence? Second, on 17 July, a Malaysian airliner fl ying over Ukraine was downed.23 Th e politically charged incident instantly dis- placed Gaza as the headline news story. Ever the consummate and cynical politician, Netanyahu seized on this golden opportunity. Shortly aft er the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Netanyahu reportedly declared that Israel had committed a major blunder when it didn’t expel “fi ve, 50 or 500” Palestinian “inciters” of the fi rst intifada while the media was riveted on China.24 Th e downed Malaysian airliner was Netanyahu’s “Tiananmen moment.” Freed up by the diversion to unleash a no-holds-barred attack, Netanyahu launched the ground invasion hours later, on the night of that very day.25 Th e new regional constellation, as the Arab Spring degenerated into the Arab Winter, further emboldened him. Hamas was left out in the cold, with- out any states willing to go to bat for it and many rooting for its defeat. Fate had lined up Netanyahu’s ducks: the perfect pretext, the perfect decoy, the perfect alignment of earthly bodies politic. He could fi nally settle scores with Hamas and, incidentally, exact sweet revenge for the humiliation he suff ered in Operation Pillar of Defense (2012).26

As ground troops crossed into the Strip, Israel let loose with abandon its explosive arsenal. Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure—homes and businesses, schools and mosques, hospitals and ambulances, power stations and sewage plants, civilian shelters and civilians fl eeing in panic—came under relentless, indiscriminate, disproportionate, and deliberate attack. Israel reportedly fi red 20,000 high-explosive artillery shells, 14,500 tank shells, 6,000 missiles, and 3,500 naval shells into the enclave.27 Th is breakdown

23. Sabrina Tavernise, Eric Schmitt, and Rick Gladstone, “Jetliner Explodes over Ukraine; Struck by Missile, Offi cials Say,” New York Times (17 July 2014).

24. Menachem Shalev, “Netanyahu Recommends Large-Scale Expulsions,” Jerusalem Post (19 November 1989). Th e fi rst intifada began in 1987 and was still going strong in 1989.

25. In a retrospective one year aft er Protective Edge, Haaretz observed that one of the “external factors” operating in Israel’s favor during Protective Edge was “the July 17 downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17.” Chemi Shalev, “Israel’s Deceptive Diplomatic Success,” Haaretz (n.d.). For a rigorous study demonstrating that “Israeli authorities may choose the timing of their attacks strategically to minimize negative international publicity,” see Ruben Durante and Ekaterina Zuravskaya, “Attack When the World Is Not Watching? International media and the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict,” Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics (2015).

26. See Chapter 10. 27. United Nations Offi ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aff airs (OCHA),

Humanitarian Bulletin—Monthly Report ( June–August 2014); “Taking Stock,” BaYabasha (Ground Forces Journal) (October 2014), p. 47 (Hebrew).

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216 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

did not yet include bomb tonnage—over 100 one-ton bombs were dropped on the Shuja’ iya neighborhood alone. More than 1,500 Gazan civilians were killed during Protective Edge. (In Israel, six civilians were killed.)28 In a 2014 global ranking of the number of civilian casualties resulting from explosive weapons, tiny Gaza placed third—below Iraq and Syria, but ahead of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Ukraine.29 Large swaths of Gaza were reduced to rubble; Gaza’s economy “eff ectively collapsed,” while recovery was “expected to take decades.”30 Th e overwhelming violent force Israel unleashed was designed to limit IDF combat casualties by blasting everything and everyone within sight of the invading army, and to subvert Gaza’s will to resist by ter- rorizing the civilian population and pulverizing the civilian infrastructure. But it also indexed the sadism and brutalized indiff erence permeating the ranks of the IDF. Th e Goldstone Report had concluded that the Israeli objec- tive in Cast Lead was to “punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.”31 Protective Edge was a repeat Israeli performance but on a vastly greater scale. Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, observed aft er touring the ravaged Strip, “I’ve never seen such massive destruction ever before,” while the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process observed, “No human being who visits can remain untouched by the terrible devastation that one sees.”32 It was a “wild war of revenge,” Haaretz journalist Zvi Bar’el recalled, that “turned the entire Gaza population into an ‘infrastructure’ to be destroyed.”33 “In the 30 years that I have spent researching and writing about Gaza and her people,” Sara Roy of Harvard University refl ected aft er Protective Edge, “I can say without hesitation that I have never seen the kind of human, physical, and psychologi- cal destruction that I see there today.”34 Even UN secretary-general Ban

28. See Chapter 12 for sources. 29. Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), Explosive States: Monitoring explosive violence

in 2014 (2015). Th e ranking was based on Gazan casualties throughout 2014, not just during Protective Edge.

30. Sara Roy, Th e Gaza Strip: Th e political economy of de-development, expanded third edition (Washington, DC: 2016), p. 401 (“expected to take” quoted from United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process).

31. See Chapter 5. 32. Sudarsan Raghavan, “Month-Long War in Gaza Has Left a Humanitarian and

Environmental Crisis,” Washington Post (9 August 2014); “Arriving for Talks in Gaza, New UN Envoy Urges Palestinian Unity, End to Israeli Blockade,” UN News Centre (30 April 2015).

33. Zvi Bar’el, “Israeli Security Assessments Are Reality Built on a Lie,” Haaretz (19 April 2016).

34. Roy, Gaza Strip, p. 395.

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 217

Ki-moon, who habitually took his cues from Washington, was moved (or felt compelled) to tell the UN General Assembly during the operation, “Th e massive death and destruction in Gaza have shocked and shamed the world,” while a few months later he told a press conference aft er visiting Gaza, “Th e destruction I have seen coming here is beyond description.”35 Meanwhile, the consensus opinion inside Israel was that Protective Edge constituted a “lim- ited military operation.”36

To extenuate Gaza’s civilian death toll, Israel, per usual, accused Hamas of using civilians as “human shields.”37 But reputable human rights organiza- tions and journalists, per usual, found no evidence to sustain Israel’s allega- tion.38 In a comprehensive defense of its conduct during Protective Edge, Israel professed that the “IDF sought to achieve the goals set by the Government of Israel while adhering to the Law of Armed Confl ict—and in certain respects, the IDF went beyond its legal obligations.”39 As if reading from the offi cial Israeli script, an international High Level Military Group— sponsored and selected by the “Friends of Israel Initiative,” and including perennial Israel pom-pom Colonel Richard Kemp—proclaimed, “Th e IDF not only met its obligations under the Law of Armed Confl ict, but oft en exceeded them.” Indeed, it purported that the “IDF showed signifi cant restraint,” and that a “life-preserving ethos . . . is propagated throughout its ranks.” It even went so far as to “express strong concerns that the actions and practices of the IDF to prevent collateral damage were so extensive . . . that they would curtail the eff ectiveness of our own militaries, were they to become constraining norms of warfare enacted in customary law.”40 Th e

35. Raghavan, “Month-Long War”; Peter Beaumont and Hazem Balousha, “Ban Ki-moon: Gaza is a source of shame to the international community,” Guardian (14 October 2014).

