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Firstly, please can you tell me why you are selectively moderating my comments? If it’s because I’ve broken the three in one day rule, that’s because I generally try to break down individual points into different posts. I’m sorry if that’s doesn’t fit the house style, and I won’t do it again, but I’d appreciate it if you allowed my other comments to go up, particularly as people are asking me questions about my position without seeing my latest posts.
Re. tactics: correct me if I’m wrong, but I always thought that you believe the right-wing Israel lobby is one of the primary obstacles to balanced American policy in the Middle East. If so, shouldn’t mainstream Jewish opinion be your main target?
As for the issues armaments, if you’ll forgive me quoting you, “I’m all eyes and ears. Evidence?”
As far as I can see the analogy breaks down on the count of context, scale, and intent. In other words it doesn’t meet any of the main requirements of an analogy. All you’ve produced so far is a general statement about fighting oppressors, which could apply to almost every conflict in human history, and hence isn’t much use in illuminating the situation.
Will read the Roy piece…Have you ever devoted a whole piece to the Warsaw Ghetto analogy? If so I’ll check it out.
If you make 10 comments in a day and I want to reply to them I approve them as I reply to them. That’s why it takes some time. I understand that you represent an important pt of view in the debate here so I’m relaxed about how much you post.
Good question. There are many ways one could approach this strategic question. You can attempt to tailor yr arguments to appeal to a constituency that is to your right hoping that if you articulate yr positions carefully enough & modulate them carefully enough, that they will eventually come to you. J Street does this & quite well. Israel Policy Forum does this fairly well. Brit Tzedek does this & less well.
But I’m a blogger and not a political organization. I see my role as speaking truth to power. If I speak it long enough & well enough I believe those sitting on the fence will be drawn closer to my pt of view. I am I.F. Stone and not J. Philip Randolph. I’m less of an incrementalist and more of a fighter against the established order (when it is unjust). I think the massive increase in readership of this blog since I began writing it is testimony that my strategy has worked fairly well.
You have to be more specific. I’m not clear what exactly you’re responding to and what evidence you’re asking for. You aren’t really claiming are you that the difference in scale of armaments between the Nazis & Jews and the difference in scale bet. Israel & Hamas is a bogus one? If so, that would be an easy one to argue.
I wrote an entire post about Roy’s essay & my thoughts about it. It relates to the Holocaust & the suffering Israel inflicted in Lebanon, not specifically to the Warsaw ghetto though that might be mentioned as an aside.
Why does it need the 40 year stuff etc etc for it to be an apt analogy? Even without that context isn’t it reasonable to say something like “I’m just making an analogy between an Iraqi fighting force defending its people from an oppressor as Jews did in the Warsaw Ghetto,” which – thus far – is as far as you’ve got in providing actually parallels between the two cases.
I’m sorry that you think I’m refusing to understand your nuance. The problem is, all I have to on is your statement about Palestinian resistance fighters. If you’d spell out some more of the similarities between the two cases, then I’d happily engage with them.
You want better comparisons? Here are a few: Khost, Sarajevo, Grozny, Sangin. These are far from exact, of course – context is everything – but they are far better than Warsaw, and that’s just from recent history.
I’m sorry that you feel I am unwilling to concede the enormity of the suffering etc. The truth is I am. With your blog, believe it or not, my silence is mostly consent.
I’m also sorry that you don’t feel I acknowledge that you think both sides share come of the responsibility. In what ways, then, do you think Hamas are responsible?
Alex, I’ve written about this times too numerous to mention. You’ve been reading & commenting at this blog regularly enough & long enough that you have to have read my statements on this subject. So pls. don’t expect me to rehash. If you do a Google internal site search using terms like “Hamas war crimes” or some such you should come up with at least some of what I’ve written. I haven’t done this myself so I’m not sure what the result will be. But it should get you some answers to yr question.
Alex,
These are much less known to the general public and thus resonate less. Listen, what’s the point of all this “Never again” talk, all the Holocaust memorials and movies etc, if in the end we cannot use the Holocaust analogies for anything. I think that Holocaust was so horrific that anything even remotely resembling it or looking like a slippery slope towards it should make our hair to stand on end. I don’t know about other Jews, but I view the conflict constantly through the Holocaust prism. Really. For example, this video documenting IDF invasion of Bil’in. I see the old Arab people made humiliated, step out of their car at a gunpoint of an arrogant Israeli soldier and think Holocaust. That’s how I was conditioned. I guess you are right that some people are conditioned in such a way as to shout treif on any Holocaust analogy, so, they might not be helpful.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%E2%80%9CHamas+war+crimes%E2%80%9D+site%3Awww.richardsilverstein.com&aq=f&oq=
“Your search – “Hamas war crimes” site:www.richardsilverstein.com – did not match any documents.”
