It hasn’t received much coverage in the American media (but see this Krauthammer column), but Israel has been scoring a series of remarkable successes in killing or capturing leading figures of all the major terrorist groups in the West Bank. Last night, the leader of the Nablus Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and his deputy were killed (an Israeli soldier and two civilians also died, the civilians after the PFLP leader heroically ran into an apartment building occupied by civilians, and shot at Israeli soldiers, wounding one, while using the civilians as shields). Because of Israel’s aggressive use of force and the building of the first part of its defensive barrier, there have been no suicide murders within Israel for months. There may not be, as the Israeli Left constantly argues, any military solution to suicide bombings, but it sure seems that the military can help quite a bit. That’s one lesson. The other lesson is the effectiveness of going after the terrorist leadership–cutting off the head of the snake, as they say, actually works. There may be just as many (or more) young Palestinians willing to be suicide murderers, but without proper logistics, weapons, etc., they are impotent.
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