Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” is Irrational
by Benjamin Studebaker
Last month, three hitchhiking Israeli teenagers turned up dead in the West Bank. The Israeli government’s reaction to these murders is completely irrational. It achieves nothing for Israel and causes immense unnecessary suffering to the Palestinian people. Here’s why.
The Israeli government believes the three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered, but it does not know who did the deed. It suspects three men with Hamas affiliations, but no evidence has yet been produced which directly ties these men to the murders. Two of them did disappear shortly before the kidnappings. The third protests his innocence. Israel claims the suspects are part of Hamas and blames Hamas for the murders. Hamas denies involvement, but called the kidnappers “heroes”. There are several possibilities:
- Hamas is lying–it ordered the murders.
- Hamas did not order the murders–they were committed by rogue Hamas militants.
- Hamas did not order the murders–they were committed by terrorists with no Hamas affiliation.
- Hamas did not order the murders–they were murdered by a non-terrorist for non-political reasons.
Regardless of which of these four is the case, the murder of three people is a law enforcement issue. It should be handled like a law enforcement issue–the police should investigate, identify suspects, locate those suspects, question them, and charge them if it has a sufficiently strong case. Every day in the United States, people get murdered. Far too often these days, the murderer kills more than three people for reasons that are to some degree political. No matter how many people the mass shooter kills, the United States responds with a criminal investigation, a manhunt, and, eventually, a trial. Reasonable governments do not start targeting all of the affiliates of the suspects or all of the people who are similar to the suspects in race, religion, ethnicity, or political opinion. This is a mark of civilization–no matter how terrible the crime, we don’t give into hysteria and we don’t lash out against the innocent.
Here’s what Israel did:
- It arrested over 500 Palestinians with no clear connection to the murders.
- It raided more than 1,200 homes in the West Bank.
- It blew up the homes of the suspects’ families.
- It prevented thousands of Palestinians from moving among villages and going to work.
- Israeli extremists kidnapped a Palestinian teenager in retaliation and burned him alive.
This last incident sparked Hamas to begin firing rockets at Israel, demanding that Israel release the captured prisoners. Israel has responded to these rockets with “Operation Protective Edge”, which entails air raids on targets in the Gaza Strip. Hamas was foolish to launch rockets at Israel–these rockets have only served to enable Israel to justify deadly air raids against the Palestinians. They do almost no serious damage to Israel. All told, more than 41 Palestinians have died for every Israeli since the initial kidnapping:
Not a single Israeli has been killed by Palestinian rocket fire. Israel has lost three citizens–the kidnapped teenagers. The Palestinians have lost 124 and counting in addition to the hundreds of people imprisoned and more than a thousand households raided. There is no evidence that these people were involved in the murders.
The murder of the three Israeli teenagers is a terrible crime, but the response of the Israeli government to this crime has been unnecessarily heavy handed and invasive. By treating the entire population of Palestine as suspect in these murders, it has recklessly and unnecessarily further alienated this population, driving it to desperate and ultimately futile acts of frustrated violence–i.e. the rockets. It has then used that violence as an excuse for further unnecessary collective punishment. Israel is said to have a “right of self-defense”, but Israel is not being attacked by an enemy state with formidable armed forces, it is being attacked by rogue criminals with pea shooters and it is responding with an assault against the Palestinian people as a whole.
Imagine if something like this were to happen in any other supposedly civilized country. What if a few white American teenagers were kidnapped and murdered on the south side of Chicago by black supremacists and the US government began indiscriminately raiding the homes of black people, arresting hundreds on the basis of race or organizational affiliation, and prevented black Americans from commuting to work outside their predominately black neighborhoods? What if white Americans kidnapped and burned a black teenager alive in retaliation? Would we be surprised if what followed was a race riot? Would it be okay for the US military to respond to that race riot by conducting air strikes on predominately black neighborhoods, killing a hundred black people? Would the US government be able to defend this action by calling it “self-defense”? It’s a ludicrous notion, and it’s a ludicrous notion if you substitute the United States for almost any other developed country. Not only would such an action clearly be wrong, but we cannot imagine any American administration conducting or attempting to justify such a policy in the 21st century.
