Fault and responsibility

I've been pondering for a while that there is a shortcoming in the English language. If someone does something bad, it's their fault. If someone is in charge when a bad thing happens, it's their responsibility. But we don't really have a word or phrase to describe someone whose actions knowingly make it more likely that someone else will do a bad thing. It's not their fault; the person who actually does the bad thing needs to get the blame. They're not responsible for the bad thing, because they didn't do a bad thing and weren't in charge of making sure other people don't do bad things. And yet, if they hadn't done what they did, the bad thing would not have happened (or at least been less likely to happen).

This has been on my mind for personal reasons - during a disagreement, I used fault/blame language, implying that the person I was speaking to would be to blame if a third party did a bad thing, when what I wanted to say was that his/her actions were making it enormously more likely that a third party would do a bad thing; this did not do a lot to resolve the disagreement. I'm hoping that in the future I'll be wiser about using language that addresses causes without apportioning blame.

But in addition to my own experience, this distinction between fault and contributing cause also, I think, is very relevant to the latest outbreak of bloodshed between Israel and Gaza. If you're fed up with that whole situation and don't want to read about it any more, this is your cue to wander off; otherwise, read on.

I am not at all a fan of Israel. They're a self-righteous, entitled and discriminatory nation that thinks it can get away with any bullshit it wants to, and I think it's to our national discredit in America that so far, we have proven them right. I'm continuously appalled that our government is complicit in squelching every viable prospect for peace while at the same time enabling Israel's continuing colonial adventures in the West Bank. So that's where I'm coming from.

But then the latest war broke out, sparked by the killing of the Israeli teenagers (remember that? Seems like a long time ago now, doesn't it), the revenge killing of the Palestinian teen, the beating of the American teen visiting Palestinian relatives by Israeli police (which I suspect is going to get swept under the rug with relief by both sides, who have no interest in actually holding each other accountable for such misbehavior), the massive Israeli manhunt/gratuitous arrest spree in search of the teenagers, and finally the rocket attacks by Hamas. And for all my latent dislike for Israel, I grudgingly admitted that they were in the right on this one. Their response to the initial kidnappings was definitely heavy-handed and provocative, but it was Hamas who started the heavy weapons fire at noncombatants, and with or without Iron Dome, Israel wouldn't be keeping faith with its own citizens if it allowed people to shoot rockets at them from across the border with impunity.

Even when Israel began its offensive, first with air and artillery strikes and later with ground forces, and even when the highly lopsided casualty figures began coming in, I remained grudgingly on Israel's side. It's true that the rocket attacks from Gaza caused very few casualties, but that wasn't for lack of trying or motivation, and I didn't see any reason to punish Israel just for being more competent at doing unto Hamas what Hamas had been trying to do to Israel all along. Too, Israel at least pays face value to targeting military assets; Hamas' rockets were fired explicitly toward civilians. And while it's clear that many Israeli pilots and soldiers have shown wretched judgment and fire discipline - there is no military asset in the Gaza strip worth firing heavy weapons in the direction of a UN facility housing refugees, which happened not once, but repeatedly in this latest fight - it's also true that no army on earth has the capability to engage targets in a dense cityscape like Gaza without hitting civilian infrastructure and causing civilian casualties. The fact that Hamas was very intentionally using civilian targets like hospitals and mosques to shelter military equipment made it all the more unreasonable to expect Israel to avoid breaking any eggs in the systematic obliteration of their omelet. Which isn't to say that the Israeli soldiers and commanders who fired or authorized the firings at the UN schools (as well as the ship that killed four children on a beach and other instances of clearly non-military destruction) should not be rigorously investigated and held accountable for their twitchy trigger fingers. I didn't have any particular hope that Israel would do so (see the bit about self-righteous, entitled and discriminatory), but I added up the numbers and still came to the conclusion that Israel was acting in justified self-defense.

And to a degree, I still feel that way. I subscribe to the Merlin theory of diplomacy as described in the first book of The Once and Future King: whoever strikes the first blow is to blame, and it is not just permissible, but incumbent upon everyone else to strike back with enough force to discourage anyone from doing so again; that there is no reason whatsoever that it is justified to employ violence against someone who has not done so first to you, whatever their other provocations. And while the lines are a bit blurry in the case of Israel v. Gaza round 3, it's indisputable that Hamas, in drastically stepping up the tempo of their rocket attacks, was the first contestant to begin launching indiscriminate attacks on the other with heavy weapons. If we are to apportion fault for this war, it is clear that the majority of that blame has to fall on Hamas.

But as I've done more reading since, I've come to recognize that Israel is falling through the crack in the English language described above. It does not remove any of the responsibility or fault that justly fall on Hamas to note that Israel's recent actions made this war not only possible, but practically unavoidable.

