Asymmetrical agency

Following the Israel-Palestine conflict, I've noticed a tendency to sometimes shift agency--and therefore, the implication of moral culpitude--from one faction to the other. For example, consider the following two, undoubtedly true propositions:

(1) Israel's attacks of Gaza had the effect of further radicalizing the Palestinians, diminishing the chances for peace.

(2) Hamas' sporadic attacks of Israel had the effect of provoking them to attack, diminishing the chances for peace.

In (1), we imbue Israel with what I'm calling agency--which is not only the capacity to but the expectation that a person or group will make rational and moral decisions. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are treated as a fact of the naturalistic world--as something that can be scientifically studied, understood, and mastered, and that will react to stimuli in a consistent and reliable way (if you attack them they will be radicalized, just as surely as adding Na+ to Cl- will form salt). In (2), it is just the opposite--we are treating Hamas as the rational, morally accountable decision-maker, and it is the easy-to-provoke Israelis that are the facts of nature.

So what is going on here? I think it's pretty clear that ascribing agency to one side has a very specific use, which is when you are trying to dispense practical wisdom to a particular side. For example, the proper context for (1) would be if I were advising Israel strategically--if I were pointing out the objective effects of Israel's actions. Similarly, the proper context for (2) would be if I were advising Hamas strategically.

In these kinds of strategic contexts, the question of moral culpability is not at issue--however, in normal language a sentence like (1) nevertheless strongly implies the moral culpability of Israel but not Hamas (with the reverse being true for (2)), which can lead to all sorts of confusion, since it sounds like suddenly one side is not being held morally culpable at all.

Specifically, one confusion I saw during the Gaza action would be that bloggers like Ezra Klein or Matt Yglesias would keep making claims similar to (1) in the context of advising Israel on what it should do to accomplish its strategic goals, and right-wing Israel backers would accuse them of disproportionately blaming Israel or failing to acknowledge the immorality of Hamas' actions. But of course, that's just confusing a case of asymmetrical agency with asymmetrical culpability. The other confusion is one that I think subtlely pops up from time to time, which is that someone will try to shirk moral culpability for their side by framing things such that their side does not have agency. For example, if the debate is whether Israel's actions in Gaza were immoral, it would be neither here nor there if the person defending Israel pointed out that Hamas had to expect Israel to respond forcefully to its provokations since that is what any country would do.

Moreover, I think the thing to keep in mind is that when the context is moral culpability, it is a "both and" situation: both Israel and Hamas must be held morally culpable for their actions as judged against a universal set of principles.