Roque,

I don't want to get into the history argument on this one. Else we end up in the never ending abyss and then Godwin's Law will probably be proved right yet again.

I'll just say my general schpeel on all this. And this is not taking the Palestinian side, 'cuz I think it's a nearly infinite number of errors on all sides. But The Palestinians really have never had a group that they choose to represent them--from all sides, factions, and constituencies of theirs--at the table since the peace process started. [Open question I suppose on 1947]. Even if Clinton was right that Arafat betrayed him, then Bill (and Dennis Ross & Crew) has no one really to blame but himself since he engineered a coup essentially bringing Arafat in and declaring him the legitimate broker on the Palestinian side. The idea that you will negotiate with Fatah and not Hamas to me is just more of that.

So in other words, I think Ross is basically telling the truth in what was offered, but he fails to grasp that the process was ultimately flawed from the get go (on both sides) and then he and Clinton are basically just trying to cover their butts in history. Which I can understand mind you, I can even understand how they feel that way (from their pov), but I wouldn't take it as gospel truth. There is another side to the story.

Freddie,

I agree with you that Israel has a huge nuclear arsenal and has mass deterrence against any country (including I would say a hypothetically nuclear armed Iran in the future). Country to country warfare is precisely where Israel is the strongest--which is why since '73 there really hasn't been one. Only these low-intensity conflicts that make use of their military vulnerabilities. Certainly, as I was pointing out with West Bank occupation and Gaza bombing, the Palestinians are also imperiled in many ways. Ways that are not often covered enough in US media. But when I talk on the Israeli side, when I say existential threat I mean the long term loss of political legitimacy of the state. (What I called losing the war, which is maybe the wrong metaphor). Jimmy Carter called it apartheid, which I'm not sure is the right word for it, but does get at the reality of the decreasing legitimacy of the state. Look at the israeli political scene. It is increasingly deadlocked and logjammed. Israel had more emigration out than immigration in this year. It has got itself (again rightly or wrongly) into increasingly militarized society, which is undercuts the moral of a liberal constitutional order.

I guess what I should have made clearer is that some state may continue to exist but my fear is that it slides further and further into the loss of its democratic nature. It was founded to be a Jewish liberal democracy. If it ceases to be the latter, whatever husk remains (even if it retains the name of Israel and still is based on Jewish citizenship), then in my mind it will have gone out of existence. Does that make sense?

What's the implication? S--t I don't know. War is hell. The only implication I draw from all this is that (as I said in the Hamas piece quoting Creveld):

When the strong fight the weak, the strong become weakened.

For me all the attempt to defend Israel from some doctrine of proportionality is completely useless relative to what is actually going on long term (strategically) in this fight. Israel continues to win battles only to be losing the long term war. Because the strong, esp. if it is a liberal constitutional democracy like Israel, begins to erode its own political legitimacy being drawn into these conflicts.

And I say this as someone who thinks Israel has a right to exist (in the pre-67 borders). If they continue on this path, they are in serious existential trouble. They will have won the armchair debate about proportionality to no practical avail.

The reason groups like Hamas embed themselves in civilian populations is that since WWII it is clear that liberal democracies will target civilian populations/infrastructure. e.g. The US firebombed Dresden, Tokyo even without using nukes. Whether that was right or not, is not a question I want to get into now, just that Hamas-like gropus are trying to use what they know will happen militarily to redound (morally) back on the strong power.

Like I said this is particularly, horribly brutal stuff. But it does have a logic. It's not Western versus Muslim or whatever. It certainly takes certain cues and is justified within those worlds by recourse to their own traditions, history, and such. But to me that is more the way it shows up, not the underlying structure. As Mark correctly pointed out this stuff goes back to Ho Chi Minh and Mao, not exactly Muslims either one of them.

But back to the Israel-Palestine version of this for a sec.

This is not a justification but rather simply an observation. From the Palestinian view the choice seems to be don't fire rockets (Fatah) and continue to have your land colonized--the "settlements" continue on in an ad hoc but pretty well unabated fashion in the West Bank. Choice #2: Fire rockets (Hamas) and get bombed. Either way the potential for ever creating a state continues to decline and Israel is left having to face the question of whether it can be a liberal democracy as it has to embed further and further into this occupation.

Roque,

Your point on propotionality to me, in its correctness, shows why the whole concept itself is now meaningless in an era of low-intensity conflict. That notion of proportional or disproportional assumes nation state to nation-state warfare. I have a long post as to why I think that Here if you are interested.

The proportionality doctrine comes out of Clausewitz's theory of warfare. And I think Martin van Creveld has demonstrably argued that the Clausewitzian paradigm of war is basically over.

As to the question of what replaces something like proportionality as a kind of rules of war for this new Low-Intensity Conflict Era I have no idea. I think they are basically brutal, with all sides committing all kinds of horrible acts.