See if you can follow this:
Much has been made in recent days - at the G8 summit and elsewhere - of Israel's right to retaliate against the capture of its soldiers, or attacks on its troops on its own sovereign territory. Some, such as those in the US administration, seem to believe that Israel has an unqualified licence to hit back at its enemies no matter what the cost. And even those willing to recognise that there may be a problem tend to couch it in terms of Israel's "disproportionate use of force" rather than its basic right to take military action.
But what is at stake here is not proportionality or the issue of self-defence, but symmetry and equivalence. Israel is staking a claim to the exclusive use of force as an instrument of policy and punishment, and is seeking to deny any opposing state or non-state actor a similar right. It is also largely succeeding in portraying its own "right to self-defence" as beyond question, while denying anyone else the same. And the international community is effectively endorsing Israel's stance on both counts.
"Staking a claim to the exclusive use of force"? The inversion of reality there is breath-taking. Israeli spokesmen and sensible people everywhere have made the point over and over again that Israel is simply claiming the same right to use force in self-defense granted to everyone else. Israel is actually upholding and implementing a universal right to use force in self-defense. If another state, even Israel, were to suddenly launch an unprovoked attack on, say, Egypt, nobody is denying that Egypt would have a right to respond with force. The idea that Israel is somehow denying this is absurd on its face.
From an Arab point of view this cannot be right. There is no reason in the world why Israel should be able to enter Arab sovereign soil to occupy, destroy, kidnap and eliminate its perceived foes - repeatedly, with impunity and without restraint - while the Arab side cannot do the same. And if the Arab states are unable or unwilling to do so then the job should fall to those who can.
It is important to bear in mind that in both the case of the Hamas raid that led to the invasion of Gaza and the Hizbullah attack that led to the assault on Lebanon it was Israel's regular armed forces, not its civilians, that were targeted. It is hard to see how this can be filed under the rubric of "terrorism", rather than a straightforward tactical defeat for Israel's much-vaunted military machine; one that Israel seems loth to acknowledge.
I thought the issue was "symmetry." Is the author, Ahmad Samih Khalidi, claiming the right to determine the final-status of the West Bank through war? No problem--let Israel use its military resources. "Straightforward tactical defeat"? Fine--sovereign states have the right to respond to attacks against their military personnel. And notice how the murder and convenient forgetting of civilian hostage Eliyahu Asheri actually help Hamas and Hizbullah score propaganda points, at least in the eyes of gullible Guardian readers.
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