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Why the Violence is Coming to an End

(New Republic) Martin Peretz - A favorite cliche put forward by Israel's critics has been proved false: Each targeted killing by Israel of terrorist leaders like Yassin and Rantisi will result in ten more suicide bombers volunteering both to murder and to die. Even among the followers of Hamas, however, there is no infinite stream of killers. And the unfinished fence has already stemmed the flow of slaughterers into Israel. An old friend of mine, a hero of the Yom Kippur War and a veteran of Israel's peace ranks, told me of a lesson we must learn: "It comes from our experience of the last years with the Palestinians, that they take concessions for weakness. Every concession encourages more demands. Since there are limits to the concessions we can make, and these are less than the perilous ones we made in 2000 at Camp David and Taba, we have to give only what we can, and not what the Palestinians expect....It may just be that negotiating with the Palestinians is a charade. But they do understand power. That is why the intifada is coming to an end. They know that they have been defeated."
2004-07-14 00:00:00
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