Terrorism

PO 4700: Contemporary International Relations

Today's puzzle

Why do groups such as ISIS destroy works of art? #### Presenter Notes:

Today's lecture: outline

Who terrorises whom?
Suicide terrorism
Does it work?
Terrorists as spoilers

Who terrorizes whom?

Presenter Notes:

To more easily spot the discrepancies between terrorists and the world population, Figure 1 presents a âradar chartâ depicting the ratio of the mean of the indicated variable for terrorists based on their country of origin and the weighted-average person in the world. Figure 2 presents the analogous ratio of the target country to the weightedaverage world population. If the terrorists come from countries that are on average no different than the world population, the ratio would be one and the point would lie on the unit circle in Figure 1.

Compared to the world population, the results indicate that terrorists are more likely to come from low-income countries with low GDP growth (from 1990 to 2000). The pattern is not monotonic in terms of income, however, as terrorists are over represented among the poorest quartile of countries and the third quartile of countries.15 The terrorists are also more likely to come from countriesâ characterized by anocracy and political instability.

Who terrorizes whom?

Body

Not limited to islamic fundamentalism Tamil Tigers: 75 of the 186 attacks 1980-2001 Of other attacks, 1/3 from secular groups Terrorists come from diverse backgrounds

Presenter Notes:

First, although religious motives may matter, modern suicide terrorism is not limited to Islamic Fundamentalism. Islamic groups receive the most attention in Western media, but the worldâs leader in suicide terrorism is actually the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a group who recruits from the predominantly Hindu Tamil population in northern and eastern Sri Lanka and whose ideology has Marxist/Leninist elements.The LTTE alone accounts for 75 of the 186 suicide terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2001. Even among Islamic suicide attacks, groups with secular orientations account for about a third of these attacks (Merari 1990; Sprinzak 2000).

Until recently, the leading experts in psychological profiles of suicide terrorists characterized them as uneducated, unemployed, socially isolated, single men in their late teens and early 20s (Merari 1990; Post 1990). Now we know that suicide terrorists can be college educated or uneducated, married or single, men or women, socially isolated or integrated, from age 13 to age 47 (Sprinzak 2000). In other words, although only a tiny number of people become suicide terrorists, they come from a broad cross section of lifestyles, and it may be impossible to pick them out in advance.

Who terrorizes whom?

Suicide Terrorism

Presenter Notes:

Terrorism: Use of violence by an organisation other than a national government to cause intimidation or fear among a target audience (pape 2004)

Suicide terrorism is the most aggressive form of terrorism, pursuing coercion even at the expense of losing support among the terroristsâ own community. What distinguishes a suicide terrorist is that the attacker does not expect to survive a mission and often employs a method of attack that requires the attackerâs death in order to succeed (such as planting a car bomb, wearing a suicide vest, or ramming an airplane into a building). In essence, a suicide terrorist kills others at the same time that he kills himself.1 In principle, suicide terrorists could be used for demonstrative purposes or could be limited to targeted assassinations.2 In practice, however, suicide terrorists often seek simply to kill the largest number of people. Although this maximizes the coercive leverage that can be gained from terrorism, it does so at the greatest cost to the basis of support for the terrorist cause. Maximizing the number of enemy killed alienates those in the target audience who might be sympathetic to the terrorists cause, while the act of suicide creates a debate and often loss of support among moderate segments of the terroristsâ community, even if also attracting support among radical elements. Thus, while coercion is an element in all terrorism, coercion is the paramount objective of suicide terrorism.

Pape, APSR: the strategic logic of suicide terrorism

Trends

Increasing number of suicide terrorist attacks
At the same time fewer terrorist incidents overall

Presenter Notes:

Before the early 1980s, suicide terrorism was rare but not unknown (Lewis 1968; OâNeill 1981; Rapoport 1984). However, since the attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut in April 1983, there have been at least 188 separate suicide terrorist attacks worldwide, in Lebanon, Israel, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Turkey, Russia and the United States. The rate has increased from 31 in the 1980s, to 104 in the 1990s, to 53 in 2000â2001 alone (Pape 2002).

