This House believes that Israel's 2008-2009 military operations against Gaza were justified

The military operations were a legitimate use of the Israeli state’s right to defend itself and its citizens: To quote then-President-elect Barack Obama - "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing."(1)

Prior to Israel's 2008-2009 military operations, Hamas had consistently violated the terms of the ceasefire between Gaza and Israel. It launched a total 6,300 rockets during an agreed hiatus in the confrontation, killing 10 and wounding more than 780. Hamas refused to extend the truce past 19 December 2008 and subsequently resumed attacks, firing nearly 300 more missiles, rockets and mortars.(1) Hamas was the first to actually escalate the conflict after the ceasefire expired, with a systematic increase in rocket attacks to a magnitude of hundreds of rockets fired daily in late December.(2) The 250,000 Israelis who lived in the southern part of the country were under constant threat, often in bomb shelters, and the economy suffered as a result.(1) Israel went to great lengths to avoid its military escalation. Just a few days before Israel's military operations, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an appeal on the Arab television station Al-Arabiya asking Gaza residents to stop the firing of rockets and mortar shells so that a military response could be avoided.(3) This appeal was apparently ignored by Hamas and the other militant groups in Gaza, and so Israel proceeded to respond militarily to remove the capacity of Gaza to launch rocket and mortar attacks  – Israel was left with no other way to ensure that the inhabitants of the country’s southern regions would not have to live in fear of rocket fire. 

Gaza was also a test case, intended to prove that Israel remained a legitimate and authoritative actor in the region. Much more was at stake than merely the military outcome of Israel's operation. The issue, rather, was Israel's ability to restore its deterrence power and uphold the principle that its citizens cannot be targeted with impunity.(4) Israel's military operations were a good tool to fulfill this need for self-defense and did so effectively. The Israeli strikes hit their targets precisely enough to do significant damage to Hamas forces, both to its leadership and to the tunnels from Gaza to Egypt that Hamas uses to smuggle in weapons and build its growing army.(1) Doing this damage was necessary as Israel could never be safe with a strong terrorist regime in control of Gaza. As David Harris, Executive Director for the American Jewish Committee, argued: "Israel could not tolerate a terrorist regime on its border that was launching repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli towns and villages."(5) Therefore there can be no debate that Israel had the right to defend itself as well as the right to determine how best to do so.

While it is easy for countries and foreigners to state their opinions about Israel's security interests and how its actions may or may not fulfill them, Israel's right to make that judgment itself must be respected. Therefore Israel's military operations against Gaza were justified as legitimate self defense against Hamas and militant aggression which was putting the lives of Israeli citizens in jeopardy.

Israel similarly violated the ceasefire prior to 2008, and had unlawfully kidnapped and imprisoned hundreds of Palestinians.  Furthermore, Israel's attack on Gaza was not an act of last resort. Israel could and should have tried to negotiate a truce with Hamas based on the following principle: an end to the Israeli siege on Gaza in exchange for an end to Hamas-led rocket attacks on Israel. This is the deal Hamas offered Israel before Operation Cast Lead was launched. Israel should have accepted Hamas’s offer and assessed whether Hamas’s intention to be bound by its terms was genuine before launching a military attack.(6) If an action isn't truly an act of last resort, it cannot be legitimately termed 'self-defense', and so is not justified. Hamas were prepared to enter into negotiations with Israel and it was prepared to discuss the more intricate details of the deal it had proposed. Its attempts to avoid conflict were committed and consistent enough to suggest that Gaza’s leaders were not engaged in diplomatic posturing or sabre rattling. Israel targeted more than just military targets, including UN warehouses holding medical and food supplies, UN schools, and hospitals. Its imprecise tactics and refusal to allow access of humanitarian workers show that it was not merely self-defense. 

As Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Haleviargue explain, “the Israeli public will not make territorial concessions on the West Bank or the Golan Heights if Gaza is allowed to become a neighboring terrorist state that can launch attacks with impunity. Israel had already had a bad enough experience letting that happen with Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon.”(1) Without the assurance that they will be allowed to protect their homes and families following withdrawal, Israelis will rightly perceive a two-state solution as an existential threat. They will continue to share the left-wing vision of coexistence with a peaceful Palestinian neighbor in theory, but in reality will heed the right's warnings of Jewish powerlessness.(4)

Meanwhile, the stronger Hamas becomes, the more resistance moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will face to making any concessions to Israel.(1) Therefore damaging Hamas, via Operation Cast Lead, actually aided the peace process in the long run, and was necessary in order to make an eventual two-state peace solution possible. The Israeli attacks may also eventually help force Hamas to accept a more durable ceasefire. Unlike the botched invasion of Lebanon in 2006, when Israel set itself the unattainable goal of eliminating the military capability of Hezbollah, during Operation Cast Lead it was made clear that the objective was not to wipe out Hamas, but instead to force the radical group to accept a durable cease-fire on Israel's terms.(8) This was necessary as prior to Operation Cast Lead Hamas showed no interest in peace, opting instead to pursue its political objectives through the use of terrorism. When Hamas came to power in Gaza in January 2006, it failed to control the rocket fire from the variety of miltary brigades, including its own al-Qassam brigade, into Israel and failed to establish internal stability. The widespread violence between Fatah and Hamas, which ended in June 2007, when Hamas took control of Gaza and ousted leaders of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, made Israel more wary of the security threat an unstable Gaza could pose.(9)

In Israel's view, Hamas' behavior and its reliance on terror tactics will never change if it thinks it can attack with impunity, and so the Israeli military operations were necessary and justified in the name of restoring Israel's deterrent and weakening Hamas, both of which make long term peace more likely.

The long-term security of Israel rests in a stable peace agreement with the Palestinians, not in attempting to bludgeon Hamas into a truce 'on Israel's terms'. To the extent that Israel's large scale assault on Gaza eliminated the hopes of such an agreement, the attacks worsened Israel's long-term security.

A crucial step towards peace is to bring Hamas to the bargaining table. Israel's levelling of Gaza emboldened Hamas' message of resistance, and allowed Gazans to continue to rely on Hamas. As long as Israel continues to justify Arab and Palestinian anger through its disproportionate response, it is unlikely that enough trust can be established to reach a peace deal.

Even Israelis recognize that this assualt has created an even larger barrier to peace. “This policy [Operation Cast Lead] is not strengthening Israel,” noted Sari Bashi, the executive director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights group that works on Gaza issues. “The trauma that 1.5 million people have been undergoing in Gaza is going to have long-term effects for our ability to live together."(10)

Operation Cast Lead was justified as it was proportionate to Hamas' rocket attacks against Israel. It should be remembered that 250,000 Israelis living in the southern part of the country had lived under years of terrorism before Operation Cast Lead was launched, often in bomb shelters, and the economy has suffered. The world's media may only have paid attention when Israel responded to Hamas' barrage, but this does not mean that Israel was not already under severe attack by this point.(1) Moreover, the Israeli strikes were rightly measured to disable Hamas rocket attacks.(11)

Terror groups fire indiscriminately at innocent Israelis and then complain of excessive or disproportionate force when Israel fires back. But according to internationally accepted laws of war, Israel is permitted to respond with the force necessary to end the conflict.(2)

Israel was legitimate in using full force to win its war on Hamas; Israel was under no obligation to restrain itself in what is, on Hamas' own terms, an existential war. Provoked by Hamas, Israel had every right to wage a disproportionate and overwhelming response. Hamas has repeatedly stated that its objective is to destroy Israel. Such an existential threat goes beyond simply Hamas' rocket attacks, as it portends much more destructive attacks in the future. This justifies defensive attacks from Israel that go beyond responding merely to the Hamas rockets, and would even justify Israeli efforts to fully demobilize or destroy Hamas.(12) In spite of this, Israel was actually far more restrained and proportionate than it was obligated to be. Israeli precision strikes sought to minimize civilian deaths, as Benjamin Netanyahu argued: "In launching precision strikes against Hamas rocket launchers, headquarters, weapons depots, smuggling tunnels and training camps, Israel is trying to minimize civilian casualties."(13) Unlike Hamas, Israeli strikes targeted military sites, not civilians. As Gary Grant argued: "Even if you target your action at military sites, civilians are inevitably going to get killed...these need to be contrasted with the actions of Hamas where every single rocket is designed to attack civilian populations, so every single act of Hamas in firing these rockets is clearly an illegal act without any legal justification."(2)

Israel may have been justified in acting disproportionately, but instead chose to respond in a proportionate and limited manner which minimized civilian deaths in Gaza, and thus the Israeli military operations were certainly justified.

