Quote Originally Posted by Lampada
So, it's because of Baruch Goldstein antifada was started?
No, but up until that point suicide bombing had not deliberately targeted civilians. In Sunni Islam it had been considered unacceptable to commit suicide, but after Goldstein's attack, that changed. The scale of the attack, the fact that it was against civilians and that it was within a holy place provoked outrage in the Sunni Arab world. Those on the Palestinian side who believed "an eye for an eye" now demanded revenge. How was this to happen? They didn't have missiles or tanks to launch an attack on a similar scale, so the idea of the suicide bomb seemed the answer. But up until this point it had only been viewed as acceptable by Shia groups and had been used in numerous attacks in Lebanon against military targets. A debate ensued among Sunni Muslim scholars as to whether suicide could be viewed as "martyrdom" and those who believed it could, won the debate. Forty days after Goldstein's attack, Hamas made the first suicide bombing within Israel deliberately targeting civilians. A line had been crossed, "the genie was out of the bottle", if you like. If they could justify that attack in their minds, then why not another?, and another? A terrible new era of violence had begun.

My point was that if Goldstein's attack had not taken place, then perhaps suicide bombing would not have been adopted as a weapon. I probably expressed this too strongly saying "in all likelihood" but I hope you can see what I was getting at. That attack and the subsequent bombings by Hamas really poisoned relations between Israelis and Palestinians at a critical time when it had looked like a peace agreement could take hold. The extremists on the Palestinian side now had a weapon of enormous power, with just one attack they could scupper peace negotiations and greatly increase their influence over the course of events.

The more general point is that establishing settlements alongside Palestinian towns in the West Bank is not likely to bring better understanding between the communities. Particularly when you consider the nature of the settlers. I mean, I think we can agree they are generally not drawn from the moderate section of Israeli society. Many are openly racist and make it very clear they want the Arabs expelled from the West Bank. For many Palestinians, this is the face of all Jews. Added to this you've got a heavy military presence there to protect these settlements with numerous checkpoints etc. It's not going to win any Palestinian hearts and minds, to put it mildly.

My account of the development of suicide bombing among the Sunni community is basically paraphrased from the series I mentioned in a previous post: "The Cult of the Suicide Bomber". Presented by Robert Baer, a former undercover agent for the CIA, it explains how suicide bombing developed first in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, then travelled to Lebanon via Iran's links with the Shia community there, and then was adopted by Sunni Arabs in Palestine. Like a virus it has mutated, appearing first as purely a battlefield weapon but then transforming into a weapon of mass terror. I don't know if it's available on the internet. Perhaps it will be shown in other countries at some stage. It's well worth watching if you get the chance to see it.