The rise of suicide terrorism is especially remarkable, given that the total number of terrorist incidents worldwide fell during the period, from a peak of 666 in 1987 to a low of 274 in 1998, with 348 in 2001 (Department of State 2001).

What accounts for the rise in suicide terrorism, especially, the sharp escalation from the 1990s onward?

Irrational?

Suicide attacks are very costly, as organizations lose one of their devoted members. Why would leaders employ it?
Two levels of rationality:
- Individual
- Group-level

Individual level

Rational if:

Belief in the hereafter
Altruism toward family/compatriots

Group level

The difficulty of recruiting

Difficult to find reliable martyrs
Organizing a suicide attack is difficult. Many possible defection:
- Operatives to recruit an attacker
- Train the attacker
- Record a video
- observe the attacker to check his resolve
- find explosives
- Identify a target
- send the attacker on their way
- make a public announcement taking credit If N operatives are required, there are N possible sources of failure. Potential targets may reward "whistleblowers"

Defection is not rare. Of 189 attacks in Israel/Palestine between 2000-03, 77 were prevented.

Group level

The importance of rewards

To limit defection, important to offer rewards \(\rightarrow\) Hamas, Hezbollah provide social services
Policy implication: the better states and/or markets provide social services, the harder for insurgencies to organize high stake attacks without fear of defection

Group level: choice of strategy

Insurgency vs terrorism

Conditions for insurgency:
- ~~ grievances ~~
- ~~ Ethnic or religious differences ~~
- rural insurgency technology (more on this next week)
  - rough terrain
  - poor state armies
  - lack of employment for young men
  - weak and new governments
Suicide attacks emerge when the conditions for insurgency are poor \(\rightarrow\) as states become stronger and better protected, suicide attacks are used more often
E.g., Israel: suicide attacks are disproportionately used on the Israeli side ("hard" targets), whereas insurgency attacks are used on the Palestinian side ("soft"" targets)

The strategy of suicide terrorists

More destructive
Signals difficulty of deterrence
Signals more costs to come

Presenter Notes:

In contrast to the first-wave explanations, this article shows that suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic. Even if many suicide attackers are irrational or fanatical, the leadership groups that recruit and direct them are not.

Viewed from the perspective of the terrorist organization, suicide attacks are designed to achieve specific political purposes: to coerce a target government to change policy, to mobilize additional recruits and financial support, or both. Crenshaw (1981) has shown that terrorism is best understood in terms of its strategic function; the same is true for suicide terrorism. In essence, suicide terrorism is an extreme form of what Thomas Schelling (1966) calls âthe rationality of irrationality,â in which an act that is irrational for individual attackers is meant to demonstrate credibility to a democratic audience that still more and greater attacks are sure to come. As such, modern suicide terrorism is analogous to instances of international coercion. For states, air power and economic sanctions are often the preferred coercive tools (George et al. 1972; Pape 1996, 1997). For terrorist groups, suicide attacks are becoming the coercive instrument of choice.

Most suicide terrorism is undertaken as a strategic effort directed toward achieving particular political goals; it is not simply the product of irrational individuals or an expression of fanatical hatreds. The main purpose of suicide terrorism is to use the threat of punishment to coerce a target government to change policy,

the heart of the strategy of suicide terrorism is the same as the coercive logic used by states when they employ air power or economic sanctions to punish an adversary: to cause mounting civilian costs to overwhelm the target stateâs interest in the issue in dispute and so to cause it to concede the terroristsâ political demands.What creates the coercive leverage is not so much actual damage as the expectation of future damage. Targets may be economic or political, military or civilian, but in all cases the main task is less to destroy the specific targets than to convince the opposing society that they are vulnerable to more attacks in the future.