Under the same logic, over 1 million residents of Gaza have been under occupation since 1967, facing limited rights of movement, regular air raids, military checkpoints, random searches and seizures, random arrests, the destruction of sanitation facilities, homes, schools, roads, shops, markets, and health facilities, and therefore Hamas has the right act in its own self-defense by whatever means it sees fit. If Palestinians do not have an army to call to its defense, how can the entire population be punished for the actions of non-state military groups?  

Israel’s right to take positive steps of some kind in the interests of its own safety does not mean it has the right to do anything it wishes in order to protect itself. It is also evident that Israel violated international law and committed war crimes, was was reported in the Goldstone Report. 

Between the time when the shelling from Gaza started in 2001 and Operation Cast Lead, 20 Israeli civilians were killed by rockets or mortars, according to estimates by Israeli human rights groups. That doesn’t justify an all-out ground invasion that killed more than 1,400 people.(10) As Javier Solana, chief of foreign policy for the European Union, said in late December 2008, "the current Israeli strikes are inflicting an unacceptable toll on Palestinian civilians."(14)

It is a widely accepted principle of international law that actions taken pursuant to a state’s right to defend itself must be proportionate to the danger that the state faces. While the 20 deaths that resulted from the actions of Hamas and its associates were tragic, the nature of these attacks did not justify a full scale military invasion of the Gaza strip, or the mass destruction of infrastructure essential to life in the strip.

The military operations were a legitimate use of the Israeli state’s right to defend itself and its citizens: To quote then-President-elect Barack Obama - "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing."(1)

Prior to Israel's 2008-2009 military operations, Hamas had consistently violated the terms of the ceasefire between Gaza and Israel. It launched a total 6,300 rockets during an agreed hiatus in the confrontation, killing 10 and wounding more than 780. Hamas refused to extend the truce past 19 December 2008 and subsequently resumed attacks, firing nearly 300 more missiles, rockets and mortars.(1) Hamas was the first to actually escalate the conflict after the ceasefire expired, with a systematic increase in rocket attacks to a magnitude of hundreds of rockets fired daily in late December.(2) The 250,000 Israelis who lived in the southern part of the country were under constant threat, often in bomb shelters, and the economy suffered as a result.(1) Israel went to great lengths to avoid its military escalation. Just a few days before Israel's military operations, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an appeal on the Arab television station Al-Arabiya asking Gaza residents to stop the firing of rockets and mortar shells so that a military response could be avoided.(3) This appeal was apparently ignored by Hamas and the other militant groups in Gaza, and so Israel proceeded to respond militarily to remove the capacity of Gaza to launch rocket and mortar attacks  – Israel was left with no other way to ensure that the inhabitants of the country’s southern regions would not have to live in fear of rocket fire. 

Gaza was also a test case, intended to prove that Israel remained a legitimate and authoritative actor in the region. Much more was at stake than merely the military outcome of Israel's operation. The issue, rather, was Israel's ability to restore its deterrence power and uphold the principle that its citizens cannot be targeted with impunity.(4) Israel's military operations were a good tool to fulfill this need for self-defense and did so effectively. The Israeli strikes hit their targets precisely enough to do significant damage to Hamas forces, both to its leadership and to the tunnels from Gaza to Egypt that Hamas uses to smuggle in weapons and build its growing army.(1) Doing this damage was necessary as Israel could never be safe with a strong terrorist regime in control of Gaza. As David Harris, Executive Director for the American Jewish Committee, argued: "Israel could not tolerate a terrorist regime on its border that was launching repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli towns and villages."(5) Therefore there can be no debate that Israel had the right to defend itself as well as the right to determine how best to do so.

