https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/06/israel-is-here-to-stay
They [the Palestinians] see a Palestinian leader who says he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, embraces and financially rewards mass murderers, and compares Israel to Nazis with no response from Israel apart from the odd press release.
This is unfair. Israel has indeed given an appropriate “response” to the PA’s practice of “financially rewarding mass murderers.” Right now the Jewish state is withholding more than $300 million from the import taxes it collected during the past year for the PA, an amount equal to that which Mahmoud Abbas spends on his “Pay-for-Slay” program. That seems to me to be a fitting and damaging response that goes way beyond “the odd press release.”
They see an Israel uninterested or unable to achieve victory in this long-standing conflict.
Israel has several different enemies it has to deal with, and must prioritize these various security threats. The Iranian threat is by far the most worrisome. Israel has been doing all it can, and then some, to “achieve victory” in the Iran theatre, by preventing the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons. From the Stuxnet cyberworm, in 2010, that caused centrifuges to speed up so fast they destroyed themselves, to the sabotage – twice – of the centrifuge plant at Natanz, to Mossad agents managing in 2018 to find, and take back to Israel, Iran’s entire nuclear archive, to the targeted assassinations of five of Iran’s most important nuclear scientists, Israel has done more to delay Iran’s nuclear project than all other countries put together. And that campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons has to take precedence over crushing the Palestinian terror groups.
But it’s not as if Israel has neglected its other enemies. The IDF has performed spectacularly in dealing with the terror groups as well. It took out the top leadership of the PIJ during Operation Arrow and Shield, along with 17 command-and-control centers, dozens of weapons storehouses, rocket launchers, weapons manufacturing plants, and terror tunnels. Its Iron Beam anti-missile defense system intercepted 96% of the missiles the PIJ fired at southern Israel – a record that far surpasses that of any other anti-missile defense system in existence. Meanwhile, the IDF continues to conduct raids deep into the two main centers of terrorism in Judea and Samaria – Jenin and Nablus, and has managed to locate, and to either arrest, or kill, every terrorist who in recent years has murdered an Israeli.
Thus, the Palestinians believe the Jewish state will soon cease to exist. This provides the motivation and incentive for ongoing terrorism.
The Palestinians don’t need to believe that Israel will soon cease to exist in order to engage in terrorism. They have enough hatred for the Jews — inculcated in them by passages in the Qur’an and thousands of hadith – to prompt their terrorism, even if the desired result remains a distant prospect. For some terrorists a belief in Israel’s disappearance within a generation will be what prompts them to terrorism, but others, who have no such expectation, will be motivated by more immediate benefits offered to terrorists — the generous lifetime support for their families that the “Pay-For-Slay” program provides.