Should Israel build and defend hospitals and schools for occupied Palestinians?

[wiggin]

Personally, I hate it that the US gives billions of dollars to Israel under the auspice of "international aid"....when it means killing innocent children and civilians who don't have a voice or any real choice in the process.

Philosophically, I don't understand why Israel doesn't recognize that Palestinians in Gaza feel they're being "persecuted" as ethnic or religious monority groups. Shouldn't Israel be more attuned to that phenomenon than anyone else?

1. The US gives military, not humanitarian, aid to Israel. It's part of a deal worked out to achieve peace between Israel and most of her neighbors - the US would ensure Israel keeps technological superiority over their more numerous foes; simultaneously, the US bankrolls both military and economic aid for Egypt and Jordan. Everyone is happy and you don't get ruinous wars in the Sinai any more. The total number of casualties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts pales in comparison to the number of casualties in other Israeli-Arab conflicts (for that matter, also compared to the number of Palestinians killed by other Arabs in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon). I'd say it was a good deal and continues to be one. As for using US money to kill innocents, the US military does that on a daily basis in Afghanistan. War is messy.

2. As Loki said, Israel's beef with Palestinians has nothing to do with their ethnicity or religion. Half of Israel is of the same ethnicity, and 1/5 of the same religion. Their issue with Palestinians is and always has been violence against Israeli civilians.

Back to the OP --- who IS going to help re-build all the hospitals and schools bombed in the Gaza strip? Palestinians can't do it on their own. Too many blockades and sanctions from Israel (and its US allies) relegate them to "victim" status.

I'm not saying it's right or good...but is it any wonder that factions like Hamas found a foothold in that kind of desperate environment?

Hamas took power in a coup before the blockade; the blockade and resulting humanitarian mess is a direct result of Hamas' actions. I have little sympathy.

As Hazir said, the rebuilding will probably be bankrolled by a combination of EU money with whatever they can scrounge up from Qatar/Turkey/Iran/etc. I'd feel more urgency about rebuilding schools if we knew they weren't going to be turned back into indoctrination centers, weapons depots, launching grounds, and tunnel entrances. Ditto for hospitals. It would help further if we had any level of assurances that resources were not being diverted for violent ends. I certainly have zero trust in UNRWA on this front, and there's no one else who can provide such assurances.


On a broader question: so far Israel is budgeting about NIS 1 billion (~$250 million) for reconstruction of their own after rocket attacks. Are we expecting Hamas to pay for that?

[Dreadnaught]

This is what I don't get, Gaza is occupied by Israel regardless of whether troops are on the ground or not. If Israel isn't going to occupy it then why not wholly withdraw and unilaterally say those are the boundaries for a Palestinian state and any further rockets will be an act of war?

Eh? That's exactly what happened in 2005.

[Loki]

Couldn't be bothered to start a new thread.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-Election...nt-List-394222

A sign of Hamas' willingness to resolve the Palestinian issue through ballots, one-time opportunism, or a hacked twitter account?

[GGT]

And I can't be bothered to link to another thread where you said Arab Israelis weren't part of Netanyahu forming a coalition government.

[Loki]

They weren't...

[GGT]

Don't "Arabs" represent around 20% of Israel's population?

And isn't that why Netanyahu used "the Arabs are voting in droves" as a clarion call to Jews?

[Loki]

The Arab party refused to enter into a coalition with the left, which was the point I made earlier...

[Flixy]

Don't "Arabs" represent around 20% of Israel's population?

And isn't that why Netanyahu used "the Arabs are voting in droves" as a clarion call to Jews?

About 45% of all MPs are usually left out of a coalition government.

[wiggin]

Also, they only got ~11% of the seats in the Knesset due to a combination of lowish turnout (compared to the Jewish turnout) and Arabs voting (wisely) for non-Arab parties that represent their interests.

[GGT]

....Hamas is de facto running a fiefdom in Gaza anyways, and the PA in the West Bank has much of the trappings of the state.

