...Everyone said that terrorism could not be countered by military means, and that it could only be stopped by a political solution. But as is so often the case in such matters, everyone was wrong. Until June 24, 2002, Bush had not yet fully freed himself from the “cycle of violence” paradigm under which Israel’s retaliatory strikes against terrorist attacks, and even such strictly defensive measures as checkpoints, were, and still are, equated with and even blamed for the attacks themselves.4 But once he realized that this way of looking at things clashed with his general attitude toward terrorism, Bush gave Sharon a tacit green light. No longer having to worry about jeopardizing his relations with the United States, Sharon was finally able to go all-out with the strategy he had hit upon: a combination of defense (the fence, which made it harder for suicide bombers to get through) and offense (targeted assassinations that decapitated the terrorist leadership, plus incursions into and sweeps of their strongholds).

So well did this strategy work that suicide bombing has by now been largely eliminated from the terrorist arsenal of the Palestinians. And even though there continues to be sporadic shelling of several towns and villages within range of the homemade Kassam rockets favored by Hamas, it does little damage. All in all, then, it can be said that the second intifada has been defeated...