You didn’t use the right Google format/protocol. Use this one which lists about 10 different posts. I’m not saying every one will be relevant, but I bet a few will contain the info you’re seeking.
The Waraw ghetto fighters were not fighting for their liberty they were fighting for their lives, because the Nazis wanted to kill every one of them. To say that the analogy is apt except for that little genocide detail – is to say that the analogy is not apt. The Nazi blockade on Warsaw was to starve the population. The Israeli embargo on Gaza, whether justified or not, is meant to cause hardships in order to bring down the Hamas. Not quite the same thing.
It’s a bit of a slippery slope from merely “causing hardships” to 1.5 million people to “starving” them. Certainly, Israel hasn’t gotten close yet to starving Gazans en masse. But just because it’s merely causing malnutrition among infants but not starving them to death…is that something you’d like to defend or be proud of?
In terms of the issue of balance of forces. If you’re saying that the imbalance of power between the two sides is similar in the two cases, then fair enough, although again it could be said of hundreds of other cases. If you’re literally comparing the strengths of Hamas in Gaza and the Jews in the Ghetto, though, it’s clear that Hamas are much stronger.
The key here is that Hamas have managed to make an art of asymmetrical warfare; whatever happens, they win. For a number of reasons, Israel won’t destroy them a la the Tamils in Sri Lanka or the Chechens in Chechnya. So they routinely win the media war, and are still able to wear down the Israeli population in the south through rockets. These do the job of demoralizing the population without the international opprobrium that goes with suicide-bombings. The point is that Hamas’ weakness is in fact its strength – this is yet another difference between Gaza 2009 and the Warsaw Ghetto.
FYI – a search of Hamas war crimes pulls up a number of posts about…Israeli war crimes. I don’t know what I should search for. Could you not give me a couple of statements regarding your thoughts about Hamas wrongdoing?
If you re-read what I wrote it should be pretty clear that I wasn’t claiming this at all. After all, there IS a diff. between 1943 & 2009 in terms of the development of armaments. Even the crudest guerilla insurgency these days has weapons the Warsaw ghetto fighters could only dream of.
I have written MANY times here that both Hezbollah and Palestinian militants who attack Israeli civilians within the Green Line are engaging in war crimes. I have written many times that I’d be glad to see some militia commanders in the dock in the Hague as long as there were Israeli generals alongside them. But one of my problems is that Israel will never agree to charging Hamas with war crimes in an international forum because they know that will automatically activate a demand that Israel face the same treatment. That is why it would never give a Marwan Barghouti or Ahmed Sadaat to an international tribunal as they should in order to strengthen the precedent of charging Palestinians with international war crimes. Then of course there’s always the possibility that the ICC would not gain a conviction & Israel would far prefer a sure conviction via Israeli justice.
According to the Rome Statute,
http://untreaty.un.org/cod/icc/statute/romefra.htm
So the fact that Palestinians are or have been prosecuted by Israeli courts renders their cases inadmissible to the ICC (on an individual basis, of course).
The ICC is an auxiliary court, it’s not meant to replace national jurisdiction as long as the latter is working. Unfortunately Israel has signed, but not ratified the Rome Statute, so (if I understand the legalese correctly) for referral of Israeli war criminals to the ICC either an Israeli declaration of acceptance of ICC jurisdiction on a case-by-case basis (Art. 12.3) or an UNSCR under chapter VII (Art. 13 (b)) would be needed. How likely is that?
But I think Israel claiming jurisdiction on crimes involving Palestinians is problematic since the Territories are not Israel’s sovereign territory. Do we really want to concede that Israel has “national jurisdiction” over Palestinians?
Personally, I think this is yet another reason why Israel would never concede a case to the ICC (& conversely why it SHOULD do so.
Actually, a number of countries claim universal jurisdiction when one of their citizens becomes victim of a crime abroad and the state where the crime happened doesn’t prosecute and/or extradite the suspect. (Remember Spain’s prosecution of Augusto Pinochet?)
