OPINION:
Words can bewitch. Soon, the seemingly benign phrase “cycle of violence,” will be applied once again to the Hamas-Israel conflict. The linguistic effect of this application will be to equate terrorism and counterterrorism, further blurring the always-essential distinction between international crime and international law enforcement.
In fact, there has never been any cycle of violence between Palestinians and Israelis. Rather, since May 1948 and the modern founding of Israel, the conflict has involved the deliberate Arab targeting of Jewish civilians, followed by obligatory forms of counterterrorism. Again and again, Hamas has chosen to violate even the most basic rules of humanitarian international law, or the law of armed conflict.
Now, yet again, by deliberately launching rockets upon Israeli soft targets from certain densely populated Gaza areas, Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) is resorting to human shields. In law, there is a designated formal term that precisely applies to such egregious expressions of lawlessness. It is “perfidy.”
For all Arab terror organizations, not just Hamas, “Palestine” still includes all of Israel. On all official Palestinian maps, Israel is still described as “Occupied Palestine.” There are no references to Israel as such. None.
The more “moderate” Palestinian Authority now still calls for continuing terrorism to “liberate Occupied Palestine.” Regarding the doctrinally obligatory use of terror-violence against “the Jews,” absolutely nothing has changed.
In world politics and international law, there are always vital differences between criminality and law enforcement. The again-escalating “war” between Hamas and Israel is, in fact, a quintessential example of these critical differences.
Even if the incessant Palestinian refrain of an Israeli “occupation” were not repeated ad nauseam as if it were some sort of sacred incantation, and even if the related claims of “stolen Palestinian land” could ever make any real sense, there would still never be any defensible legal justification for Hamas policies of planned terror.
As long as Israel feels bound to accept some sort or other of asymmetrical peace process, Hamas terrorists will emerge and reemerge with expanding enthusiasm and with potentially growing destructiveness. These criminals will fight first for their own personal reputations, and, ultimately, for their own personal immortality. Although still generally unrecognized, Hamas terrorists typically fear death more intensely than ordinary human beings. The “suicide” they expect to suffer as “martyrs” threatens little more than a temporary inconvenience.
What matters most to them is that they will soon be rewarded by entrance into the eternal blessedness of a martyr’s paradise. For Hamas, all violence against Israel is necessarily sacred. For Hamas, the most compelling form of power is always the utterly sacred promise of immortality.
Palestinian terrorists are not militants. They are not revolutionaries. They are not freedom fighters. Their expected martyrdom is primarily a desperate strategy to defy personal death. Although any such strategy must appear irrational to both Americans and Israelis, it can still seem entirely rational and reasonable to the would-be perpetrators themselves.
When packing explosives with nails, screws and razor blades dipped in rat poison, Hamas operatives are cruel murderers. Moreover, when choosing to kill at much safer distances, when they fire barrage after barrage of rockets into Israeli nursery schools, summer camps, shelters and hospitals, they are also indisputable cowards. To wit, the latest Hamas attack on Sderot launched on Aug. 21 was directed at an Israeli kindergarten.
On some matters, international law is unambiguous. Terror groups have no right to “retaliate” under international law, no more so than would any individual criminal in domestic society maintain such a right against municipal police authorities. On the basis of their own current actions against Israeli noncombatants, moreover, Hamas is an organization that recognizes no civilizing boundaries in its employment of violence against Israel.
It takes this barbarous position in direct opposition to humanitarian international law, or the law of armed conflict.
Regarding Israel and Hamas, it is time to call things by their correct name. To begin, there has never been a genuine “cycle of violence” in the Middle East. It is a proper time, therefore, to unambiguously reject any purported equivalence between Palestinian terror and Israeli counterterror.
• Louis Rene Beres is emeritus professor of international law at Purdue University.
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