Terrorism works

That's the view of Evelyn Gordon, who adds that terrorism will continue to be effective as long as we in the west continue to behave as though terrorists have legitimate grievances.

The Israeli "occupation," for instance, could have ended in 2000, when Israel offered to uproot most settlements and establish a Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, in some 97 percent of the territories. But since the Palestinians responded by launching a terrorist war, not only is there still no Palestinian state, but Israel has reconquered areas it vacated in 1995. Thus the terror would seem to have been counterproductive.

The same is true of the 9/11 attacks. At the time, al-Qaida's main stated grievance against America was its troops' presence in Saudi Arabia. But not only did American troops not leave Saudi Arabia after 9/11, they invaded two other Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. Again, a seeming defeat for the terrorists.

Yet if you examine the terrorists' real goals, rather than the West's starry-eyed interpretation of them, it turns out that terrorism has scored tremendous achievements over the past five years.
In Israel's case, for instance, Hamas, which pioneered suicide bombings inside Israel, has never concealed the fact that its goal is Israel's eradication. And many Palestinians share this goal: Opinion polls repeatedly found that while 40-50 percent of Palestinians viewed the intifada's goal as expelling Israel from the territories, the other 40-50% (exact proportions varied) viewed the goal as "liberating all of historic Palestine," including pre-1967 Israel.

Rephrasing the question produced even larger majorities: In a Pew Research poll published in June 2003, 80% of Palestinians said their "rights and needs" cannot be met as long as Israel exists.

Toward this goal, terrorism has produced substantial progress – because a necessary precursor to eradicating Israel is destroying its international legitimacy, which is precisely what has been occurring over the last five years. For the first time since Israel's founding, the question of whether Israel has a right to exist has become an open and acceptable topic of debate in the West. And even when not discussed explicitly, the idea of Israel's illegitimacy is gaining ground implicitly – as in the Christian divestment campaign, or the famous December 2003 poll in which 59 percent of Europeans deemed Israel the greatest threat to world peace.

...

Now, this same process is occurring with the London attacks: A growing number of media pundits and politicians, both in Britain and abroad, have already shifted the blame from the terrorists to Britain's "provocative" presence in Iraq. Even Tony Blair has proclaimed that Arab-Muslim grievances must be addressed.

While these intangibles are their greatest success, the terrorists have also reaped some tangible achievements. One, obviously, was the upset victory for Spain's socialists and the subsequent withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq produced by the 2004 Madrid bombings. Another is Israel's withdrawal from Gaza without getting anything in exchange, which 72 percent of Palestinians rightly deem a victory for terror.