What we’re seeing in Israel is not the kind of civilized law enforcement we’ve come to expect in America, Europe, Canada, Australia, or other such places. This is the kind of thing we see in explicitly racist or openly autocratic countries. This is the kind of thing apartheid South Africa might do to its blacks. And we know how the South African regime would have justified it–they would claim that the blacks are dangerous and violent, that they’re defending themselves from a “black menace”. They wouldn’t be lying–many white South Africans had a deep-seated fear of the blacks, as I have no doubt many Israelis have a deep-seated fear of the Palestinians. But this fear would not reflect the balance of power on the ground. The apartheid South African state would crush an armed uprising by the black population, killing many more blacks for each white lost, and the Israeli state easily crushes any kind of military resistance put up by the Palestinians.
All of this senseless violence will achieve nothing in the big picture for either side and will only serve to worsen relations. The fundamental mistake was made by the Israeli state. It chose to see a mass murder as an act of war, as an act for which a military response was reasonable, even necessary. Murders, even when committed by terrorists, are not acts of war. There’s no state that can be held collectively responsible for ordering an “attack”. Yes, the murderers may be part of an extremist group, and yes, that group may have been involved in planning the attack, but even then, the group is not analogous to a state but to organized crime–to the mob. You don’t fight the mob with air raids, you fight the mob with good law enforcement and good community relations, by giving local populations real alternatives to joining the mob or having to deal with it. That means building strong communities where there are jobs and opportunities for people outside of organized crime, outside of organized terror. That means treating the Palestinian population with dignity, it means providing for a higher quality of life in the territories. It means giving people real alternatives to joining Hamas and relying on Hamas for economic survival. As long as Israel sees the Palestinians as a collectively criminal people, to be suspected and collectively abused whenever any of their members commits any serious crime, it will continue to drive Palestinians into the arms of Hamas and perpetuate the cycle of violence.
Nothing good will come of further antagonizing and alienating the Palestinian people with retaliatory violence, and no appeal to “self-defense” will change that. Even if Western governments and Western media buy into this narrative, the Palestinians won’t, and they’re the hearts and minds that Israel needs if it wants its teenagers to be able to hitchhike in the West Bank unmolested.
Your position here couldn’t be more misguided. This didn’t start because terrorists kidnapped and murdered children. It is far more complex than that. Your comparison between who died is foolish and ignores the reality of rockets being fired indiscriminately upon non military targets.
It also ignores the reality that no country would put up with years of rocket fire as Israel has.
Hamas is a terrorist organization that uses human shields and exploits their own people. Their charter calls for the destruction of Israel. That’s a non starter for negotiations.
Are you claiming that Operation Brother’s Keeper wasn’t a direct response to the kidnappings, that the rocket fire did not start as a result of that response, and that Operation Protective Edge was a response to that rocket fire? What do you propose happened instead?
The rockets aren’t killing people and the air strikes are. That’s the reality. It doesn’t really matter that Hamas would like to kill civilians with the rockets, they’re too weak to pull it off. “Put up with”? What’s the alternative to “putting up with” rocket fire from Palestine if “putting up with” it involves air strikes every few years? Genocide? Other countries don’t experience rocket fire because they aren’t maintaining military occupations of lands that belong to other people. On what basis do you claim that if other countries were in a similar situation to Israel (long-standing occupation, endemic rocket fire) they would behave any worse than Israel does? And even if you had such a basis, how would that excuse Israeli behavior?
Hamas is a crummy organization, but that fact doesn’t make this an effective response. What are these air strikes supposed to achieve? Israel isn’t going to destroy Hamas any more than it was going to destroy Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon War. Every few years, Israel goes after Hamas, kills a bunch of people (most of whom are civilians, as 89 of the 124 killed to this point have been), and to what end? It just embitters the Palestinians and leads to more violence against Israel down the line.
Mr. Studebaker: The world is so duped that whatever the media says is in the best interest of Israel, will be believed, hook, line & sinker. The nation is th epitomy of hypocrisy–so ‘holy,’ and having suffered the ‘holocaust.’ Perpetual genocide continues, and anyone who in the slightest, criticizes what Israel is doing is instantly ‘anti-semitic.’ Netanhayu is a homicidal, megla-maniac. The root question remains: what good could Hamas achieve if it were to murder 3 adolescent Israelis? None. The perpetrators of the crime were not authorized by Hamas, leaving several other possibilities–rogue elements, Mossad Black ops, etc.