36. Meron Rapoport, “Th e Coup against Israel’s Army,” Middle East Eye (21 May 2016).

37. State of Israel, Th e 2014 Gaza Confl ict, 7 July–26 August 2014: Factual and legal aspects (2015), paras. 161–65.

38. Amnesty International, Israel/Gaza Confl ict: Questions and answers (25 July 2014); “Jeremy Bowen’s Gaza Notebook: ‘I saw no evidence of Hamas using Palestinians as human shields,’ ” New Statesman (25 July 2014); Kim Sengupta, “Th e Myth of Hamas’s Human Shields,” Independent (21 July 2014). For Hamas’s alleged “human shielding” in Operation Cast Lead, see Chapter 4; for Protective Edge, see also Chapter 12 and Chapter 13.

39. State of Israel, 2014 Gaza Confl ict, para. 15. 40. High Level Military Group, An Assessment of the 2014 Gaza Confl ict (2015), paras. 7,

59, 119, 216, 207 (see also paras. 12, 24, 30, 54, 63, 103, 113, 169, 180, 205). Th e group described itself as “top-level practitioners from democratic nations whose expertise covers the entire

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218 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

credibility of these attestations, however, crashed up against the testimonies of Israeli soldiers who actually saw combat during Protective Edge. In con- trast, the “assessment” of the High Level Military Group largely consisted of a stenographic transcription of what senior Israeli offi cials told it. Th e IDF eyewitness accounts were compiled by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli non- governmental organization comprising former Israeli soldiers. None of the hundreds of testimonies collected by this organization over more than a dec- ade has ever been proven false, and all of them were approved for publication by the IDF censor. Th e politics of Breaking the Silence were not aberrantly left ist (it did not support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and opposed criminal prosecution of Israeli offi cers), while most of the sol- dier-witnesses did not even appear contrite.41 Th e criminal dimensions of Protective Edge could be gleaned from these IDF eyewitness accounts (see Table 4). Although Israel fl inches at juxtapositions of its own conduct with that of the Nazis, one of the Breaking the Silence testimonies (no. 83) breached this taboo: “Th ere’s that famous photo that they always show on trips to Poland [in which Israeli youths visit Holocaust memorial sites] that shows Warsaw before the war and Warsaw aft er the Second World War. Th e photo shows the heart of Warsaw and it’s this classy European city, and then they show it at the end of the war. Th ey show the exact same neighborhood, only it has just one house left standing, and the rest is just ruins. Th at’s what it looked like.” To avoid mind-numbing redundancy, Table 4 omits the suc- cession of combatants who testifi ed that the IDF’s modus operandi during the operation was shoot to kill anything that moves, oft en on explicit orders but also because it was “cool.”42 If the High Level Military Group perempto- rily dismissed all these combatant testimonies, it was because “senior [Israeli] commanders as well as those leading the fi ght on the ground” contradicted

gamut of the conduct of warfare, its strategic, tactical, operational and legal frameworks” (paras. 1, 201). Kemp alleged that if the High Level Military Group’s fi ndings were “the diametric opposite of those of the UN Human Rights Council, human rights groups,” it was because these groups “analyze the situation based on human rights law, not the laws of armed confl ict.” Th e most charitable thing one can say is that Kemp didn’t read a single word in any of these critical reports, which of course based their analyses overwhelmingly on the laws of armed confl ict. Richard Kemp, “We Put Our Reputations on the Line: Th is is why,” Jewish Chronicle (16 December 2015). For Kemp, see Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.

41. Haggai Matar, “Why Do So Many Israelis Hate Breaking the Silence?,” +972 (14 December 2015).

42. Curious readers should consult numbered testimonies 2, 3, 16, 17, 22, 24, 28, 40, 51, 52, 55, 56, 63, 75, 81 (reference at Table 4).

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ta ble 4 How Israel Fought Operation Protective Edge: A Selection of IDF Testimonies

18a When we left aft er the operation, it was just a barren stretch of desert. . . . We spoke about it a lot amongst ourselves, the guys from the company, how crazy the amount of damage we did there was. I quote: “Listen man, it’s crazy what went on in there,” “Listen man, we really messed them up,” “Fuck, check it out, there’s nothing at all left . . . , it’s nothing but desert now, that’s crazy.”

21 I remember that the level of destruction looked insane to me. 22 We entered Gaza . . . with an insane amount of fi repower. 25 It all looked like a science fi ction movie . . . serious levels of destruction

everywhere. . . . [E]verything was really in ruins. And non-stop fi re all the time. 30 Before the entrance on foot [to the Gaza Strip], a crazy amount of artillery

was fi red at the entire area. . . . Before a tank makes any movement it fi res, every time. Th ose guys were trigger happy, totally crazy.b

31 Th e explosions’ eff ects cause major amounts of damage, but that doesn’t interest anyone. “Use it, use it, explosives can’t be taken back,” the platoon commander says, “I don’t want to leave explosives with me.”

36 Our view was of the center of the Strip. Let’s say it was a real fi reworks display. From a distance it looked pretty cool. . . . If you looked through a night vision scope you saw crazy wreckage, it was a real trip.

38 [Y]ou’re shooting at anything that moves—and also at what isn’t moving, crazy amounts. . . . [I]t also becomes a bit like a computer game, totally cool and real.

49 It was total destruction in there—the photos on line are child’s play compared to what we saw there in reality. . . . I never saw anything like it.

70 [T]he unfathomable number of dead on one of the sides, the unimaginable level of destruction, the way militant cells and people were regarded as targets and not as living beings—that’s something that troubles me.

74 [I]t’s destruction on a whole other level. 94 Th e air force carries out an insane amount of strikes in the Gaza Strip during

an operation like “Protective Edge.” 96 [S]hells are being fi red all the time. Even if we aren’t actually going to enter:

shells, shells, shells. . . . What happens is, for seven straight days it’s non-stop bombardment, that’s what happens in practice.

sou rc e: Breaking the Silence, This Is How We Fought in Gaza: Soldiers’ testimonies and photographs from Operation “Protective Edge” (2014). a Testimonies are numbered in the collection. b The official Israeli postmortem on Protective Edge stated that “artillery was used in a restrained and calculated fashion, after taking various technical and doctrinal precautions intended to minimize potential civilian harm and optimize the fire’s accuracy” (State of Israel, 2014 Gaza Conf lict, para. 357), while the High Level Military Group stated that “the vast major- ity of artillery fire during the ground operation was fired into open areas in Gaza with no civil- ian presence. . . . The IDF further employs a number of technical and operational means to ensure the accuracy of its artillery” (Assessment, para. 117).

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2 2 0 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

them.43 Who could quarrel with such disinterested authority? Th e last testi- mony (no. 111) in the Breaking the Silence collection provided insight into the society that nurtured “the most moral army in the world.” “You leave the [Gaza Strip] and the most obvious question is, ‘Did you kill anybody?,’ ” an IDF infantry sergeant rued. “Even if you meet the most left -wing girl in the world, eventually she’ll start thinking, ‘Did you ever kill somebody, or not?’ And what can you do about it? Most people in our society consider that to be a badge of honor. So everyone wants to come out of there with that feeling of satisfaction.”

