Earlier I critiqued Jackson Diehl’s column, “If this peace process fails.” Now, (via Daled Amos) I see that Noah Pollak has critiqued the column from a different perspective.
The 2000-2005 terror war was not an outpouring of political or social frustration, but rather an attempt at so thoroughly terrorizing and intimidating the Israeli public that the Israeli government would concede almost anything to make the suicide bombings stop. For its success the terror war required political, military, and religious leadership and organization, arms supplies (remember the Karine A?), and funding—and it also required an enemy that was caught off-guard by the suddenness and depravity of the attacks. None of these factors exists today, primarily due to the total defeat of Arafat’s terror offensive. Israel’s victory involved several key elements: the killing and imprisonment of large numbers of the Palestinian corps of jihadists, especially the terror leaders; the construction of a security wall that today makes Palestinian penetration of Israel immeasurably more difficult; and a revolution in Israel’s intelligence-gathering and military operations in the West Bank and Gaza. By way of everything from checkpoints and electronic surveillance to the cultivation of networks of informants and the deployment of undercover operatives, the Shabak (the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service and counterintelligence agency) and IDF dramatically have curtailed the ability of Palestinian terror groups to organize themselves and attack Israel.
In the past I’ve written that the MSM is usually obsessed with the motives for Arab terror rather than the means or opportunity. Here Pollak is arguing that a violent response from the Palestinians is unlikely because Israel has greatly reduced their means and opportunities for carrying out terror. That is true and something I hadn’t considered.
I still expect some terror attempts in the wake of a failure at Annapolis. The Palestinians will need to put up a good front that the failure has caused them despair and that the despair has led to increased terror attempts.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
