Israelis have become used to blanket accusations. It is the kind of message that unites the nation, left and right, in grim resolve. What, Israelis ask, would other countries do?
Does the enemy’s civilian suffering trump Israel’s sovereignty? Does it trump the real, if less bloody, agony and fear of hundreds of thousands Israelis over long years?
Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzippi Livni have cast aside their political rivalries in order to orchestrate an answer: Israel must fight off the Gazan rockets.
That said, Israel’s unity may be short-lived. It is a democracy, not a one-voice nation, and with a general election due next month, debate is continuing both within the government and beyond it. If the Gaza campaign turns Lebanon-like — with a humanitarian catastrophe, ongoing bombardment of Israeli civilians or both — domestic criticism will echo loud and clear.
But even opponents of Olmert’s second war must face the blunt fact that Hamas is lethal. To the detriment of their own people, its leaders, Haled Mash’al and Ismail Hanieh, want neither peace nor compromise. Like their friend and supporter, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they want Israel dead. It is as simple as that.
One ray of hope is that moderate Arab leaders, including Egypt’s foreign minister, have openly blamed Hamas for the current Gazan predicament. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are willing to broker peace, and perhaps save the Palestinians from their own worst leadership.
Israel has gone a long way since the Arab world set out to kill it off. For the first time, prominent Arab voices acquit Israel of the wholesale blame that some Western critics still lazily throw at it.
For the time being, Israel should strive for the safest truce it can accomplish, provided that Hamas stops shooting out of its own crowded living room.
But after the election next month, Israel’s next leader must face the moderate Arab challenge. He or she must talk directly to the Arab League, whose proposed peace plan will require tough Israeli negotiation, but is a reasonable start to preventing future wars, including just wars. Give it a chance.
Fania Oz-Salzberger is professor and chair of Modern Israel Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and director of the Posen Research Forum for Political Thought in the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa, Israel.
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