Terrorist Organization and Israel Essay

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The 2014 war in Gaza lasted for almost two months and resulted in thousands of casualties, remaining of course unresolved. However, as Espuelas (2014) puts it, "the first casualty of war is the truth," (p. 1). Nowhere is this adage more noticeable than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the truth is particularly multifaceted and complex. The principles of just war offer dictums for assessing the ethics of both the Israeli position and that of Hamas. War is considered a last resort in Israel; otherwise Israel would have used even greater force than it already has. Whereas Israel can be considered a legitimate authority because it operates as a democratic state, Hamas is less so. Hamas is legitimate to its supporters, but remains a spurious political organization dedicated to and predicated on the annihilation of Israel. Moreover, the the 2014 war in Gaza was fought to redress a clear wrong: it was a direct response to escalations in the ongoing rocket fire, which unearthed the subversive tunneling system that even more seriously threatened Israel. Peace seems highly unlikely, and yet Israel's ultimate goal is simply to exist in peace. It remains surrounded by neighbors that deny its legitimacy and has a dearth of international support too. Although critics of Israel have understandably denounced the civilian casualties that have resulted from the 2014 war in Gaza, the government of Israel is unlikely to have deliberately targeted civilians as there would be no strategic gain at all from such maneuvers. In fact, the civilian casualties may be due to what Espeulas (2014) calls the "human shield" theory: hiding Hamas targets in locations that contain large numbers of civilians in order to make Israel look bad. Although Israel's conscience cannot be considered totally clean, the war in Gaza meets almost all of the criteria for a just war.

A primary principle of just war is that the violence must be a last resort. Diplomacy and negotiation should be used first, in order to avoid unnecessary violence. In Israel, violence is clearly a last resort given the restraint that Israel does tend to show throughout its history in the face of numerous aggressions. In the case of the 2014 Gaza war, the violence did arrive as a last resort because the daily rocket attacks became not just hourly but every few minutes (Espuelas, 2014). Hamas's charter renders the organization explicitly unwilling to negotiate with the state of Israel. Therefore, it is impossible for Israel to negotiate or use diplomacy with Hamas because of the latter's outright refusal to acknowledge its opponent's point-of-view. Israel could if it wanted to resort to using force more often; instead, Israel resorts to underhanded tactics to avoid war such as the policy of containment in Gaza. Israel resorted to violence specifically because the rocket fire had increased to the degree that it was intolerable -- and indeed, any rocket fire should be considered intolerable.

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Therefore, the war in Gaza is a last resort from Israel's point-of-view. From Hamas's point-of-view, violence is illegitimate. Violence is an integral part of the Hamas tactics because Hamas refuses to work with Israel by categorically denying its existence.

Israel is a legitimate authority, in spite of its lack of allies in the Middle East. It is a democratic nation-state with a highly organized system of government. Although it lacks the support of a large number of nations, Israel does demonstrate the legitimacy of any modern nation-state. On the other hand, Hamas has a low degree of legitimacy, as it is an organization that primarily exists to destroy Israel. It is not a legitimate government of the Palestinian people; it mainly controls Gaza and is a vindictive agent that seeks to redress wrongs through propaganda and terrorism against Israel. The legitimacy conferred onto Hamas comes from anti-Israeli sentiment not just among Palestinians in Gaza but throughout the Arab world. As Riedel (2014) points out, "many Saudis, especially young people, admire Hamas for fighting against Israel." The same is true throughout the Muslim world. Hamas uses what Landes (2014) calls a "dead baby strategy," a propaganda operation consisting of "gruesome images of dead children are appearing every night on Arab television," (Riedel, 2014). Hamas might tout itself as a legitimate authority that protects the rights of the Palestinian people, but it has never sought negotiations with Israel on principle. Therefore, Hamas lacks legitimacy as a governing body and also functions by using violent principles that violate the tenets of just war.

Redressing a wrong is the song sung by both Israelis and Hamas. From Hamas's perspective, Israel refuses to grant Palestinians their own state and has encroached upon Palestinian territory. From Israel's perspective, Hamas launches daily terror attacks at Israel. Both sides claim that they are redressing a wrong. Without delving too deep into history, it is clear that wrongs have been committed by both sides. Yet in this particular case, Israel was redressing a specific set of ethical violations Hamas had committed including the construction of a massive network of tunnels and the rocket attacks that came as often as once every four minutes (Espuelas, 2014). Israel and Palestine both suffer from existential crises, but it was not Israel that fired the rocket attacks or constructed tunnels to the degree authorized by Hamas and paid for by its allies. According to Visser (2015), the war in Gaza was justified because of the tunnels alone. The war "averted a major disaster for Israel," because " Hamas had planned a mega-terror attack that was scheduled to be carried out on Rosh Hashanah," (Visser, 2015). With funding from Qatar, the Hamas tunnel entrances were "stocked with tranquilizers, handcuffs, ropes, and other materials useful for subduing abducted civilians and soldiers," (Visser, 2015). Each tunnel, some of which were 120 feet deep, cost about one million dollars;.....

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