Stop the rockets, but lift the siege
Any ceasefire will be temporary unless Israel starts negotiating seriously with the Palestinians
Jul 26th 2014 | From the print edition

THE mounting toll of innocents in Gaza is reason enough for anyone with compassion to demand a ceasefire. Since July 8th, when Israel began its campaign to clobber Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that has run the Gaza Strip since 2007, at least 700 Palestinians have been killed, most of them civilians and many of them children, along with at least 35 Israelis, including three civilians. After Israel undertook a ground invasion of Gaza on July 18th, the casualty rate on both sides soared. Hospitals have been hit and scores of buildings flattened, often with civilians inside. A Palestinian family of 25, said to have been hosting a Hamas fighter during a supper to break the Ramadan fast, was wiped out.

Yet it would be a grievous mistake to bring about a ceasefire that achieved nothing more than to revert to the status quo. In the longer run, if a more durable peace is to be built, the Israelis must seek a sovereign state for Palestinians, who, including Hamas, must in turn reiterate their support for a government that disavows violence and recognises Israel. Unless a ceasefire is couched in such terms, the poison will in time well up all over again and the cycle of violence will resume, as it has done repeatedly since 2007.

Only three months ago talks on a peace deal foundered. Could it be any different this time? One reason to think so is that both sides have seen how that collapse paved the way for a war that neither really wanted and which is now causing higher military casualties than Israel had been expecting.

The talks broke down chiefly because of Israel, said John Kerry, their sponsor and America’s secretary of state. In frustration, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinians’ moderate leader, formed a unity government that Hamas was persuaded to back. Whereas America cautiously welcomed this development, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, railed against it, fearing a united Palestinian front. When on June 12th three Israeli students were kidnapped and murdered on the West Bank, Mr Netanyahu instantly blamed the crime on Hamas, which unusually refused to claim responsibility for it, and rounded up at least 500 of the group’s members. Its retaliation, the multiplying rocket fire at Israel, led Mr Netanyahu to unleash his assault on Gaza.

The Israelis’ first stated military aim is the legitimate one of destroying Hamas’s stockpile of rockets, thousands of which have been fired indiscriminately—indeed, criminally and foolishly—into Israel in the past decade, killing around a score of Israelis and frightening millions more, as the missiles’ range and sophistication have increased. A newer aim, also legitimate, is to destroy Hamas’s military infrastructure, especially the tunnels that provide access to Israeli territory in the hope—among other things—of sending in guerrillas to murder Israelis, or kidnap them to barter for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

But war is about conduct as well as aims. Israel is wrong to hit buildings with no evident military purpose and houses packed with civilians, even if they harbour Hamas fighters or officials and the army gives warnings. It may also be counterproductive. Hamas knows that, as the death toll among its own people rises, it has a better chance to promote its cause.

The world’s biggest open-air prison

To stop the fighting Hamas must promise not to fire its rockets into Israel. But in return Israel should agree to honour an agreement dating to 2012 to lift the siege that has immiserated Gaza’s inhabitants since 2007 in an effort to enfeeble Hamas. And it should free, or put on trial, some of the hundreds of Hamas prisoners rounded up in the past month or so on the West Bank, the bigger bit of a would-be Palestinian state.

But the catastrophe befalling Gaza stems fundamentally from the refusal of Israel to negotiate in good faith to let the Palestinians have a proper state encompassing both Gaza and the West Bank. Mr Netanyahu still allows the building of Jewish settlements there, which makes a workable Palestinian state ever less likely to emerge.

Real mediation must be resumed. Egypt has to be involved, since it shares with Israel the keys to the prison that is Gaza, but its new military rulers hate the Islamists of Hamas as much as Israel does. Turkey and Qatar can help prod Hamas towards moderation but are loathed by Israel. America is still the one actor that has the weight, however diminished, to bring everyone to the table. Though bruised by his previous fruitless efforts, Mr Kerry must do more than just stop the rockets.