I've not been able to relocate the article that initially started me thinking down this path, although I believe it was a column written for Al Jazeera English. Briefly summarized, the author pointed out that Hamas was acting from a position of weakness; their allies in the Egyptian government were booted out in Sisi's bloodbath coup, and their former allies in Iran had turned on them over their support for the Syrian rebels, starving them of much-needed cash. Cut off by the Israeli/Egyptian blockade from any meaningful economic development, and unable even to tax smugglers after Egypt started shutting down tunnels, Hamas was left unable to pay the thousands of government employees - many of them not even affiliated with Hamas - necessary to keep life running in Gaza. It was from this position of weakness that Hamas finally consented to form a unity government with Fatah in the West Bank.

Of particular note are the number of concessions they had to make: the new government committed to recognizing Israel and honoring past agreements (sticking points for the U.S.-led peace process), and no Hamas members were placed in critical or high-level positions. The Palestinian Authority's governing structure remained intact while extending over the territory in Gaza that Hamas took by force in 2007. Both sides called it a unity government, but it's hard to see that as anything but the most transparent face-saving token for Hamas; this was capitulation. They gave up all their autonomy and authority, and in return, they got to add their name as an afterthought to the new government.

Israel and the United States were not impressed. (Henceforce, I'm just going to say Israel, since it can be safely assumed that America will back Israel up in whatever foolishness it desires). Despite the fact that the new government met every demand they had for a Palestinian government, both fixated on the presence of Hamas, however ephemerally, in the new coalition and resoundingly rejected it. While pretending to include Hamas in the coalition may have been a face-saving joke, it did save face for Hamas; it allowed them to back down without the likely existence-threatening humiliation of admitting that they were defeated. By hounding the new government relentlessly for even the semblance of association with Hamas, Israel told the leaders of Gaza that their capitulation wasn't good enough, that Israel would settle for nothing less than their abject humiliation and dissolution. Nor was their rejection simply a matter of semantics; not only did the blockade stay in place, but by supposedly incorporating Hamas, the new PA government rebranded itself as a 'terrorist organization,' meaning the wonderfully imperious provisions of U.S. law restricting anyone from financially supporting terrorists (as defined by the U.S. government however seems convenient) came into play. When the U.N. and Qatar attempted to create funding channels to pay the aforementioned largely-non-Hamas civil servants in Gaza, they were stymied by Washington, forcing Hamas deeper and deeper into crisis.

In an ideal world, Hamas would recognize it was beaten and be willing to publicly admit that they were ready to surrender. However, it is manifestly evident that this isn't an ideal world, and by holding out for the symbolic victory instead of taking the win and permitting the foe to bow out with some vestigial dignity intact, Israel threw away a real opportunity to resolve the problems that had led to two wars in Gaza over the last three years. Instead, they made it very clear to Hamas that there was no way short of institutional suicide for them to get aid to the people of Gaza, and I can't say I'm terribly surprised that Hamas, having already signed away the majority of their dignity, declined to throw the remainder in for free.

(Most of the writers published on Al Jazeera believe that this was intentional on Israel's part; that they rebuffed Hamas because a divided Palestinian government serves their purpose and allows them to maintain the occupation and other measures for 'security reasons'. I suspect that to some degree, they're right, but I also suspect that many of the Israeli decision-makers responsible for all of this sincerely want to protect their people but have become so entrenched in a siege mentality that even cosmetic concessions like allowing Hamas to pretend to be part of the unity government have become tantamount to surrendering to terrorism, 'giving them an inch,' etc. Either way, the result is the same: the only peace Israel can accept is the peace it imposes, and since Palestine cannot accept that peace, Israel is determined that it shall have no peace at all.)

All of that is the background to the latest conflict. I don't know if the initial kidnapping was orchestrated by Hamas, the work of Hamas sympathizers, or simply a brutal but not entirely unpredictable burst of misdirected violence from among the occupied people of Palestine. I know that Israel, in using their justifiable search for the missing teens as an excuse to round up anyone affiliated with Hamas in the West Bank, further backed the Hamas leadership in Gaza into a corner. That doesn't excuse Hamas' decision to start shooting rockets at Israeli towns again. This war is, once again, Hamas' fault. But the reason Hamas was even in a position to make that decision, and the reason the leaders of Hamas felt, rightly or wrongly, that rockets were their only option, is that Israel had fenced them in and insisted that there was no other way for them to go. And that's why I think we need some new language for this conflict. Israel was justified in returning fire, and in sending in troops to ensure the rocket fire ceased (although their particular actions in pursuit of those goals is certainly subject to scrutiny). But if Israel's goal is not to have rockets fired at it, and not to have to send troops into peril and inflict such exorbitant civilian casualties, they could have done so back in April by simply accepting victory with grace and taking 'yes' for an answer.

Because Israel did not, because they chose a course of action that so clearly set the stage for the latest outbreak of violence, any discussion of fault or blame or responsibility for this war will have to take into account the role Israel played in ensuring that it had to happen.