The following is from Ami Isseroff’s posted article of March 13, 2007:
One of the key issues on the table between Israel and the Palestinians is the so-called “right of resistance.” Quartet and Israeli conditions for recognition of the Palestinian government include an end to violence, while Palestinians continually uphold the “right of resistance,” which is a major principle of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Letter. In practice, resistance always seems to include suicide attacks, shootouts and rocket attacks on civilians. Intentional attacks against civilians are crimes against humanity and cannot and should not be tolerated by the international community, nor should they be justified by “peace” groups….
March 9, 2007 – I was discussing with a friend the possibility of Israeli-Palestinian (or more generally, Jewish-Arab) dialogue. She sent me an article, entitled “Palestinians Debate ‘Polite’ Resistance to Occupation.” It reports widespread distrust within the Palestinian community in any notion of a non-violent intifada. A member of Hamas put it like this: “Nothing can be achieved through resisting the occupation in a polite way.”
….Non-violent resistance – Of course, nobody can deny the right of people to protest an injustice. If there were hundreds of thousands of Palestinians peacefully demonstrating for their own state and for peace it would be an effective and moral act. That doesn’t mean that all non-violent actions are good and moral. What would you think of a non-violent demonstration in support of apartheid or the “rights” of child-molesters?
…. Resistance against an occupation army is permitted by international law. Nobody would claim that the acts of the French Maquis or Russian or Polish or Jewish partisans against the Nazis were wrong, or that resistance to German occupation in World War I was not a moral act. However, if the representatives of the occupied people have an agreement with the occupier, it is questionable whether they can subvert that agreement by claiming the right to “resistance.”
Murder of civilians – Suicide bombings, rocket attacks and other violence directed against civilians is just plain wrong, whether they occur in Iraq or in Israel. They cannot be justified as “resistance.”
Click here for the entire article online at MidEastWeb for Coexistence.
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