The Canary in the Coal Mine

Much has recently been written about the "root causes" of terrorism. The main reasons brought up by the Left are US policies in the Middle East, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are correct about these two issues being the main drivers of terrorism, but the reasons that these two are root causes are exactly the opposite that the Left gives. Evelyn Gordon reviews the reasons.

Most of the tactics of terrorists were tried and perfected against Israel. Despite the protestations of many that these were just isolated acts and had to do with the Palestinians' attempts to win themselves (another) homeland, it turns out that what worked against Jews is now being employed against everyone else.

It was the PLO that invented airline terrorism, with a wave of hijackings in the 1970s; it was Hamas that turned suicide bombings into standard practice; even the grisly Chechen takeover of a school in Beslan this month aped the PLO's takeover of a school in Ma'alot in 1974.

But even more important than the pure tactical side, is what the strategic responses to terrorism have been.

When the PLO was founded in 1964 – with the goal, incidentally, of a Palestinian state instead of Israel, which did not yet have the territories – no one was talking about such a state. Even after Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza from Jordan and Egypt, nobody advocated a Palestinian state in those territories; the world expected Israel to keep part of this land (that is why, according to its drafters, UN Resolution 242 demands the return of "territories" rather than "the territories") and return the rest to Jordan and Egypt.

Forty years later, a Palestinian state in every inch of the West Bank and Gaza has become an international consensus. And this achievement was not in spite of Palestinian terror but because of it: Many peoples with equal or better claims to statehood, from Tibetans to Iraqi Kurds, have sought independence without resorting to terror; yet their aspirations at best elicit lip-service support from the world, and often outright opposition. The Palestinians' success lay in persuading the international community that peace depends on meeting their demands.

This is the key to the spread of terrorism - the almost constant appeasement of Arab terrorists over the last 40 years. It would be astonishing if they did not learn from these experiences that terrorism pays. The terrorists in Iraq, as well as those in Chechnya have seen that if they adopt Palestinian tactics, their demands - like the demands of the Palestinians - will be appeased.

Only by proving that terrorism does not pay can the US and Russia reverse this eminently logical conclusion. And they can do this only by finally penalizing Palestinian terror rather than rewarding it. Otherwise, expect to see ever more terrorism worldwide – because that has proven to be the winning tactic.