The ICC Indicts Israeli and Hamas Officials: On the Perils of Absolutist National Sovereignty

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Ben Netanyahu, former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and the military commander of Hamas on November 21, 2024. With the world having had centuries wherein national sovereignty has been the basis of the international order, the heads of national governments could be expected to instantly bolt from just being indicted by an international court. Since the world woke up in 1945 to learn of the Nazi atrocities against Slavs (20 million), Jews (6 million), intellectuals and gays, whether murdered in concentration camps or on the proverbial street, as well as reading as years went by of Stalin’s mass-graves from his government’s mass-murders of Ukrainians, Poles, and even Russians, the hegemonic doctrine that the sovereignty of a state should be absolute has been barely subject to any resistance. So, when the ICC has issued arrest warrants, it has been up to national governments around the world to enforce the warrants by arresting the heads of other governments charged with having violated international law. This weakness in the constraint on what would otherwise be absolutist national sovereignty attests to the marginal degree to which that doctrine has actually been questioned since 1945. In other words, the international order can be said to occupy a rather uncomfortable ‘betwixt and between’ position with respect to whether the sovereignty of countries should be constrained internationally. Not until international law comes complete with real enforcement powers will the world be able to say that heads of governments (and of state) are no longer in a state of nature as described by Thomas Hobbes in his tomb, Leviathan.  

In the case of Israel and Hamas, the nature of their respective crimes is such that the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty can legitimately be discarded and replaced by a doctrine of relative national sovereignty. The ICC’s judges said there were “reasonable grounds” that the three defendants bore “criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity since October 7, 2023,[1] when Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped a couple hundred more. In (over) response, or retribution as “punishment,” the Israeli military had killed over 44,000 residents of Gaza and made over a million more homeless by the time the ICC issued its warrants. Israel even dropped bombs on the tents being used by the homeless residents. The scale alone of the suffering can be seen as an indictment on the doctrine of absolute sovereignty, which had been able to protect more than one head of a national government in the world.

In fact, during the very month in which the ICC announced the three warrants, Russia’s President Putin signed a revised, more flexible government policy on when the country’s military could use tactical nuclear weapons and was still having the military bomb civilian targets. Even the U.S. Embassy in Kiev was no longer safe from becoming a target. To be sure, the ICC had already issued an arrest warrant for Putin, but it was an easy matter for him to avoid being arrested. Netanyahu too could be expected to easily evade capture. Besides being able to stay in their respective countries, they could safely visit the respective allies. Often missed is the hesitancy that other, third-party governments, have in arresting the heads of other governments. Besides not wanting retaliation, it is easy for a country’s government to ignore the ICC’s requests. The ICC’s enforcement mechanism has been, in short, like a bad joke.

The weakness of the E.U. federal system only made the arrests of the three defendants within that territory especially unlikely. Put another way, that the ICC would have to depend on the E.U. to hold its states accountable demonstrates just how weak the court’s enforcement mechanism was when the court issued the warrants. Hence, the BBC noted at the time, “Netanyahu and Gallant do not face any immediate threat of prosecution.”[2] Even though “if either of them set foot in any [signatory country to the ICC’s jurisdiction], the two men “must be arrested and handed over to the court.”[3] The E.U.’s foreign minister, Josep Borrell, “said the ICC decision was binding on all E.U. member states.”[4] Nevertheless, “Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said . . . he would ignore an arrest warrant issued by [the ICC] for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”[5] Orban’s refusal to recognize the validity of federal law would imperil the E.U. were his decision to go against the E.U. requirement to eventually become the norm with respect to E.U. law in the state governments; it could turn into something akin to the Nullification Crisis in the early 1830s in the U.S., when it too had a young federal system and had to contend with South Carolina’s Nullification Acts. Orban’s disrespect for E.U. law (including regulations and even directives, which the states have some discretion in implementing) is a microcosm of the disrespect for international law (and arrest warrants) that had become the norm at the global level by 2024; otherwise, coalitions of countries would have literally pushed Putin out of Ukraine and Netanyahu out of Gaza, as the U.S.’s coalition had pushed Saddam Hussain out of Kuwait in the early 1990s.

