The "Just War Tradition"

On December 27, 2008, after sustaining eight years of rocket attacks, Israel launched a military operation against Hamas in Gaza. How are we to evaluate the Israeli incursion from a moral and ethical perspective?

As in any moral evaluation of a war, we must begin by distinguishing the "Why?" from the "How?" "Just war" theory distinguishes between jus ad bellum and jus in bello - between the moral justification for war and the moral justification for actions taken during a war. The decision to wage a war or to embark on a military operation is made by a government, by politicians. The implementation of that decision in the field, however, or the "How?" is determined by the military echelon. Generally speaking, a government is not to blame for the behavior of soldiers, and soldiers should not be blamed for the decisions made by the political class.

To ask "Why?" is to invoke several principles that belong to the "just war tradition." The first is the right of self-defense. From an external point of view, from the perspective of the relationships between states, a state has the right to defend itself against attack. From the internal point of view, namely from the perspective of the relationship between a state and its citizens, a government has the duty to defend its citizens. A state must protect its citizens from acts of violence because it must preserve the conditions that enable it to exist; foremost among them is the preservation of the lives of its citizens. A democratic state is therefore under an obligation to defend its citizens' lives. Thus the state has a right vis-à-vis the enemy and a duty vis-à-vis its citizens. This is the distinction between a state's right of self-defense, which relates to what is beyond its confines, and a state's obligation of self-defense, which relates to what is within its confines. Both are applicable in our case, since beginning in 2001 over ten thousand Kassam rockets and mortars were launched from Gaza into Israel, endangering the lives of the citizens under attack.

Second is the principle of last resort, which dictates that if a dispute can be solved without resort to military force and inflicting casualties, then the parties are obligated to do so. The use of military force is justified, in other words, only if all other alternatives have been exhausted. Here, too, Israel is presumably in the right, for rather than launching an offensive immediately after the first Kassam rocket struck Sderot, the country waited eight years, during which it pursued other solutions, both military and political. Israel's long abstention from any large-scale military response in the face of this aggression presumably meets the principle of last resort.

Third, the probability of victory principle dictates that a military operation may be launched only if it has a reasonable chance of successfully achieving its aims. Such operations may not be initiated merely as a symbolic gesture of bravery. If there is no chance of victory, the use of military force is mere bloodshed. Yet here we must distinguish between classical wars like World War II and the Six-Day War in which victory meant the elimination of a military threat, and asymmetric counterterrorism or counterinsurgency warfare against a non-state entity, like the type Israel faces against the terrorist militias of Hizbullah and Hamas. In the latter, victory means significantly improving the security situation in the southern part of Israel by damaging the enemy's armaments infrastructure and crippling its ability to carry out terrorist activities. Here again, last year's incursion into Gaza met the pertinent condition.

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