Israel fared both better and worse than it could have predicted going into the operation. On one side of the ledger, despite the murder and mayhem that Israel was daily infl icting on Gaza, the White House signaled it the green light to proceed. Human rights organizations reported from fairly early on that Israel was probably targeting or fi ring indiscriminately at civilians and civilian infra- structure.44 But notwithstanding some behind-the-scenes friction,45 the United States did not publicly pressure Israel to desist. On the contrary, President Barack Obama or his spokespersons dutifully invoked Israel’s “right to self- defense,” while turning a blind eye to IDF atrocities and a deaf ear to Gaza’s wails.46 Th e inescapable fact was that Obama did not just facilitate this latest Israeli massacre in Gaza; he was its enabler in chief. It might be wondered why he supported the assault if he had earlier supported negotiations with the Hamas-Fatah unity government. Th e simple answer was that once Hamas pro- jectiles started fl ying over Israel, and Israel’s domestic lobby lined up wall-to-wall congressional support,47 it would have required spine, which Obama conspicu-

43. High Level Military Group, Assessment, para. 115. 44. Amnesty International, “UN Must Impose Arms Embargo and Mandate an

International Investigation as Civilian Death Toll Rises” (11 July 2014); Human Rights Watch, “Gaza: Airstrike deaths raise concerns on ground off ensive” (22 July 2014). To be sure, Human Rights Watch (HRW) was ultracautious in its criticism of Israel at the incep- tion of Protective Edge; see “Indiscriminate Palestinian Rocket Attacks” (9 July 2014). For HRW’s equivocating record on Israel, see Norman G. Finkelstein, Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish romance with Israel is coming to an end (New York: 2012), pp. 123–54.

45. Marissa Newman, “Israeli Offi cial Confi rms US Nixed Arms Shipment,” Times of Israel (14 August 2014).

46. Gareth Porter, “US Avoided Th reat to Act on Israel’s Civilian Targeting,” Inter Press Service (12 August 2014).

47. Ramsey Cox, “Senate Passes Resolution in Support of Israel,” Th e Hill (17 July 2014); Connie Bruck, “Friends of Israel,” New Yorker (1 September 2014).

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 2 21

ously lacked, to defy it. Still, did realpolitik compel him to reaffi rm Israel’s “right to defend itself ” day in and day out, even as human rights organizations docu- mented Israeli atrocities? In addition, Israel hugely profi ted and Gaza hugely lost from a dramatic regional reconfi guration. Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia openly longed for Hamas’s eviction from power,48 while the Arab League—in its sole meeting on Gaza—backed el-Sisi’s cynical cease-fi re ultimatum.49 Only Iran, Turkey, and Qatar among Middle Eastern powers opposed the Israeli onslaught. If Israel showed relative restraint during Operation Pillar of Defense, this was because of the red lines drawn by Egypt and Turkey in support of Hamas.50 But aft er the July 2013 coup, Egypt turned on Hamas with a vengeance, while Turkey was preoccupied with and bogged down in Syria. Convulsed by its own internal confl icts and humanitarian crises, the so-called street across large swaths of the Arab world fell mute during Protective Edge. Arab despots accordingly paid no domestic price for egging on Israel. Meanwhile, the European Union also gave Israel a free pass as it dreaded “militant Islam,” which was spreading like wildfi re under the ISIS banner, and to which Hamas was refl exively assimilated. Th e redemptive global exception was the Latin American bloc. In an exemplary display of selfl ess solidarity with beleaguered Gaza, the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela registered disgust at Israeli actions.51 Nonetheless, amid the slaughter, Gaza was eff ectively on its own, alone and abandoned.

On the opposite side of the ledger, Israel was taken off guard by the robust and ramifi ed network of tunnels that Hamas had constructed. Adopting and adapting Hezbollah’s strategy during the 2006 Lebanon war, Hamas used projectiles to lure Israel into a ground invasion. It then emerged from tunnels that withstood Israeli aerial bombardment and infl icted an exceptional number of combatant casualties.52 Only ten Israeli soldiers had been killed

48. David Hearst, “Saudi Crocodile Tears over Gaza,” Huffi ngton Post (28 July 2014). 49. “Arab League Urges ‘All Parties’ to Back Eg ypt’s Gaza Truce Plan,” Arab News

(15 July 2014). 50. See Chapter 10. 51. Robert Kozak, “Israel Faces Latin American Backlash,” Wall Street Journal (30 July

2014). 52. High Level Military Group, Assessment, para. 110; Nahum Barnea, “Tumbling into

Gaza, and Climbing Out Again,” ynetnews.com (29 July 2014); Nidal al-Mughrabi, “Hamas Fighters Show Defi ance in Gaza Tunnel Tour,” Reuters (19 August 2014); Gili Cohen, “Tunnel Vision on Gazan Border,” Haaretz (17 July 2014); Mark Perry, “Why Israel’s Bombardment of Gaza’s Neighborhood Left US Offi cers ‘Stunned,’ ” Al Jazeera America (27 August 2014); Amos Harel, “Israel and Hamas Are in an Underground Race in Gaza,”

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2 2 2 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

in Cast Lead, four by “friendly fi re”; many Israeli soldiers had testifi ed to not having even seen a Hamas fi ghter.53 Th is time around, however, fully 62 Israeli soldiers were killed by militants.54 In the face of this surprisingly stiff resistance, the IDF marked time once having crossed into Gaza, not ventur- ing more than two to three kilometers beyond the border.55 As it launched the ground invasion, Israel abruptly recalibrated its mission from destroying Hamas’s “rockets” to destroying Hamas’s cross-border “terror tunnels.” Yet, of the 32 tunnels Israel reportedly discovered and detonated, only 12–14 actu- ally passed under the border.56 It was cause for perplexity why Israel couldn’t have sealed them from its side, just as Egypt aft er the July 2013 coup sealed some 1,500 commercial tunnels passing from Gaza into the Sinai. Later, when Egypt fl ooded the still extant tunnels (allegedly to preempt weapons smug- gling), Israeli energy minister Yuval Steinitz praised it as a “good solution.”57 Why was it a “good solution” for Egypt but not a “good solution” for Israel? Perhaps Israel couldn’t on technical grounds duplicate Egypt’s modus oper- andi. Still, the question was not even posed why Israel was ravaging Gaza to eliminate “terror tunnels” if it seemingly had less destructive options at hand. Once the IDF breached Gaza’s border and met fi erce resistance, it sought to destroy the tunnel network inside Gaza, so that Hamas couldn’t infl ict heavy casualties when Israel next set out to “mow the lawn.” If Israel asserted a “right” to destroy the tunnels—a prerogative endorsed by much of offi cial public opinion around the world—it was declaring that Gaza had no right to defend itself against Israel’s periodic massacres. Even were it true that Israel sought to destroy only the cross-border tunnels, it would still be hard to fi g- ure out why this was a legitimate preemptive goal. Inveterate Israel propagan- dist Colonel Richard Kemp compared these tunnels to no less than Auschwitz: “Th e purpose of both of those things was to kill Jews.”58

Haaretz (31 January 2016); Shlomi Eldar, “Is Hamas on the Off ensive or Defensive?,” Al-Monitor (18 April 2016).

53. See Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. 54. Th ree other Israeli soldiers were killed by friendly fi re and a fourth was killed in an

operational accident. 55. Amos Harel, “Using Gaza Lessons to Prepare for Next Hezbollah War,” Haaretz

(7 August 2014). 56. Amos Harel, “Gaza War Taught Israel Time to Rethink Strategies,” Haaretz

(5 August 2014). 57. “Eg ypt Flooded Gaza’s Tunnels at Israel ’s Request,” Agence France-Presse

(8 February 2016). 58. “Kemp: Hamas tunnels like Auschwitz,” Australian Jewish News (16 March 2015).

