The Gaza attacks suggest that Israeli authorities are trying to become stronger in the future negotiation process and are using the current opportunity to achieve what they will not be able to in the future. Maybe this is a step that was taken considering that the US will not extend extensive support under President-elect Barack Obama's lead.
However, aggressive foreign policy does not deserve such a cold line of reasoning because what has been going on in Gaza is a plain massacre. What is being punished is not actually Hamas but the Gazan people because they elected Hamas. This tragic situation, which the West is following reluctantly and indifferently, is pretty illustrative because it shows that democratic progress in the East is approved by the West only if their people elect the previously endorsed candidates.
Hamas' rocket fire before the attacks does not justify the disproportional response by Israel that killed many civilians. More importantly, the entire Gazan people were subjected to a cruel campaign after which they have to deal with a growing lack of food, potable water and electricity. In other words, everything is being done to make sure that the allegedly radical groups and elements are forced to remain so.
We are not unfamiliar with this state attitude. Describing a social and political issue with reference to combating terrorism is a tactic that forces your rival to remain a terrorist. Turkey has been doing this for at least 25 years. This, of course, does not justify the other side's reliance on violence. Currently, neither the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) nor Hamas is willing to subscribe to any option that will smooth politics. They are aware that this will seriously undermine the power structure of the organizations relying on violence, and they do not want to lose the military structure of their organizations.
Interestingly, all states dealing with such organizations have the same mentality and mindset. In fact, these states are afraid of their societies; they restrict liberal movement in their societies because of the opportunity they grant to the states' opponents. Every real alternative solution bears the risk of revealing the exaggeration of the perception of threat. For this reason, the alternatives pointing to a political style or negotiation process are not considered. If the PKK still exists in Turkey, the Republic of Turkey is responsible for this. Likewise, it is Israel that made Hamas an important actor and encouraged the Palestinians to rely on violence.
Meanwhile, the problem is not resolved by accusing these two states. Considering the official indifference after the latest Gaza attack, we may conclude that the US has no objection to relying on violence and unjust moves in the Middle East. What the people are going through means nothing in a world of nation-states where political actors consider nothing but the opportunities to maximize their interests. Defeating Hamas will change the power share in the Arab world and expand the nation-states' sphere of action. Therefore, the Muslim world currently relies on a dual language: Their crocodile tears are reported in the media while they actually make cold calculations behind the stage.
The real matter is that the foreign policy approaches of nation-states are shaped by authoritarian mindset. This approach describes the world as a playhouse where the nations are in conflict to win a zero-sum game. This leads the unfilled social demands to rely on violence because failure to respond to these demands is possible only when they are allowed to become illegal by relying on violence. Therefore, the real problem is that the current nation-states fail to internalize democracy. Liberal democracy has served as a buffer zone in the process where the nation-states have shaped their authoritarian grounds as it presented election systems as democracy. At the point where the mechanisms of the liberal democracy prove to be insufficient, the deliberate blindness of the state produced the current politics of terror.
Now we all think that Israel is doing something illegal and immoral. We all condemn this state, which recently pledged not to carry out such an attack. But an authoritarian mindset perceives ethics and morality through a pro-interest approach, and for this reason, the nation-state itself is immoral and unethical. Israel should be condemned. If your eyes are shut to your own state, this condemnation means nothing, and people still keep dying there.
