The Palestinian tactic of using non-military materials, that can be brought into Gaza, to construct crude bombs and rockets, has been more annoying than damaging to the Israelis. None of the Palestinian rocket designs has been able to reach Israeli towns outside Gaza.

But two Palestinian efforts are succeeding. The propaganda campaign in the Palestinian community to demonize Israel and convince most Palestinians that Israel must be destroyed, has succeeded and survived exposure to the Western world. The other successful effort has been the one to convince Israeli trading partners that Israel is at fault, Palestinians are victims and international pressure must be put on Israel to make peace with Israel. What's interesting with these two efforts is that the European nations being convinced to pressure Israel are doing so without buying into the Palestinian goal of destroying Israel.

The negotiations between Palestinians and Israel currently come down to a possible agreement for a long truce. The terrorist groups are taking a beating, with the Israelis getting more effective at finding and killing senior terrorist leaders. Thus, for the terrorist leadership, some kind of peace deal is a matter of life or death. Palestinians may give lip service to a "permanent" peace deal, but everything Palestinians say to each other still revolves around "death to Israel." So any peace agreement with Israel will be, to the Palestinian terrorist organizations, a truce during which they can prepare for a more devastating series of attacks.