An oft-quoted definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over but to expect different results. The carnage Israel's military has been inflicting on the Gaza Strip for the past week fulfils this definition. Time and again since Israel's disengagement from Gaza in 2005, the military has attacked in a bid to prevent rockets being fired from the strip. Operation Protective Edge is the latest in a long line of military operations against the Palestinians of Gaza – it will not be the last.
There is no clear military objective at play in this latest offensive. Israel’s accomplished spinmasters talk about attacking targets used for “military purposes”, such as weapons storage, command-and-control centres or communications facilities. Any such targets were destroyed long ago and instead the Israelis bomb schools, mosques, cafes, private homes and facilities for the disabled.
In the absence of a clear military objective, the purpose of this latest operation becomes clear: to collectively punish the people of Gaza because militants among them are firing rockets at Israel.
The heart-wrenching images emerging of maimed women and children support this view. The UN reports that 70 per cent of those killed have been civilians, which is no surprise given that the Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places on the planet.
The real insanity comes from assessing Israel’s stated goal of stopping the rockets. The Gaza Strip is by any measure little more than an open prison for 1.7 million Palestinians. Another pertinent perspective is Thomas Jefferson’s view about the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But in Gaza, the Israeli military arbitrarily takes away life, there is no liberty and notions about the pursuit of happiness are little more than a cruel joke in the blockaded territory.
Take away those supposedly inalienable rights and what’s left is desperation. Desperate people hit out, in this case with rockets either ingeniously fashioned from pipes or more sophisticated models imported from Iran.
If Israel wanted to encourage more rockets being launched, it could hardly do better than its current strategy.
