Posted: January 22, 2009 by NP Editor Full Comment.

Irwin Cotler

The Israeli-Hamas conflict, with its evocative images of human suffering, has engaged the hearts and minds of people the world over. Indeed, the death of any innocent — Israeli or Palestinian — is a tragedy, and no one can fail to be moved by the human suffering and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

But the immediate cessation of violence that was declared over the weekend — and that has so far held — may not endure. If we want to prevent further tragedies, it is important to go beyond the “fog of war” — to go behind the daily headlines that cloud understanding and the cliches (the “cycle of violence”) that corrupt it — and ask some fundamental questions about the root causes of this war and the basis for its resolution.

1. Do you agree that Israel, like any other state, has the right to live in peace and security, free from any threats or acts of force?

2. Are you aware that Hamas has launched over 8,000 missiles, rockets and mortars from behind civilian areas, deliberately targeting and terrorizing the Israeli civilian population these last three years, constituting an armed attack prohibited by the UN Charter? Are you aware that despite a six-month truce, Hamas launched close to 3,000 armed attacks in 2008 alone?

3. Do you agree that Israel — like any other state — has an obligation to protect its citizens, and a right to self-defence against armed attack as set forth in Article 51 of the UN Charter?

As then-U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice put it to the UN Security Council, echoing the words of both U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “The situation before the current events in Gaza was clearly not sustainable. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis lived under the daily threat of rocket attack, and frankly, no country, none of our countries, would have been willing to tolerate such a circumstance.”

4. Do you agree that Israel’s exercise of self-defence must comport with the principles of international humanitarian law, including the principle of proportionality and the prohibition against the infliction of unnecessary suffering?

5. Do you agree that Palestinians in Gaza have the same right as Israelis to live in peace and security? Are you aware of the domestic repression by Hamas of Palestinian rights in Gaza, including converting the civilian infrastructure to a weapons depot and exploiting the civilian population as human shields, as is now being observed even in the Arab press?

6. Do you agree that the ceasefire must be durable and sustaining to protect the peace and security of both Israelis and Palestinians?
If so, then let us look deeper at what this conflict is truly about.

7. Are you aware that the border crossings — between Egypt and Gaza, and between Gaza and Israel — have been used to smuggle terrorists, weapons, munitions and contraband, when they should be open instead for the movement of people and trade, as set forth in the 2005 Israeli-Palestinian Agreement on Movement and Access?

8. Are you aware that Hamas is designated a terrorist entity by Canada, the United States and the European Union, and that UN Security Council resolutions require Palestinian governing authorities to deny safe havens to terrorists?

9. Are you aware that the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews wherever they might be?

10. Are you aware that this genocidal ideology is shared not only by Hamas but also by Iran and its proxy immediately north of Israel, Hezbollah. Did you know that Iran is training, financing, supplying and instigating terrorist action by Hamas and Hezbollah to carry out this existential threat to Israel?

11. Are you aware that Hamas — not only during the present hostilities, but before them, too — has propagated a state-sanctioned culture of hate, in the mosques, in the schools, in the broadcasting system and in the summer camps and training camps, which teaches that Jews are inherently evil, a cancer, responsible for all the evils of the world, the sons of apes and pigs and the defilers of Islam?

12. Do you agree that such statements promote hatred and contempt for Jews, and constitute an obstacle to peace?

The next generation of Palestinians must be one that is capable of keeping the peace with Israel. It is in the interests of neither Israelis nor Palestinians themselves to perpetuate this false “conflict of civilizations” — and yet perpetual conflict is exactly what Hamas, by its own acknowledgment, wants, until Israel’s demise.
So then, a final question:

13. Do you agree that a comprehensive and enduring ceasefire must include: the reaffirmation — as a bottom-line commitment, as President Obama has put it — of Israel’s right to live in peace; the cessation of all acts of terror and violence against Israeli civilians, the casus belli of these hostilities; the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza; the establishment of an international protection and stabilization force to enforce the ceasefire and protect against smuggling and the manufacture of weapons; the deployment of a massive humanitarian undertaking to ensure assistance reaches those in need; the opening of border crossings; the initiation of a comprehensive program for the reconstruction of Gaza and the rehabilitation of its citizens; and the freeing of Palestinian society from the cynical and oppressive culture of hate and incitement fuelled by Hamas?

