Results of years of rewarding terror

In the interview (with the Al-Ayyam paper), Mashaal also said Palestinians would renew violence if the international community continues its boycott of the Palestinian unity government, a coalition of Hamas and Fatah.

"We are doing the impossible to end the embargo on our people...if, God forbid, it continues...the results will be serious," Mashaal said.

"The explosion will be in the face of the Zionist enemy," Mashaal said.

OK, so the West stops giving some aid (while increasing other aid) to the PalArabs because the Hamas-led government won't renounce violence.

And Hamas answers that if the West doesn't stop the embargo, there will be more violence. (Against Israel, of course - he's not that stupid to threaten the West.)

It would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that the West has acceded to Arab and Muslim threats of violence for decades. Mashaal is just using a formula that has been proven successful time and time again.

So while it might seem like it makes no sense, the Pavlovian response of the West proves that terror, and threats of terror, have been mostly successful in getting the Arabs what they want. he very idea that violence is counterproductive is not even entertained by PalArab leaders.

A further proof of this happened today: Egypt scolded the PalArab terror groups for shooting rockets into Israel, calling it a "lost gamble." Their responses:

The spokesperson of the Hamas movement, Ismail Radwan, said "resistance is not gambling, but a legal right for the Palestinian people, secured by all international laws and conventions."

He told Ma'an "the Palestinian factions adhered to the ceasefire for a sufficient time, yet the Israelis broke it and so they are to blame for their aggressive actions."

Radwan affirms that as long as the Israelis violate the ceasefire, the homemade projectiles will continue to land on Israeli towns.

A leader of the Islamic Jihad movement, Khadir Habeeb, says he disagrees with the Egyptian delegation on the use of the term "gamble" to describe the hurling of homemade projectiles. However, he admits that the projectiles must be used "efficiently and not excessively". He also argued that the Palestinians unanimously agreed on the ceasefire, but it was the Israelis who violated it.

The military spokesperson of the An Nasser Salah Addin Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), Abu Sharif, refuted the Egyptian declarations regarding Palestinian projectiles and described them as "accusations against the Palestinian people".

Egypt is hardly against PalArab aspirations, but instead of even considering that Egypt might have a point, the Paleos instinctively berate and continue threats of terror and blaming Israel - an almost subconscious predilection for violence and redirection that seems to be a result of many years of being rewarded for just such actions and threats.

And until Israel and the West makes a consistent stand that such thinking is wholly unacceptable and will be punished rather than rewarded, it will continue.