I don’t know though if Israel is among those states, or if they just claim a right to extralegal “measures” anywhere in the world, as they’ve often done, even in friendly countries (see under Munich ’72, e.g.).
But I fully agree that Israel should ratify the Rome Statutes and the additional APIC asap, along with every state that hasn’t done so yet.
There are many crimes for which universal jurisdiction applies, they can be prosecuted anywhere regardless of the nationalities of the perpetrators or victims or where the offence was committed. See for example Spanish judge to hear torture case against six Bush officials.
Like Fiddler, I think the chances of the ICC being used in this context are vanishingly small. However there are other avenues. IMO people should focus on the likelihood of bringing proceedings successfully rather than on the egregiousness of the offence. Cases regarding house demolitions are much more likely to be effective than soldiers shooting old ladies. The former are often well documented and incontrovertible, the latter will likely be stymied by all manner of obfuscatory tactics. This might seem heartless, and to some extent it is, but at the moment there is NO justice whatsoever.
This is a lesson to me to read before referencing!
I believe the Torture Convention which is what the Spanish officials are using is may be constrained in its applicability as Fiddler described. However, I believe grave breaches of art 147 of the 4th Geneva Convention are not so constrained.
Alex, as far as I can understand the only thing which you believe could be compared to the Warsaw Ghetto is … the Warsaw Ghetto. All the discussion centres around whether that is the case, or alternatively if there are any features of the Gaza siege which make a comparison appropriate. I don’t think we’re going to change each others minds quickly.
With regard to the wisdom as opposed to the appropriateness of the analogy: For those who wish to obscure Israel’s offences this is a cheap target and they are going to leap on it. However, I think most ordinary people, including Jews (even in the US), will not have a problem seeing that there are parallels. Neither do I think they will be impressed by any smokescreen thrown up to obscure those parallels. To say “I’m not engaging in murder” is hardly a convincing defence when you are holding a bloody cudgel over a cowering victim.
Analogies are not usually exact equivalences. The reason people use Warsaw for analogy is that it is the pre-eminent example, a common rhetorical device. When Israelis and supporters of Israel compare Hamas to the Nazis, they are often NOT making an analogy but attempting to draw a more exact equivalence! Successfully so if we are to judge from the degree of mistaken beliefs commonly held about it, particularly in the US. Is that not a more serious problem? Most people know the Warsaw Ghetto well enough to be able to see the parallels as well as the differences. Nobody is claiming that Israel is attempting to annihilate Gazans but you don’t get points for not committing genocide.
More on the ‘parity of arms’ between Hamas in Gaza and Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto – http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1074682.html
Did you notice the link at the bottom of the article:
Egypt seizes 560 sheep being smuggled into Gaza via tunnels
All these posts deal with Israeli war crimes. Btw, to be clearer, I’m not asking if you think Hamas have committed war crimes; I’m asking what responsibility you think they hold for the current impasse?
Ah, I see. That’s a diff. question than the one you asked yesterday. Not sure how to answer the question since it covers so much ground. Perhaps you could qualify it in some way & let me know what specifically you want to know in regards to Hamas’ role in “the current impasse.”
BTW, I think I’ve written many times here that Hamas is not by any stretch my ideal political movement. I almost surely wouldn’t vote for Hamas were I Palestinian (nor would I vote Fatah). Hamas are bad guys just as much as the extreme Israeli nationalists, or settlers or Fatah are bad guys. I especially don’t like the Hamas crowd in Damascus. But along with many Israeli analysts, I think there are elements within Hamas with whom a peace could be negotiated. Not a perfect peace. But a peace. The problem here is that there is no Israeli Obama, no political leader with the courage and foresight to renounce the military option as a policy of first choice & to embrace negotiation as the option of first choice. I don’t know if there CAN be an Israeli Obama.
I’d agree with you that I think Israel should negotiate with Hamas, although I think Hamas recognition of Israel should be a pre-requisite (note recognition of Israel and not recognition of Israel’s ‘right to exist’, which is meaningless). I guess I’m more cynical than you as to where that would lead us, but I certainly think it should be a policy commitment to find out. Needless to say the current Israeli leadership won’t be taking us in that direction.
A 2006 interview with Ismail Haniyeh conducted by the Washington Post, in which he answers the question of ‘recognition’ – among other things.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/24/AR2006022402317.html
And even if this interview wasn’t proof of Hama’s intentions there is no reason to believe they are the comic book villains the Zionists make them out to be.
