Something that's always bothered me is the tactics of Hamas and the PLO in using suicide bombers against civilians. Mostly because the tactics don't work, they've been using this for years and the Israelis just aren't impressed by it.

The whole idea is to create an enviroment where the target can't operate in current conditions and succumbs to your demands. To me, it would seem to be a better opperation to target infrastructure rather than population. Target bridges, power stations, water supply, fuel storage, shipping, communications, manufacturing and food processing.

The cost to Israel in people isn't much of a cost really. Ok, so you blowup 10 people and wound 25, so what? Their family and a few neighbors are saddened for a month or so but then life goes on (as it has for the past 10 years). By the same token blowup a power station that takes 6 months or a year to rebuild and you impact a lot more people over a longer period of time. Take out water supplies and a whole lot of people spend the next 6 months hauling water to their homes and can't flush the toilets with ease. Take out the fuel supply and people start walking where they use to drive or ride a buss. Take out manufacturing facilities and you take jobs and the product that was supplied. Take out comminications and people can't use the phone, watch dubbed "Bay Watch" on their TVs and the internet doesn't work anymore.

The whole point is to impact the largest amount of people for the longest period of time and at the same time demonstrate that the current Government is no longer in control all the while increasing the cost of doing business and Government. Blowing up a buss load of kids just pisses people off and strengthens their resolve. You get their attention when they flip the switch and the lights don't come on, when they twist the faucet the water doesn't flow, the job they had just ended because the building isn't there any more and they'er walking because no one has any gas to sell.

If Hamas and the PLO had spent the last 10 years attacking infrastructure do you think Israel would have held out this long?

The security is tighter over there than you'd ever believe. There's no way that someone could sneak explosives past those guards. They've been blowing up populated areas, because they're easily accessable.

You may not understand the viewpoint of either party. The bombers aim is (personally) revenge for the shit way they have to live. Their controllers strategic aim currently is to polarize the situation and prevent any settlement with Israel, they want to escalate the violence and keep anyone on either side from being able to compromise. The current Israeli government wants the same thing, oddly enough. Both sides want the whole loaf, neither wants to share. Both think they can win a total victory- In the case of the radical Israelis, this would mean the expulsion or death of ALL Palestinians in every area they control and keeping the land they grabbed during 1967. For the radical Palestinians, they want to throw the Jews into the sea- Remember when a Muslim murdered Sadat for wanting to compromise? Remember when a Jew killed Yitzhak Rabin for the same reason?

no, no, no

The bombers WANT to kill Israelis. They'd prefer to kill Israeli soldiers, and since a lot of soldiers travel by bus, they are a popular target, but they would kill any israeli they can.

And you're trivialising the effect that the bombers have on Israeli life. You reckon that life goes on after a month or so? Right now there's a massive ptsd problem in Israel, people are conscious all the time of anything unusual, guards on restaurants, shops and so on.

The reason suicide bombers are there is because things are so tight that any other method is unlikely to succeed. Any suspicious package left around will be reported and dealt with in minutes. (The IRA invented the "proxy bomb", where they raid your house in the middle of the night, then get you to drive your car, plus bomb to the target. That would be harder in Israel, but I'm surprised it hasn't at least been tried) Also, the palestinian terrorists don't have the resources to make any meaningful impact on the Israeli infrastructure.

I was always angry that the IRA etc felt the need to shoot soldiers and blow up bars full of civilians. They could easily have paralysed England with a few well placed devices as you describe, but England is a VERY different country to Israel - tougher people in a harder place, much more attuned to terrorism and surrounded by enemies - they've just got a tougher outlook!

I dont see how you can link PLO and Hamas or other militant organisations...
The suicidebombers themselves mostly do it because of revenge, when their son/taughter/father/mother/brother/sister/whatever has been killed. Everything to live for, has been taken away from them by the jews: job, family and a place to live. There just no other reasonable thing to do.
The militant organizations dont have any other options left, to attack israel. If they could they'd better attack the soldiers or infrastructure, than civilians.
Saying that innocent civilians are being attacked, is wrong.
1) Israel is a democratic country and those civilians have chosen the option to take the land from the arabs.
2) Almost any Israeli civilian is also member of the IDF.
3) Living on occupied land, what even UN says isnt their, makes the civilians more like an occupying army, than "innocent civilians".
Who knows, maybe by some international law, killing jews on the occupied territories is legal.

This has been pointed out before, but I should elaborate a bit. The Israeli bus company is owned by the Government and it duals as transportation for the Army. If you look closely at casualty lists from a bus bombing, you will find that most often, the majority of them are soldiers are settlers... I remember one incident in Jerusalem where 17 were killed on a bus; 13 of them were soldiers, 2 were settlers, and 2 were tragically civilians.

Also, the Palestinians-- particularly HAMAS, being the most organized of the groups-- engage in more operations than are reported. It's mostly the "mosquito" harrassment kind of resistance. The targets are occupation soldiers and settlers. This takes the form of mortar attacks, rocket attacks, sniping, etc. These occur on a daily basis. The suicide bomb is their "weapon of mass destruction," and is usually a revenge weapon. If you notice, they only take place after Israeli Air-raids or Incursions... It's a way of saying, "What goes around comes around," I guess.

True, with a better campaign-type plan, they might be more successful. However, the "Intifada" mimics the successful "Moqawama" in Southern Lebanon-- a war of attrition. If I were in control of them, I would focus all the resistance on one particularly important city at a time. If they can get full control of Qalqilyah, for example, they would have an easy gateway/staging area into Israel. If they could better control Jenin and Nablus, the resistance would be much stronger (as these are the beds of resistance). If they can control Rafah, then importing arms would be easier.

As it is though, the Intifada is degenerating into low-level but brutal violence. You're right, it is time for HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs to rethink their strategy.