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 2 2 3

Samantha Power, US representative at the United Nations, scolded the Security Council for “saying nothing of the resources diverted from helping Gaza’s residents to dig tunnels into Israeli territory so that terrorists can attack Israelis in their homes.”59 But these cross-border catacombs were “only used to conduct attacks directed at IDF positions in Israel in the vicinity of the Green Line, which are legitimate military targets.” 60 Do the laws of war pre- scribe that planes, artillery shells, and tanks get to breach Gaza’s border at Israel’s will and whim, but Hamas tunnels targeting combatants must not transgress Israel’s sacred space?

Israel misrepresented not only the threat posed by Hamas “terror tun- nels.” It also infl ated the performance of its antimissile defense system and the threat posed by Hamas “rockets.” Hamas reportedly fi red fi ve thousand rockets and two thousand mortar shells at Israel during the operation.61 To reconcile the vast discrepancy between the many thousands of projectiles Hamas unleashed, on the one hand, and the minimal death and destruction they infl icted, on the other, Israel motioned to its wondrous Iron Dome antimissile defense system. A leading Israeli military correspondent posited that were it not for Iron Dome, “the Israeli casualty count would have been infi nitely higher,” while an Israeli diplomat purported that Iron Dome “pre- vented thousands of potential Israeli civilian casualties.”62 But this explana- tion does not persuade. Whereas Israel alleged that Iron Dome intercepted 740 rockets, the UN Department of Safety and Security put the number at closer to 240.63 However, the most skeptical reckoning came from one of the

59. “US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power’s Full Speech at the Security Council,” Haaretz (24 December 2016). Th e ever-righteous Power also condemned the Security Council for failing to “muster the will to adopt the simplest of resolutions calling for a seven- day pause in the savage bombardment of innocent civilians, hospitals, and schools in Aleppo,” even as she and the Obama administration had blocked any UN action against Israel’s savage bombardment of innocent civilians, hospitals, and schools in Gaza.

60. UN Human Rights Council, Report of the Detailed Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry Established Pursuant to Human Rights Council Resolution S-21/1 (2015), para. 108, emphasis added.

61. UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS), cited in Addendum to Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (A/HRC/28/80/Add.1) (26 December 2014), p. 8.

62. Hirsh Goodman, “Israel’s Narrative—An Overview,” and Alan Baker, “Th e Limits of the Diplomatic Arena,” in Hirsh Goodman and Dore Gold, eds., Th e Gaza War: Th e war Israel did not want and the disaster it averted (2015), pp. 12, 70.

63. UN Offi ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aff airs, Humanitarian Bulletin ( June–August 2014), p. 19.

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2 2 4 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

world’s leading authorities on antimissile defense, Th eodore Postol of MIT.64 (Postol had previously debunked claims hyping the Patriot antimissile defense system in the 1991 Gulf War.65) He concluded that Iron Dome suc- cessfully intercepted 5 percent of incoming Hamas rockets, or, on the basis of Israel’s raw data, an underwhelming 40 of them.66 Even accepting, for argu- ment’s sake, the offi cial Israeli tally of 740 successful interceptions, it still perplexed why the thousands of Hamas projectiles that Iron Dome did not intercept caused so little damage. Indeed, even before Israel fi rst deployed Iron Dome (during Pillar of Defense in 2012), the material consequences of Hamas projectiles barely registered. Consider these fi gures. Whereas Hamas fi red some 13,000 rockets and mortar shells at Israel between 2001 and 2012, a total of 23 Israeli civilians were killed, or one civilian killed per 500 projec- tiles fi red.67 In the course of Cast Lead, Israel’s most violent confrontation with Gaza prior to Protective Edge and before Iron Dome was deployed, Hamas fi red some 900 projectiles, yet a total of only 3 civilians were killed.68 Even during Protective Edge, fully 2,800 Hamas projectiles, or 40 percent of the total number, landed in Israel’s border region69 where Iron Dome was not deployed, yet only one Israeli civilian was killed by a rocket.70 (Most Israelis in the border region “remained in their home communities” during the

64. Th eodore Postol, “Th e Evidence Th at Shows Iron Dome Is Not Working,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (19 July 2014); “Iron Dome or Iron Sieve?,” Democracy Now! (31 July 2014), democracynow.org/2014/7/31/iron_dome_or_iron_sieve_evidence, democracynow .org/blog/2014/7/31/part_two_theodore_ postol_asks_is.

65. Th eodore A. Postol, “Lessons of the Gulf War Patriot Experience,” International Security (Winter 1991/92).

66. Israel alleged that Iron Dome intercepted 740, or 90 percent of, incoming Hamas rockets in populated areas where it was deployed, which would put the total number of incoming rockets in these areas at 820. Yoav Zitun, “Iron Dome: IDF intercepted 90 percent of rockets,” ynetnews.com (15 August 2014).

67. State of Israel, 2014 Gaza Confl ict, paras. 44, 51, p. 58n174; B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), Attacks on Israeli Civilians by Palestinians, btselem.org/topic/israeli_civilians. Th e fi rst Hamas rocket attack to cause Israeli civilian casualties didn’t occur until 2004, “aft er so many rockets that had caused only material damage or slight wounds.” Filiu, Gaza, p. 274.

68. See Chapter 10. 69. State of Israel, 2014 Gaza Confl ict, para. 114, p. 122n361. It stated that “more than 60

percent” of Hamas projectiles landed in the border areas, but it put the total number of Hamas projectiles fi red during Protective Edge at 4,000 (ibid., paras. 103, 112), whereas the more reliable UNDSS fi gure was 7,000.

70. Th e other fi ve civilian deaths in Israel resulted from mortar shells. State of Israel, 2014 Gaza Confl ict, pp. 112–13nn328–32.

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 2 25

operation,71 and most of the Hamas projectiles struck “built up areas” there.72) Postol ascribed the fewness of Israeli civilian casualties in Protective Edge primarily (but not exclusively) to Israel’s early warning/shelter system,73 which had been signifi cantly upgraded in recent years.74 But that still couldn’t fully account for the fewness of civilian casualties before Israel overhauled its civil defense system. What’s yet more telling, it couldn’t account for the mini- mal Israeli property damage during Protective Edge. Th e Israel Ministry of Foreign Aff airs website tracked on a daily basis the damage caused by Hamas rockets to civilian infrastructure.75 Table 5 summarizes its entries. Th e offi cial Israeli postmortem on Protective Edge alleged that “several residential com- munities on the border with the Gaza Strip . . . were battered by rocket and mortar fi re.”76 Yet, even allowing that a certain percentage landed in open areas, how could the thousands upon thousands of Hamas rockets have infl icted so little damage? How could only one Israeli house have been destroyed and 11 others hit or damaged by a mega barrage of rockets?77 Th e obvious and most plausible answer was that the preponderance of these so- called rockets amounted to enhanced fi reworks or “bottle rockets.”78

Th e triad of media takeaways from Protective Edge—“Hamas rockets,” “ter- ror tunnels,” and “Iron Dome”—in actuality constituted meta-props in Israel’s hasbara (propaganda) campaign. Israel initially infl ated the threat posed by Hamas’s projectiles to justify its “insane” and “crazy” assault on Gaza’s civil- ian population and infrastructure. However, the pretext backfi red as the

71. Ibid., para. 210. 72. Report of the Detailed Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry Established

Pursuant to Human Rights Council Resolution S-21/1 (22 June 2015), para. 90. 73. Th e circumstantial evidence lent credence to Postol’s contention. Although Hamas

rocket attacks killed only one civilian in two of the Israeli border regions unprotected by Iron Dome, mortar shells killed four others. Th e diff erential result was perhaps due to the fact that Israel’s warning system provided a lead time, to those seeking shelter, of 15 seconds in the case of a rocket but only 3–5 seconds in the case of a mortar attack. Postol also mentioned the modest size of Hamas rocket warheads as a factor.

