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Just And Unjust Wars: An Analysis Of Israel Hamas War 2008

On December 27, 2008 two days after Christmas, Israel launched a military assault against Hamas in Gaza. The official claim for the attack was the response to the rocket attacks of Hamas, hence, claimed to be in self-defense. True, Israel has the right of self-defense, but in ‘Operation Cast Lead’, more than 1400 Palestinians died-including at least 100 women and 311 children, and more than 5000 injured, which is disproportionate by all means as compared to the death toll of 11 in last three years on Israel side with unsophisticated obsolete rockets. USA as usual has sided with Israel and vetoed UN Security Council’s resolution for seize fire.

If we scrutinize the recent Israel war against Hamas, in Gaza, it can not be categorized as a ‘just war’. Because, the Just war theory deals with the questions of, how and why wars are fought. Walzer in his book Just and unjust war talks about war convention which usually uses to identify the war time codes for avoiding the civilian losses. As for instance, he writes, ‘among professional soldiers the war convention often finds advocates of a special kind, and they remain sensitive to those limits and restrains that distinguish their life’s work from mere butchery’ (Walzer 2000: 44). In the case of Israel, we see that Israeli soldiers are not concerned about any such conventions and are involved in civilian killings. Likewise, in Geneva Conventions, clear instructions are written about sparing civilian lives and assets, and doing against it is a mere violation of just war practices. In defending their war time atrocities, Israel argues that Hamas militants used to fire rockets from the civilian populated area and established offices within them. So, it is a collateral damage and Hamas could not be allowed to use human shield.

This is their justification for self-defense, but not convincing enough; because Israel has the capabilities of target killing of Hamas militants, as they have demonstrated it by killing the Hamas leader Sheikh Yasin in 2004 and several others. Therefore, civilian killings have some ulterior motives as well, other than eliminating Hamas, which are pretty covert. It could be speculated that Israel wants to displace Palestinian and wants Palestinian populated territories evacuated, by forcing them to migrate if they want to save their lives and other life supporting assets. This could also be seen as a part of a greater ideological plan of creating a greater Israel (Zionist objective) on the land of Palestine, at the expense of innocent civilian Palestinian lives. These indiscriminate killings by the Israeli army and displacing people, violating their very right to live and move freely, could not be justified as just war by calling it preventive or defensive war; when their enemy side is far weaker to challenge, threaten, or raid them.

Majority of the states have condemned the Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Here, the problem is the lack of any sovereign supranational authority, which could enforce its decisions on aggressor states, in case of rules and norms violation. So international law is the term more irrelevant and ambiguous in this Israeli aggression context. As the act of bellicose Israeli war is a clear violation of international law but there are no means to stop American backed Israel to stop aggression again innocent civilians. Furthermore, Walzer talks about the international society of sovereign states which has no perfect and defined structure to regulate their actions; so its their responsibility to “take the shape of political society the character of which is accessible through such notions as crime and punishment, self defense, law enforcement, and so on” (Walzer 2000, 58).

Presently, we live in world of many so called independent sovereign states, without any system of law enforceable among them. Waltz designates this state of without supreme authority above states as the state of “anarchy”, which is greatly stressed by the realist tradition. Under such circumstances of the anarchic international order, the rule of the game is ‘Might is Right’; like we have witnessed in the case of Israel where there is no formation of coalition forces to stop Israel against her aggression (as we also have witnessed in the case of Iraq Kuwait war). The dual standard of international community could be observed in many instances where powerful states manage to come up without any penalties or accountability (Israel against Hamas in Gaza and Russia against Georgia for example), even if they are aggressor and violated human rights and sovereign right of weaker states especially. While, Walzer says, “Any use of force or imminent threat of force by one state against the political sovereignty or territorial integrity of another constitutes aggression and is a criminal act” (Waltz 2000: 62). Whatever Israel has done is a criminal act, but no one is to ask her in the whole international community.

Israel is an aggressor party and uses the excuse of Hamas’ rocket attacks which have cause very little damage as compared to what Israel has inflicted on the civilians so far. Walzer says, “Aggression justifies two kinds of violent response, a war of self defense by the victim and a war of law enforcement by the victim” (Walzer 2000: 62); as we have already analyzed that Israel has no point of such justifications for its war against.

