you need desperation together with indoctrination, and if the indocrtination is strong enough, you don't even need the desperation> I agree with that. But with such desperation as we see now, the cycle of violence is easy to sustain. You cannot say where the cycle of violece begins -- each side takes their own starting point and blames the other. Israel has tried to impose a military solution -- and they failed. Did the Palestinians fail? Absolutely. So we have a couple of tragic failures -- nothng to crow about. The issue is not where it began because on that there can never be agreement -- the issue is how, where and when will it end?
This imo is wrong-headed on several levels. First of all, I can say exactly where the violence begins and it's not a cycle, it's a Palestinian strategic choice.
Suppose Abu Mazen had not lost out in the struggle for control of the Palestinians. Suppose he had even made a gesture to try to restart the peace process for real. For example, if he had gone to Jerusalem and addressed the Knesset the effect on Israeli politics would have been electric. This scenario is so-close-yet-so-far from what happened, but suppose it did, and Abu Mazen convinced the Israelis that he was really trying to stop the terrorism, though it may have only slowed. Would the "cycle" have continued? No, because it's not a "cycle", it's a defense. Given a Palestinan leader who is not a proven liar and whose checks were not bouncing, the Israelis would have continued withdrawing (as they did in fact withdraw from Bethlehem and Jenin) and would have agreed to stop targeted assasinations and only go after 'ticking bombs', as they did during the so-called hudna.
The second wrong-headed thing is to say Israel has tried to impose a military solution -- and they failed
Israel has several times picked at the edges of a military solution (mindful of US opinion) and each time it slowed the terror, but when they withdrew the terror restarted. Israel has not imposed 1% of the military solution it could impose, and when the fighting starts again (at this point I say when, not if) you will see more 'juice' applied.
As Pape pointed out, suicide terrorism is designed to coerce territorial concessions from liberal democracies, and depends heavily on the restraint of the victims. As time goes on, and the victims see the corpses pile up, the restraint frays. So suicide terrorism as a strategy has a window of opportunity, and works best when the territory being demanded is not central to the democracy's national interests. In this, as in so much, the Palestinians are political morons. |
