The Laws of War Must Not Apply to Israel

Evelyn Gordon
Commentary/Contentions
06 May '11



http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/05/06/laws-of-war-must-not-apply-to-israel/

The international response to the Fatah-Hamas unity deal provides yet another example of a troubling development. Alone among the nations, Israel is increasingly denied the protections of the laws of war.

Thus, for instance, the West denounces Israel’s targeted killings of Hamas leaders even as it correctly deems America’s targeted killing of Al-Qaida’s leader perfectly legitimate (a double standard skewered by Alan Dershowitz this week).

Now the same double standard is being applied to Israel’s suspension of fund transfers to the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. and Europe have both demanded that Israel resume the transfers. Even the usually sensible Tony Blair, the Quartet’s Middle East envoy, echoed this demand. “The money is Palestinian money so it must be transferred,” Blair told Haaretz. “That is a Quartet position. Hillary Clinton made the same point.”

The money is indeed Palestinian: customs duties that, under a 1994 agreement, Israel collects on the PA’s behalf at its ports to spare importers the hassle of dealing with two separate customs offices. But under the laws of war, this fact is totally irrelevant.


The laws of war permit a country at war to freeze enemy assets in its territory lest they be used to finance the enemy’s campaign. And all countries do so. For instance, the U.S. and other NATO countries now bombing Libya have all frozen Libyan government assets.

No reasonable person would deny that Israel is at war with Hamas. Missiles are routinely fired at Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza, and the Islamist organization still refuses to recognize Israel’s existence. Contrary to Washington’s wishful thinking, the Hamas-Fatah accord hasn’t softened this position, as senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar made clear on the very day it was signed. According to the Jerusalem Post, he told Al Jazeera that his organization “will never recognize Israel,” as Palestinians reject “the rule of Poles and Ethiopians in their land.”

Nor can Hamas be part of a new PA government without benefiting from PA funds. No matter what mechanisms are created to prevent direct transfers from the PA to Hamas, money is fungible. The very fact that the PA will now finance governmental outlays in Gaza for which Hamas previously had to foot the bill frees up funds for Hamas’s war on Israel.

Thus the moment the deal was signed to bring Hamas into the PA government, Israel was entirely justified under the laws of war in freezing fund transfers to the PA. Indeed, none of the Western countries now sanctimoniously protesting the freeze would hesitate a moment to freeze the assets of any government that included a terrorist organization committed to their own destruction.

As far as the West is concerned, though, the laws of war don’t apply to Israel. Unlike other nations, it has no right to take reasonable, legal steps in its own defense. The West may preach equality before the law, but it falls back Orwell’s definition of equality: Some countries are clearly more equal than others.

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