by Robert Tracinski

About the author: Robert Tracinski is a writer, teacher, fellow, and analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute.

A few days after the last tanks rolled out of Jenin and other cities across the West Bank (though they remain in Ramallah and Bethlehem), Israelis flooded back to streetside cafés to enjoy the spring weather and the security won by their army’s assault on Palestinian terrorists.

This lull in anti-Israeli terrorism is likely to be short lived, however, because Israel has not committed to the one policy that can achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East: a permanent Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory.

Palestinian Terrorism Is Not New

The conventional wisdom is that the Israeli occupation and resulting Palestinian “resentment” is the cause of the current...