Perspectives in the western world are slowly shifting against Netanyahu’s hardline position, particularly in Europe:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/adl-poll-support-for-israel-declining-in-western-europe-1.120871
Hamas certainly had nothing to gain from ordering the kidnappings, though it wouldn’t be the first time that either of these parties has acted irrationally–Hamas has little to gain from the rockets it is presently firing, and Israel has little to gain from the air strikes it is presently launching.
I bag to differ:
1st – for many days after the kindups the israeli govrenment had pledged:”quiet will be answered by quiet” . However Hamas kept shooting.
2nd- operation brother keeper wasn’t an overreaction. Given up the abducted teenagers were taken by unknown radicals, there was the fear they are under constant torture. The abducting force did not even contact the red cross or something. Or three teenagers under torture is not good enogh reason for a massive operation?
The Israeli government’s initial response was not “quiet”, it was to search a thousand homes, imprison 500 people, and prevent tens of thousands from going to work.
People get abducted by crazy people in countries all over the world all the time, but governments do not respond by searching a thousand homes and preventing people from going to work.
I beg to differ again: being abducted by political radicals is not the same as being abducted for ransom. Criminal usually do not torture the abducted teenager, and hardly execute them. Political radicals, do.
Besides, where is the damage in searching in many houses? It is not pleasant I agree, but it is better than 3 teenagers being tortured and/or executed. About the administrative detention: I’m not a big fan of that. However, it is legal under international and Israeli law. Anyways, if it paralysis the ability of Hamas to move the abducted teenagers from point to point, it may be worth the trouble.
Still, I don’t see any of these means, as an excuse to shoot rockets nondiscriminatory into civilian population. It is a war crime under any excuse.
Pedophiles abduct, rape, and murder children all the time. Children abducted by pedophiles suffer horribly. But countries do not respond in the way Israel has responded to “Amber alerts” and other cases of child abduction, even when it is highly likely that the abducted children are going to be raped or killed.
In most western countries, we require a warrant to search a house–the police must submit evidence to a judge indicating that they have good cause to believe criminal activity is taking place in the house. Searching a thousand homes indiscriminately violates the legal rights of homeowners to be protected from unwarranted search and seizure.
Regardless of whether or not the detentions are legal, they are not moral. It is wrong to arrest large numbers of people without evidence directly connecting them to a crime.
The rocket fire is deeply misguided and foolish, but it does not justify these other actions. Two wrongs do not make a right. We hold states to higher moral standards than we do terrorist organizations.
3rd- the call made by one of the teenagers to the israeli police saying “i was abducted” is well recorded. In the backgroud you can hear one of the terrorists. According to the ISA the voice belongs to one of the most promenint Hamas man in the west bank.
4th- the tv of hamas has praised the act and televised a “recreation” of the event. So Hamas is responsible.
5th-there is no occupation in the Gaza strip .
There is no reason to shoot rockets.
6
As I stated in the piece, it’s not particularly relevant who kidnapped the teenagers or whether or not Hamas is lying about having done it–this is not how you conduct law enforcement.
There is a naval blockade of the Gaza strip, Palestine does not have political independence from Israel, and Palestinian living standards are very low. None of these provide excuses for senseless violence, but the Palestinians have legitimate grievances.
I beg to differ again:
There is no blockade but a siege. Meaning every ship is searched for weapons and then being allowed (or not) in. I’m not for that but I can understand why would they do that. Besides, Gaza has a border with Egypt (a muslim arab country). While Hamas is openly admitted to driving Israel into the sea- Who do you think should open the border- Israel or Egypt? Or it is usually that an entity which its charter calls for your destruction you open the border to?
Moreover, Why can’t Palestinians in the Gaza strip declare independence right away? Above that, Why don’t they have independence already? – Mainly due to the their rejectionist steadfast. Take the 2008 Olmert to Abu- Mazen peace offer- 99.5!% of the west bank, half of Jerusalem, compensation of the refugees, and as Olmert put it- “I’m still waiting for Abu-Mazen’s reply”.
Besides- electing Hamas than complaining about ” grievance” , I cannot agree I’m sorry.
Israel does not allow Gaza to import or export a wide variety of non-weapons goods and services. I’d call that blockade. Israel also operates a land barrier limiting the ability of Gazans to trade with Egypt. Because Israel does not give Palestine independence, Israel is responsible for the welfare of the Palestinians and is morally obligated to show them equal concern. Acting to deny them access to markets and economic opportunities unjustly marginalizes the Palestinians, who have no independent state of their own to appeal to. The Gazans cannot just declare independence on their own because the Gaza Strip is too poor and insufficiently large to constitute an economically viable independent Palestinian state. The Palestinians do not have independence already because they have rejected proposals for Palestinian statehood that they feel do not amount to genuine full independence. Israel’s proposals typically leave them with territory that is discontinuous. This is due to the settlement construction, which has carved up the West Bank into chunks and made it impossible for there to be an independent Palestine without mass settlement evacuations.
