Are civilian Palestinian deaths justifed by the "security" excuse?

Should Palestinian civilians pay with their lives or through collective punishment for the crimes of a minority of extemists?
I hear the excuse often that extremists hide behind civilians, so civilian death is justified. What do you think?

Do ordinary Palestinians have the power to extinguish militant attacks/ideology/etc any more than I have at ridding my state, city or country of drugs and gangs?? Should ordinary Palestinians continue to pay the price for failure to do so?

Think of this question:
Are civilian Israeli deaths justified by the "security" excuse?

Consider that there are 10s of thousands of Israeli troops occuppying Palestinian territory, engaged in such blatantly illegal practices such as helping to confiscate Palestinian land and use it for Jewish-only settlements and roads, confiscation of water resources for use by Israelis, protecting settlers who harass and occasionally kill innocent Palestinians (some of the Israeli troops are settlers themselves), torture, wanton destruction of property, shooting Palestinian protesters for target practice and Palestinian kids for sport, and imposing walls, barbed wire and hundreds of checkpoints to strangulate the life of the people.

In other words, the Palestinians have no security - and just think, many of those Israeli soldiers are reservists who then retreat into Israel and hide out among civilians. Many of the Israeli settlers are armed militants, perhaps something like 1/3 of all Israelis can be counted as militants if you include reservists who . Is it all right to collectively punish the Israelis who shelter these militants? On top of sheltering, aiding and abetting the Israeli militants, the Israelis elected Ariel Sharon, who was personally responsible for thousands of innocent people being massacred, including things like nighttime attacks on villages, setting bombs around houses, shooting those who came to the door and exploding the houses with the people inside (Qibya).

Any human rights advocate would answer no, civilian deaths aren't justified by the crimes of the militants, in either case. Neither is causing hunger among the population and malnutrition among babies, which is what the Israeli blockade of Gaza is doing. Any honest and fair observer of the Palestine/Israel situation would note that Palestinians were collectively punished not for the crimes of the minority of extremists, but because they live in or own land covetted by Israel for the Jewish state. The real goal is to grab as much land as possible with as few Palestinians as possible, and bully them into accepting their own ethnic cleansing. Security is just an excuse.

So Americans chose George Bush, now they reap what they sow in Iraq....
Dont believe the Israeli lie that they kill innocent civilians "by mistake". You wanted "democracy" in the occupied lands. Now the people have chosen who represents them its alright for Israeli soldiers to kill them...?
Americans want to give democracy but only if you vote for whom THEY want you to vote for.

Ordinary Palestinians elected Hamas, now they can reap what they sow.

Sadly, yes. They CHOSE Hamas.

Yes