There are a couple basic flaws in the argument advanced by LL - that terrorism is just the weak side conducting war by the only means possible. It presumes that conducting any sort of war is necessary to begin with. Virtually all Palestinians who have died at the hands of the Israelis have died in the past 11 years of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The first 33 years of it yielded virtually no deaths, and the culmination of those 33 years was an offer of statehood on nearly all of the disputed territory. The Pals chose to reject this and start up a bloody intifada. They chose war over peace. Whatever the response of Israel, be it disproportionate or not, the choice of war was that of the Palestinians and hence it is a fallacy to argue that they have no choice but to use terrorism. If war was forced upon them the argument would have some weight. It has no weight when the terroristic side chooses war.
The second major point here is that people who argue that the Pals are conducting war by the only means possible don't understand what the real purpose of the terrorism is. The Pals cannot defeat Israel militarily with terrorism, no matter how much of it they conduct, no matter how many civilians they kill. Nor can they accomplish the purpose through the indirect channel of instilling terror in the Israeli citizenry and hence causing them to pressure their government to accede to the Pal demands. The Pals know very well that the opposite is true. The terrorism only serves to harden Israeli opinion against the Pals, and causes them to elect one hard line government after another. If the U.S. we were suffering daily terrorists attacks, would we elect people with a softer and more conciliatory approach, or hardliners who promise to stamp the terrorists out with force? I think we all know the answer to that question.
The hard line regimes of Sharon and Netanyahu are exactly what the Pals have bought and paid for. The Israeli left (it's Labor Party) has been in the political wilderness for over a decade now. This is exactly what the Pals want, because this is a war of public relations. They know that the terrorism will cause increasingly hard line Israeli governments to undertake increasingly hard line responses that will result in the deaths of an increasing number of Pals, including especially civilians who will inevitably be caught in the line of fire.
And the Arabs, in all their disdain for western culture, understand some things about that culture. They are aware that "Christendom" has been afflicted with 2 millennium of anti-semitism, which causes any action taken by Jews to endure 1000 fold the scrutiny of actions undertaken by anyone else. And second, they know of this "soft spot" liberal tradition we have for backing the underdog - the implicit assumption that might makes wrong. They play to both of these elements in western culture beautifully, and they get the expected result - their own actions and violence are excused, minimized, justified as rational responses to the aggression of a powerful bully who has left them no other choice in the matter. The object is to isolate the state of Israel and force concession after concession until it concedes itself out of existence. Every opinion poll bears this out - Pals support a "two state solution" only as a stepping stone to ridding Palestine of Jews. It's been the Arab objective since the invasion of 1948, long before there was an occupation or settlements.
- wolf
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