74. State of Israel, 2014 Gaza Confl ict, para. 183, p. 111n327; Itay Hod, “Th e Israeli App Red Alert Saves Lives,” Daily Beast (14 July 2014).

75. mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Pages/Israel-under-fi re-July-2014-A- Diary.aspx.

76. State of Israel, 2014 Gaza Confl ict, p. 65 (caption). 77. Th is tally jibed with the established pattern: all of one Israeli home was “almost

completely destroyed” during Cast Lead (see Chapter 3); for minimal property damage prior to Cast Lead, see Human Rights Watch, Indiscriminate Fire: Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli artillery shelling in the Gaza Strip (2007), pp. 24–28.

78. Mark Perry, “Gaza’s Bottle Rockets,” Foreign Aff airs (3 August 2014).

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ta ble 5 Israeli Property Damage Resulting from Hamas Rocket Attacks during Operation Protective Edge

Date Description

7 July 8 property damage 9 building near kindergarten hit 10 11 one house completely destroyed, two others damaged 12 13 rocket hits Israeli electrical plant supplying power to Gaza 14 15 signifi cant damage to cars and property; school for special needs

children hit 16 house damaged 17 building damaged 18 kindergarten and synagogue damaged 19 massive damage in residential area 20 21 house hit, building damaged 22 house damaged 23 24 25 26 27 two houses hit 28 29 30 31

1 August 2 3 school grounds hit 4 5 house hit 6 7 8 house hit 9 10 11 12 13

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 2 27

projectiles kept coming and Israel’s tourism industry took a big hit.79 When a Hamas projectile landed in the vicinity of Ben-Gurion Airport, prompting international airlines to suspend fl ights destined for Israel, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg obligingly fl ew over in order to reassure prospective travelers.80 But if tranquility reigned in the Promised Land, then why was Israel pulverizing Gaza? Not missing a beat, Israel conjured a new rationale, quickly aped by credulous journalists: Hamas “terror tunnels” which “have the sole purpose of annihilating our citizens and killing our children” (Netanyahu).81 Th is newly minted alibi also backfi red, however, as Israeli evacuees recoiled at the prospect of returning to their border communities. It was then wide ly conceded in Israel that Hamas fi ghters infi ltrating via tunnels targeted the IDF, not civilians.82 In a retrospective marking the fi rst anniver- sary of Protective Edge, a senior Israeli military correspondent fl atly stated, “Th ese tunnels allowed Hamas to move commando forces under the border

79. “Israel Visitor Numbers Nosedive during Gaza Off ensive,” Agence France-Presse (11 August 2014).

80. “In CNN Interview, Combative Bloomberg Says US Flight Ban a Mistake,” cnn .com (22 July 2014).

81. Tamer el-Ghobashy and Joshua Mitnick, “Israel Says It Is Escalating Gaza Campaign,” Wall Street Journal (29 July 2014).

82. Aaron J. Klein and Mitch Ginsburg, “Could Israeli Soldiers, Not Civilians, Be the Target of the Attack Tunnels?,” Times of Israel (29 July 2014); Emanual Yelin, “Were Gaza Tunnels Built to Harm Israeli Civilians?,” +972 (11 August 2014); “Can Complete the Destruction of Tunnels within 24 Hours,” Galei Tzahal (14 August 2014) (Hebrew).

14 15 16 17 18 19 shopping center hit 20 21 building hit 22 house and synagogue hit 23 24 25 26 house and playground hit

sou rce: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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2 2 8 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

and into Israel without warning, to carry out attacks on soldiers.”83 Israel touted the technical wizardry of Iron Dome aft er Pillar of Defense in order to compensate for the operation’s meager returns.84 It hyped it again during Protective Edge in order to soothe the jittery nerves of both its indoctrinated domestic population and would-be tourists. (Israel’s fl ourishing arms trade also stood to reap rich dividends from the Iron Dome fanfare.) But in its offi cial postmortem on Protective Edge, Israel reversed itself in order to rationalize the death and destruction it wreaked in Gaza. It downplayed Iron Dome’s effi cacy and instead magnifi ed the vulnerability of Israel’s home front.85 Spewing forth one lie aft er another, Israel kept catching itself in the tangled web of its deceits. If its misrepresentations and contradictions went unnoticed, it was testament to the competence of Israeli hasbara, on the one hand, and the bias of Western media, on the other.

When Israel hit civilians who took refuge in UN schools, leaving scores dead and hundreds wounded, it crossed a red line.86 (A UN Board of Inquiry later found that Israel had in its possession up-to-date GPS coordinates of all the UN shelters it targeted, and that it used indiscriminate weapons, such as artillery, in densely populated areas where these shelters were situated, as well as precision weapons, such as guided missiles. Th e board did not credit Israel’s various justifi cations for these attacks.87) As the international community reacted in shock,88 the diplomatic dominoes began to fall in Israel’s direction. Feeling the heat from inside the UN bureaucracy, Ban Ki-moon denounced on 3 August one of these atrocities as a “moral outrage and criminal act.”89 Left isolated on the world stage, and unwilling to bear the onus of this latest

83. Amos Harel, “Th e Last Gaza War—and the Next,” Haaretz (1 July 2015), emphasis added. See also Ron Ben Yishai, “Ten Years of Lessons Learned,” ynetnews.com (19 June 2016).

84. See Chapter 10. 85. State of Israel, 2014 Gaza Confl ict, paras. 189–90 (see also paras. 4, 113, 190). Th e

report, which was issued in 2015 to preempt the anticipated critical fi ndings of a UN Human Rights Council inquiry (see Chapter 13), devoted just 2 of 460 paragraphs to Iron Dome, and emphasized not its brilliant performance but, instead, that it was “fallible” and couldn’t prevent “extensive harm to civilian life and property.”

86. Human Rights Watch, In-Depth Look at Gaza School Attacks (New York: 2014). HRW determined these attacks to be “war crimes.”

87. Summary by the Secretary-General of the Report of the United Nations Headquarters Board of Inquiry into Certain Incidents Th at Occurred in the Gaza Strip between 8 July 2014 and 26 August 2014 (2014).

88. Pierre Krähenbühl, “In the Eye of a Man-Made Storm,” Foreign Policy (26 September 2014).

89. “Gaza: Ban condemns latest deadly attack near UN school as ‘moral outrage and criminal act,’ ” UN News Centre (3 August 2014).

