StrategyPage on Israel’s partial “re-occupation” of the West Bank:
The Israeli military operation in Palestinian territory has prevented suicide attacks for 18 days. Some 1800 Palestinians are under arrest, including 300 suspected militants (half of whom were already known to Israeli police. Ten dozen suicide bombing attacks have been intercepted. Attacks on individual terrorist leaders continue, showing that the Israelis continue to maintain their network of informers and collaborators inside Palestinian territory. A recent attack involved a car bomb that killed several Palestinian terrorist leaders.
The Palestinian media is running more stories about concern that the suicide bombing campaign is not working and that negotiations might be more likely to achieve results.
What’s that? Punishing barbarians might force them to try a more civilized method to get what they want? There will be much shock in newsrooms and on college campuses around the nation, but not many other places.
But even negotiation is doomed to fail if the Palestinians think they’ll get as much today as they were offered two years ago. Murderous gambits should be punished, not encouraged. And face it: Arafat’s terror campaign has been little more than a negotiating ploy with a body count.
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