Israel kills far more civilians and abuses far more Palestinian civilians on a REGULAR DAILY BASIS.
If we’re comparing suffering – there is NO question. Israel is ruining far more lives.
It’s amazing how simple the truth is. We have countless studies on life under the Occupation. So much data and blah blah.
Still Zionists LIE over and over.
LD – no he doesn’t. He knows very well what he has to do: recognise the Israel that is recognised by the international community and is a member of the United Nations, i.e. Israel within its pre-1967 borders. I never claim them to be cominc book villains. But – just like the current Israeli Prime Minister – they are rejectionists.
Haniya has no obligation to recognize Israel unless & until Israel is willing to recognize Hamas. Let us know when you Israelis can get there & you’ll really have something to talk about. I never cease to be amazed at the obliviousness that Israel supporters manifest. Obligations always rest with the other side, never with Israel.
Alex, I do not know if you even read the article.
Does Israel recognize the right of return? Does Israel obey international law?
You tout the fact that Israel is a member of the UN but Israel regularly dismisses the UN. The UN means nothing to Israel.
The UN and all those other progressive institutions mean nothing to powerful entities, be it corporations or States like the US or Israel.
Put all this in context.
I see no substantiated argument against Hamas. And that does not absolve them from their acts of terror. That’s the SAD part.
Israel is ‘accepted’ in the same way Saudi Arabia is accepted.
It’s political not moral. But if that’s what you mean by stating Israel is a member of the UN – then just say so.
But keep in mind the great irony here. I do recall that Israel was allowed into the UN on the condition that it recognize the right of return. Well, it hasn’t and never will.
It all comes back to Zionism. Maintaining that ethnic majority; the Jewish majority.
I remember Norman Finkelstein lampooning Abbas at one of his lectures. He compared Israel’s hysterical reaction to Ahmedinejad versus their relationship w/ Abbas.
It turns out that Abbas is a Holocaust denier. He wrote a paper on it in fact. And look how highly he is held by the Israeli and US planners.
So forgive my intense skepticism whenever a Zionist attempts to take the moral high-ground (i.e., whining about terrorism).
Robert Fisk – one of the best journalists covering the Middle East – has a tribute to Tom Hurndall that connects nicely to some discussions here:
(emphasis mine)
Does that mean you don’t think it’s a war crime if it doesn’t kill anyone?
Silly question. If it is a war crime, then let’s bring to justice every Israeli gunner who’s ever fired a rocket or tank shell on a civilian area in Lebanon or Gaza–not to mention all those cluster munitions–whether or not they killed or injured anyone. I don’t see justice in b&w terms as you seem to. Justice is relative. You get as close to justice as you can.
I’m merely asking questions; not drawing conclusions.
Not everywhere in Gaza was attacked Peter; you make it sound like the whole area was a shooting range (maybe you even believe it), in which case a hell of a lot more people would have died.
Uh, that’s pretty much what it was. You’re not there. I’ve read accounts by multiple journalists who have been there since the war and they directly contradict you. 4,000 homes were completely destroyed. Tens of thousands without shelter. Could you tell us a few major neighborhoods which remain unscathed? A few post war pictures might be good visual aids as well.
I am not sure to which comments this refers to. I have no sympathy to an argument that had Israel wanted to kill much more people it could have done so. Israel knows it cannot really engage in carpet bombings, but does everything to push the line. Use of cluster bombs in Lebanon and WP in Gaza (and Lebanon) is really nothing more in my eyes than state terror.
Not everybody was attacked? Well, not everybody was attacked in Sderot either, judging by the number of casualties through the years, n’est-ce pas? And I am not sure what is more horrific: not to know whether you are going to be attacked or not or to expect an attack with almost a certainty. In fact, from people who visited Sderot, this point is often voiced and I appreciate it: to leave in constant danger of a Qassam falling on you, even though it is known as abysmally ineffective, is indeed a horrible thing. So, what can be said of Gazans, who have been living under the Damocles sword of much greater effectiveness for years?
The issue of the right of return is far more complicated, as you and I both know, particularly as the relevant resolution speaks of “willing to live in peace with their neighbours”. Given that the right of return is used as the trojan horse to destroy Jewish statehood, it’s clear that Israel is right to oppose it. Having said that, if the Palestinian refugees agreed to come and serve in the army and learn Hebrew (those who were able to do so, of course, like everyone else), I would have no problem accepting their return en masse.
