Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict

These forces have been engaged in a terrorist campaign, both against Israel
and against their own people. Their tactics of intimidation give them
majority support within the community and enable them to control the peace issue
by keeping the moderates from speaking out. Whenever an agreement between
the Palestinian Authority and Israel seems imminent, a new terrorist campaign
will begin, with the hope that massive loss of civilian life will provoke a
military response from Israel. An Israeli military incursion will in turn
agitate ordinary Palestinians, pressuring their leadership to withdraw from the
bargaining table.

Oddly, this cycle of violence has worked mostly
to the detriment of the Palestinians themselves, particularly in economic
terms. Scholar Benny Morris has noted that the first four months of the
latest Intifada (uprising) cost the Palestinians more than $500 million in lost
revenue and mushroomed the unemployment rate from 12% to over 40%. five
more years of violence, in a community where half the people already lived on
less than $2 per day, has no doubt caused the sort of economic devastation that
may take more than a generation to resolve.