Hamas says lots of awful things, but its military capabilities are extremely limited. It does not pose a credible existential threat to Israel like a powerful foreign state might. The Gazans have legitimate grievances which they seen legitimate means of expressing, so they turn to illegitimate means, just as poor youths without other options often turn to crime. The ultimate cause of the crime is the lack of opportunity, not the villainy of the youths, and the ultimate cause of Hamas is Palestinian despair, not intrinsic villainy.
6th hamas is not a parallel to ‘the mob’. It is a huge military group with more rockets amd missles than most countries on earth.
7th the israeli south is under rocket fire for 20 month now. Isn’t that a war crime? How many posts have you written about that?
8th How do you suggest to stop the Hamas rockets?
9th- take a note: today israel ceased fire for 6 hours. BUT hamas refused to do so.
Hamas’ rockets are not up to military specifications. They are extraordinarily ineffective on a tactical level. Hamas is not like a foreign nation state, it is much more like the IRA, FARC, and criminal syndicates.
I’m not defending Hamas’ firing of rockets, but this response from Israel is not helpful. It doesn’t benefit Israel to conduct air raids, to search a thousand homes, to imprison hundreds of people, and so on. These tactics only serve to further enrage the Palestinians and encourage them to turn toward violence. The question we need to ask is what purpose Israel’s air strikes serve. What does Israel have to gain from this? The answer is nothing, it’s an irrational, emotional response.
I don’t know why you claim so. Hamas has already launched more than 1,000 of rockets!
Some of them to more than 100km northern to Gaza. It is a military Emirate with a very violent charter, and this is how it should be treated.
If any sovereign state shot 1,000 missiles at any other sovereign state, those missiles would kill many thousands of people. The missiles Hamas has launched during Operation Protective Edge killed their first person today (July 15, 2014). On a tactical level, this a tremendous failure and not reflective of the sort of entity that possesses serious military capability.
My friend
I appreciate your opinion but I think you can use some research:
1. Israel dos not block the Gaza-Egypt border. It has 0 soldiers and machines and the Gaza strip. It is Egypt to do so. No other entity is required to open its an hostile heavily armed entity. More reasonable to ask it from Egypt.
I urge you to compare the siege with Pres. Kennedy’s behavior on the Cuba missiles crisis. No one should stand and not do anything when its neighbor it screaming “I’ll drive you to the sea” and buy weapons to do so. It is not a sane policy.
2. I urge you to read Pres. Clinton’s memories about the 2000 Camp David peace offers. And I urge you to read more of the 2008 Olmert peace paln. But of them offered fully connected Palestinian sovereign state with Jerusalem as the capital >95% of the west bank and 1:1 land swap. And compensation to the refugees. However even “moderate” Abbas says day&night he would never agree to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a nation state. Thus , downplaying U.N resolution 181. I’m sorry, but the Palestinian steadfast rejectionism is a fact.
3. Hamas missles are not a joke. They are huge missles. They are standard made in Iran missles. See link at the end. Huge ones. The only reasons it has not created chaos yet, it Israel’s billion dollars cost ” Iron Dome”. (some 50% sponsored by US though). Don’t mistake them with the IRA or ETA like “mob”.
4. No one should live in the reality that every now and then they have 15 second to run for their survival. Some goes for the people of Sderot. This is not a sane reality, and no entity would put up to that. Some goes with Israel.
Some links:
http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Details-of-Olmerts-peace-offer-to-Palestinians-exposed-314261
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/21/iran-supplied-hamas-missile-technology
I should clarify–Israel does not block the Gaza/Egypt border, but Egypt does:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/22/gaza-uninhabitable-blockade-united-nations
The Kennedy administration’s policy on Cuba was not a rational response to Cuba’s military capability. Cuba never posed a credible threat to the United States.
