My comments on the ObjectivismOnline forum thread:

Some argue that Israel’s “disengagement” is to be blamed for the recent round of attacks. This is true in a sense, but not in the way most critics claim.

The Palestinian terrorist groups and their backers depend on continued violence for their political power and the foreign and domestic loot (“aid”) that comes with it. They have used the “Zionist entity’s occupation” as the primary excuse for their violence. Since they demand the entire territory of Israel, “disengagement” will not satisfy their demands. (Nothing will, since a continued conflict is the only justification for their existence.) However it does create a line in the sand. This line is a political statement as much as it is a physical barrier, intended to finally delineate Israeli claimed land from Arab land. The audience of this statement is primarily the Israeli public itself, as well as the EU market on which Israel’s economy depends. The Palestinians are a distant second – but faced with a de-facto border and Israeli and European condemnation, their opposition (which is ultimately funded by the West) will collapse.

Of course European support is far from guaranteed, but Israel has no other options. The Palestinians refuse to be integrated and they cannot be expelled – Arab nations don’t want them either. Sooner or later they will have to be recognized as a foreign power, and continued aggresion treated as an act of war. The trick is to marginalize them first in order to limit Islamic and Western support.