While it is easy for countries and foreigners to state their opinions about Israel's security interests and how its actions may or may not fulfill them, Israel's right to make that judgment itself must be respected. Therefore Israel's military operations against Gaza were justified as legitimate self defense against Hamas and militant aggression which was putting the lives of Israeli citizens in jeopardy.

Israel similarly violated the ceasefire prior to 2008, and had unlawfully kidnapped and imprisoned hundreds of Palestinians.  Furthermore, Israel's attack on Gaza was not an act of last resort. Israel could and should have tried to negotiate a truce with Hamas based on the following principle: an end to the Israeli siege on Gaza in exchange for an end to Hamas-led rocket attacks on Israel. This is the deal Hamas offered Israel before Operation Cast Lead was launched. Israel should have accepted Hamas’s offer and assessed whether Hamas’s intention to be bound by its terms was genuine before launching a military attack.(6) If an action isn't truly an act of last resort, it cannot be legitimately termed 'self-defense', and so is not justified. Hamas were prepared to enter into negotiations with Israel and it was prepared to discuss the more intricate details of the deal it had proposed. Its attempts to avoid conflict were committed and consistent enough to suggest that Gaza’s leaders were not engaged in diplomatic posturing or sabre rattling. Israel targeted more than just military targets, including UN warehouses holding medical and food supplies, UN schools, and hospitals. Its imprecise tactics and refusal to allow access of humanitarian workers show that it was not merely self-defense. 

As Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Haleviargue explain, “the Israeli public will not make territorial concessions on the West Bank or the Golan Heights if Gaza is allowed to become a neighboring terrorist state that can launch attacks with impunity. Israel had already had a bad enough experience letting that happen with Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon.”(1) Without the assurance that they will be allowed to protect their homes and families following withdrawal, Israelis will rightly perceive a two-state solution as an existential threat. They will continue to share the left-wing vision of coexistence with a peaceful Palestinian neighbor in theory, but in reality will heed the right's warnings of Jewish powerlessness.(4)

Meanwhile, the stronger Hamas becomes, the more resistance moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will face to making any concessions to Israel.(1) Therefore damaging Hamas, via Operation Cast Lead, actually aided the peace process in the long run, and was necessary in order to make an eventual two-state peace solution possible. The Israeli attacks may also eventually help force Hamas to accept a more durable ceasefire. Unlike the botched invasion of Lebanon in 2006, when Israel set itself the unattainable goal of eliminating the military capability of Hezbollah, during Operation Cast Lead it was made clear that the objective was not to wipe out Hamas, but instead to force the radical group to accept a durable cease-fire on Israel's terms.(8) This was necessary as prior to Operation Cast Lead Hamas showed no interest in peace, opting instead to pursue its political objectives through the use of terrorism. When Hamas came to power in Gaza in January 2006, it failed to control the rocket fire from the variety of miltary brigades, including its own al-Qassam brigade, into Israel and failed to establish internal stability. The widespread violence between Fatah and Hamas, which ended in June 2007, when Hamas took control of Gaza and ousted leaders of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, made Israel more wary of the security threat an unstable Gaza could pose.(9)

In Israel's view, Hamas' behavior and its reliance on terror tactics will never change if it thinks it can attack with impunity, and so the Israeli military operations were necessary and justified in the name of restoring Israel's deterrent and weakening Hamas, both of which make long term peace more likely.

The long-term security of Israel rests in a stable peace agreement with the Palestinians, not in attempting to bludgeon Hamas into a truce 'on Israel's terms'. To the extent that Israel's large scale assault on Gaza eliminated the hopes of such an agreement, the attacks worsened Israel's long-term security.

A crucial step towards peace is to bring Hamas to the bargaining table. Israel's levelling of Gaza emboldened Hamas' message of resistance, and allowed Gazans to continue to rely on Hamas. As long as Israel continues to justify Arab and Palestinian anger through its disproportionate response, it is unlikely that enough trust can be established to reach a peace deal.