It is precisely such a lack of respect for the international court and international law itself that led Netanyahu’s office to condemn the ICC’s warrants against the prime minister and the former defense minister as “antisemitic.”[6] Of course, the warrant against the commander of Hamas’s military was not said to be a case of prejudice against Muslims. In fact, Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister, objected that the ICC was placing “the State of Israel and the murderous leaders of Hamas in the same row, and thus legitimizes the murder of babies, the rape of women and the abduction of the elderly from their beds.”[7] The ICC was not legitimizing the events of October 7, 2023 because the court issued a warrant for a Hamas high official too.

The court found reasonable grounds that Hama’s Deif was “responsible for the crimes against humanity of murder; extermination; torture; and rape and other form[s] of sexual violence; as well as war crimes for murder, cruel treatment, torture; taking hostages; outrages upon personal dignity; and other form[s] of sexual violence.”[8] While this may seem duplicative, crimes against humanity are legally distinct from war crimes. Regarding Netanyahu and Gallant, the court found reasonable grounds to believe that they “each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”[9] If the Israeli government officials still needed an explanation for why the court was putting them in the same criminal category with the Hamas official, perhaps contrasting 44,000 dead and over 1 million homeless with 1,200 dead and only a few hundred homeless (i.e, taken as hostages)—many of whom had been able, unlike the Gaza residents, to return to find a house or apartment building still standing. Just the fact that Israeli officials objected to the equivalence in the ICC’s charges leveled against Israeli and Hamas officials even though Israel’s military response had been disproportionately aggressive and destructive suggests just how warped human judgment can be, and just how dangerous the doctrine of absolutist sovereignty is as applied to national governments under which government officials can act with the sense of impunity from international law having “teeth” internationally. Even that such a misplaced doctrine had by the 21^st century become a part of the status quo in the global order does not bode well for human nature, which the doctrine contradicts.  That both the presidents of Israel and the United States called the ICC arrest warrants against Israeli officials “outrageous” boggles the mind, given the scale of destruction wrought by Israel in Gaza.[10] Put more directly, a species capable of such mental feats devoid of reason should not grant absolute sovereignty to any human being. Giving absolute sovereignty to people heading a government that has nuclear weapons is a bad idea, and yet the world, out of fear, has not stood up to keep that from continuing.

Given the salience of greed the thirst for power that are so indelible in human nature, the U.S. was still selling military weapons to Israel and the Biden administration had not courageously resisted the notoriously strong American Israeli lobby (the AIPAC). So the U.S. Government had a vested economic and political interest doing two things at the expense of human rights and international law: 1.) being the single veto at the UN Security Council against a resolution the day before that would have stipulated an immediate ceasefire, the removal of Israel’s military from Gaza, and the unconditional release of the hundred or so remaining Israeli hostages being held by Hama; and 2.) rejecting the ICC’s warrants for the two Israelis (but curiously not the one against the Hamas commander)—both in the same week! Countering the vested interest of the U.S., the E.U., a third party to the dispute/war, more objectively stated that all three warrants should be respected and enforced.[11] Given the magnitude of killing and destruction in Gaza, going much beyond the heinous acts of Hamas on October 7, 2023, the position of the E.U.’s foreign minister could indeed be viewed as being relatively objective, mature, and even ethical.

Lest it be objected (as it was by Israel and its enabler, the U.S.), that neither the U.S. nor the sovereign state of Israel had signed documents agreeing to be covered by the ICC’s jurisdiction, “the court [had] ruled in 2021 that it had jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza because the UN’s secretary general had accepted the Palestinians” constitute a member of the UN.[12] Just because Israel does not recognize the Palestinians politically does not mean that the UN and the ICC could and should not do so.

Lest it be objected that the ICC, as a court of last resort, is “supposed to act when domestic courts cannot, or will not, genuinely investigate or prosecute serious international crimes,” Israel had had a bit more than a year to do so, but had not even charged Netanyahu of war crimes and crimes against humanity.[13] Especially given the judicial reforms that the prime minister had successfully had the legislature adopt, it would be highly unlikely that the judiciary would ever hold Netanyahu accountable even for corruption.

