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The Israeli-U.S. Gaza War and Its Aftermath: the Hobbesian Test

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Herbert P. Bix
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In July 2004 Israeli jurists on the High Court of Justice (HCJ) deliberated on Israel's separation wall in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague had just determined, by a vote of 13 to 2, that the 30-foot-high wall was part of Israel's policy of building settlements on stolen or confiscated Palestinian land, and had condemned it as an illegal land grab, which other states should not recognize. The UN General Assembly almost immediately called on Israel to comply with the ICJ advisory opinion and end its illegal wall building, whose real aim was the defense of settlements, not Israel itself.

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Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 22 , May 2009 , e2
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2009

References

Notes

i Martti Koskenniemi, “Occupied Zone—‘A Zone of Proportionality,‘” Tel Aviv, June 2007; Aeyal M. Gross, “Human Proportions: Are Human rights the Emperor's New Clothes of the International Law of Occupation?” European Journal of International Law, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2007, pp. 1-35; “UN rules against Israeli barrier,” BBC News, July 9, 2004; Michael Mandel, “Self Defense Against Peace,” posted at Counterpunch.org, Feb. 5, 2009.

ii Helena Cobban, “Pogrund, ‘Left’ Zionism, belief, recognition,” posted March 14, 2009 at justworldnews.com.

iii Richard Falk, “Israel's war crimes,” Le Monde diplomatique—English edition, posted at mondediplo.com, March 3, 2009.

iv Gideon Levy, “The Silence of the Jurists,” Ha'aretz, posted 1/2/09.

v Michael Howard, et al, eds, The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (Yale Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 218-19.

vi See Dominik J, Schaller and Jurgen Zimmerer, “Settlers, imperialism, genocide: seeing the global without ignoring the local—introduction,” Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2008), pp. 191-199. Citing Raphael Lemkin, the prime mover behind the 1948 Genocide convention, the authors note (p. 195) that “settler colonies were especially prone to genocide.”

vii See Irene Gendzier, “What the US knew and chose to forget in 1948 and why it matters in 2009,” ZNET, posted Jan. 23, 2009.

viii “Israel Undermining NPT, El Baradei Warns: IAEA Chief Also Lashes Out US Over Iraq Carnage,” posted at Antiwar.com, Feb. 16, 2009.

ix Reuters, “Russian FM: Make Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone,” posted at Haaretz.com, March 8, 2009.

x Tom Spender, “Israel ‘planning Gaza invasion,‘” Al jazeera English, April 4, 2007.

xi On General Keith Dayton, see Helena Cobban, “Dayton on his Palestinian army's prospects,” justworld news, May 12, 2009.

xii As Middle East historian and journalist Helena Cobban noted, “deterrence” by definition is a reciprocal, not “self-referential” phenomenon involving only one party. See “Israel, deterrence, and self-referentialism,” posted at justworldnews.com, Jan. 18, 2009; Paul Rogers, “The Gaza Conflict,” Oxford Research Group, Dec. 2008.

xiii Karin Laub, “Hamas says it's back in control of the Gaza Strip,” AP News, Jan. 23, 2009.

xiv Patrick Martin, “Account of Israeli attack doesn't hold up to scrutiny,”“ Globe and Mail, Jan. 29, 2009.

xv Reuters North American News Service, “Final Gaza toll shows 960 civilians killed—group.” Posted at antiwar.com, March 12, 2009.

xvi “Israelis 'shot at fleeing Gazans,” BBC News, Jan. 15, 2009.

xvii Craig Whitlock, “Red Cross Reports Grisly Find in Gaza,” Washingtonpost.com, Jan. 8, 2009; A01.

xviii Mel Frykberg, “Israel May Face Charges for War Crime,” Inter Press Service, Jan. 7, 2009.

xix Amira Hass, “Gazans: IDF used us as ‘human shields’ during offensive,” Haaretz.com, posted Feb. 20, 2009; “Gaza ‘human shields’ criticized”, BBC, Jan. 8. 2009.

xx Amos Harel, “IDF rabbinate publication during Gaza war: We will show no mercy on the cruel,” posted at Haaretz, Feb. 19, 2009; Ben Lynfield, “Army rabbi ‘gave out hate leaflet to troops,‘” The Independent (UK), Jan. 27, 2009.

xxi Tony Karon and Tom Engelhardt,“ Change Gaza Can Believe In,” posted at antiwar.com, Jan. 23, 2009; Ethan Bronner, “A Play About Shells for Gaza Children,” New York Times, Jan. 24, 2009; Retired Col. Ann Wright Reports Back From 48 Hours in Gaza,“ posted at CommonDreams.org, Feb. 13, 2009.

xxii Joanne Curran, “Israelis destroyed 25, 000 homes in Gaza, Palestinians say,” The Daily Record.co.uk, posted Jan. 20, 2009; “Israel destroyed 41 mosques in Gaza, says ministry,” posted at www.turkishweekly.net,; “The U.S. Aid Offer is Disgraceful,” posted at Moon of Alabama, Jan. 31, 2009.