Even Israelis recognize that this assualt has created an even larger barrier to peace. “This policy [Operation Cast Lead] is not strengthening Israel,” noted Sari Bashi, the executive director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights group that works on Gaza issues. “The trauma that 1.5 million people have been undergoing in Gaza is going to have long-term effects for our ability to live together."(10)

Operation Cast Lead was justified as it was proportionate to Hamas' rocket attacks against Israel. It should be remembered that 250,000 Israelis living in the southern part of the country had lived under years of terrorism before Operation Cast Lead was launched, often in bomb shelters, and the economy has suffered. The world's media may only have paid attention when Israel responded to Hamas' barrage, but this does not mean that Israel was not already under severe attack by this point.(1) Moreover, the Israeli strikes were rightly measured to disable Hamas rocket attacks.(11)

Terror groups fire indiscriminately at innocent Israelis and then complain of excessive or disproportionate force when Israel fires back. But according to internationally accepted laws of war, Israel is permitted to respond with the force necessary to end the conflict.(2)

Israel was legitimate in using full force to win its war on Hamas; Israel was under no obligation to restrain itself in what is, on Hamas' own terms, an existential war. Provoked by Hamas, Israel had every right to wage a disproportionate and overwhelming response. Hamas has repeatedly stated that its objective is to destroy Israel. Such an existential threat goes beyond simply Hamas' rocket attacks, as it portends much more destructive attacks in the future. This justifies defensive attacks from Israel that go beyond responding merely to the Hamas rockets, and would even justify Israeli efforts to fully demobilize or destroy Hamas.(12) In spite of this, Israel was actually far more restrained and proportionate than it was obligated to be. Israeli precision strikes sought to minimize civilian deaths, as Benjamin Netanyahu argued: "In launching precision strikes against Hamas rocket launchers, headquarters, weapons depots, smuggling tunnels and training camps, Israel is trying to minimize civilian casualties."(13) Unlike Hamas, Israeli strikes targeted military sites, not civilians. As Gary Grant argued: "Even if you target your action at military sites, civilians are inevitably going to get killed...these need to be contrasted with the actions of Hamas where every single rocket is designed to attack civilian populations, so every single act of Hamas in firing these rockets is clearly an illegal act without any legal justification."(2)

Israel may have been justified in acting disproportionately, but instead chose to respond in a proportionate and limited manner which minimized civilian deaths in Gaza, and thus the Israeli military operations were certainly justified.

Under the same logic, over 1 million residents of Gaza have been under occupation since 1967, facing limited rights of movement, regular air raids, military checkpoints, random searches and seizures, random arrests, the destruction of sanitation facilities, homes, schools, roads, shops, markets, and health facilities, and therefore Hamas has the right act in its own self-defense by whatever means it sees fit. If Palestinians do not have an army to call to its defense, how can the entire population be punished for the actions of non-state military groups?  

Israel’s right to take positive steps of some kind in the interests of its own safety does not mean it has the right to do anything it wishes in order to protect itself. It is also evident that Israel violated international law and committed war crimes, was was reported in the Goldstone Report. 

Between the time when the shelling from Gaza started in 2001 and Operation Cast Lead, 20 Israeli civilians were killed by rockets or mortars, according to estimates by Israeli human rights groups. That doesn’t justify an all-out ground invasion that killed more than 1,400 people.(10) As Javier Solana, chief of foreign policy for the European Union, said in late December 2008, "the current Israeli strikes are inflicting an unacceptable toll on Palestinian civilians."(14)

It is a widely accepted principle of international law that actions taken pursuant to a state’s right to defend itself must be proportionate to the danger that the state faces. While the 20 deaths that resulted from the actions of Hamas and its associates were tragic, the nature of these attacks did not justify a full scale military invasion of the Gaza strip, or the mass destruction of infrastructure essential to life in the strip.

Israel has sought to justify its military attacks on Gaza by stating that they amounted to an act of 'self-defense' as recognized by Article 51, United Nations Charter. This contention should be rejected: the rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they were, did not, in terms of scale and effect amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defense. Under international law, self-defense is an act of last resort and is subject to the customary rules of proportionality and necessity.