....Hezbollah, while funded by Syria and current helping the Assad regime in the Syrian civil war, is based in Lebanon and is a Lebanese Shiite organization.

Israel does in fact occupy parts of Syria (the Golan Heights, though Israel claims they won them fair and square and have annexed the land), but that is not Hezbollah's beef - rather, they argue that Israel is occupying Lebanon, even after the 2000 withdrawal that was verified by the UN-established border. Hezbollah has manufactured a claim to still being under 'occupation' by arguing very similarly to Hamas - Israel routinely violates Lebanese airspace for surveillance of weapons shipments, and they claim that the Har Dov/Shebaa Farms region (determined by the UN to be part of the Syrian Golan) is Zionist-occupied Lebanon. That is their casus belli for all sorts of attacks since 2000. When Israel responds - as they memorably did in 2006 - they face just as much opprobrium as they do in Gaza - accusations of war crimes, international condemnation, etc. In fact, I'd say the current international response to Israel's operation in Gaza has been more muted than the response to either their previous operation in Gaza (Cast Lead in 2008/2009) or the second Lebanon war in 2006.

I don't think that Gaza being a state (recognized or not) has any bearing on how Israel can handle the situation. It's largely irrelevant to the logic of violence that Hamas and Hezbollah both use. Israel's reactions, in turn, are largely independent of the status of Gaza.

Sorry, I don't understand how you make these broad statements, while posing them as "logical" conclusions. There's nothing "logical" about territorial or border disputes between tribal and/or religious groups in the region. Israel can't expand housing settlements beyond negotiated borders, then act surprised when they're challenged as illegal occupiers.

I'm tired of US politicians posturing as Israel's best ally, even when that means over-looking Israel's political mistakes.

[Loki]

Israel was challenged as an illegal occupier when it didn't even control all of present-day Israel.

[Aimless]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...tary-operation

Sigh. Good thing some of them have somewhere to turn once things calm down and they begin to think about what happened. Can't help but feel as if it's a little naive to expect this sort of account to emerge immediately after a war. People need time and a safe place.

[Loocid]

The public opinion tide is turning against Israel. And not without good reason.

Legality is one thing. Morality is another.

[GGT]

I'm not sure the political tide is turning "against" Israel, but it does demand that we (the west and its allies) explain contradictory/conflicting policies. If we support fundamental human rights, then why are we allied with the Saudi Kingdom? If we're advocates for individual freedoms and ethnic identity (or state's rights), then why aren't we working toward a Palestinian state solution?

[Loki]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/wo...lestinian.html

What a mess. The level of radicalization on both sides is probably unprecedented. More than half the Palestinians think it's good for Palestinian youths to go around stabbing Israeli civilians. Meanwhile, half the Israelis think it's ok to execute what is effectively a prisoner. At this point forget peace. Both sides would have happily wipe themselves off the map as long as they took the other side with them.

[wiggin]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/wo...lestinian.html

What a mess. The level of radicalization on both sides is probably unprecedented. More than half the Palestinians think it's good for Palestinian youths to go around stabbing Israeli civilians. Meanwhile, half the Israelis think it's ok to execute what is effectively a prisoner. At this point forget peace. Both sides would have happily wipe themselves off the map as long as they took the other side with them.

Agreed that it's a mess, but the reality with this story is rather more complex than has been typically shown. Half of Israeli Jews did indeed respond to the survey by disagreeing with some positions argued by the IDF Chief of Staff, but that's not the same thing as arguing that summary execution of prisoners is acceptable. The case of this soldier is instructive in a number of ways that illustrate the broader and rather nuanced discussion represented by the survey's question:

Part of the support for the soldier (and those like him) is due to politics, not a sober assessment of his guilt or innocence (or the appropriateness of his actions). For example, this story was first publicized by the release of a video by B'tselem showing the unlawful killing. It immediately polarized the Israeli public - those sympathetic to B'tselem's aims expressed shock and disgust at the soldier's actions, while those opposed rushed to his defense, arguing he was being prematurely tarred by the left wing. In reality, the video provided little information or context, so it was largely impossible to form an informed position on its basis - rather, the reactions served as a barometer of political identification. It says worrying things about the polarization in Israeli politics, but little about the support for summary executions. The fact that the soldier was being investigated by the IDF well before the release of the video, possibly to be charged with murder, did little to sway opinion once this 'right vs. left' dynamic started playing out.

