Under international law Israel has a clear right (in fact, a duty) to retaliate for the barbarous, perfidious crimes of the PLO/PA, writes political science professor Louis Rene Beres: Palestinian atrocities, Israeli retaliations and the laws of war.

When television news reports create parallel images between Palestinian attacks upon Jews leaving the synagogue with nail-studded bombs and Israeli reprisals against PLO targets with infantry and air-launched missiles, they obscure an essential truth: The Palestinian resort to violence is grotesque and gratuitous, seeking only to inflict maximum pain and suffering upon the innocent, while the Israeli use of force is designed only for survival and self-protection. Does anyone really believe that Israel would use armed force against any Arab targets if the Palestinians ceased their campaign of mayhem and murder? …

The PLO/PA practice of intentionally placing its terrorist forces and assets in the midst of civilian populations is unequivocally a war crime. Although it is certainly true that the Law of War is designed to protect all noncombatants from armed attack, this authoritative body of rules also makes it perfectly clear that responsibility for harming civilians must ultimately rest with the side that engages in perfidy. When IDF infantry from the Golani and Paratrooper brigades, in coordination with armored units, head into the Jenin and Balata camps to root out would-be Palestinian suicide bombers, full responsibility for resultant civilian casualties rests with Yasser Arafat.