The price of the winning equation

[Violet_Crumble]

Israeli public opinion has become deaf to Palestinian suffering, because a clear equation has been created in Israel: They are suffering - but we are not being blown up.

For a long time, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and other senior Palestinian officials warned the public in the West Bank and Gaza that suicide bombings do great damage to the Palestinian cause. All of them stressed that from the Israeli point of view, the front in the conflict had moved to buses, restaurants, shopping centers and places of entertainment, places where millions of citizens lead their daily lives.

Abu Mazen and those who shared his view understood that daily pictures and news reports of the horrors, death and destruction caused by suicide bombings would cause Israeli public opinion, and to a certain extent also international public opinion, to lose its sympathy (whether little or great) for Palestinian national demands. But the Palestinian public paid them no heed. Public opinion polls in the territories showed substantial support for suicide bombings. Spokesmen for Hamas and other terrorist organizations lionized those who blew themselves up in Israeli cities as "the nuclear bomb of the poor and oppressed," to which Israel had no answer.

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The separation wall and fences are a good example. The fence's route in the northern West Bank, and around the settlements, has ruined the livelihood of masses of Arab peasants who returned to working the land after they lost their jobs in Israel. The wall in Jerusalem destroys the fabric of life for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents of the Ramallah, Abu Dis and Bethlehem regions. But Israeli public opinion has become deaf to Palestinian suffering, because a clear equation has been created in Israel: They are suffering - but we are not being blown up. They will lose their livelihoods, and their children will not be able to reach their schools or doctors' clinics, but we will be able to ride the bus or go to the supermarket with less fear.

All of this could change in a moment, but for now, Israel's success in foiling attacks and the improvement that collective punishment of the Palestinian population has wrought in Israel's security are enabling increasingly arbitrary rule and ever greater Israeli violence in the territories.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/444232.html

[The Magistrate]

1. An Excellent Analysis, Ma'am

The tactics employed by the militant Arab Palestinian leadership are profoundly self-defeating. They do not seem to be in any sense the product of sound calculation of means and ends, as succesfully miltary actions must be, but rather to issue from consulting emotions of pride and rage, which can never lead to success against a cool-headed opponent.

It is a commonplace of fighting lore that a blow which only causes pain, but does no real damage, will only infuriate and rouse to greater strength the person so struck. It is of utmost importance for the weaker of two contestants to heed this principle, for to violate it will only result in a worse defeat.

The over-riding fact of the conflict between the people of Arab Palestine and the people of Israel is that the Arab Palestinians have no real military option: they have no capability whatever to do serious harm to Israel by violence. The refusal of their leadership, and of many among that people, to recognize this, has done them incalculable harm. Israel does possess the power not only to do real harm, but to impose its will unilaterally on its foe, should it choose to. The only checks against this are political, within Israel itself, and internationally. The actions of Arab Palestinian militants have eroded these political checks on Israeli action to merest gossamer within Israel itself, and weakened them greatly in the international community.