DO NOT let them get away with it. "It" is the series of attacks that have taken the lives of dozens of Israeli civilians during the Jewish holiday of Passover. "Them" refers to the perpetrators of the attacks: the people who murdered themselves and others, and the people who helped in planning the attacks or knowingly funded them.
The groups that claim responsibility for the suicide bombings want to derail the Middle East peace process. They have no interest in a meeting that is moving toward recognition of Israel in return for a co-existing Palestinian state. Some people apparently prefer unending violence and destruction, in the insane hope of getting everything they want, to reasoned compromise. But we cannot generalize the actions of an extreme, militant group to be representative of all Palestinians.
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Those of us with the opposite preference, those who want to stop the occupation of Palestine by Israel, and the terrorizing of Israel by Arab nations and individuals, have a difficult task before us. Somehow, we must honor the memory of those killed by the attacks, and try to prevent future attacks. At the same time, we must behave as though Hamas does not exist. Letting terrorists' actions determine what happens to all Palestinians and Israelis means the terrorists have won.
Right-wing Israelis may ask us to consider Hamas to be monsters representative of all Palestinians. "Look at these Palestinians," they will say. "They just want to destroy Israel, they don't even care about peace for their own children. Look at the suicide bombing in Haifa -- some of the victims were Muslims."
To assume that all Palestinians support the suicide bombings makes no more sense than assuming that every MIT graduate is a lunatic like the Unabomber, even if there were other MIT graduates who thought that the Unabomber was right in criticizing political correctness. Agreeing with some of the sentiments of a madman does not mean that one agrees with his method of madness.
Those committing the terrorism have not been elected to represent Palestine. "The Palestinian Conversation," to quote the title of an extraordinary article about everyday Palestinians (New York Times, Feb. 3), is much more complicated than right-wing Israelis would have us believe.
When the intifada halted briefly at Yasser Arafat's request last December, it gave a false impression that Arafat could control the actions of all Palestinians. He cannot, and he has as little credibility with some militant Palestinians as he does with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, particularly after Palestinian police officers killed Islamic militants.
Although the terrorist group Aksa Martyrs Brigades has been associated with Arafat's Fatah movement, when Arafat cracked down on militant Islamic groups for the ceasefire, there was much dissent within Palestine. According to "The Palestinian Conversation," even inside a single family, a father could say "To hell with [Hamas]" while his son and daughter-in-law argued that the suicide bombers were products of desperate circumstances.
Indeed, some may ask us to consider the suicide bombings justified. "Why should we be outraged that it happened during Passover?" they will say. "Don't Israeli soldiers humiliate and kill Palestinians during Ramadan just as they do every other day of the year?"
The only time one may commit a wrong in response to a wrong is to prevent future wrongs. When terrorists struck the United States, the American response, at least theoretically, was not in revenge but to keep terrorism from happening again. Americans considered unintended, but foreseeable, killing of civilians in Afghanistan necessary to prevent future wrongful killings.
Suicide bombing by Palestinians murders Israeli men, women and children, not to mention young Palestinians, and it does nothing to prevent Israel from responding with even greater force in the occupied territories. If suicide bombers just want to scare Israelis, they are doing an excellent job. But Israelis, whatever their faults as a nation, are not cowards. When they are afraid, they do not retreat; they press forward more stubbornly than before.
The suicide bombings reinforce Israel's belief that a Jewish state cannot live safely next to Palestinians. Every young bomber who makes it into a cafe tells Israelis that they are absolutely right in restricting the movements of all Palestinians.
Palestinians and Red Cross officials complain about having ambulances held up at Israeli military checkpoints, and it is a valid complaint. But when security officials find explosives in ambulances ("Passover massacre claims 19 in Israel," Houston Chronicle, March 28), the delays make sense.
The city of Ramallah, once bustling with Palestinian businesses, academics and professionals - even a jazz club visited by Israelis - looks like it has been hit by a Texas tornado. Cars have been flattened by Israeli tanks, power and water lines cut, and families cower in their homes while Israel's army looks for Arafat. He was not allowed to go the Beirut summit, where his country's future is being decided, and Sharon blames him for the suicide bombings, even though Arafat has condemned them.
President George W. Bush, though he also holds Arafat responsible for the attacks, has taken the right course by continuing to pursue peace. Sharon should emulate this form of defiance of Palestinian terrorists - responding to violence with the determination to end violence, instead of perpetrating and perpetuating it. His show of force in the occupied territories, and lack of commitment to peace, is what the terrorists want.
(Pallavi Guniganti's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at pguniganti@cavalierdaily.com.)
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