Back in October, a fortnight after the appalling massacre of October 7, I wrote a piece in The Times in which I asked whether the conflict in Gaza could be judged to be a just war. From a position highly and overtly sympathetic to the right of Israel to retaliate against an obvious atrocity, I suggested that a durable peace was impossible if it only had a single signatory.
The idea of the just war, in the work of Thomas Aquinas and Hugo Grotius, has three parts: the war must be fought to put right a clear wrong; it must be conducted in accord with justice; and the aftermath must respect the motivating reason for war. Grotius, in particular, places a great emphasis on whether there is any prudential likelihood that the stated objective of the war can be achieved. The stated objective of the Netanyahu government is to eradicate Hamas and it was on that point that I raised the reservation that this war may not be just. What regime will the Israelis leave behind with the Palestinian Authority in no fit state to take over? Can they really drive tanks though an idea?
Six months after that piece I wanted to reflect, again more in sorrow than in anger, on the state of what has become a desperate and dreadful conflict. I am sadly afraid that those concerns look prophetic and there is even more fog in the war today than there was then.
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