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How Should Israel Respond to the Jerusalem Bombing?

TruthNews Commentary, August 10, 2001

While Israeli rescuers were still digging children's bodies out the rubble in Jerusalem from the latest Palestinian suicide attack, Secretary of State Colin Powell was urging restraint in the face of what his boss, President Bush, called a cowardly attack. Powell, a retired general who sent 100,000 troops to Panama to arrest dictator Manuel Noriega and 500,000 troops to Saudi Arabia to keep the price of gas down, is not in a particularly good position to argue that the Israelis should show restraint. But Israel is unlikely to engage in massive retaliation, either.

Instead, the Israelis have shut down Orient House, the PLO headquarters in eastern Jerusalem, and shot missiles at an empty building in Ramallah. Orient House, an attempt by the Palestinians to establish a foothold in what they claim as their capitol, was established when the PLO returned from exile in 1993. Orient House is a patent violation of the Oslo accords, but 5 prime ministers have tolerated its existence until now. Shooting missiles from helicopters at empty buildings was ex-prime minister Ehud Barak's strategy to deal with the intifada. Desiring a more effective response, the Israelis promptly dumped him in favor of Ariel Sharon.

The problem is, that there is very little that the Israelis can do in the way of effective response short of reoccupying the disputed territories. The policy of targeted killings of terrorists is effective, but Israel is already doing that. The Israelis have found that in dealing with Syria and other Arab neighbors, simple tit for tat retaliation can be effective in dissuading aggression. But this is not true for the Palestinians. The Arab countries are ruled by dictators who have much to lose from a confrontation with Israel. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, however, has very little to lose in continued confrontation with Israel. If more of his own people are killed, then international sympathy for the Palestinians increases. By increasing his people's suffering, he increases their hatred of Israel.

So, to a certain extent, Powell has it right when he urges restraint. Israeli retaliation would be pointless because it would simply encourage more Palestinian retaliation. Retaliation will only be effective if it follows Powell's example in Panama – the retaliation needs to be massive and swift in order to destroy the Palestinians' capability to commit violence. This would almost of necessity entail Israel reoccupying the disputed territories for an extended period of time along with the deportation or imprisonment of the terrorist leaders and their supporters.

The problem with this approach is that if Israel were to reoccupy the disputed territories, international condemnation would ensue. Arafat would call for international intervention, and he might get it. Most of the Arab leaders are too cautious to go to war with Israel to save Arafat, but Bashar al Assad of Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq are reckless enough to try it. They would probably be defeated but this could lead to more pressure for international intervention.

Since the Palestinians appear to not want peace (at least, not enough to implement the Mitchell plan, which would require them to stop killing the Jews), the only other alternative for Israel is to continue the course of targeted killings of terrorists and economic boycott of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hitler's Willing Executioners
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Goldhagen reaches conclusions that are both uncompromising and savage, rejecting as inadequate the conventional historical explanations for how an entire country could allow the Holocaust to happen, and gives the first detailed, broad-ranging account of the actual killers of the Jews.