More broadly, this story brought a simmering issue into stark relief - how exactly should the rules of engagement work in these sorts of situations. To the casual observer, the soldier's actions are wholly unacceptable - the injured terrorist was on the ground and appeared to be no threat, several minutes after the incident. Yet the Israeli public are not casual observers - a large proportion of them have combat training, especially in counter-terrorism. They are aware that there are potential cases where the apparent execution of a prisoner is not only allowed but required under legal rules of engagement. The most common theory (and that of the soldier's lawyer) is that he acted out a genuine fear for his life and that of his comrades, concerned that the surviving terrorist might be wearing a suicide vest and would detonate it. There are a lot of practical problems with this position - shooting the terrorist would have been the wrong move in such a situation (for fear of detonating the vest), the terrorist has reportedly already been briefly frisked by a commander (itself a violation of IDF protocol designed to minimize the chances of such a secondary attack, but done to allow medical personnel to access the scene), and the soldier appears to have justified his actions at the time by arguing that the terrorist deserved to die. But again, this case is not being argued on its own merits, but on the broader issue facing the IDF soldiers on a daily basis, which is the tricky issue of interpreting fairly challenging rules of engagement in a complex environment.

I've seen debates playing out on Facebook that take it as a given that summary executions are wrong and illegal, but disagreeing on the facts of the case and the application of typical rules of engagement. The debates, while vitriolic, tend to be surprisingly sophisticated, probably because the interlocutors all have some familiarity with the dilemma. It's very hard for soldiers to gauge what level of force is appropriate to handle a given situation in a way that enhances their own safety and that of others without being overkill. Indeed, the 13 year old girl with scissors probably doesn't need to be gunned down, but do soldiers know she isn't also carrying a suicide vest, or part of a larger attack? Similarly, a car approaching a checkpoint and driving erratically might just be innocuous, but do they know they aren't facing a potential car-rammer? Etc. It's a complicated calculation, and the Israeli public knows it. Obviously the political and military elite argue for a certain level of restraint due to moral and political concerns, but the public is not as convinced.

The point is that 'half of Israelis' do not think summary executions are ok; they just err more conservatively on applying the rules of engagement, and distrust what they see as a left wing bias in the media and government. There is a minority of these - a distressingly large minority - who do believe in summary executions, and that position should be unreservedly condemned (and has been, by and large). But I don't think the broader debate over this issue is representative of an unwillingness to achieve a peaceful resolution, but rather frustration at the challenging bind soldiers are placed in on a daily basis.

Personally, I'm far more concerned about Israeli despair vis-a-vis the peace process - I think that's a much bigger obstacle to future negotiations. Recent polling as well as elections have suggested that while a broad majority of Israelis support a peaceful solution to the conflict, much fewer are confident in the standard formula pushed by the center left in Israel - land for peace, two states, etc. They simply look at the last 25 years of failed negotiations (and no small amount of terrorism) and feel like the left's solutions are unworkable with a fundamental change on the Palestinian side. The center-right doesn't really offer a peace alternative - rather, Netanyahu and his ilk promise to 'manage' the conflict indefinitely - but despairing Israelis see this as at least a realistic position that has the best chance of working for now. It's an understandable position, perhaps, but poses very challenging questions about how to change the rather awful status quo.