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 2 29

string of Israeli atrocities, the White House joined on 3 August in the chorus of condemnation, while Israel’s cheerleaders in the US Congress fell silent. Once the United States declared that it was “appalled” by Israel’s “disgrace- ful” lethal shelling in proximity of a UN shelter,90 it sunk in on Israel that it was time to wind down the operation. On 2 August, Netanyahu had nipped in the bud rumors of an impending Israeli troop withdrawal: “We will take as much time as necessary, and will exert as much force as is needed.”91 But disabled by his chief enabler in the White House, Netanyahu announced on that same 3 August that Israeli troops were withdrawing.92 To cover up for its failure to destroy Hamas’s catacombs, Israel entered the discreet qualifi er that it had detonated nearly all of Hamas’s “known” tunnels.93 Th e operation dragged on for another three weeks, however, as Israel sought to extract the best possible terms in the fi nal diplomatic phase, and still harbored hopes of infl icting a decisive military defeat on Hamas by attrition. It resorted to indiscriminate aerial bombardments, killing and wounding many civilians, and assassinated senior Hamas military leaders.94 Aft er the beheading of an American journalist on 19 August,95 media attention shift ed to ISIS, and the Gaza massacre entered the ho-hum, more-of-the-same phase of the news cycle. Israel was able to resume the precision terror strikes with unprece- dented abandon, fl attening high-rise apartment buildings, as if playing a video game and with barely a pretense that they constituted legitimate mili-

90. Donna Chiacu, “US Slams ‘Disgraceful Shelling’ of UN School in Gaza,” Haaretz (3 August 2014).

91. Griff Witte and Sudarsan Raghavan, “Netanyahu Says Israeli Military ‘Will Take as Much Time as Necessary’ in Gaza,” Washington Post (2 August 2014).

92. A tactical consideration also fi gured in the withdrawal decision. Israel could proceed with the ground invasion only if it ventured into Gaza’s built-up areas. To avoid street-by- street fi ghting and attendant combatant casualties, Israel would have to blast everything in sight, causing many thousands of civilian deaths, which international public opinion would not abide, and even then Israel would still suff er heavy combatant losses as Hamas fi ghters popped out of the tunnels. Amos Harel, “Operation Protective Edge Advances with No Exit Strategy,” Haaretz (20 July 2014); Amos Harel, “As Bulldozers Destroy Hamas’ Underground Network, IDF Sees Light at End of Tunnel,” Haaretz (1 August 2014); Amos Harel, “IDF Wary of New Gaza Ground Op Even as Diplomacy Lags,” Haaretz (25 August 2014).

93. Gili Cohen, “Senior Offi cer: Hamas still able to carry out tunnel attacks against Israel,” Haaretz (31 July 2014); “Operation Protective Edge in Numbers,” ynetnews.com (27 August 2014).

94. Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell, “Israeli Air Strike Kills Th ree Hamas Commanders in Gaza,” Reuters (21 August 2014).

95. “James Foley: Islamic State militants ‘behead reporter,’ ” BBC (20 August 2014).

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230 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

tary objectives.96 But the Hamas projectiles and mortar shells kept coming, causing Israeli civilian casualties to mount. On 26 August, a cease-fi re agree- ment went into eff ect. Its essential terms stipulated that Israel (and Egypt) would ease the blockade of Gaza, while the Palestinian Authority (PA) would administer the border crossings, coordinate the international recon- struction eff ort, and prevent weapons from entering Gaza. Th e agreement deferred to future talks other points of contention, such as a prisoner release and construction of an airport and seaport in Gaza.97

At a news conference aft er the cease-fi re was reached, Netanyahu boasted of Israel’s “great military and political achievement.”98 But Israel did not attain its avowed goals. Initially, Netanyahu hoped to fracture the Palestinian unity government by provoking a violent reaction from Hamas and then redemonizing it as a terrorist organization. But the unity government held together, even as President Abbas probably longed for Israel to deliver Hamas a deathblow. If Israel hoped to show that Hamas was an unreconstructed terrorist organization, it ended up persuading many more people that Israel was an unrepentant terrorist state. If Israel hoped to convince the United States and European Union not to negotiate with a unity government that included Hamas, it ended up itself negotiating with the unity government and indirectly with Hamas. “Eff ectively,” an infl uential Israeli columnist observed, “Israel has recognized Hamas.”99 If the unity government ulti- mately yielded no fruit, it was because of factional infi ghting, not Protective Edge.100 Once hostilities escalated, Netanyahu’s avowed objective was to destroy Hamas “rockets” and “terror tunnels.” But both these aims proved beyond his reach. Hamas kept fi ring projectiles (killing two Israelis in the last hour before the cease-fi re), while an unknown number of tunnels remained intact. Israel’s larger goal of infl icting a comprehensive military and political defeat on Hamas also went unfulfi lled. Although Israel had made

96. Alessandria Masi, “Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Collapse Apartment Building,” International Business Times (23 August 2014). See also Chapter 12.

97. Nidal al-Mughrabi and Luke Baker, “What’s in the Gaza Peace Deal?,” Reuters (26 August 2014); Ilene Prusher, “Israel and Palestinians Reach Open-Ended Cease-Fire Deal,” Time (26 August 2014).

98. Barak Ravid, “Netanyahu: Gaza op was great military, political achievement,” Haaretz (28 August 2014).

99. Zvi Bar’el, “With Truce, Israel Talks to Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” Haaretz (27 August 2014).

100. Amira Hass, “Tensions between Hamas and Fatah Overshadow Reconciliation Government,” Haaretz (6 September 2014).

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 231

any concessions contingent on Hamas’s disarmament, the cease-fi re agree- ment did not oblige the Islamic resistance to lay down its weapons, and only a vague promise was extracted from the PA to stem the fl ow of arms into Gaza. Th e cease-fi re’s terms “didn’t include any statement, not even a hint, regarding Israel’s security demands,” an Israeli diplomatic correspondent groused. “Th ere was nothing about the demilitarization of the strip, the rearming or the issue of the tunnels.”101 Although it was the regional power- house, Israel “failed to impose its will on an isolated enemy operating in a besieged territory without advanced weaponry.”102 Th e chief benefi ciary of this latest Gaza massacre was Lebanon. Aft er its military fi asco, Israel would think twice before attacking Hezbollah, as it possessed a formidable arsenal of real, sophisticated rockets,103 reducing Iron Dome’s potential effi cacy quo- tient from single-digit percentages to near zero; it also possessed a tunnel network dug deep inside mountains. In a replay of the last act, last scene of Pillar of Defense, the Israeli prime minister, defense minister, and chief of staff cut sorry fi gures at the news conference proclaiming Israel’s “victory” in Protective Edge.104 Still, Netanyahu could exult in a pair of complementary triumphs. He satiated the bloodlust of Israeli society that he himself had whipped up. It could now savor the prospect of Gazans confronting, once the soot had settled, the massive death and destruction Israel had visited on them. “Th e latest military operation,” a comprehensive UN report found, “has eff ectively eliminated what was left of the middle class, sending almost all of the population into destitution and dependence on international humanitarian aid.”105 Israel had, concomitantly, battered if not yet com- pletely broken the spirits of the people of Gaza. Th e ever-escalating violence, the wreckage left in its wake, the futureless future had fi nally taken a toll. Nine months aft er Protective Edge, “not a single totally destroyed home” had

101. Barak Ravid, “Netanyahu Saw His Chance to Run Away from Gaza, and He Took It,” Haaretz (26 August 2014).

102. Mouin Rabbani, “Israel’s ‘Operation Status Quo,’ ” Norwegian Peace-Building Resource Center (25 August 2014).

103. Jassem Al Salami, “Rockets and Iron Dome, the Case of Lebanon,” Offi ziere.ch (5 August 2014), offi ziere.ch/?p=17519; “Israel Preparing for ‘Very Violent’ War against Hezbollah, TV Report Says,” Times of Israel (6 September 2014).

