Protecting Gazans moral and strategic
As President Biden headed to the Middle East on Wednesday, a monumental humanitarian crisis facing Gaza’s people joined support for Israel at the top of his agenda. In a situation fraught with dilemmas, Biden can take cold comfort in the fact that urgently addressing Gaza’s plight is both the right thing to do morally and is in the strategic interest of the United States. One goal of his trip can be to help Israel see its moral and strategic interests clearly, too.
Already, the number of Palestinians killed and displaced has exceeded that of any of the five Israel-Hamas conflicts since 2008. More than 3,000 Palestinians have reportedly died, and about 12,500 have been wounded, figures that no doubt include Hamas personnel but also, tragically, hundreds of children. As this editorial was being written on Tuesday, a Gaza hospital where Palestinians were sheltering was struck. Palestinian officials blamed an Israeli airstrike; Israeli authorities said a wayward rocket fired by Palestinian militants was to blame. Meanwhile, roughly half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes.
More loss of life will occur if, as expected, Israel launches a ground invasion. After the slaughter of its civilians, Israel — like any other state — has every right to respond militarily. How it conducts military operations against Hamas will be critical to the legitimacy of those actions and to preserving hope for postwar economic and political reconstruction.
This battle will challenge the Israeli military’s professionalism, perhaps as never before. Hamas stages military operations and launches rockets from densely populated civilian areas — clear violations of international law. And Hamas and other Gaza-based groups have taken a number of hostages: 199 in total, according to Israel.
In that context, comments from certain current and former Israeli officials have illustrated the risk of allowing raw emotions to rule the moment. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for example, asserted that “we are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” This cannot be squared with proportionality and precision, which the laws of war require Israel to practice.
More recent statements from Israeli officials have cast the war more discriminately, as a fight to “demolish Hamas,” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it. Israel’s agreement with the Biden administration to plan for delivery of humanitarian aid via Egypt is a positive development.
Even before the current crisis, Gaza was under a land, sea and air blockade. The results were dire: 81.5 percent of the population living in poverty and 63 percent being dependent on humanitarian aid. Most of the drinking water from Gaza’s sole aquifer is unfit for human consumption. Hamas didn’t help, diverting resources to building tunnels in its conflict with Israel. Hamas no doubt knew its brutal attacks would provoke an overwhelming military response that would first and foremost devastate Gazan civilians.
Still, the plight of Gazans has been treated by the United States and the wider international community as a sad but immutable fact in an irresolvable conflict. This was a moral and strategic error, helping promote the instability that has — for now — wrecked efforts on the part of Israel, the United States and Arab states to build a durable diplomatic settlement among the region’s big players.
Though there are few good options for the people of Gaza, some are better than others. Hopes that Egypt might accept substantial numbers of Palestinian refugees are misplaced. Gazans themselves have little interest in living under an Egyptian regime that they rightly see as responsible for enforcing the blockade. Nor does Egypt have any interest in giving Palestinians refuge. Doing so would implicate Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi in a repeat of the Palestinian experience during Israel’s war of independence, when about 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled by Israeli forces. This central event in Palestinian memory — called the Nakba, or catastrophe — guides how Palestinians are likely to view resettlement outside Gaza.
Therefore, the priority for the United States, the European Union and Arab states is to move emergency supplies in. This will require Israel to keep its promise of safe passage for civilians to the east and south of Gaza — as well as its commitment to allow aid agencies to operate unimpeded. The E.U.’s announcement of a humanitarian air corridor into Gaza is a step in the right direction. U.S. discussions with Israeli officials on setting up “safe zones” for civilians also hold promise. As Biden was to explain to all the leaders he met Wednesday, such measures are the beginning, not the end, of what will be a long-term international effort to protect the lives of Palestinians.