“There has to be a just, or justifiable, way of responding to indiscriminate rocket attacks.” But there’s an extremely just way of responding: namely, end the occupation and end the blockade. Indeed, ending the blockade alone – though short of justice, which demands the end of the occupation as well – could have stopped the rocket fire. The 2008 lull could have been extended if Israel had lifted the blockade (as it ought to have done on moral grounds in any case). The 2012 ceasefire ended with an Israeli commitment to ease the blockade, which it didn’t do, and so there were periodic rocket launches (though Hamas itself fired no rockets until the Israeli rampage against Hamas on the West Bank in June 2014). In the current crisis Hamas has made clear that there would be no rocket fire if the blockade were ended.

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