[RandBlade]

It seems to me as a rather ignorant outsider that since the Second Intifada that the security situation in Israel has got better (probably due to the wall) while the situation for the Palestinians has not. What seems to be missing though is a desire on the Palestinian side to realise that the conflict isn't working for them and to go back to the situation before the Intifada.

[wiggin]

It seems to me as a rather ignorant outsider that since the Second Intifada that the security situation in Israel has got better (probably due to the wall) while the situation for the Palestinians has not. What seems to be missing though is a desire on the Palestinian side to realise that the conflict isn't working for them and to go back to the situation before the Intifada.

It all depends on how you define 'security situation'. It also helps if you take a broader view.

Certainly Israel does not face as many existential threats as they did in the past - there are not hundreds of thousands of Arab troops poised at all of her borders, ready to invade. Egypt and Jordan are no longer serious threats, and Syria is not an existential one. The only 'real' threat to Israel is an Iranian nuke, which despite the Netanyahu hyperbole is a very legitimate and real security concern. So in that context, the peace deals starting in 1979, coupled with the fall of the Soviet Union (and the subsequent deterioration in the military strength of Israel's opponents) have dramatically improved Israel's existential security. In this lens, the Palestinians have never really figured prominently. They can be a nuisance, yes, and they can and have murdered thousands of Israeli civilians. But they have never posed an existential threat to Israel.

Most people, however, do not use existential threats as the rubric by which to judge security. A broader definition might be - have Palestinian actions since the start of the Oslo process increased the disruption to Israeli lives? The answer to that is almost certainly yes, especially when compared to the 1980s. The first intifada did not penetrate much into the Israeli psyche; it mostly stayed in the territories and produced relatively small numbers of casualties on the Israeli side. The Oslo process, however, inaugurated the widespread use of suicide bombings in the 1990s followed by the (much more destructive) second intifada in the early 2000s. These most definitely did change Israeli lives - not just the thousands killed an maimed, but also the change in the way Israelis approached public transport and public places. Obviously terrorism has been a fact of life in Israel since long before independence, but the persistent high casualty attacks that characterized the 15 years following the Oslo accords were certainly transformative. Since the end of the 2nd intifada, these high casualty attacks have broadly died down, but have been replaced by an ever-growing threat of indirect fire from Gaza. While this doesn't kill all that much, the longer range arsenal now wielded by Hamas covers much of central and southern Israel, effectively putting most of the country's economy on hold for a month every couple of years when the violence flares. Bomb shelters have been reopened in Tel Aviv for the first time since the first Gulf War, so I'd say that definitely counts as 'disruption'. And now, of course, they have had a year or so of unpredictable lone-wolf attacks on a near-daily basis.

My point is that Israelis certainly appreciate the security gains that have been won - at substantial blood and treasure - in reducing the frequency of mass casualty attacks of the sort we see in Europe today. They also are thankful that there is no one seriously contemplating that the country might be overrun by conventionally-armed adversaries on any given day. But they don't see that the Oslo process - which, you may recall, involved arming and training former terrorist groups and handing over administration of large parts of the territories to Palestinians - has substantially been involved in that improvement. All they see is continued poor security, largely now as a result of incomplete Israeli control over the territories.

Now, I more or less agree with your argument that the real catalyst for change will be a change on the part of the Palestinians. But I worry that even if we were to magically find a Palestinian populace united behind a strong, clean, credible, reasonable leader committed to a nonviolent resolution to the conflict (which is not going to happen any time soon), the Israelis would be very leery of embarking down that path again. Oh, I think if this fantasy were to come true Israel would come around eventually, but the disillusionment and cynicism about the peace process goes pretty deep nowadays.

