Where blame belongs

Editorial

The world's eyes are again riveted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dramatic events unfold by the hour as the two sides stand off in a deadly game of chicken.

As usual, there is a stream in international opinion that places all blame for the flare-up on Israel. Israel, goes the contention, provokes terrorism through a range of acts. What Canadian and other western observers rarely acknowledge is that the thing that Israel does that really provokes the terrorists is simply exist.

Since Israel Defence Forces Cpl. Gilad Shalit was kidnapped from his post inside Israel on June 25, the situation has escalated into one of the most dangerous in the past several years. In exchange for the safe return of Shalit, the Hamas terrorists holding him are demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian "political" prisoners from Israeli jails.

Khaled Mashaal, a leading figure in Hamas, has said that Shalit will be viewed as and treated as a prisoner of war. If we could be sure that he would – meaning that Geneva Conventions for the treatment of captured soldiers would be respected – it would be a positive signal. What the Hamas leader clearly meant, of course, was nothing of the sort. He intended his comments to be interpreted by the world as a statement that the kidnapping of Shalit is a legitimate act by one side in a conventional war with rules of engagement.

Something that Canadian and other observers must reject forcefully is the assertion of the Hamas leadership that Shalit is a prisoner of war. There is no equanimity between the IDF soldier and the hundreds of terrorists whom Hamas is demanding be released from Israeli prisons. Though the international community frequently holds Israel to a wildly different standard than it does other entities, this is a case where the very foundation of justice and international law depends on recognizing the difference.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made the difficult but unequivocally correct choice to engage in no negotiations with terrorists who are holding hostage one of his citizens. To do otherwise would be to drink the seawater of capitulation. To begin down such a path is an irreversible journey that would induce an endless round of kidnappings and increased – not reduced – terrorism.

Requests for Israel to stop incursions into Gaza have come from human rights groups within the country and diplomats outside it. There have been calls to keep the border crossings open to allow the flow of food, medicine and fuel into Gaza. International observers who are aghast at the sights coming out of Gaza this week will place the blame where they almost invariably do: on Israel. The David and Goliath analogy that the international community loves to apply allows a critique that sees Israel as a provocateur and the terrorists as freedom fighters.

As difficult as this time may be for Gazans, the international community should recognize the precursors to this situation. The short-term precursor, obviously, is the kidnapping of an IDF soldier. The longer-term precursors, depending on how far back into history one wants to travel, include a vast range of opportunities presented to the Palestinians and the Arab states for endless variations of mutual co-existence. In each of these cases, the core Israeli demand – that it be permitted to exist – has been rejected.

The anti-Israel interpretation tends to emphasize the argument that Israel is punishing all Gazans for the crimes of a few. This "group punishment" thesis holds less water as time progresses. Those responsible for the kidnapping are members of Hamas – the very entity that, as the Palestinians' international allies love to remind us, was duly elected in apparently free and fair elections earlier this year. The idea that ordinary Gazans are suffering because of the acts of an entity beyond their control is inconsistent with the assertion that Hamas is the legitimate government of the Palestinian Authority.

To be recognized as legitimate by the world community, Hamas must take the reins of the government and undertake to both stop terrorism from all sources and, even more urgently, stop participating in terrorism itself. Until that day, international observers should be careful to place blame for the plight of Gazans where it belongs: on the terrorists.

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