The cycle of violence in Gaza

"Behold I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand, that thou mayest do to him as it seem good unto thee."
- I Samuel 24: 4

AND SO it must have seemed when the bombers with David's star upon them came out of the sky to smite the enemies of Israel in the land of Gaza - as trapped and confined as was Saul in that cave in the wilderness of Engedi. The damage was, as usual, heavy and disproportionate. Hundreds of Palestinians dead and wounded under the bombs, while the feeble rockets fired back at Israel caused minor damage. With Israel it is often 10 teeth for one chipped tooth.

But wait a minute. No country should have to stand and just take it when rockets rain down on its border towns from another country. Israel is justified in taking measures to protect its citizens. And the rocket fire from Gaza is all the more galling in that Israel left Gaza three years ago. The hated occupation ended. Jewish settlements were uprooted and residents forced to leave. Where is the justification for continued Palestinian attack?

One doesn't know if it might have made a difference if Gaza had been developed economically, with aid and business start-ups, factories and work shops to give the young men work. Would it have made any difference if Gaza had not been turned into a vast, impoverished internment camp, with only a trickle of goods and services allowed in when Israel deemed it fit?

But wait a minute. Didn't Gaza elect Hamas to power, a terrorist government that refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist? I remember Ezer Weizman telling me, when he was president of Israel, that it really shouldn't matter whether Israel's right to exist is recognized or not. "We do exist," he said, and the Palestinians who won't recognize that fact can't change reality. Nor can Israel erase the reality that Hamas exists.

Would it have made a difference if Israel and the United States had come to terms with Hamas, giving the freely elected government responsibility for running Gaza rather than simply trying to choke it?

Israelis have said that the Palestinians must recognize and admit that they are a defeated people, that they must bend to Israel's will. But somehow they never do. Israel's leaders also feel that Israel is not feared enough in the region. Thus the need for disproportionate vengeance, for disproportionate force to instill fear, for collective punishment to teach the Arabs a lesson they won't forget.

They don't forget, but they don't learn the intended lesson either.

It's been 30 years since I lived in Israel, and the yellowing clips of the articles I wrote could be published today without much change, such is the cycle of pain and vengeance that the Palestinians and Israelis have been inflicting on each other, each with their martyrs and their heroes, long before there was a Jewish state.

One has to wonder if reprisals will ever be effective, especially against a society steeped in martyrdom and revenge. Will bombing cause Gazans to reject Hamas, or will it increase its popularity? And if you want Gazans to stop the rockets, does it work to target their security apparatus? It is as if President Bush said to Mayor Bloomberg, there is too much crime in New York and I am going to bomb all the police stations until it gets better.

So, no, there is no justification for the Palestinians to continue their rocket attacks, even though there are reasons. But the kind of bombing that Israel is wont to do in Gaza, as in Lebanon a couple of years ago, may seem "good unto thee," but is it really going to change behavior? Or will it create more martyrs, more suicide bombers, to keep the cycle going? In the end, will Israel's brand of disproportionate violence against Palestinians achieve its ends? Trouble is it never has.

"As saith the proverb of the ancients, wickedness proceedeth from the wicked," but so far no one is saying "but my hand shall not be upon thee," as David said in Engedi.

H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.