(BTW, the improvement in security in the West Bank is only tangentially tied to the security barrier. The barrier can be circumvented, often without too much trouble. What has really helped is that Israel comprehensively dismantled the built-up terrorist networks during the second intifada, and they now routinely - almost nightly - go on arrest raids to keep terrorist cells from getting too organized or large. This is backed up by an enormous human and signals intelligence operation and near-constant vigilance. The barrier helped in that it funnels points of entry to a few relatively manageable areas, and it also just increases the time necessary for a would-be terrorist to get from his home in the WB to an Israeli city - precious time that the intelligence community can use to coordinate with a military or law enforcement response. But it doesn't magically stop terrorists from entering Israel.)

As another aside - certainly if you look just at raw casualties the Palestinian situation in the WB was far worse during the 2nd intifada - lost more friction between IDF incursions and armed groups led to heavy casualties. Since then, it has been a constant, but lower, level of violence. So in a sense it might be seen to be preferable to during the intifada. On the other hand, Gaza has only gotten worse, largely because they are autonomous and run by bloodthirsty nuts.

[Lewkowski]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/wo...lestinian.html

What a mess. The level of radicalization on both sides is probably unprecedented. More than half the Palestinians think it's good for Palestinian youths to go around stabbing Israeli civilians. Meanwhile, half the Israelis think it's ok to execute what is effectively a prisoner. At this point forget peace. Both sides would have happily wipe themselves off the map as long as they took the other side with them.

If America was hit by terrorist attacks as often as Israel was would have turned large portions of the Middle East into glass. Frankly Israel has acted with an absurd amount of restraint.

[Loki]

Wig, I understand that politics is at play here. But that very fact is what's distressing about the situation: we have a person who wasn't a threat by any meaningful measure (despite what the soldier's apologists claim, especially as the soldier shot the terrorist when that action would lead to an explosion and kill people around him) being executed by a soldier who gloated about his actions. And somehow this isn't a sufficiently negative action to get people to ignore politics and condemn it.

https://today.yougov.com/news/2016/0...orhood-patrols Meanwhile, 51% of Americans want a total ban on Muslims entering the country. Must be because of the daily terrorist attacks Americans face.

[wiggin]

Wig, I understand that politics is at play here. But that very fact is what's distressing about the situation: we have a person who wasn't a threat by any meaningful measure (despite what the soldier's apologists claim, especially as the soldier shot the terrorist when that action would lead to an explosion and kill people around him) being executed by a soldier who gloated about his actions. And somehow this isn't a sufficiently negative action to get people to ignore politics and condemn it.

https://today.yougov.com/news/2016/0...orhood-patrols Meanwhile, 51% of Americans want a total ban on Muslims entering the country. Must be because of the daily terrorist attacks Americans face.

Right, but Loki, the facts that your describe (while certainly appear to be the actual truth about the case) are not accepted as true by the majority of those Israelis who are supporting the soldier. The narrative I've seen is that some combination of those facts are incorrect - especially regarding the belief that the terrorist was no longer a threat. I agree with you, and I think that the facts appear to agree with you as well. But the right wing in Israel is similar to right wings in other countries in their suspicion about the 'mainstream media', and especially about liberal NGOs like B'tselem that released the footage initially. They're not completely to be blamed - certainly there have been plenty of Pallywood productions that have been bought by the media (especially foreign media) hook, line, and sinker. And the methods of groups like Breaking the Silence are also subject to some legitimate skepticism (B'tselem, however, tends to be on the up-and-up in most cases, but are tarred with the same brush). So they doubt the narrative being told, and thus support the soldier. The fact that they need to doubt the narrative to support the soldier (implying that if the soldier had acted as he appears to have actually done, they would not be able to support him) is still IMO an encouraging sign. The poisonous politics aside, it doesn't seem like the majority of the population has lost its moral compass.

It's also telling that major Israeli institutions - including the main right wing party, the Prime Minister's Office, the IDF General Staff, the IDF JAG, and the main right wing publications - all appear to agree with the facts and are not broadly supportive of the soldier (absent the occasional argument in favor of 'due process' or the like). That is also encouraging. It means that even when politics gets in the way of public perception, the country's institutions are working as designed.