In short, like Russia’s Putin, Israel’s Netanyahu and the U.S.’s Biden conveniently rejected the very validity of international law, and perhaps that position is fair because law without an enforcement mechanism can only really be a resolution or policy befitting an international realm with no sovereignty having been delegated to it from the world’s countries, whose government officials have gotten used to enjoying the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty serving as the bedrock of the global order. Reading slowly through the detailed charges promulgated by the ICC might get a person to reconsider whether, given human nature, the world hasn’t made a mistake in allowing it to become the status quo and thus enjoy considerable inertia even in the face of horrendous atrocities in Gaza as well as Ukraine with the perpetrators—national governments and their respective officials—being able to act with the smug sense of impunity. It is a pity that the national governments adopted, whether explicitly or by not rejecting it in action, such flawed doctrine as an important geo-political element of the status quo. Even if the world comes to realize that the squalid doctrine has enabled abuses of power by national governments, the very nature of the status quo suggests that the doctrine will nevertheless still be likely to enjoy considerable inertia as the power behind the thrones because of the political (and even military) energy needed to dislodge the artifice.

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1. David Gritten “Arrest Warrants Issued for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas Commander Over Alleged War Crimes," BBC.com, November 21, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Tansin Paternoster and Evelyn Dom, “European Leaders Give Mixed Reactions on Netanyahu’s War Crimes Arrest Warrant,” Euronews.com, November 22, 2024.
6. David Gritten “Arrest Warrants Issued for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas Commander Over Alleged War Crimes.”
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.; Jaroslav Lukiv, “Biden Says ICC War Crimes Arrest Warrant ‘Outrageous,” BBC.com, November 22, 2024.
11. David Gritten “Arrest Warrants Issued for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas Commander Over Alleged War Crimes.”
12. Ibid. 
13. Ibid.

 

On Israel’s Public Relations Campaign against the Charge of Genocide

In theory, state media is more vulnerable to doing the bidding of its sponsoring government than are privately owned media companies. In practice, governments are able to pressure even private news outlets to sway public opinion for political purposes. Even allied governments can pressure the government of a country in which a private news company resides in terms of what stories to air and when to air them, in order to sway that country’s public opinion, and even global public opinion. The sudden appearances in print, online, and on television news networks of former Israeli hostages being interviewed just after the International Court of Justice had announced on December 29, 2023 that Israel would be tried on charges of genocide in Gaza. Not coincidentally, I submit, emotionally-charged hyperbole was used to pull emotional “heart-strings” in order to convince the world, including the justices at international court, that the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 had been so bad that even Israel’s extremely disproportionate military attacks in Gaza were justified and thus should not be considered to be genocidal. Besides the logic being flawed, for the infliction of such disproportional harm was not justified, and even a justified genocide would violate the Convention on Genocide, which Israel had agreed to be bound. In short, I suspect that much was happening behind the scenes not only in Israel, but also in the U.S. Government and even private media companies in the U.S. immediately following the Court’s announcement.

On December 29, 2023, the International Court of Justice announced that South Africa had filed papers accusing Israel of being “in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention” because “acts and omissions by Israel . . . are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . . to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”[1] On January 2, 2024, a spokesperson for the Israeli government “announced that representatives of the country would appear very soon before the court to defend Israel’s position.”[2] Being a signatory to the Genocide Convention, which had been adopted by the UN’s General Assembly in 1948, Israel was not only subject to the court’s jurisdiction on genocides, but also obligated to send representatives to the Court when a defendant. In anticipation, Israel unleased a public relations offensive, which included not only Israeli media outlets, but also American ones too, perhaps from pressure from Washington, an ally of Israel. Not having proof of the complicity, I am basing my hypothesis on the very convenient timing involved, as well as the fact that multiple interviews were published and aired within days of the Court’s announcement.

Admittedly, the first casualty in war is truth, but even subjectivity goes only so far before it becomes hyperbolic or otherwise excessively manipulative (i.e., used as a weapon of sorts) by twisting the meaning of words beyond recognition. In fact, the 20^th century philosophical phenomenologists, including Jaspers, Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre overrated human subjectivity in using it to anchor their respective philosophies. Those philosophers and others like them may have been unduly pessimistic on the potential of human reason because the horrors in the Nazi Holocaust had followed the optimism in the Enlightenment in the 18^th century. As Nietzsche wrote, a philosopher is not a person of one’s day. This means that a philosopher worth one’s salt thinks outside the box, as it were, and so one’s philosophy is not unduly delimited by one’s immediate context. In short, the decadence in the bloodiest century so far had swallowed the philosophical phenomenologists. Meanwhile, analytic philosophers allowed themselves to become reductionists in obsessing on language.