I’m well-versed on the content of the Camp David proposal and proposal from Olmert–these proposals were rejected because they did not satisfy Palestine’s territorial and sovereignty wishes. We must bear in mind that Palestine is psychologically starting from the portion they were to receive under the 1948 UN Partition plan, much of which they ceded formal claim to at Oslo in 1993. As far as they are concerned, existing Palestine is a already a rump state, and they are loathe to concede more of it to Israel. The Camp David proposal called for the Palestinians to agree to have the West Bank divided into three cantons separated by Israeli settlements, which would trisect their territory. Israel also demanded that it retain control of the Jordan River Valley for 6-21 years (10% of Palestine’s territory). The Palestinians did not trust that this territory would ever actually go to them. Israel also desired to retain the right to use Palestinian airspace and deploy troops to Palestine in an “emergency”. This falls short of full sovereignty–no state allows another state that kind of military access.
The Hamas missiles don’t kill large numbers of people. This was the case even before Iron Dome came online. It’s unclear if Hamas’ missile technology is equal to Iran’s (though Iran certainly helped advance Hamas’ capabilities). To the extent that Hamas’ missile technology is equal to Iran’s, this only reflects negatively on Iran’s military capabilities.
I’m not saying that Israel should “put up with” missile strikes, but there’s a further question you’re not paying attention to here–how does Operation Protective Edge convince the Palestinians not to use violence? Israel has many times used military force against the Palestinians, but this has not intimidated the Palestinians or prevented them from launching rockets. Ultimately, ending Palestinian violence requires improving Palestinian living conditions, something Israel has continually declined to do without extracting severe concessions.
Tha pal’ only take the part of partition resolution which is comfortable to them.However they still won’t recognize Israel’s right to exist as a nation state. Despite the fact it is written there blank on white. “Jewish state”. Sorry, they cannot read only the part they want and ignor the other part. Indeed steadfast rejectionism. Besides, one the high league of palestinian arabs have rejected the plan, and waged a war against the Hebrew population of palestain, doing so to drive them to the sea-they lost the moral right to use the plan as a basis for negotiations. UN resolution 242 and 338 are the basis for the negotiation- meaning, the green line. They were 100% of that in 2008. Steadfast rejectionism.
As for standard of living- compare the west bank to Gaza strip. In the west pal’ are prospores. That is indeed because israrel do care for the pal’ PPP. Moreover, when israel left gaza, huge amounts of greenhouses which produced millions of dollars per year were left “as is” in order to support the pal’ economy. What did Gazan do with it? Bulldozered it, and made it a rocket lunch pad. I’m sorry- you cannot help these who do not help themselves…
So I beleive Gazan are to be held for thier choice to vote in Hamas. If you vote Hamas- you care more for drivind “the jews” into the sea than to your economy.
Then there is the israeli security issue. The peace camp in Israel is in a bad shape, becuase israelis are affraid the pal’ would treat the west bank the same as they did with gaza. I think , if anyone is pro-peace, he should support israrl’s defense effort.
Last, the only way Hamas wil give up rockets shooting is a military force taking the rockets away from them. Hamas does not care for the walefare of Gaza, and an economic growth won’ttapple its reigime. What else do you offer?
Palestine has a per capita GDP of $1,653. Israel has a per capita GDP of $37,035. No part of Palestine is prosperous relative to Israel and this disparity is a legitimate grievance for Palestinians, who are reduced to substandard living conditions. This disparity predates the Palestinians’ choice to vote for Hamas–indeed, this disparity is the cause of that decision. Hamas receives support because the Palestinians feel hopelessness and despair. Hamas’ rocket attacks offer them action of some kind, albeit stupid and unhelpful action.
Terrorism is always and everywhere the result of economic desolation. Only when young Palestinians feel they have legitimate options, legitimate means by which to express grievances, will they cease to use illegitimate means. By using air strikes against Gaza and killing a couple hundred people, Israel does not “take the rockets away” from Hamas. Once again, I put the question to you–what is being achieved by Operation Protective Edge? How does this operation help Israel? In all my reading on this issue, I have not seen a single policy justification for this, only vague arguments claiming that the Palestinians are anti-peace. So? Even if the Palestinians were militantly anti-peace, that does not in any way establish that Operation Protective Edge is a rational strategy for dealing with them.