Operation Cast Lead caused the deaths of over 1,400 Palestinians, over 300 of whom were children, injured 4,500 more and resulted in the destruction of schools, mosques, houses, UN facilities and government buildings. If, as Israel has stated, Cast Lead was carried out in accordance with the terms of international law, and the safeguards incorporated into the contemporary law of war, then Israeli forces had a duty to protect civilian infrastructure under the fourth Geneva Convention. The death and destruction that Israeli forces wrought throughout the Gaza Strip was not commensurate with the losses caused by Hamas rocket fire, no matter how horrific those attacks may have been.

Israel’s actions amount to aggression, not self-defense, not least because its assault on Gaza was unnecessary. Israel could have agreed to renew the truce with Hamas.(15) Israel's attack on Gaza was also not an act of last resort. Israel could and should have tried to negotiate a truce with Hamas based on the principle that Hamas stop firing rockets at Israel in return for Israel lifting its siege on Gaza. This is the deal Hamas offered Israel before it started Operation Cast Lead, and Israel should have taken it then and seen how went before resorting to military force.(6)

Israel arguably provoked the entire conflict by targeting Palestinian civilians with its blockade on Gaza. According to Hebrew University international law expert Yuval Shani, "It is my opinion that in this situation, and given the question marks regarding Israel's status in Gaza and Gaza's long-standing dependency on Israel, cutting off its water and electricity supplies would be equivalent to a direct attack on a civilian target, especially given that the motive for doing so is one of collective punishment, which is, in itself, a problematic motive."(26) Hamas had offered to renew the ceasefire if Israel reopened Gaza's border crossings. The strip had been sealed by Israel in an economic siege aimed at toppling Hamas. The blockade had brought the territory near economic collapse.(21) Therefore this blockade must be seen as the true cause of the conflict, and thus Operation Cast Lead was not a legitimate act of self-defense.

The lack of efficacy of Operation Cast Lead also undermines its legitimacy as 'self-defense': while Hamas's offensive capacities were blunted for a while, the likelihood, as with Hezbollah after Lebanon in 2006, is that it will quickly rebuild its military strength. Indeed, the assassinations of its leaders by Israel over the years- and the raids on its weapons workshops- did little to limit its rise to power.(16) Israel's overall strategy, moreover, is not one of 'self-defense' against Hamas, but rather to make ordinary Palestinians suffer in hopes of creating ill will toward their Hamas government. This is why, beginning in 2007, Israel cut back fuel shipments for Gaza’s utilities, and why, in the aftermath of the bombings, 800,000 Gaza residents were deprived running water. As Sari Bashi, the executive director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights group that works on Gaza issues, argued: “The Israeli policy on Gaza has been marketed as a policy against Hamas, but in reality it’s a policy against a million-and-a-half people in Gaza.”(10) Rashid Khalidi added to this argument: "This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about 'restoring Israel’s deterrence,' as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: 'The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.'"(17)

Israeli internal politics may also have played a role in determining the size and scope of Cast Lead. Israel was preparing for general elections on 10 February 2009. The prospect of a return to power by the hawk Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, promising tough action against Hamas, hardened the positions of Israel's more moderate political leaders, and may have caused them to launch such an operation to 'look tough', rather than judging its proportionality on its own merits.(21)Therefore Operation Cast Lead should be regarded not as legitimate self-defense, but rather as an act of aggression against the Palestinian people of Gaza, and consequently w

None of these arguments change that fact that 250,000 Israelis in southern Israel lived under constant fear of Hamas rocket attacks, which Hamas escalated after a ceasefire which it refused to extend. It is notable that Syria, an implacable enemy of Israel, actually played a significant role in triggering he conflict. The Damascus office of Hamas, which operates under the aegis of the regime of Bashar al Assad, vetoed the efforts of Hamas leaders in Gaza to extend the cease-fire and insisted on escalating rocket attacks.(4) The role of foreign powers in proving the conflict through Hamas has been recognized outside of Israel was well: Egypt's Foreign Minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, assailed Israel's air strikes but also held Hamas responsible. The Egyptian government understood that Hamas, like Hezbollah, is increasingly allied with Iran and its goals for fomenting regional instability.(1) Israel could not possibly have been expected to thus not take military action to defend itself when coming under rocket fire from a terrorist government dedicated to Israel's destruction and under the direction of foreign states which are mortal enemies of Israel's existence. There was simply no other way to stop the rocket attacks. Moreover, Israel's blockade of Gaza was not a justified reason for Hamas' rocket attacks. Israeli control of Gaza’s borders was a response to Hamas’ exploitation of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza to turn it into an armed, Islamic state dedicated to the destruction of Israel above all else, even its own economy. Hamas was not provoked. Quite the contrary. Hamas’ arms smuggling was the provocation. Then, on top of this provocation, Hamas fired rockets indiscriminately into Israel. The idea that Hamas was provoked leapfrogs the facts.(27)