Israel’s government responded to being charged with genocide by exploiting the worst of the 20^th century to stir the world’s emotions against South Africa’s accusation of genocide. In particular, the Israeli government spokesman announcing that Israel would send representatives to the court described South Africa’s accusation as “a blood libel” against what The Times of Israel labeled as “the Jewish state,” as if the South African ministers were antisemitic.[3] The intended allusion was to the Jewish origins of the state due to the blood of the Holocaust, and an implicit claim may have been that the heirs of victims cannot become victimizers, which is not so. Indeed, vengeance against current adversaries can be intensified by resentment of the unspent justice against past aggressors. Such disproportionate vengeance is not fair to the contemporary enemies unless they were also the past aggressors. The Israeli government spokesperson suggested such a link in labeling the South African government as an heir of the Nazis.[4]  In being aided by South Africa, the Palestinians in Gaza too could be vicariously linked to an old enemy. I would not be surprised to find press reports of the Israeli government ministers referring to Hamas as Nazis so as to justify expending even the unrequited vengeance in the previous century following the collapse of Nazi Germany.

Of course, the Israeli spokesman’s “heirs of the Nazis” comment was wildly off the mark. Real heirs would not have waited to see Israel’s wholesale destruction and killing in Gaza before attempting a genocide against not only Israelis, but Jews anywhere. Also, filing an accusation in an international court pales in comparison with what heirs would have done, and is not even close to what the Nazis actually did to Jews in Europe. In actuality, the South African government had pointed to the obligation of any signatory to the Genocide Convention to report possible genocides to the court. With more than 1.8 million Palestinians displaced from their homes and Gaza residents facing the “highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded,” according to the UN’s emergency chief, Martin Griffiths[5], the natural human sentiment of disapprobation—a visceral emotional reaction of revulsion—had more than enough stimulus to be activated worldwide, including in South Africa. Hume refers to such an activation to be what ethical judgment is, underneath—a visceral emotional reaction rather than a Kantian contradiction of reason. In heeding an ethical obligation, the officials in the South African government were hardly heirs to the Nazis.

Another allusion to the Nazis occurred just three days after the court had announced that Israel had been accused of committing genocide. Jake Tapper of CNN headlined a former Israeli hostage, Mia Schem, who had been held in Gaza for a harsh 55 days at the home of a Palestinian family (hence thankfully rape was not committed). Schem, a young, beautiful woman who obviously deserves much sympathy for her ordeal as a hostage, nonetheless shamelessly described her ordeal as incorrectly as “a Holocaust.” 

The deliberate misappropriation of such an emotionally-tinged word—and that an Israeli of all people would use the word opportunistically and inaccurately beyond recognition—suggests an underlying motive to manipulate public opinion. Ironically, survivors of the real holocaust would probably bristle at the attempted comparison. What you experienced for 55 days is nothing like what we experienced in Nazi Germany, the retort might insist. The implication that the Palestinians in occupied Gaza—a “ghetto” so called by Israel’s Finance Minister Smotrich (who also said on the day after the court’s announcement that “Israel must reduce” the Palestinian population there to 100,000-200,000 from 2.3 million[6])—are like Nazis conveniently denies the decades of oppression exacted by Israel on the residents of Gaza and the obvious difference between the attack by Hamas of October 7, 2023, including the taking and holding of hostages, and Nazi Germany’s many atrocities over more than a decade.

Besides exaggerating in furnishing a label for her ordeal as a hostage, Schem extrapolated in generalizing concerning the entire population of Palestinians in Gaza. Interviewed on Israeli television on the day the court announced that Israel had been accused of committing genocide, she accused every Palestinian in Gaza of being a terrorist. “Everyone there are(sic) terrorists . . . there are no innocent civilians, not one,” she said.[7] She based her empirical claim on the acquiescence of the wife and child of the man who had held Schem in his home. No auditor would make such a projection to a population of numbers based on such a small sample size. After Hamas’ attack of October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 240 were taken hostage, Israeli President Herzog had claimed, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible” as Israel was ordering 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate their homes.[8]  The implication to be drawn from both statements is that retribution against every Palestinian there would be justified. Indeed, reports from the UN suggest that precisely that was occurring.