104. Yossi Verter, “Netanyahu aft er the War: Less popular, but still unchallenged,” Haaretz (29 August 2014).

105. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, “Report on UNCTAD Assistance” (2015), para. 30.

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232 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

been rebuilt.106 Fully half of Gazans polled aft er Protective Edge expressed a desire to leave. In extreme but still indicative instances, they boarded rickety vessels to escape (hundreds drowned), crossed into Israel illegally in search of work or the comfort of a jail cell, and—in unprecedented numbers—com- mitted suicide.107 If Israel’s tacit goal in its recent major operations had been to “punish, humiliate, and terrorize” Gaza’s civilian population (Goldstone Report), then this time around it could take pride in a job well done. It also put the lie to the bromide that violence doesn’t work. It does, and did.

Hamas also fl ourished the V sign for victory.108 Indeed, its popularity among Palestinians surged aft er fi ghting Israel to a stalemate.109 But the uptick proved ephemeral. When armed hostilities broke out, Hamas’s pri- mary goal was to end the blockade of Gaza. Whereas the original Egyptian cease-fi re proposal stipulated that the siege would be lift ed only aft er “the security situation stabilizes” in Gaza, the fi nal cease-fi re agreement omitted this precondition. However, it called only for the blockade to be eased (not lift ed) and did not include an external enforcement mechanism, which Hamas had earlier demanded.110 In eff ect, it reinstated the cease-fi re terms ending Pillar of Defense, which Israel had back then proceeded to scrap.111 Hamas settled for less than its bottom line because of Israel’s relentless bom- bardment. “Our demands were just,” Hamas leader Khalid Mishal told a news conference, “but in the end we had the Palestinian demands, on the one

106. United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Gaza Situation Report No. 93 (22 May 2015).

107. Roy, Gaza Strip, pp. 405–6; Jack Khoury, “Th ousands of Gazans Fleeing to Europe via Tunnels, Traffi ckers and Boats,” Haaretz (17 September 2014); Shlomi Eldar, “Escaping Gaza, Hundreds of Palestinians Drown,” Al-Monitor (19 September 2014); Mohammed Othman, “Suicide Rates on Rise in Gaza,” Al-Monitor (9 February 2015); Jodi Rudoren and Majd Al Waheidi, “Desperation Drives Gazans over a Fence and into Prison,” New York Times (17 February 2015); Mohammed Omer, “ ‘Th e Smell of Death Hangs Everywhere’: Blockade drives Gazans to suicide,” Middle East Eye (11 April 2016); Sanaa Kamal and Hunter Stuart, “Palestinians Paying Th ousands in Bribes to Leave Gaza,” Al Jazeera (5 September 2016).

108. Khaled Abu Toameh, “Ismail Haniyeh Makes First Appearance since Start of Gaza Operation,” Jerusalem Post (27 August 2014).

109. Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, “Special Gaza War Poll” (2 September 2014).

110. Ehab Zahriyeh, “Citing Past Failures, Hamas Demands an Enforceable Cease-fi re,” Al Jazeera America (16 July 2014).

111. Mohammed Daraghmeh and Karin Laub, “Hamas Claims ‘Victory for the Resistance’ as Long-Term Truce Is Agreed with Israel,” Independent (26 August 2014).

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 233

hand, and the pain of Gaza’s civilian population, on the other.” “We agreed to the cease-fi re,” Mishal continued, “in the knowledge that the siege will be lift ed.”112 But it was already clear at the time113 that this was wishful thinking until and unless Hamas disarmed. Two years aft er Protective Edge, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman still maintained that only “if Hamas stops dig- ging tunnels, rearming and fi ring rockets, we will lift the blockade.”114 As the Islamic movement wouldn’t capitulate, the siege showed no signs of abating: “the virtual ban on exports from Gaza has not been lift ed,” while at the vol- ume of truck traffi c Israel allowed, it would take “174 years to return Gaza to where it was in May 2014.”115 If Gazans fl ocked into the streets aft er the cease-fi re was declared, it was to proclaim, fi rstly to themselves and then to the world, that however enormous the toll, however bottomless the sacrifi ce, the people of Palestine still lived. We were, we are, we will be!

An offi cial consensus crystallized during Protective Edge according to which Israel had the right to defend itself, even though it had initiated the armed hostilities, and Hamas would have to disarm, even though it had acted in self-defense. In July 2014, the European Union called on “Hamas to imme- diately put an end to these acts and to renounce violence. All terrorist groups in Gaza must disarm.” At the same time, it recognized “Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself against any attacks,” with the throwaway caveat that the “Israeli military operation must be proportionate and in line with interna- tional humanitarian law.”116 Th is allocation of rights and obligations did not just contradict the circumstantial facts of the operation; it also contradicted the overarching legal framework of the occupation. Whereas international law prohibits an occupying power from using force to suppress a struggle for self-determination, it does not debar a people struggling for self-determina- tion from using force. Israel consequently has no legal mandate to use force

112. Jack Khoury, “Meshal: Hamas will go back to war against Israel if upcoming truce talks fail,” Haaretz (28 August 2014); Amira Hass, “Hamas Trying to Sell ‘Victory’ to Gazans,” Haaretz (27 August 2014).

113. Norman G. Finkelstein, Method and Madness: Th e hidden story of Israel’s assaults on Gaza (New York: 2014), pp. 159–60.

114. Jack Khoury, “Israel Will Help Rebuild Gaza If Hamas Disarms, Lieberman Says,” Haaretz (24 October 2016).

115. Roy, Gaza Strip, pp. xxxi, 406 (citing the humanitarian relief organization Oxfam). 116. Council of the European Union (22 July 2014).