The long-term security of Israel rests with a stable peace agreement with the Palestinians, not in attempts to bludgeon Hamas into a truce 'on Israel's terms'. To the extent that Israel's large scale assault on Gaza eliminated the hopes of such an agreement, the attacks worsened Israel's long-term security.(10)

Operation Cast Lead ignored history, which teaches that there is no military solution to peace with the Palestinians. As a Daily Star Editorial argued, "For the Israelis, once they have exercised this latest spasm of gratuitous bloodletting, there will be yet another opportunity to accept the oft-proved impossibility of a military solution. The Palestinian people will not be battered into submission, no amount of air strikes will make the core issues in the moribund peace process go away, and all of the same difficult decisions will still be waiting when the dust settles."(18) Thus Operation Cast Lead actually undermined future peace by once more making Israelis believe they can fight their way to a solution, which they cannot. As Nicholas Kristoff argues, "What we’re seeing in the Middle East is the Boomerang Syndrome. Arab terrorism built support for right-wing Israeli politicians, who took harsh actions against Palestinians, who responded with more terrorism, and so on. Extremists on each side sustain the other."(10)

Israel cannot stop rocket attacks by military action alone; eventually a political deal will be needed.(19) Operation Cast Lead emboldened the anti-negotiation side of Israeli politics, however, which focus on their claim that Israel should not negotiate with Hamas. However, Hamas was democratically elected, and so Israel must make peace with them. If Hamas was an authoritarian regime, Israel could possible attempt to get rid of it and make peace with the Palestinians in Gaza separately. But, because Hamas was democratically elected, any efforts by Israel to destroy them will be seen in Gaza as an effort to destroy the Palestinians and their democratic will. This would not enable any long-term peace with the Palestinians. Therefore, a long-term peace depends on working with Hamas, rather than attempting to destroy them.(20)  Instead, Israel pursued Operation Cast Lead, which included an Israeli ground assault in Gaza, the excessive force of which is likely to create more terrorists in the long run.(10) The fact that Hamas was always going to survive Israel's assault meant that Operation Cast Lead was always going to help to consolidate the legitimacy of the Hamas movement, and to ensure that all the efforts of Israel to eliminate that fundamental pillar of resistance will produce the reverse result.(22)

Israel's offensive gave Iran and its allies a way to pressure Egypt, Jordan and other Arab 'moderates'. Like the Lebanon war of 2006, Israel's battle with Hamas in Gaza produced a schism among Muslim states. Iran and its Lebanon based ally Hezbollah have joined Hamas's Damascus-based leadership in calling for a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel -- and also against the governments of Egypt and Jordan, which are accused of silently supporting Israel's air attacks.(23) Israel’s ruthless attack on Gaza and the massive civilian casualties it has inflicted has severely damaged the nation's moral stature in the world. This moral deficit will cause problems for Israel in its future engagements in the world. Therefore long term peace in the region was harmed by Operation Cast Lead, and so it was not justified.

The most important thing for regional peace in the long run is not the belief among Israelis that there is a 'military solution' to the conflict, but rather the belief of Hamas and its backers in Syria and Iran that Israel can be 'solved' militarily. It is this belief that causes them to constantly return to using force against Israel, as they did with the rocket attacks. Therefore to establish peace in the long run, Israeli deterrent and demonstration that its citizens cannot be targeted with impunity are the most important factors, and these are exactly what Operation Cast Lead re-established. Moreover, Hamas may promotes itself as the legitimate power in Gaza, but in reality, Hamas is at its core a terrorist organization that refuses to renounce violence or recognize Israel's right to exist. Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. Hamas came to power in Gaza through a violent coup against the Palestinian Authority government. Since Hamas refuses to live in peace with Israel, the Israeli government has no choice but to seek Hamas' replacement.(2)