Gemma Connell, Gaza team leader for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), referred to conditions in even north Gaza as, “No food, no water, very little medical supplies.”[9] By January 4, 2024, many people in southern Gaza had been “displaced not once, not twice, but six or seven times,” according to Connell. With 2.2 million people in Gaza “in desperate need of help,”[10] South Africa was on firm ground empirically as well as ethically, whereas Schem’s attempt to justify the wholesale annihilation of the Palestinians living in Gaza was empirically and ethically spurious. In outlining plans for Gaza after the Israeli military attacks, Israeli Defense Minister Yaov Gallant said on January 5, 2024 that the Palestinian “entity controlling the territory” would “build on the capabilities” of “local non-hostile actors” already present in Gaza.[11] Clearly, not every Palestinian in Gaza was a terrorist, and did not deserve the onslaught of Israeli “collective justice” as if they were.

I contend that Schem’s interviews were part of a coordinated PR offensive by Israel that reached as far as CNN in America. CNN interviewed another former hostage, Doran Asher, days after the Court had announced the accusation of genocide. She was more accurate in labeling the infliction of “psychological warfare” on her during her 50 days of captivity in Gaza.[12] CNN claimed in its headline, "This is what she wants you to know." My question is, who else wanted the world to know?  Who would have had the motive and political power to see it it that you hear or read her story?

That she wanted to tell her story would not have been sufficient to get her on CNN, which would surely not have been acting solely on her behalf. 

It can also be asked what did not make it onto CNN. For instance, the American media had been practically silent in putting the Hamas attack in the wider context of decades of harsh Israeli occupation of Gaza, maintaining it as a subjugated “ghetto.” Not that enduring such harsh conditions for so long justifies the killing and hostage-taking committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023; rather, the context is explanatory, and could have resulted in a global public opinion less dismissive of Israel’s vastly disproportionate destruction of Gaza. The omission of proper context can point back to CNN’s bias or the media company’s role as part of a broader PR campaign possibly being pushed by the Israeli government to set public opinion against the accusation of genocide in Gaza in spite of the facts on the ground there.

In conclusion, Israel’s attempt to manipulate global public opinion (and even the justices at the International Court of Justice) may have eventuated into the following narrative: The entire population of Gaza committed a holocaust by killing 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping 240 more.  Every civilian in Gaza is culpable, and thus is a legitimate military target and deserves to be homeless and starving. Furthermore, any serious effort to hold Israel back from its extremely disproportionate “collective justice,” which is an inherently flawed ethical theory because even people living in the same geographical area do not all have the same beliefs, values, and ideology, is to be discredited as “blood libel.” Unfortunately for Israel’s credibility in its PR offensive, much more blood had flowed in Gaza than in Israel, and this alone, rather than any antisemitism, had brought South Africa to the International Court of Justice. While it is easy to throw public-relations “bombs” such as Holocaust, Nazi heirs, and terrorists, such irrationality is expedient, and thus may end up working against Israel’s interests. For instance, by inserting Nazi-era terms into the public discourse, calls for a genocide of the Jews could be transformed  from constituting hate speech to being merely countervailing political speech. Additionally, the hyperbole could ultimately undercut Israel’s credibility at the International Court and in the court of world opinion. Viewing an opposing political position on the war as antisemitic even though Israel’s military response had been so very disproportionate could erode Israel’s credibility further. The attack of October 7, 2023 was indeed horrific, as were the ensuing experiences of the Israeli hostages, but so too was the ironic banality of evil in the decades in which Israel occupied Gaza as a “ghetto” subject to the flawed ethical concept of collective justice. To say it has not been a fair fight, even taking the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 into account, is not to be antisemitic. Rather, the charge is political, as were the interviews given by freed Israeli hostages.

