Reply #25: Governments, Sir, Are Responsible For Maintaining A Monopoly On Political Violence Where They Rule [View All]

[The Magistrate]

It is obviously in their interest to do regarding violence arising internally towards them. When a government fails to do this in regards to violence directed from its territory against a neighboring state, it is responsible for that failure. The neighboring state may be satisfied with the efforts that government which has failed in this responsibility takes to curb the perpetrators (Spain seems satisfied with the efforts of French police against Basque separatists in the border regions), or may it, for reasons of policy or disinclination to press the matter fully, choose to refrain from vindicating itself against the neighbor's failure in duty (India has excellent reasons for not pressing to war with Pakistan), but it is not required to do either of these two things, and is within its rights to take such derelictions as casus belli.

The arrest of a group belonging to political rivals of Hamas does not establish any good faith effort by the Hamas government to curb rocket attacks against Israeli from the Gaza territory it rules. Attacks were carried out by Islamic Jihad and by the Popular Resistance Committees, and both these groups enjoy close ties with Hamas in Gaza, and their rocket teams were not arrested, or even hunted by Hamas police. There is no question that the Hamas government allowed these actions, or that it could have prevented them, or at least arrested their perpetrators, had it chosen to.