More on the Gaza Seige

Summary: Roughly 120 Palestinian civilians have died in 2008 as a result of Israeli raids, including the recent attacks. These attacks resulted from thousands of Hamas rockets, which have killed 5 Israeli civilians. Who is looking out for Palestinian civilians?

I want to spend some more time analyzing the current Israeli attacks in Gaza, which now include a ground invasion. Let's look first at what has caused the invasion: Hamas rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. Hamas has launched thousands of rockets into Israel in the last few years, including 300 between December 19th and December 27th of 2008. So as you might imagine, thousands of rockets will create an unacceptable level of fear among Israeli civilians.

However, during 2008 a total of five Israeli civilians have died as a result of Hamas rockets. Before the recent Israeli attack on Gaza, 420 Gazans had been killed, at least of fifth of them civilians, by Israeli raids. So even before the invasion, the numbers seem lopsided. If we include the recent attacks, where some 300 have been killed, including between 50 - 90 civilians, it looks even more lopsided.

If five Israeli civilian deaths are enough to cause Israel to kill an estimated 120 or more Palestinian civilians, than it gives the impression that Palestinian lives are worth less than Israeli lives. Israel, and the US in other conflicts, claim that they are trying to avoid killing civilians while their enemies are in fact trying to kill civilians. But trying not to kill civilians isn't the same as actually not killing civilians. Of course, Hamas seems to care as little about the civilians that die, except in using their deaths to rally support of their cause.

In the end, I suppose that is the biggest tragedy of this ongoing situation: nobody seems to care about the Palestinian civilians that die. Israel doesn't care enough to stop bombing or to let anything more than a trickle of humanitarian aid enter Gaza. Palestine doesn't care enough to stop their rocket attacks. And the international community doesn't care enough to get more involved and find a solution, consider that the solution is likely to be hard and costly.

The problem I face though in this analysis is that a major criteria for analyzing whether the attack is justified is whether Israel exercised all other options. I, and probably many others, do not know enough to come to a firm conclusion here. Maybe Israel could have opened the borders, but this would have allowed more rockets to come in. I cannot think of a different course for Israel - while I think five deaths is not enough to launch this war, at some point the rocket attacks have to stop. Unfortunately, there are only two ways to stop them - an Israeli invasion or some sort of internationally support peace or disarmament.

The Economist has some interesting articles on the war (much of my data and background info comes from these articles), and more discussion on whether the attack is justified and proportional.