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234 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

against the Palestinian self-determination struggle.117 It might be argued that insofar as this self-determination struggle has been unfolding within the framework of a belligerent occupation, Israel has the legal right, as the occu- pying power, to enforce the occupation so long as it endures.118 But the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in 1971 that since South Africa had refused to carry out good-faith negotiations to terminate its occupation of Namibia, the occupation had eventually become illegal. In light of the Namibia precedent, Israel’s failure to carry out good-faith negotiations based on international law has delegitimized its occupation as well.119 If Israel can lay title to any “right,” it is—in the exhortation of the United States at the time of the Namibia debate—“to withdraw its administration . . . immedi- ately and thus put an end to its occupation.” Whereas it proclaims the right of self-defense against Hamas projectiles, Israel is in eff ect promulgating a right to use force to perpetuate the occupation. Were Israel to cease its violent repression, the occupation would end and, ideally, the projectile attacks would also stop as Palestinians went about the business of consolidating their own independent state. Th e right to self-defense could justly be invoked by Israel only if the attacks continued regardless. On the one hand, Israel cannot pretend to a right of self-defense if the exercise of this right traces back to the wrong of an illegal occupation/denial of self-determination (ex injuria non oritur jus120). On the other hand, Israel would not need to invoke the right if it ceased infl icting the wrong. In 2016, the European Union issued a state- ment calling for “all parties to . . . produce a fundamental change to the . . . situation in the Gaza Strip, including the end of the closure and a full open- ing of the crossing points, while addressing Israel ’s legitimate security concerns.”121 But Israel cannot lay claim to “legitimate security concerns” vis- à-vis Gaza so long as the force it deploys there is designed to entrench an illegitimate regime. Th e legally correct position was enunciated by the UN Human Rights Council mission on Protective Edge, which called on Israel to “lift , immediately and unconditionally, the blockade on Gaza.”122 Th e

117. See Chapter 7. 118. Ibid. 119. See Appendix. 120. No legal benefi t or right can be derived from an illegal act. 121. “Council Conclusions on the Middle East Peace Process” (18 January 2016),

consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/01/18-fac-conclusions-mepp/; emphasis added.

122. See Chapter 13.

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 235

refrain that Israel has a right to defend itself is a red herring. Th e real question is, Does Israel have the right to use force to perpetuate an illegal occupation? Th e answer is no.

But (it might be contended), even granting that unlike Israel, Palestinians can legally resort to force, doesn’t Hamas’s use of indiscriminate projectiles and its targeting of Israeli civilians still constitute war crimes? Th e situation is more equivocal than is oft en acknowledged. First, what constitutes an indiscriminate weapon isn’t clear, while the implicit standard isn’t just. A class of weapons apparently passes legal muster if its probability of hitting a target is relatively high. Th is legal threshold is keyed to and correlates with cutting-edge technology. Th e couplets advanced/primitive and discriminate/ indiscriminate overlap; a high-tech weapon can, whereas a low-tech weapon cannot, discriminate between targets. But then, only a people suffi ciently endowed to purchase high-tech weaponry can defend itself against a high- tech aerial assault. If it lacks material resources, if compelled by circumstance to use rudimentary weapons, a people engaging in a war of self-defense or a struggle for self-determination cannot prevail except by breaching the laws of war; if it obeys the laws of war, it will almost certainly suff er defeat. If this be the law, it is a most peculiar law, for it negates a raison d’être of law—the substitution of might by right—as it enshrines might, or the rich and power- ful, above right. Second, it was asserted that even if the civilian population of one party to a confl ict comes under relentless attack, it does not have the legal right to carry out “belligerent reprisals”—that is, to deliberately target civil- ians of the opposing party until that party desists from its initial illegal attacks. “Regardless of who started this latest round, attacks targeting civil- ians violate basic humanitarian norms,” Human Rights Watch stated right aft er Protective Edge began. “All attacks, including reprisal attacks, that target or indiscriminately harm civilians are prohibited under the laws of war, period.”123 But was that true? In fact, international law does not—at any rate, not yet—prohibit belligerent reprisals.124 Th e United States and United Kingdom have even defended the right to deploy nuclear weapons in belliger-

123. Human Rights Watch, “Indiscriminate Palestinian Rocket Attacks” (9 July 2014). 124. International Committee of the Red Cross, Customary International Humanitarian

Law, Volume I: Rules (Cambridge: 2005), rule 146. Th e United Nations Human Rights Council cites this study as authoritative on the current state of customary law. Report of the Detailed Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry Established Pursuant to Human Rights Council Resolution S-21/1 (22 June 2015), para. 33. See also A. P. V. Rogers, Law on the Battlefi eld, second edition (Manchester: 2004), p. 235.

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236 • O p e r a t i o n P r o t e c t i v e E d g e

ent reprisals.125 Th e people of Gaza surely, then, had the right to use make- shift projectiles to end an illegal, merciless seven-year-long Israeli blockade targeting a civilian population, and to end Israel’s criminal bombardment of a civilian population. Indeed, in its landmark 1996 advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons, the ICJ stated that international law was not settled on the right of a state to use nuclear weapons when its “survival” was in jeopardy. But if that elusive abstraction called a state might legally use nuclear weapons when its survival is at stake, then a people surely has the right to use makeshift projectiles when its survival is at stake. Th e political pru- dence of Hamas’s strategy could be legitimately questioned. But the law is not unambiguously against it, while the scales of morality tilt in its favor. Israel has imposed a brutal siege on Gaza that halved its already “de-developed” GDP. As a result of the blockade and recurrent military assaults, Gaza’s population has been “denied a human standard of living,” while some 95 percent of its water is unfi t for human consumption. “Innocent human beings, most of them young,” Sara Roy bewailed, “are slowly being poisoned by the water they drink.” Th ey were not only consigned but also literally confi ned to a slow death. “When a place becomes unlivable, people move,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency has observed. “Th is is the case for environmental disasters such as droughts, or for confl icts, such as in Syria.

Yet this last resort is denied to the people in Gaza. Th ey cannot move beyond their 365 square kilometers territory. Th ey cannot escape, neither the devas- tating poverty nor the fear of another confl ict. Its highly educated youth . . . do not have the option to travel, to seek education outside Gaza, or to fi nd work, anywhere else beyond the perimeter fence and the two tightly-control- led border-checkpoints in the north and south of the Gaza Strip.

With the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza almost entirely closed except for a few days per year, and with Israel oft en denying exit even for severe humanitarian cases or staff of international organizations, the vast majority of the people have no chance of getting one of the highly sought- aft er “permits.” Th ey can also not leave across the sea without the risk of being

125. Legality of the Th reat or Use of Nuclear Weapons (8 July 1996)—Letter dated 16 June 1995 from the Legal Adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Offi ce of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, together with Written Comments of the United Kingdom; Letter dated 20 June 1995 from the Acting Legal Adviser to the Department of State, together with Written Statement of the Government of the United States of America; Oral Statement of US representative (15 November 1995); Dissenting Opinion of Vice-President Schwebel. Th e ICJ itself elected not to rule on the legality of bel- ligerent reprisals (para. 46).

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I s r a e l H a s t h e R i g h t t o D e f e n d I t s e l f • 237

arrested or shot at by the Israeli or Egyptian navies, and they cannot climb over the heavily guarded perimeter fence between Israel and Gaza without the same risks.126

Th e people of Palestine embraced Hamas as it launched belligerent reprisals against Israel. In the climacteric of their martyrdom, Gazans chose to die resisting rather than to live expiring under an inhuman blockade.127 Th e resistance was mostly notional, as the rudimentary projectiles caused little damage. So the ultimate question is, Do Palestinians have the right to symboli- cally resist slow death punctuated by periodic massacres, or is it incumbent upon them to lie down and die?

126. B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human R ights in the Occupied Territories), “Over 90 Percent of Water in Gaza Strip Unfi t for Consumption” (9 February 2014); United Nations Relief and Works Agency, “Denied a Human Standard of Living: Th e Gaza blockade has entered its tenth year” (21 October 2016); Roy, Gaza Strip, pp. lii–lvii, lxviii, 402–3.

127. Amira Hass, “Hamas’s Rejection of the Cease-Fire Deal Was a Foregone Conclusion,” Haaretz (16 July 2014).

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