I close on a personal note. I write not only as a law professor and MP, but as one who has family in Israel and friends in Palestine, and who has lived and worked in the region and been engaged in the struggle for peace for more than 35 years.

The overriding truth of these past 35 years for me has always been clear and remains the same. I will stand with those who support the right of peoples in the Middle East — Israelis and Palestinians alike — to live in peace and security, free from any threats or acts of force, a cornerstone of UN principle and Canadian foreign policy; and I will oppose all those, like Hamas and its patron Iran, who seek the destruction of any people or state in violation of the UN Charter and all civilized norms.

National Post

Irwin Cotler is professor of law (on leave) at McGill University, the Opposition Critic for Human Rights and the MP for Mount Royal. He has written extensively on the Middle East.

Lorne Gunter, National Post

Published: Monday, December 29, 2008

Suppose you lived in the Toronto suburb of Don Mills and people from the suburb of Scarborough — about 10 kilometres away — were firing as many as 100 rockets a day into your yard, your kids’ school, the strip mall down the street and your dentist’s office.

A trip to the cleaners to pick up your shirts would be a life-risking act. Going to the grocery store would involve thinking through in your mind the location of all the shelter sites along the way, in case rockets started raining down on the road as you drove by.

Or perhaps you lived in Montreal’s Outremont neighbourhood and your children had weekly emergency drills because people who hated you — absolutely, blindly hated you and everyone from your community — were launching missiles by the score into your cul-de-sac and the nearby playground, and they had been doing it for seven years.

Or maybe you had a home in south Vancouver and militants living in Richmond were lobbing rockets every day across the Fraser River. Already they’d destroyed the homes of a couple of your neighbours, taken out the food court at the Oakridge Centre, levelled a nearby elementary school, damaged hundreds of tombstones at the Mountain View Cemetery and flattened the VanDusen Botanical Garden.

School children were no longer allowed to go outside at recess. Soccer, baseball and football leagues had all suspended play because the risk of death or injury to a young player or fan was too high, should a missile attack come during a game. Every major street corner had a concrete blast wall and you and your family knew that when the siren sounded you had about 15 seconds to find one and duck behind it or face death or dismemberment.

Since 2001, the small Israeli city of Sderot — one kilometre from the northern boundary of the Gaza Strip — has been the target of nearly 7,000 rocket and mortar attacks. That’s an average of about three a day. In the past week, the rate has been closer to 60 a day.

It’s the equivalent of extremists living in St. Boniface constantly attacking Winnipeg, or Hullois terrorizing Ottawa daily or Dartmouthians menacing Halifax year after year.

Frankly, I can’t imagine my neighbours in Edmonton bearing up so patiently with seven years of bombardments coming from the Enoch reserve on the west edge of the city or Calgarians enduring fusillades from Springbank.

It’s all well and good that we sit here in our safe and comfortable Canadian homes tut-tuting about Israel’s weekend attacks on Hamas and other Palestinian militants in Gaza. But if we were in the same position as Israelis in the southern part of that nation, who have endured daily threats for years now, I would imagine we would understand fully the sentiments of Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni: “Enough is enough. When there’s shooting, there’s a response. Any state would react that way.”

This is not some squabble in which both sides are equally to blame: Had there been no Palestinian attacks on Israel, there would have been no Israeli retaliation, period.

From 2001 to 2005, Hamas and the rest of the Gazan rocket firers insisted their attacks were provoked by the presence of 7,000 Israeli settlers within the borders of Gaza. Remove them and the attacks would stop, the Palestinians promised.

But the Israeli army removed the settlers and the rocket attacks escalated. Nearly two-thirds of the attacks on Sderot have occurred since. Without Israelis inside Gaza to fire on, the terrorists have turned their firepower on the next nearest Jews.

From June through early December, there was a sort of ceasefire in place between Hamas and Israel. Somewhat sardonically, the Israelis keep referring to this as “the lull,” because the fire never fully ceased and the Israelis had enough experience with Hamas promises to know it never would.

I am saddened by the deaths of Palestinian civilians in this past weekend’s air raids. Still, it is Hamas and the other extremists who have chosen to site their bases and missile launchers in civilian neighbourhoods, and Hamas who has provoked Israel again and again until it had no choice.