The Value of Peace through Strength

Force is the only option against Palestinian Terrorists

By Kerry Eskenas
Posted on 11/06/05

The world received word this week that a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five and wounded thirty-four in Hadera, Israel. A group called Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, calling the suicide bombing a revenge for the Israeli military’s assassination of one of its commanders earlier this week. Although the world community is stunned that terrorists would continue to attack Israel after the Gaza Disengagement that took place about two months ago, I can’t say that I personally felt any amount of surprise. After Israel voluntarily pulled out of the Gaza Strip, the world community expressed a rare praise for Israel’s efforts to achieve peace in the region. It was clear to the rest of the world that Israel had conducted this disengagement voluntarily, but it is irrelevant that leaders and the general public understood this. The ones who needed to understand this truth were the terrorists themselves. Unfortunately, the decision to conduct the disengagement was made without requiring any concessions or agreements from the Palestinian side of this conflict. As a result, the extremist leaders propagandized to their followers that the killing of innocent Israelis had frightened Prime Minister Sharon into surrendering the disputed territory.

I didn’t visit Gaza on my trip to Israel this summer, but I spoke to many people who had been there and I was told that it wasn’t a very desirable portion of land. Although some very religious Israelis wanted their country to retain the Gaza Strip for ideological reasons, most of the Israeli population didn’t feel that the area was worth keeping. Not only were there very few Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip compared to the number of Palestinians there, but it was a poverty-stricken area that was also very dangerous. The question was, why continue to put Israeli soldiers in danger on a daily basis in the Gaza Strip when there were so few settlers there and the land wasn’t really an asset to Israel in the first place? These arguments were valid, but the problem wasn’t in the decision to transfer the land to the Palestinians. The problem was that the disengagement was conducted without any guarantee from the Palestinians that they would aggressively deal with terrorists. No matter how obvious it is to the rest of the world that the disengagement was a purely voluntary move by Israel for peace, terrorists have interpreted the move as meaning that their strategy of killing innocent Israelis is a successful one for the achievement of their political goals.

While I was watching the news this afternoon, I heard a reporter say that if Israel retaliates for this latest attack, the ‘cycle’ of attacks on both sides will continue and all hopes for peace will be dashed. This reporter’s message was that the Israeli military striking terrorists only results in terrorists attacking Israeli civilians, and unless Israel does nothing, this process could go back and forth for eternity. I strongly disagree with this reporter’s message. It is clear that there is no short-term complete solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has condemned the latest terrorist attack, it isn’t clear that he will actively go after terrorists. There is nothing right now that will absolutely stop terrorists, whose ultimate goal is to destroy Israel, from attacking Israeli civilians. When someone hates another group of people so intensely that he or she is willing to die to destroy as many of those other people as possible, there is no amount of negotiation or lack of retaliation that will bring peace.

In the long-run, there is hope for peace if there is a change in culture—in other words, if Palestinian children aren’t raised to hate Israel. The only way that Israel can decrease the incidence of terrorism in the short-run is to retaliate. The military must go after terrorists and ensure that they understand that Israel will react when a terrorist attack occurs, and Israel must show that terrorism is not a successful tactic for achieving Palestinians’ political goals.

If Israel sticks with its policy of retaliating against terrorists for suicide bombings—and Israel likely will stick with this policy, fortunately—then the Palestinians’ support for Hamas in democratic elections is a call for their own destruction. The Palestinians will, in my opinion, come to understand this truth. As The Independent pointed out after the Hadera attack, the Palestinian president “warned militias that for every blow they made, Israel would hit back threefold.”

By making a clear and firm statement through retaliatory attacks that terrorism is not a legitimate way for the Palestinians to fight for their cause, the number of tragedies like the Hadera attack will be diminished in the short-run. And in the future, Israeli politicians should ensure that terrorists—not so much the world community—have a clear understanding about the reasons behind decisions such as the Gaza Disengagement. Otherwise, terrorist leaders will be able to spin the truth to fit their propaganda and encourage further terrorist attacks.

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