Walzer (dialectically) explains why Israel’s attacks are just
The New Republic - July 31, 2006
HOW AGGRESSIVE SHOULD ISRAEL BE? War Fair by Michael Walzer
Israel is now at war with an enemy whose hostility is extreme,
explicit, unrestrained, and driven by an ideology of religious
hatred. But this is an enemy that does not field an army; that has no
institutional structure and no visible chain of command; that does
not recognize the legal and moral principle of noncombatant immunity;
and that does not, indeed, acknowledge any rules of engagement. How
do you–how does anyone–fight an enemy like that? I cannot deal with
the strategy and tactics of such a fight. How to strike effectively,
how to avoid a dangerous escalation–those are important topics, but
not mine. The question I want to address is about morality and politics.
The easy part of the answer is to say what cannot rightly be done.
There cannot be any direct attacks on civilian targets (even if the
enemy doesn’t believe in the existence of civilians), and this
principle is a major constraint also on attacks on the economic
infrastructure. Writing about the first Iraq war, in 1991, I argued
that the U.S. decision to attack “communication and transportation
systems, electric power grids, government buildings of every sort,
water pumping stations and purification plants” was wrong. “Selected
infrastructural targets are easy enough to justify: bridges over
which supplies are carried to the army in the field provide an
obvious example. But power and water … are very much like food:
they are necessary to the survival and everyday activity of soldiers,
but they are equally necessary to everyone else. An attack here is an
attack on civilian society. … [I]t is the military effects, if any,
that are ‘collateral.’” That was and is a general argument; it
clearly applies to the Israeli attacks on power stations in Gaza and
Lebanon.
The argument, in this case, is prudential as well as moral. Reducing
the quality of life in Gaza, where it is already low, is intended to
put pressure on whoever is politically responsible for the
inhabitants of Gaza–and then these responsible people, it is hoped,
will take action against the shadowy forces attacking Israel. The
same logic has been applied in Lebanon, where the forces are not so
shadowy. But no one is responsible in either of these cases, or,
better, those people who might take responsibility long ago chose not
to. The leaders of the sovereign state of Lebanon insist that they
have no control over the southern part of their country–and, more
amazingly, no obligation to take control. Still, Palestinian
civilians are not likely to hold anyone responsible for their fate
except the Israelis, and, while the Lebanese will be more
discriminating, Israel will still bear the larger burden of blame.
Hamas and Hezbollah feed on the suffering their own activity brings
about, and an Israeli response that increases the suffering only
intensifies the feeding.
So, what can Israel do? It is an important principle of just war
theory that justice, though it rules out many ways of fighting,
cannot rule out fighting itself–since fighting is sometimes morally
and politically necessary. A military response to the capture of the
three Israeli soldiers wasn’t, literally, necessary; in the past,
Israel has negotiated instead of fighting and then exchanged
prisoners. But, since Hamas and Hezbollah describe the captures as
legitimate military operations–acts of war–they can hardly claim
that further acts of war, in response, are illegitimate. The further
acts have to be proportional, but Israel’s goal is to prevent future
raids, as well as to rescue the soldiers, so proportionality must be
measured not only against what Hamas and Hezbollah have already done,
but also against what they are (and what they say they are) trying to
do.
The most important Israeli goal in both the north and the south is to
prevent rocket attacks on its civilian population, and, here, its
response clearly meets the requirements of necessity. The first
purpose of any state is to defend the lives of its citizens; no state
can tolerate random rocket attacks on its cities and towns. Some 700
rockets have been fired from northern Gaza since the Israeli
withdrawal a year ago–imagine the U.S. response if a similar number
were fired at Buffalo and Detroit from some Canadian no-man’s-land.
