[Washington Post] David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey - In its operations against Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, Israel's conduct has been fully compliant with the applicable norms of international law. In determining the existence of a legitimate casus belli, a state is entitled to consider the entire context of the threat it faces. Hizballah is not simply a terrorist gang, like Germany's Baader-Meinhof or Italy's Red Brigades. It is a substantial political and military organization that has more than 12,000 short- and medium-range rockets and that has operated freely on Lebanese territory for many years, whose stated goal is Israel's destruction, and is the client of a major regional power - Iran - whose government appears dedicated to the same goal. Moreover, although international law requires a state to have a lawful reason to use force - such as self-defense - it does not mandate that a state limit its military response to "tit for tat" actions. Once a country has suffered an armed attack, it is entitled to identify the source of that attack and to eliminate its adversary's ability to attack again. It is not required to accept a limited conflict that fails to meet and resolve the danger it faces. No state has the right to permit a foreign military force to use its territory to launch attacks against another country. Lebanon's failure to expel Hizballah would in and of itself have been a legitimate cause for Israeli military action. It was the Taliban's sheltering of al-Qaeda that was the basis of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in 2001. Although there is some grim humor in the spectacle of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose troops have ravaged Chechnya, criticizing Israel for a "disproportionate" use of force, the claims are without merit. In NATO's 1999 war against Serbia, airports, bridges, and the power grid were attacked - with the agreement and approval of the European governments involved. In the current conflict, Israel's primary military purpose in attacking these targets appears to be to cut Hizballah's supply lines, not to punish Lebanon. Hizballah intentionally operates from civilian areas, both to protect its military capabilities from attack and to increase civilian deaths, which can then be trumpeted for propaganda purposes. But the presence of a large civilian population does not immunize Hizballah or Hamas forces from attack. Responsibility for any additional civilian casualties must be attributed to those groups, not to Israel. The legal rights Israel is exercising to defend itself today are the very same legal rights on which the United States must rely in the war on terrorism. Attempts to revise the traditional laws of war so that law-abiding states cannot effectively protect their own populations from attack or even defend their territory from armed incursion are not humanitarian advances. They simply make the world safer for those who reject any notion of law in war. The writers are Washington lawyers who served in the Justice Department under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
2006-07-26 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive