> Dwayne's postulate that in the long term there is no technological fix
> that can stop determined low-tech human inventiveness.
"No weapon can defeat a people determined to be free' was a slogan of the Irish Republican movement in the seventies and eighties.
In the end they were if not defeated, then certainly side-tracked into another route, constitutional nationalism.
But the truth of the slogan (which was a response to Britain's greater firepower) was that in the end it was not which side had the better firepower, but which had the stronger case, i.e. in the long term there is no technological fix that can stop determined human inventiveness (I don't need the 'low-tech' part, because human inventiveness might mean hi-tech, too.) The Irish case was that whatever strategy Britain tried, the Republicans found an answer - internment led to a cell structure organisation, the 'criminalisation' policy led to the struggle in the H Blocks.
The parallel with the Arab nationalist struggle is not bad. The defeat of the joint Arab forces in 1956 was answered with the Palestinian forces put in the field by Arafat in 1967. The Yom Kippur War was answered with an international guerilla campaign. Unfortunately the strategic twisting and turning of the Palestinian leadership also introduced an element of oportunism. So 1973 also led the Palestinians to push more and more for a diplomatic solution at the United Nations. And the incorporation of the Fatah movement into Israeli rule over the Palestinians put the reactionaries of Hamas into the unlikely position of most militant fighters.
It is not the bravery or the tactical inventiveness of the Palestinians that is lacking, but their ideological leadership.