Another suicide bombing...

I'll keep saying it, there can be no peace until the terrorists are disarmed.

It is hard to imagine a people for whom blowing oneself up in a crowd of innocents is not considered an act of barbarism. Yet it is hard to escape the impression that the Palestinians, even today, remain such a people.

This clearly was the case at the height of the terror offensive against Israel, during which suicide bombings were officially and unofficially lionized by Palestinian society. But how else is one to interpret the antiseptic Palestinian response to yesterday's atrocity in Netanya, in which five were murdered and 55 wounded?

"I believe that this harms Palestinian interests and is another act to sabotage efforts to revive the peace process and to sabotage the Palestinian elections," said Saeb Erekat, giving the official reaction to the attack. But is it wrong? Is there anything morally wrong with slaughtering innocent Israelis?

The recent Palestinian political jockeying has, unfortunately, only reinforced the sense that the relative lull in terrorism is not related to any second thoughts as to its morality. Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life terms in an Israeli jail for his direct involvement in specific terrorist attacks, and who is widely considered a key architect of the "militarization" (a term that itself reflects the Palestinian sanitization of terrorism) of the attacks against Israel, was the big winner of the first Fatah primaries. Similarly, Hamas is expected to do so well in the parliamentary elections scheduled in January that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is widely expected to postpone them indefinitely.

It is certainly possible that the political tailwind Barghouti and Hamas are enjoying has more to do with the unpopularity of the PA, either because of corruption or the general chaos, than it does with popular support for terrorism. But we Israelis can hardly ignore the fact that the most popular Palestinian groups and individuals seem to be those most associated with terror against Israel.