🤥 Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into Israeli civilian areas.

Palestinians, like all people, have the right under international law (as affirmed by the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949) to resist their military occupation. While rockets are an indiscriminate and largely ineffective way to do this, the fact that they are fired by a besieged population should surprise no one.

Israel’s policies have effectively pushed Palestinians towards violence as a means of exercising their internationally recognized right to resist Israel’s military occupation and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Peaceful avenues for resistance, such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, have been stifled, while attempts at nonviolent protest, like the 2018-2019 Great March of Return, have been met with violence.

Hamas rockets, though largely ineffectual, have proven to be the only way for Palestinian resistance groups to get Israel’s attention and to interrupt the comfortable routine of Israeli life which comes at the expense of Palestinians in Gaza residing in a massive ghetto only kilometers away.

This argument highlights the glaring double standard when it comes to Palestine and Israel. Israel, the illegal occupier, repeatedly and far more effectively bombs civilian areas in the Gaza Strip, and sometimes the West Bank. Despite lacking the right to self-defense under international law against a people it occupies, Israel is given carte blanche to act. Conversely, Palestinians, whose right to resist occupation is recognized by international law, face criticism and heavy repercussions for exercising this right.

Israel’s illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip constitutes an unlawful use of force. As long as Israel’s occupation persists, it constitutes, according to international rules of responsibility, a continuous wrongful act. Therefore, Israel forfeits its right to self-defense, but that same right is preserved for the occupied state/people, i.e. the Palestinians.