David Hornik in his article Boosting Terror in the West Bank zeros in on
the idea is that releasing terrorists will “strengthen Abbas” and is something he needs to shore up his popularity in the Palestinian street. This idea of bolstering the head of Fatah with an influx of terrorists who failed in their murder-missions goes back to 1994, when Israel started periodically freeing large numbers of such peace-emissaries in efforts to propitiate the then Fatah leader Yasser Arafat.
In other words, the same old Palestinianism, one of whose tenets is that when it comes to the Palestinians even the most basic norms of prudence and morality have to be stood on their heads, and that doing so will achieve good results even if it has been proved time and again only to generate more bloodshed.
What more need be said?