“Israel regularly dismisses the UN”
I think you mean that Israel regularly dismisses UN General Assembly resolutions, which aren’t binding.
The Saudi analogy is apt – both states have the same rights and responsibilities accorded them by the international system (right to exist not being one of them).
The Abbas point is absurd – Abbas wrote his phd thesis or something twenty years ago; he clearly doesn’t hold the same views now, in contrast to Ahmadinejad, who regularly parrots them whenever he gets a chance.
“Destroy Israel?” How will the exercise of the right of return “destroy” Israel? I wish you and many others using such careless, imprecise language would take greater care. What you really mean to say is that it will unalterably change the demographic makeup of the Jewish state and force it to come to terms with something it has always refused to do: that it expelled 700,000 Arabs from Israel in 1948 in a primal national sin.
You also conveniently neglect to acknowledge that both the Geneva Accord and Saudi Initiative propose amending the terms for exercising the Right of Return so that most refugees would receive financial compensation and not physically return (though some would). This exercise of the Right of Return would not “destroy” Israel, though it would allow it to come to terms in at least a basic way with the crime it committed in expelling its Arab inhabitants.
As for compelling a native of pre-1948 Israel to learn Hebrew as a condition for returning, I find that notion laughable. Should we make it a condition for Native Americans to attain U.S. citizenship that they learn to speak English? Keep in mind these Arab refugees are people who lived in this land long before you or most Israelis did. What right do you have to impose on them a language that is alien to them? This is precisely the problem I have with the condesenscion of these sorts of ideas. BTW, should we also compel them to root for Betar Yerushalayim? Why not compel them to paint their homes (if they have one) blue and white with a Jewish star?
Richard – I’m not questioning the extent of the destruction – I’m saying if it was a ‘free-for-all’, i.e. kill and destroy whoever and whatever you want, a hell of a lot more people would have been killed, and many more places destroyed.
As for right of return, even Noam Chomsky acknowledges that large-scale implementation of the right of return would see Israel become an Arab state. That would mean the destruction of Israel, although it wouldn’t necessarily entail physical harm to its Jewish citizens.
Do you support the implementation of the right of return? There’s nothing ‘convenient’ about my neglecting to acknowledge Geneva etc – if that settlement is supported by the various peoples of the land, I will support it too.
Some of the Arab refugees lived on this land long before I did; some are the grandchildren of those who lived on this land long before I did. I don’t believe that bestows inherent rights, anymore than I should have inherent rights when it comes to Germany or Poland.
You are right about Hebrew – I didn’t mean for it to come out as a prerequisite. What I meant was some way of securing the recognition of the returnees that the country was a Hebrew-speaking democracy (although Arabic should also be privileged). I see no other way of understanding the provision of ‘willing to live in peace with their neighbours’. If you’re coming to change the polity, you’re not willing to live in peace.
I think Geneva & the Saudi initiative are the real hopes for ending this conflict. I’m glad to hear that you would support them if Israelis & Palestinians would too, though it would be nice to have you support it NOW, rather than waiting to see that others support it later.
You don’t believe if I lived in Jaffa in 1948 & was physically expelled that this bestows “inherent rights” on me?
I’m glad to hear that. I agree with you.
Well I do – broadly speaking – support the Geneva Accords now. I just don’t think it’s realistic at this point in time.
RE. Jaffa – I don’t think it gives me any inherent rights to change the polity of the state, although it should give me rights vis-a-vis my property and the wrong that was done to me, on an individual level.
I agree w. you about that.
But that was exactly what revisionist Zionism was about, wasn’t it? Jews came to Palestine to create a Jewish state, and in a land where the existing population is about 95% non-Jewish, that means changing the polity. That’s not changed by the fact that Palestine wasn’t a sovereign Palestinian state but a province of the Ottoman Empire, and then under British mandate. Neither did the fact that some millennia ago Jews had ruled the land give the newcomers any inherent rights.
So why should the Jewish population between the sea and the river enjoy national and political collective rights while Palestinians are reduced to individual owners of property?
Well I think that both Palestinians and Jews should have national and political collective rights, but not one at the expense of the other, hence the need for a sensible partition (hopefully leading to a more integrated solution in the long-term).
Well, Peter, I think you’re overly concerned with the Holocaust. It’s not forbidden territory, but analogies should be accurate, and I’ve seen nothing here to suggest that the Warsaw Ghetto analogy is.
