On Thursday 28 March 2002 22:28, you wrote: > Trent Shipley wrote: > > The "legitimacy" of terrorist acts must thus be considered situationally > > and in the context of ethical conduct in extreme situations, most notable > > acceptable behavior by combatants and states in time of war. > > So then would it be considered legitimate if Israel were to start > indiscriminately bombing Palestinian population centers, deliberately > targeting civilians in response to terrorist activities?
Yes. In fact, it might even work. I remember an interview with a North Vietnamese general who said that the (Communist) Vietnamese leadership were willing to sustain a disadvantageous kill-ratio of as high as 1:20 in their war of national liberation against the French, Americans, Australians and their collaborators. >From the news I come up with an overall kill ratio somewhere between 1:5 or 1:10 against the Palestinians. Were the Israelis to drive that above 1:20 (say 1:100) it might be sufficient opressive violent force to force the enemy into quiescence. On the down side it would be hard to spin in the US and Europe. It also might provoke neighboring Arab states into open hostility. Also, for PR purposes it would look better if it were a state at war with a hostile neighbor state instead of a state conducting an anti-insurgency against non-citizen third-class subjects who are subjects of Israel against their own will. Killing Palestinians is not a problem. Keeping Palestinians in a state of perpetual apartheid, that's a bit of a problem. If there were a sovereign Palestinian state and Hamas were to conduct cross boarder operations against Israel with the winking aproval of an adminsitration that accidentally-on-purpose did not enforce the Palestinian state's sovereign right to wage war then Sharon would clearly be justified in any and all retaliation. However, since there is no Palestinian state all Palestinians in the occupied territories are non-citizen subjects of Israel. That changes none of the realpolitic, but it makes Sharon's PR job quite a bit more difficult. It means that when Israel retaliates it not only commits an act of agression in a civil war it also engages in state terrorism against an oppressed minority with limited civil rights--an oppressed minority with a better claim to their own nation state than the Americans had against Great Brittain or than the Slovaks relative to Chekosolvakia, or Serbs, Bosnians, Montenegrans, or Croats with each other. Again, the problem wasn't that France was at war with Algeria. The problem was that France claimed Algeria was a Department of France. France was couldn't pacify Algeria. Thus, we say that the French occupation of Algeria was unjust and that the French were the aggressors in the Algerian war of national liberation. However, if the soverign state of Algeria or its proxy were to commit an act of war against France today France would be "justified" in a very wide range of military responses to Algeria's act of war. ============== Now. Since Arafat is *not* the leader of a soverign state with any right to make war (as leader of a state) is Israel correct in holding he and his government accountable. Maybe. But it is a classic ploy to make the Indian leaders responsible for the behavior of the Indians on the reservation. What might be a better legal position is that since the P/A is at best a semi-autonomous protectorate without military sovereignty Israel must still retain the sovereign state's monopoly on (military) force over the occupied territories. It follows that Israel retains the right to enforce that monopoly on all its subjects, including non-citizens (eg. West Bank and Gaza Palestinians). This line of reasoning would give Israel a fig leaf that would justify the presence of a paralel police force throughout the occupied territories, including those nominally controlled by the P/A. ========= My reading is that Arafat has renounced terrorism for himself. However, is is not prepared to enforce a monopoly of force on behalf of the PA. And why should he? The PA is not a state, thus it does not have a monopoly on force. Since the PA does not have an Army, it must not have any right to assert positively or negatively its non-existant Army's right to a monoply. It does have a police force, but the police enforce a monopoly on coercive force against civil crime. As a police force that does not serve a sovereign state it has no responsibility to cooperate in enforcing any monopoly on violence against states--that is, acts of war. Indeed, policing against preparations for war or acts of war is entirely out of the purview of the PA police. They have no justification for taking action against Hamas or any other group making war except as they commit crimes against subjects or vistors to PA controlled areas. > I find Israel's restraint in this matter admirable. I think most, if not > all other countries faced with the same dilemma would have abandoned all > pretense of civility long ago. Well yes. But most other countries are secular and are not cursed by holy writs that make it impossible for them to ceed territory. France was worse than Israel in Algeria. Nevertheless, France left Algeria to the indigenous Algerians. Russia abandoned its non-Russian colonies. Israel is cursed with Palestine.