The killing of over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and more than 4,500 injuries, accompanied by the destruction of schools, mosques, houses, UN compounds and government buildings, which Israel has a responsibility to protect under the Fourth Geneva Convention, is not commensurate to the deaths caused by Hamas rocket fire. For 18 months Israel had imposed an unlawful blockade on the coastal strip that brought Gazan society to the brink of collapse. In the three years after Israel’s redeployment from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. And yet in 2005-8, according to the UN, the Israeli army killed about 1,250 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children. Throughout this time the Gaza Strip remained occupied territory under international law because Israel maintained effective control over it.(15) The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious, but the numbers speak for themselves: 800 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed during Operation Cast Lead. In contrast, around a dozen Israelis were killed, many of them soldiers.(17) Precision strikes which avoided civilian deaths were never going to be possible in the crowded Gaza Strip. As Akiva Eldar argued: "The tremendous population density in the Gaza Strip does not allow a 'surgical operation' over an extended period that would minimize damage to civilian populations. The difficult images from the Strip will soon replace those of the damage inflicted by Qassam rockets in the western Negev. The scale of losses, which works in 'favor' of the Palestinians, will return Israel to the role of Goliath."(24)

It is notable that Israel is more culpable for the civilian deaths it causes than Hamas is with its rockets, as Israel had options (such as ending the blockade and negotiating with Hamas) which could have caused fewer civilian deaths, whereas Hamas did not. Rather Hamas responds as the disproportionately weaker party; the Palestinians were compelled to use the crude means at their disposal to free their lands from Israeli occupation, even if this meant being unable to target them well and some civilian deaths resulting.(25) Israel's Operation Cast Lead was less legitimate as it was not Israel's only option, and so cannot be regarded as proportionate. Furthermore, Israel's use of white phosphorous in Gaza was a humanitarian crime. The use of white phosphorous by Israel to shield its military movements in Gaza was a humanitarian crime, as the chemical causes serious health problems to civilians that inhale it. And, by all accounts, the chemical was inhaled by many Gazan civilians.(25)

It is indisputable that Hamas has launched violent attacks against civilian targets. Israel, on the other hand, conducts its operations exercising all due care to limit civilian casualties. Hamas terrorists, however, set up their headquarters and store weapons in private homes, schools, colleges and mosques. Both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit have blamed Hamas for provoking the Israeli attack on Hamas targets embedded in civilian areas.(28) Israel's air assault has resulted in more Palestinian casualties, but that is in part because Hamas deliberately locates its security forces in residential neighborhoods. This is intended both to deter Israel from attacking in the first place as well as to turn world opinion against the Jewish state when it does attack. By all accounts, however, the Israeli strikes hit their targets precisely enough to do significant damage to Hamas forces.(1)

Israel actually put its own troops in harm’s way to minimize civilian casualties during Operation Cast Lead.(13) This shows Israel's commitment to preventing civilian casualties and thus the justification of Operation Cast Lead. The disparity between Israeli and Palestinian casualties can be explained by the fact that Israel has early warning systems and hospitals. Israel invests significantly more in stable buildings that do not crumble when subjected a blast, systems that can detect incoming rocket fire, and an extensive and modern network of hospitals and emergency response teams. This, and the fact that Israel does not attempt to shield its military installations behind civilian homes and businesses, helps lower the number of civilian casualties as compared to in Gaza.(2)

 The claim that Israel violated the principle of proportionality, by killing more Hamas terrorists than the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rockets, is absurd. There is no legal equivalence between the deliberate killing of innocent civilians and the deliberate killings of Hamas combatants. Under the laws of war, any number of combatants can be killed to prevent the killing of even one innocent civilian.(29) Moreover, if Israel were to be 'proportional' and respond to the Hamas attacks in the same way, what would that mean? Would this require that it launch rocket attacks back against Gazan civilians? Obviously not (this would result in even more civilian deaths), and this is where the logic of proportionality against terrorist attacks makes little sense.