VANCOUVER, British Colombia -- Israel's hopes that its massive operation on the West Bank would halt the terror bombing have died with a new wave of attacks. Many bomb-making facilities were destroyed in the operation, but Palestinian rage has increased and the slaughter continues.
In such a context it isn't surprising that Israelis should be thinking about other terror campaigns against occupation in the Arab world, nor that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's recent bedtime reading should have included a magisterial study of Algeria's war for independence against France. The war's history is instructive for both Israelis and the Palestinians. But the lessons each draws from it are very different.
For Palestinians, Algeria's savage but successful liberation struggle shows how the weak can defeat the powerful politically -- even after being crushed militarily. It offers hope to a nationalist movement that, like Algeria's FLN, is hopelessly outgunned by a determined and clever adversary.