No my friend. It is the other way around. Until the massive terror blitz of the 90’s (during the Rabin led peace prosses) pal’ used to work freely in israel. Many of then were enretpenoure, and made good many and boomed the pal’ PPP. However, when buses and cafes started to “boom” because of peaceprosses this thing started to fade. Morover, have you read Hamas’s charter? Hardly do the talk about economic cooperation with israel, so voting them in is not economic cooperation prone. Additionally,take the PA budget? How much of it goes for develoment and how much goes for supporting terror? Refer to the dutch par’ decision few days ago. You keep ignoring few important factors: 1.pal’ rejection of israel’s right to exist as nation state. The day they accept that, peace occurs and prosperity follows. 2. The lack of better option than opration PE? How do you offer the libarate Sderot from rocket fire.
I’m sorry, but that’s not true–Palestine has consistently been much poorer than Israel:
http://kushnirs.org/macroeconomics/gdp/gdp_palestine.html
As I stated, the election of Hamas is symptomatic of a desperate population that feels it has no legitimate means of expressing grievances and has given up on cooperation. It is Israel’s task to give the Palestinians meaningful legitimate means of expressing themselves politically and advancing themselves economically.
Whether or not the Palestinians recognize Israel is really beside the point. Israel exists whether or not the Palestinians choose to recognize it. It’s a petty side argument over semantics. At the end of the day, what’s important for Israel is that the Palestinians stop firing rockets, and that will only happen when the Palestinians come to believe they have credible alternative options for expressing themselves.
I think it is about time ISRAEL strikes back on their “al-queda”. And 9/11 gave AMERICA a taste of what they face everyday. ISRAEL has been a a state of war since their rebirth in 1948, with enemies on every side. It is a good thing that GOD himself protects “The apple of his eye”. If not ISRAEL would have been destroyed already. They have every right to defend themselves…
Wasn’t it also a mistake for America to treat 9/11 as anything but a law enforcement issue? The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost trillions of dollars and accomplished nothing lasting of merit. When countries confuse acts of murder with acts of war, they get involved in expensive quagmires.
So let’s check the facts:
The pal’ has got huge foreign aid for the EU and other countries
– billions of euros:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/activism/7514-foreign-aid-to-palestine-exists-only-to-support-the-qpeace-processq-industry
In fact they are the one of the most supported population on earth!:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_aid_to_Palestinians
They use it support terrorist:
http://europenews.dk/en/node/75323
Corruption:
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4267/palestinians_very_serious_about_stealing_aid_billions
Is really their problem is lack of money?
More facts:
All the greenhouses given by Israel became rocket lunch pad:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/palestinian-militants-ransack-former-gush-katif-greenhouses-1.179788
They spend truck loads of many on digging super-attach tunnels:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/tunnel-infiltration-thwarted-near-kibbutz-sufa/
They voted in a party which never talks about development, only about militant policy towards Israel.
Until now, and actually every since the peel committee they never agreed to a single peace offer, or even partition plan.
Even during the british mandate when both populations (Hebrew population of the mandate and arab population on the mandate) when both sides used to live more or less on the same standard of living, they never agreed to a single offer.
Until today, they don’t recognize Israel’s right for self determination, and instead of building factories they build rockets,….
And you claim their problem is lack of money, and more money will moderate their militant urge…
Isn’t that …against facts?
The facts say that Palestine is desperately poor compared to Israel. The money they get is not anywhere close to enough to lift Palestinians out of relative poverty. Palestine has a HDI score of 0.67, well below Israel’s score of 0.90:
Click to access PSE.pdf
Click to access ISR.pdf
The UNDP reports that Palestinians can expect to live 9 years less than Israelis and receive 2.2 fewer years of schooling. Israel’s per capita GNI is 7.8 times the size of Palestine’s.
GNI indicates the income of Palestine, the available funds it has to spend on everything–from rockets to schools to hospitals. Israel’s per capita GNI is 7.8 times greater, which means that the Palestinians have insufficient resources to provide equivalent living standards regardless of how they distribute those resources.
I absolutely agree that Hamas is corrupt and does not optimize what little resources it has, but the average Palestinian, who is deeply uneducated, desperate, and hopeless, is taken in by their promises of action. Give the Palestinians hope and they will not feel the need to turn toward Hamas.
[…] has only killed 2 Israelis). He replied that the Palestinians had a right to self-defense. In my most recent post about this conflict, I’ve seen similar arguments being made by Israeli […]
I am grateful to have found a like-minded individual who agrees that the kidnapping and murder of three Israelis should have been treated as a law enforcement issue. I shared your piece with my father and he remarked, “The article is very well written and makes a great deal of sense.”