The Israel war cannot be categorized as pre-emptive or preventive war because, there was no imminent threat posed by the much weaker Hamas. The balance of power has been very much on the Israel side. In fact, there is no balance of power as such because all the power lies on Israel’s side. According to Walzer, “ A preventive war is a war fought to maintain the balance, to stop what is thought to be an even distribution of power from shifting into a relation of dominance and inferiority” (Walzer 2000: 76). It would be ridiculous to claim that Hamas has developed rockets which can hit the Israelis cities so it’s a preventive war to destroy the Hamas and avoid the future attacks by them.

If we consider pre-emptive strikes “hostile acts short of war” it is Israel which is engaged in these activities, as the Gaza has been turned into a prison. To take a pre-emptive strike there must be a sufficient threat as was in 1967, Egypt Israel war. It Is not just to believe that the people of Gaza, who already live in Israel made 21st century ghetto, pose any threat to omnipotent Israel. No “manifest intent” (Walzer 2000: 81) could be seen in this situation form Gaza against Israel which make the war inevitable for pugnacious Israel.

The double-effect doctrine could not be justified here, because, first of all this is not a just war, as explained by Walzer that double-effect “is a way of reconciling the absolute prohibition against attacking non combatants with the legitimate conduct of military activity” (Walzer 2000: 153). But no good intention could be seen in this unjust war so far. To injure the civilians un-deliberately for achieving some higher motive of peace for instance or liberation of people from oppressor is not the case here; where civilians have been targeted indiscriminately. Israel has some other ulterior motives for attack on Gaza; it is apparent that no measures have been taken to avoid or minimize the civilian causalities; rather it is more likely target killing of civilians to force Hamas to come to the negotiations on Israel’s terms. It can also be coercion on the Israeli part to warn Palestinians not to vote Hamas if they want to avoid such attacks.

The point of ‘sliding scale’, the more just the more right, as discussed by Walzer, when he has referred to John Rawls as saying that certain violence could not be justified even in just war; in such a case the aggressor should be more constrained for the means of war which he uses. The doubt advantage is also here when “Acts permissible in a war of legitimate self defense, when these are necessary, may be flatly excluded in a more doubtful situation” (Walzer 2000: 229). Walzer says that “the grater the injustice likely to result from my defeat, the more rules I can violate to avoid defeat” (Ibid.). This is plausible only if the state is just; but this statement is ambiguous because if each combatant considers that he is just, the result would be ultimate destruction. And the state like Israel would take unjust advantage of it. It is necessary to observe Jus in Bello. There must be certain rules for the war either you are just or unjust you have to follow these rules. In the context of Sliding Scale if we analyze the Israeli attack on Gaza there was no reason to break the rules for Israel because there was no such injustice to prevail if they restrained and adopt some other violent means other than war or to minimize the civilian causalities.

For the ‘supreme emergency’ Walzer says that there are “two levels on which the concept of necessity works: the first has to do with the imminence of the danger and second with its nature” (Walzer 2000: 252). Walzer argues that even if it is the matter of nation’s very survival, still then, the mere identification of such threat is not sufficient to target and injure or kill the innocent unarmed civilians (Walzer 2000: 254-55). Same is the case of Israel’s attack on Gaza, where there is absolutely ‘no supreme emergency at all’. Israel supposedly has attacked to take revenge from the Hamas but has bombed the civilian population and killed disproportionately the innocent people. There have always been the other peaceful means/options to resolve the issue but Israel has never resorted to any such peaceful means. It has always adopted extreme choices and launched all out violent attack on Gaza.

From the very beginning, when the Hamas was elected to legislative assembly and form the fully democratic government in Palestine, Israel refused to talk to them and declared them as so called ‘terrorist’. Big powers (the United States of America, Great Britian) also did nothing to resolve the contention but follow the Israel’s favored Israel’s claims and halted all the aid to Palestine. Gaza has turned into a full fledge prison, where a wall has been erected by the mighty Israel in argument of self-defense. Despite the International Court of Justice’s decision against the construction of wall around Gaza, Israel rejected the decision and kept on erecting the wall. The masses are facing severe humanitarian problems. Eighty per cent of about 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza are still living on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the Gaza strip remain bad and the area is classic example of neo-imperialism and also provokes the political extremism. So all these facts show that israel has no justification to wage to just or unjust war agained already deprived and weaker people of Palestine.

Reference

Walzer 2000 “Just and unjust war”

About the Author

My name is Shahzad Ahmad Raja and i am a masters student in the descipline International European Relations at Linkoping University, Linkoping Swden.