Gaza-Israel conflict: Blame Hamas, not Israel

Hostilities have quickly escalated, following the recent kidnappings and murders of Israeli and Palestinian teens and the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Hamas has been indiscriminately launching a barrage of rockets at civilian population centers. Last Thursday, Hamas inserted 13 jihadist gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades beneath Israel’s southern border using a secret tunnel in an effort to carry out attacks on Jewish civilians and soldiers. In response, Israel launched airstrikes to target rocket sites and weapons caches in Gaza; additionally, Israel initiated a limited ground offensive into Gaza in order to seek and destroy the types of tunnels which Hamas has used in the past to kidnap or kill both soldiers and civilians.

Millions of citizens in both Israel, and Hamas-controlled Gaza, face a constant barrage from the air: Hamas has indiscriminately launched over 1,760 rockets at civilian population centers and Israel’s defense forces have targeted combatants in the Gaza strip, regrettably causing civilian casualties. Despite Israel’s acceptance of an Egyptian brokered ceasefire agreement on Tuesday, Hamas immediately rejected it, electing instead to continue the conflict and endanger the safety and well being of civilians on both sides.

While any discussion regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue invariably evokes hot tempers on both sides, this piece is not meant to rile emotions; rather, it is meant to objectively assess which side to blame for this current conflict. The events undoubtedly indicate that Hamas is fully culpable for this third round of open conflict since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007. Even Mahmoud Abbas, the sometimes moderate president of the Palestinian Authority, posed this question last Thursday on Palestine TV to his rivals in Hamas: “What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?”

The answer is as chilling as it is morally reprehensible: Hamas, the Sunni Islamist political organization regarded by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union as a terrorist organization, started this latest conflict in order to kill as many civilians as possible, including its own fellow Palestinians. When a rocket kills an Israeli citizen, Hamas wins – Gazan civilians rally around the flag, and by the twisted standards of Palestinian politics, Hamas’ moral authority to govern Gaza, as opposed to its growing rivals, Islamic Jihad, is strengthened. When Israel accidentally kills a Palestinian, Hamas still wins; dead Palestinians are an indispensable element of Hamas’ propaganda war against Israel.

As evidence that Hamas has no regard for the lives of Palestinian civilians, the UN reported this Thursday that it found 20 rockets in a school; additionally, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri urged Palestinians to adopt human shield tactics and stated on Al-Aqsa TV that “The policy of people confronting the Israeli warplanes with their bare chests in order to protect their homes has proven effective against the occupation… We in Hamas call upon our people to adopt this policy.” Essentially, dead civilians on either side benefit Hamas, and its leaders are ruthlessly seeking this goal.

Former President Bill Clinton placed the blame entirely on Hamas’ shoulders, asserting that Hamas’ strategic play here is to force Israel to kill Palestinians. He bluntly put it thus during an interview with India’s NDTV this Thursday: “Hamas was perfectly well aware of what would happen if they started raining rockets into Israel. They fired one thousand, and they have a strategy designed to force Israel to kill their own civilians so that the rest of the world will condemn [Israel].” Although the casualties are indeed lopsided, this fact by no means forecloses Israel’s right to defend its civil society. The difference between Israel’s military and Hamas is that Israel uses the Iron Dome missile defense system to defend its civilians while Hamas uses Palestinian civilians to defend its missiles.

The truth is that no country can idly stand by as its civilians are indiscriminately fired upon, and to expect Israel to do otherwise under the false banner of human rights is illogical and borderline anti-Semitic. The Israeli military possesses the capability to level the entire Gaza strip in a matter of hours. However, Israel is constrained by international pressure, by its own morality and by the understanding that Palestinian deaths are a PR nightmare. It has shown remarkable restraint in the current conflict by telephoning Gazan civilians to warn about impending airstrikes, by calling off airstrikes when human shields form around intended targets, by dropping warning charges (so-called roof knocking) and by unilaterally declaring a ceasefire in order to allow Gazans to leave their homes and access food.

The violence in this latest bout in the seemingly never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict is already gruesome, and the amount of victims will only keep increasing; however, Hamas could save the lives of Gaza’s civilians by immediately ceasing its rocket strikes against civilians in Israel. The decision is entirely up to Hamas to pursue peace or to continue its terrorist activities; nevertheless, Israel is entirely within its right to defend its civilian population from Hamas’ terrorist activities, which include constant missile salvos and infiltrations with heavily armed jihadists.