xxiii Lebanon and Gaza are not exactly comparable, as Gilbert Achcar notes, but the war crimes committed by officers and soldiers of the IDF do invite comparison. See Achcar, “The Crisis in Gaza: An Interview with Gilbert Achcar,” first published in Irish Left Review, reproduced on ZNet, Jan., 17, 2009; Helena Cobban, “At IPS: ‘Gaza, and Israel's Wars of Forced Regime Change,‘” justworldnews.com, posted Jan. 9, 2009.

xxiv Illene R. Prusher, “After the war, Gazans, seek answers on white phosphorus,” Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 5, 2009.

xxv Laura King, “Afghan civilian deaths: Who is to blame?,” Los Angeles Times, posted at latimes.com, May 17, 2009,

xxvi “Israel admits using white phosphorus in attacks on Gaza,” timesonline, UK, Jan. 24, 2009; David Hambling, “Doctors spooked by Israel's mystery weapon,” posted at wired.com, Jan. 30, 2009.

xxvii Mel Frykberg, “Israel Braces for Wave of Lawsuits,” ZNet, posted Feb. 20, 2009.

xxviii Said K. Aburish, The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of The House of Saud (St. Martin's Griffin, 1994, p. 269.

xxix Dagmar Barnouw, “The Fog of ‘Evil’: The Political Use of World War II in the Ongoing War on Terror,” Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (March 2009), pp. 8, 10.

xxx Noam Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War: Essay on the Current Crisis and How We Got There (Pantheon Books, 1982), pp. 233, …?

xxxi Said K. Aburish, The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (St. Martin's Griffin, 1994), p. 269.

xxxii Peter L. Hahn, Caught in the Middle East: U.S. Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1945-1961 (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004) and Charles D. Smith's review of Hahn, “American Middle East Policy: Response to Reality or to Domestic Politics,” in Diplomatic History, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Jan. 2006), p. 158; John Newhouse, “Diplomacy, Inc.,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 3 (May/June 2009), pp. 73-92.

xxxiii Newhouse, p. 82.

xxxiv See Noam Chomsky and Gilbert Achcar, Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign policy, Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War, and Justice, ed. by Stephen R. Shalom (Paradigm Publishers, 2007), pp. 60-70.

xxxv Seymour M. Hersh, “Syria Calling: The Obama Administrations Chance to Engage in a middle East Peace,” The New Yorker (April 6, 2009), p. 30.

xxxvi Richard Falk, “Israel's war crimes,” Le Monde diplomatique—English edition, posted at mondediplo.com, March 3, 2009.

xxxvii Chris McGreal, “Demands grow for Gaza war crimes investigation,” The Guardian (Jan. 13, 2009), posted at guardian.co.uk.

xxxviii Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, press release, Feb. 26, 2009.

xxxix BBC News, posted Jan. 25, 2009; Chris Hedges, “With Gaza, Journalists Fail Again,” posted at Truthdig.com, Jan. 26, 2009.

xl “Prosecutor: Gaza Probe Goes on Without Israeli OK,” AP, New York Times, May 20, 2009.

xli See Tony Karon, “Can Bibi Force Abbas to ‘Recognize’ an Oxymoron”, posted at Rootless Cosmopolitan, May 4, 2009. http://tonykaron.com

xlii Moon of Alabama, “The Iranian Weapon Ships,” posted Feb. 1, 2009.

xliii Anna Fifield, “Hizbollah admits full support for Hamas,” Financial Times, May 13, 2009.

xliv Jason Ditz, “Israeli Air Strike on Sudan Convey in January Killed 119; State Media, posted at antiwar.com, May 25, 2009.

xlv Helena Cobban, “M. Totten on Israel junket—and in JWN comments,” justworldnews.com, posted Feb. 25, 2009.

xlvi “Hamas ‘more popular’ since Israeli action,” The Australian, Feb. 6, 2009; “Poll Shows Hamas Gained Popularity Since Gaza War; Neither Hamas nor Fatah Particularly Trustworthy, Most Palestinians Feel,” antiwar.com, Feb. 6, 2009.

xlvii Reuters North American News Service, “Interpol reviews Iran requests for Israeli arrests,” posted March 10, 2009 at antiwar.com.

xlviii Noam Chomsky, “‘Exterminate all the Brutes’: Gaza 2009,” ZNet, posted Jan. 20, 2009.

xlix Anthony Carty, Philosophy of War (Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2007), Ch. 4 (“The Use of Force”), pp. 110-139. Also see Richard A. Falk's important review in American Journal of International Law, Vol. 102, (2008). Pp. 902-909.

1 The need for a new rhetoric of mutual empathy and the defense of morality as distinct from law are themes that run through Carty's essays in Philosophy of International Law.