As for Gaza, I think that the discourse between left and righ or zionist and anti-zionist or however you want to phrase it would be improved when both sides acknowledged that the following two statements can be simultaneously true.
1) Israel does a number of terrible things.
2. Israeli bad deeds are exaggerated.
2 does not exclude 1; 1 does not exclude 2, yet most discourse is built around the assumption that one excludes the other.
Richard – is there any chance I can be taken off moderation? It’s a bit frustrating to post responses to people only for them to be seen ten hours later.
I’m trying to figure out why you’re being moderated. I can’t find either yr e mail or IP in my moderation list. Is it possible that you’re using dynamic IP? If so, my blog is set up to moderate all first time IPs, which would be why your comments are being moderated.
How do I find out if I’ve got dynamic IP? It happens both when I write from my home laptop and when I write from work…
I think this comment was moderated as well & not published immediately. But it should’ve been since I approved a comment of yours yesterday fr. this IP. I’m a little befuddled why you’re in moderation given that you’re using the same IP as last night. I’ll look more closely at my moderation list to see if any of the IPs you use are still in there. But I already checked last night & they weren’t as far as I could tell.
But I do apologize for the inconvenience.
Richard – I don’t know what you mean by recognising Hamas. I am talking in formal terms – the international system works via recognition. The idea that Israel has to recognise Hamas is as meaningless as saying Iran should recognise Israel’s right to exist. Israel has done deals with the Palestinians over the issue of recognition – deals which unfortunately (and for this Israel has to take a large share of the responsibility) haven’t made much progress beyond the stage of rhetoric, but Hamas can’t even bring themselves to make that rhetorical commitment.
But if we were to accept your formulation, how would we get out of the morass? What if I said “Israel has no obligation to recognise Hamas unless and until Hamas is willing to recognise Israel”?
I don’t know what this means. It sounds like a definitive statement, but is empty of meaning.
I find it odd that you say that Hamas must recognize Israel, but Israel has no such obligation to recognize Hamas. And I don’t have a clue what you mean by “formal terms.” The PLO did not recognize Israel before it began negotiating with Israel. Why change the rules solely for Hamas?
I don’t believe either party needs to recognize the other BEFORE they negotiate. The goal of negotiations is to get to recognition & acceptance of ea. other. But this may not be a precondition (unless you merely want to set up terms that destroy the chance of any negotiation happening).
Wikipeida is good on the issue of recognition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition
Somehow, Hamas have to show that they acknowledge the right of Israel to sovereignty over part of the land – one per cent would do for me. Now Israel has done that – unfortunately it’s only shown it’s willing to create a Palestinian bantustan, but I believe that to be more than what Hamas are prepared to accept (the odd contrary statement to the western media notwithstanding, which should of course be pursued seriously by concerned third parties). There’s no point in embarking on negotiations in Hamas if there is no possibility to end the conflict. Long-term truces are pointless; it would be better to stay in the OPT than to go down that road.
Just when I was beginning to believe you actually had a few good things, informative things to say about the conflict, you prove me wrong. A long-term truce is what Hamas is offering w/o any negotiations haven’t happened yet. For you to make the horrible statement that you’d rather continue Israel’s heinous Occupation because Hamas doesn’t offer you what you want BEFORE there’s been ANY negotiations is ridiculous. I’m sorry you don’t recognize that.
Well first of all Hamas’ statements about a truce fall into the category of their contrary statements to western media etc – I hope the Obama administration will pursue them to find out how serious they are. I’m a believer in 242, which means land for peace. Withdrawing from the OPT without a peace deal would be a strategic liability. Israel needs to pursue policies that will get Palestinian consensus on something along the lines of a Geneva Accords. This means stopping settlement expansion, removing checkpoints etc etc. But, given what’s happened in Gaza and Lebanon, unilateral withdrawal wouldn’t be very sensible.
A minor correction to your translation of the excerpt from Zamir’s article (and you might consider including the link to the Hebrew original) – he doesn’t say an “innocent Arab civilian” but “innocent Western citizen”.
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I’m not sure why, when I’ve made a pretty clear statement on the issues, you have to ask me to clarify myself. But the answer is yes. But such a charge will only resonate when it involves rockets that actually killed or injured an Israel civilian. There haven’t been very many of those. But yes, I’d support charges in those cases.