Statelessness and Tipping Points

The Israeli-Hamas conflict is more than agonizing to watch. It smacks of more than hopelessness and intractability. It's got an awful resonance to it, a sense that the hopelessness is enough to crack the frame through which we view all this. Something is changing for Americans now. Anyone watching CNN during the initial bombardment could see that Israel was finally losing a PR battle with Hamas.

I was especially struck by what Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic had to say in 'Why I'm Not Blogging More about Gaza':

I have friends in Gaza about whom I worry a great deal; I've seen many people killed in Gaza; I've served in the Israeli Army in Gaza; I've been kidnapped in Gaza; I've reported for years from Gaza; I hope my former army doesn't kill the wrong people in Gaza; I hope Israeli soldiers all leave Gaza alive; I know they'll be back in Gaza; I think this operation will work; and I have no actual hope that it will work for very long, because nothing works for very long in the Middle East. Gaza is where dreams of reconciliation go to die. Gaza is where the dream of Palestinian statehood goes to die; Gaza is where the Zionist dream might yet die. Or, more to the point, might be murdered. I'm not a J Street moral-equivalence sort of guy. Yes, Israel makes constant mistakes, which I note rather frequently, but this conflict reminds me once again that Israel is up against an implacable force, namely, an interpretation of Islam that disallows the idea of Jewish national equality.

My paralysis isn't an analytical paralysis. It's the paralysis that comes from thinking that maybe there's no way out. Not out of Gaza, out of the whole thing.

There's a choice to beat your head against the wall or stand back a bit. Mr Goldberg chose wisely. Bret Stephens, not so much. Andrew Sullivan pointed out the basic problem:

Bret Stephens proposes:

For every single rocket that falls randomly on Israeli soil, an Israeli missile will hit a carefully selected target in Gaza. Focusing the minds of Hamas on this type of "proportionality" is just the endgame that Israel needs.

How is that an "endgame" exactly? Isn't it actually a formula for the war never ending?

There's probably never been an easy solution here. Both sides have a form of justification here. As Mayor Bloomberg pointed out, "We'd handle this the same way in New York". Of course, if New Jersey was attacking with F-16's, I'm sure New York would also be lobbing homemade rockets across the Hudson River if that's all that was available. Reasonable people defend their territory with whatever means are available. Reasonable people are also revolted when innocents die.

In the US we had a reasonably safe filter through which to view this conflict: terrorism and the state. It was easy to lump Hamas together with Al Qaeda and the rest of them after 2001. Hamas were, unquestionably, the bad guys. Then things started to change. The idea of Palestinian statehood moved out of the left's idealist menagerie into the mainstream. And then, in 2006, Hamas defeated the more moderate Fatah movement in Palestinian elections in Gaza. Hamas became, in a real sense, the representatives of Gaza.

I am not saying this should legitimize them. I'm not saying they woke up and ceased to be thugs. They're thugs. I'm talking about how the gestalt shifted. The IDF now look like thugs too, albeit thugs in F-16's. The idea of the Palestinian state brough about this change. Palestinian statelessness made it an even bigger problem. A vacuum was there, and Hamas is more or less blocking the airway.

Meanwhile, we've got an equivalence developing. Israel attacks Hamas' infrastructure, and the Gazans go without energy, food, medical supplies. Israel isn't so much defending itself from terrorists as attacking a vastly weaker, subjugated people. Like I said, nothing's really changed. Just the way we see it.