The conclusion that terrorism doesn't work, even if it _is_ the conclusion Fatah has drawn, is a thin thing to hang hope on, isn't it? In the conversation with your acquaintance, your guess, Lisa, was that Fatah had concluded that terrorism was a mistake because it led to reprisals, whereas your acquaintance's assessment was that Fatah had concluded that terrorism hadn't made a dent in the targeted societies. But in neither case is it suggested that (even) Fatah has decided that the targeting of civilians is _morally wrong._ In a different context, George W. Bush has spoken of "the soft bigotry of low expectations." Isn't that what's at work when we derive optimism from the _possibility_ that group x has made a _strategic calculation_ that they haven't made a dent through a barbaric means of warfare? It's better than nothing, I guess, but so far as the deep wisdom of it goes, remember the line sometimes attributed to Freud: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And terrorists would have made a bigger dent if the IDF hadn't intercepted as many of them as it has.