During a UK parliamentary discussion, Conservative MP Crispin Blunt said that Hamas rockets fired at Israel could be “legitimate” if the terrorist group had the ability to “engage in targeting” of specific Israelis.
“This is a complex and difficult question that we have to…address,” said Blunt. "Whilst we’ve already taken a position on what is plainly the stupid, illegitimate, immoral mortaring of people where you can’t tell what the targets are, simply by flying weapons over the wall, because you don’t have the capacity to engage in that targeting of what would be legitimate targets under international law as resistance.”
Conservative MP Mark Harper replied: “Did I correctly hear him when he was talking about the indiscriminate Hamas attacks that they send into Israel that he seemed to be saying the only problem with them is that they weren’t more accurately targeted to kill certain Israelis and that they indiscriminately killed other Israelis, and if they targeted the weapons more accurately that would be sort of okay. Now, I fear I may have misunderstood him but could he put me right? Because if so I find that offensive and an extraordinary thing to say.”
Blunt answered: “You have, under international law, a legal right to resist. Now, not only is the use of those weapons unlawful because they’re un-targeted and they’re indiscriminate. It’s also fantastically stupid because you then give the Israelis their whole raison d’etre for their argument about the threat they are facing from the Palestinian people.”
He added: “That’s why I deplore violence from the Palestinians of any kind. Because they’re going to get smashed.”