It doesn’t matter that, so far, the Gazan rockets have done minimal
damage; the intention every time one is fired is to hit a home or a
school, and, sooner or later, that intention will be realized. Israel
has waited a long time for the Palestinian Authority and the Lebanese
government to deal with the rocket fire from Gaza and the rocket
build-up on the Lebanese border. In the latter case, it has also
waited for the United Nations, which has a force in southern Lebanon
that is mandated to “restore international peace and security” but
has nonetheless watched the positioning of thousands of rockets and
has done nothing. A couple of years ago, the Security Council passed
a resolution calling for the disarming of Hezbollah; its troops,
presumably, have noticed that this didn’t happen. Now Israel has
rightly decided that it has no choice except to take out the rockets
itself. But, again, how can it do that?
The crucial argument is about the Palestinian use of civilians as
shields. Academic philosophers have written at great length about
“innocent shields,” since these radically exploited (but sometimes,
perhaps, compliant) men and women pose a dilemma that tests the
philosophers’ dialectical skills. Israeli soldiers are not required
to have dialectical skills, but, on the one hand, they are expected
to do everything they can to prevent civilian deaths, and, on the
other hand, they are expected to fight against an enemy that hides
behind civilians. So (to quote a famous line from Trotsky), they may
not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is interested
in them.
There is no neat solution to their dilemma. When Palestinian
militants launch rocket attacks from civilian areas, they are
themselves responsible–and no one else is–for the civilian deaths
caused by Israeli counterfire. But (the dialectical argument
continues) Israeli soldiers are required to aim as precisely as they
can at the militants, to take risks in order to do that, and to call
off counterattacks that would kill large numbers of civilians. That
last requirement means that, sometimes, the Palestinian use of
civilian shields, though it is a cruel and immoral way of fighting,
is also an effective way of fighting. It works, because it is both
morally right and politically intelligent for the Israelis to
minimize–and to be seen trying to minimize–civilian casualties.
Still, minimizing does not mean avoiding entirely: Civilians will
suffer so long as no one on the Palestinian side (or the Lebanese
side) takes action to stop rocket attacks. From that side, though not
from the Israeli side, what needs to be done could probably be done
without harm to civilians.
I was recently asked to sign a condemnation of the Israeli operation
in Gaza–a statement claiming that the rocket attacks and the
military raid that led to the capture of Gilad Shalit are simply the
inevitable consequences of the Israeli occupation: There “never will
be peace or security until the occupation ends.” In the past, I am
sure, some Palestinian attacks were motivated by the experience of
occupation. But that isn’t true today. Hamas is attacking after the
Israelis departed Gaza and after the formation of a government that
is (or was until the attacks) committed to a large withdrawal from
the West Bank. Similarly, Hezbollah’s attacks came after the Israeli
withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The aim of these militants is not
to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel; it is to destroy
Israel. Admittedly, that is a long-term aim that derives from a
religious view of history. Secularists and pragmatists have a lot of
trouble acknowledging such a view, let alone understanding it.
By contrast, the Israeli response has only a short-term aim: to stop
the attacks across its borders. Until that is achieved, no Israeli
government is going to move forward with another withdrawal. In fact,
it is probably true that the Hamas and Hezbollah attacks have made
any future unilateral withdrawals impossible. Israel needs a partner
on the other side who is, first of all, capable of maintaining
security on the new border and who is, second, actually willing to do
that. I can’t pretend that the Israeli military operations now in
progress are going to produce a partner like that. At best, the army
and air force will weaken the capacity of Hamas and Hezbollah to
attack Israel; they won’t alter their resolve. It will probably take
the international community–the United States, Europe, the United
Nations, some Arab states–to bring the Lebanese army into the south
of the country and make it an effective force once it is there. And
it will take a similar coalition to sponsor and support a Palestinian
government that is committed to two states with one permanent and
peaceful border and that is prepared to repress the religious
militants who oppose that commitment. Until there is an effective
Lebanese army and a Palestinian government that believes in co-
existence, Israel is entitled to act, within the dialectical limits,
on its own behalf.
Michael Walzer is a contributing editor at The New Republic.