The Real Threat To Terrorism - Part III

In this third installment of this series, I return to where I started - how individuals and groups that support terrorism garner support for their causes in the periods of discord and can be thwarted by peace.

We continue to see that the more extreme groups - Hamas, Hezbullah and other militant groups in the Middle East - will continue to survive without the peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Those groups are committed to the distruction of the State of Israel and use terrorism to further their goals - although it usually hurts those people who basically want to get on with their lives with some semblance of peace and security - the Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel itself. Those people for the most part are supportive of the peace process as it will give them some control over their own lives.

When looking at the TV or Internet, you are likely to see the violent side of things as this is what the media has come to expect people want to know. There isn't much front page news with a headline like "1000th day of peace." The headlines blare "Car Bomb kills 2" or "West Bank Settler stabs 1 Palestinan" because those attract the attention. Terrorists know the media as well, or better than, most media experts. They know that their causes will be fully covered if they do something drastic and high profile.

This gets back to the point then that if peace can be achieved, the terrorists will not have the ability to alter events so substantially as they did following the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin. We saw that the bombings of buses in Tel Aviv after Rabin's death enabled the current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netenyahu, to take office on a platform of peace through security. As we have seen thus far, Israel has had neither because the bombings have sporadically continued and the enactment of the Oslo Accords has been held up by squabbles regarding the security arrangements. The terrorist groups knew that if the peace process had continued after Rabin's death, a major breakthrough could have occurred, robbing them of their manpower base. As this did not occur, more children and teenagers become enthralled with the terrorists' messages and the cycle of violence continues.

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