It is not often that one can see clearly through the swirling fog of bitter recrimination and historic injuries that envelop the confrontation between Palestinians and Israelis. But in Beit Hanoun yesterday there seemed to be a brief moment of clarity. The town was burying 18 people, most of them women and children who died in their beds Tuesday when Israeli shells slammed into their home.
As has happened so often before when such an indisputable atrocity has occurred, the international community has protested loudly. Israel, for its part, has once again promised an investigation into the “tragic error” and even apologized to the survivors of the extended family which it massacred.
What became clear yesterday was the stark imbalance of horror facing each side. These latest slayings bring the number of Palestinian dead since June close to 400, with a thousand others injured. More often than not this slaughter was achieved by precision-guided weaponry. In the same period, eight Israelis have died and a score injured, by primitive homemade rockets fired by Palestinian militants into Israeli-held territory .
Israel claims to be acting in response to these attacks. But the considerable disproportion in casualties between the two communities suggests that there is something more happening here. The Israeli military says it always targets militants who, however, use the civilian population as a shield. It is. Therefore, the militants’ fault when innocent people are killed by weapons which Israelis have fired. It is however also the militants’ fault when other innocents, this time on the Israeli side of the frontier, are killed by a highly inefficient homemade rocket.
Virtue, therefore, seems to lie in having a weapon that will go precisely where it is aimed. The killing of innocents in Beit Hanoun may have been a mistake, but it was an honest mistake made from a tank’s gun which has impeccable technological credentials. Nasser rockets, assembled in Palestinian garages are, however, dishonest and discreditable. Therefore, even though the damage they cause is a fraction of the devastation wrought by Israelis barrages, it deserves to be punished in considerably inverse proportion.
Israel has a citizen army in which most everyone will serve at some time. Does this fact inform Israeli thinking when it attacks Palestinians, shooting them like sheep trapped in a pen? Do Israeli hawks in reality see every Palestinian as the enemy to be struck down mercilessly ? If they do, after Beit Hanoun they may finally have got something right. Among the grief and despair amidst the shattered bodies and masonry, there was a cold anger. Israel has pursued a consistent policy of radicalizing moderate Palestinians with one humiliation and outrage after another. As radicals now talk of a return to suicide bombing and Hamas of abandoning its truce, it may be that a Palestinian citizens army is emerging. If every Palestinian has become a target, why should not every Palestinian fight back?
