Epilogue: Israel’s Further New Wars

Abstract

At the end of 2005, the Al-Aqsa Intifada had been under way for more than five full years but showed no signs of ending. It had claimed 1,064 Israeli victims, of whom 745, or 70 percent, were civilians; another 7,462 Israelis had been wounded, 70 percent of them (5,212) also civilians. These data give rise to melancholy reflections about the consequences of new wars, and wars in general, in which the heaviest price is paid by the civilian population. Even in democracies, civilians do not make the decision to go to war, do not prosecute the war, and are usually unable to cope with it, either mentally or physically. The casualties on the Palestinian side were vastly higher than those of Israel. Between September 30, 2000, and October 31, 2005, 3,729 Palestinians were killed and nearly 25,000 wounded; of the latter, 7,789 were struck by live ammunition and 6,510 by rubber or plastic bullets. Less than one-third of the Palestinians who were killed had taken part in the fighting; more than a thousand of those who were killed had not taken any part at all in the war (The details regarding the others are not entirely clear.) Nearly one-third of the Palestinian dead were under the age of 18, and all told, possibly 50 percent of all the dead and wounded on the Palestinian side had not fought against Israel. ¹ These data were current as of the end of October 2005. Since then, the number of victims has risen almost daily, with the percentage of civilians among the casualties remaining steady.