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1.. Pierre Meilhan, Bethlehem Feleke, and Tamar Michaelis, “South Africa Files Genocide Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice Over Gaza War,” CNN.com, December 29, 2023; Jeremy Sharon, “Israel Confirms It’ll Defend Itself from Gaza Genocide claims in the Hague Next Week,” The Times of Israel, January 2, 2024.
2. Jeremy Sharon, “Israel Confirms It’ll Defend Itself from Gaza Genocide claims in the Hague Next Week,” The Times of Israel, January 2, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Heather Chen and Eve Brennen, “Famine in Gaza ‘Around the Corner,’ as People Face ‘Highest Levels of Food Insecurity Ever Recorded,’ UN Relief Chief Says,” CNN.com, January 6, 2024.
6. Sanjana Karanth, “Senior Far-Right Israeli Official Admits Gaza Is a ‘Ghetto’ For Palestinians,” The Huffington Post, December 31, 2023.
7. Amy Spiro and Michael Horovitz, “Freed Hostage Mia Schem: ‘I Experienced Hell. There Are No Innocent Civilians in Gaza,” The Times of Israel, December 29, 2023.
8. Paul Blummenthal, “Israeli President Suggests that Civilians in Gaza Are Legitimate Targets,” The Huffington Post, October 13, 2023.
9.  Michael Rios, “’No Food, No Water, Very Little Medical Supplies’: UN Aid Worker on Devastating Conditions in Gaza,” CNN.Com, January 4, 2024.
10. Ibid.
11. Amir Tal, “Israeli Government Divisions Burst into Open as Ministers ‘Fight’ over Post-War Plans,” CNN.com, January 5, 2024.
12. Christian Edwards and Bianna Goldryga, “Freed Israeli Hostage Says She Endured ‘Psychological Warfare’ during 50 Days of Hamas Captivity,” CNN.com, January 4, 2024.

Israel and the United States on Palestinian Democracy

I contend that the furtherance of democracy in general and more specifically in the Middle East can be regarded as a strategic pathway toward regional peace. The philosopher Kant wrote a treatise on a global federation as a means toward achieving world peace. The founders of the United States reckoned that all the republics within that regional federation must be democratic for the Union itself to be sustained. A United States of the Middle East would also stand a better chance were it's states republics in form. It follows that especially when democratic bystanders put short-term tactical and strategic advantage above furthering or just permitting the development of a young, unstable democracy, the hypocrisy puts off rather than furthers peace. The reactions of Israel and the United States to a Palestinian achievement in 2011 are a case in point. 

The two main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, announced on April 27, 2011 “that they were putting aside years of bitter rivalry to create an interim unity government and hold elections within a year, a surprise move that promised to reshape the diplomatic landscape of the Middle East. The deal, brokered in secret talks by the caretaker Egyptian government, was announced at a news conference in Cairo where the two negotiators referred to each side as brothers and declared a new chapter in the Palestinian struggle for independence, hobbled in recent years by the split between the Fatah-run West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza. It was the first tangible sign that the upheaval across the Arab world, especially the Egyptian revolution, was having an impact on the Palestinians . . . Israel, feeling increasingly surrounded by unfriendly forces, denounced the unity deal as dooming future peace talks since Hamas seeks [Israel's] destruction. ‘The Palestinian Authority has to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas,’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a televised statement. The Obama administration warned that Hamas was a terrorist organization unfit for peacemaking.”[1]

An agreement that puts aside years of bitter rivalry is in itself morally praiseworthy not only because of the heightened possibility for peace, but also because just achieving such an agreement is not easy; rather, this is the road less traveled. As reported at the time, “A desire for unity has been one goal that ordinary Palestinians in both areas have consistently said they sought. Until now it has proved elusive and leaders of the two factions have spoken of each other in vicious terms and jailed each other’s activists.”[2] Tit for tat much more conformable to human nature than putting faith in trust where none has existed.

More specifically, an agreement by rival parties in a young democracy to have common elections furthers the ideal of representative self-government. Putting an ideal before partisan advantage is also morally (and politically) laudable because such a priority is not easy given human nature (nature and nurture). 

This is not to say that the results of an election agreed to by rivals (assuming a fair and transparent one) are pleasing to interested bystanders nearby or halfway around the world who gave their own agendas. If such bystanders brandish themselves as beacons of democracy to the world and yet act on their own agendas, the charge of self-serving hypocrisy can stick. 

To be sure, both Israel and the United States had at the time a long-term interest in the furtherance of the democratic form of government, so assuming a stance of enlightened self-interest would have avoided the noxious cloud of hypocrisy. Unfortunately, the two bystanders, who still claimed to value representative democracy, held the furtherance of the form hostage to their hostility to an enemy. It can be said, in fact, that democratic governments that refuse an opportunity to permit a young and not yet stable democracy to strengthen are not themselves worthy of self-government, for they are not sufficiently mature, politically, in putting their respective partisan agendas first. 

Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed in retirement after the American Revolution that a self-governing citizenry must be educated and virtuous to sustain a viable republic. I submit that both formal education and virtue require and strengthen self-discipline, as well as foster maturity. To skip class and not study for tests, for example, flaunt self-discipline, whereas to follow the rigors of a course of study requires (and builds) self-discipline and thus maturity. The relationship between self-discipline and virtue is more widely understood. 

To the Israeli government, the sheer possibility of unity among the Palestinians translated into having a more formidable opponent in bargaining. Surely, however, more was at stake than jostling for strategic advantage. As it turned out, such a concern dominated at the expense of peace. Even the increasing dominance of Israel itself over the Palestinian Authority did not bring peace any closer.  

1. Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner, “Fatah and Hamas Announce Outline of Deal,” The New York Times, April 28, 2011, p. A1.

2. Ibid.

Refusing for its Own Sake: Israel on the Palestinian Unity Government

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority reached a deal for a unity government with Hamas on February 6, 2012—which was also the sixtieth anniversary of the Accession Day of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned that a unity government with Hamas would rule out any chance of making peace with Israel. Meanwhile, the E.U. and U.S., as well as the state of Israel, had conditioned recognition and aid to Hamas on that party renouncing violence, recognizing Israel, and agreeing to previous agreements reached between the P.L.O. and Israel. In short, for all that achieving a unity government requires in terms of hard decisions and effort, the accomplishment was not exactly valued by Israel and the West. Aside from the baleful consequences in refusing to recognize something of value out of stubbornness and inflexibility, Israel and the West may have been hurting themselves by ruling out a chance for peace at the outset.

“Hamas is an enemy of peace,” Netanyahu said. “It’s an Iranian-backed terror organization committed to Israel’s destruction.”[1] Doubtless that description reflects Hamas historically, but in sticking to the description, it was the Prime Minister rather than Hamas that was cutting off any chance of peace. He was ignoring or dismissing the possibility that Hamas could change as a result of negotiations and a deal. Part of what happens as two parties negotiate and reach a deal is that the parties’ respective perspectives and interests can also change. To condition the negotiations themselves on the other party already having changed is illogical, besides being utterly unfair to that party irrespective of whatever its past may or may not have been. It is essentially to presume that that which takes place during negotiations must somehow occur beforehand—and for only one of the parties. In continuing to build settlements, Israel has not exactly been kosher going into the negotiations; Abbas’s unity government could insist that Israel itself change as a condition for negotiations to begin.

Ironically, Abbas’s unity government may be requisite to any agreement, for otherwise Hamas would be outside any such deal. Presumably everyone concerned must be part of a peace deal for peace to ensue. Therefore, Israel as well as the U.S. and E.U. would be wiser not to look the gift horse in the mouth—meaning complain about that which is really a gift to them. Abbas has undoubtedly had to swallow hard to accept a unity government with his rival. He is due credit for this, and his action should be recognized for what it is: a necessary step on the way to a definitive agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis. At the time of Abbas’s announcement, it would have been wise for Israel and the West to seize the opportunity of the unity government rather than view it as ending any chance of an agreement.

The lack of change projected onto Hamas was really in its adversaries. “Give peace a chance” means being willing to relax one’s stubbornness such that one can change. The change needed is ultimately in oneself—not the other guy. With this on one’s plate, to worry oneself with the other’s change involves a rather presumptuous overreaching that one can ill-afford. This is not to say that the other guy has been an angel. Hamas has been far from it, but the same could be said of Israel. It takes two to tangle, and angels have no need for peace talks. Sometimes appearances can be deceiving here on earth. The smallest excuse may easily be made use of by the party most interested in sustaining a feud. If there is anything that must change before negotiations can begin, it is this: a refusal to come to the table, presumably conditioned on some change in the other guy other than his refusal to come to the table. The refusal usually says much more about the refuser than the refusee.

1. Ethan Bronner, “Abbas Will Lead thePalestinians in a Unity Pact,” The New York Times, February 7, 2012.