Suicide terroristsâ willingness to die magnifies the coercive effects of punishment in three ways. - First, suicide attacks are generally more destructive than other terrorist attacks. From 1980 to 2001, suicide attacks amount to 3% of all terrorist attacks but account for 48% of total deaths due to terrorism, excluding September 11 (Department of State 1983–2001). - Second, suicide attacks are an especially convincing way to signal the likelihood of more pain to come, because suicide itself is a costly signal, one that suggests that the attackers could not have been deterred by a threat of costly retaliation. Organizations that sponsor suicide attacks can also deliberately orchestrate the circumstances around the death of a suicide attacker to increase further expectations of future attacks. This can be called the âart of martyrdomâ (Schalk 1997).The more suicide terrorists justify their actions on the basis of religious or ideological motives that match the beliefs of a broader national community, the more the status of terrorist martyrs is elevated, and the more plausible it becomes that others will follow in their footsteps. Suicide terrorist organizations commonly cultivate âsacrificial mythsâ that include elaborate sets of symbols and rituals to mark an individual attackerâs death as a contribution to the nation. Suicide attackersâ families also often receive material rewards both from the terrorist organizations and from other supporters.As a result, the art of martyrdom elicits popular support from the terroristsâ community, reducing the moral backlash that suicide attacks might otherwise produce, and soestablishes the foundation for credible signals of more attacks to come. - Third, suicide terrorist organizations are better positioned than other terrorists to increase expectations about escalating future costs by deliberately violating norms in the use of violence. They can do this by crossing thresholds of damage, by breaching taboos concerning legitimate targets, and by broadening recruitment to confound expectations about limits on the number of possible terrorists. The element of suicide itself helps increase the credibility of future attacks, because it suggests that attackers cannot be deterred.

Evidence of Rationality

Timing of attacks

95% of attacks were parts of organised campaigns
- US and French forces in Lebanon
- Israel and West Bank/Gaza
- Independence of Tamil regions in Sri Lanka
- Kurdish region in Turkey
- Chechnya
- Kashmir
- US forces in Saudi Arabia
Timing of suspension. Cease-fires tend to stick for months

How can we tell that there is a logic behind suicide terrorism, and that it is not simply irrational? (1) timing nearly all suicide attacks occur in organized, coherent campaigns, not as isolated or randomly timed incidents; (2) nationalist goalsâsuicide terrorist campaigns are directed at gaining control of what the terrorists see as their national homeland territory, specifically at ejecting foreign forces from that territory; (3) target selectionâall suicide terrorist campaigns in the last two decades have been aimed at democracies, which make more suitable targets from the terroristsâ point of view. Nationalist movements that face nondemocratic opponents have not resorted to suicide attack as a means of coercion.

there have been 188 separate suicide terrorist attacks between 1980 and 2001. Of these, 179, or 95%, were parts of organized, coherent campaigns, while only nine were isolated or random events. Seven separate disputes have led to suicide terrorist campaigns: the presence of American and French forces in Lebanon, Israeli occupation of West Bank and Gaza, the independence of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, the independence of the Kurdish region of Turkey, Russian occupation of Chechnya, Indian occupation of Kashmir, and the presence of American forces on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula. Overall, however, there have been 16 distinct campaigns, because in certain disputes the terrorists elected to suspend operations one or more times either in response to concessions or for other reasons. Eleven of the campaigns have ended and five were ongoing as of the end of 2001. The attacks comprising each campaign were organised by the same terrorist group (or, sometimes, a set of cooperating groups as in the ongoing âsecond intifadaâ in Israel/Palestine), clustered in time, publically justified in terms of a specified political goal, and directed against targets related to that goal.

The most important indicator of the strategic orientation of suicide terrorists is the timing of the suspension of campaigns, which most often occurs based on a strategic decision by leaders of the terrorist organisations that further attacks would be counterproductive to their coercive purposesâfor instance, in response to full or partial concessions by the target state to the terroristsâ political goals. Such suspensions are often accompanied by public explanations that justify the decision to opt for a âcease-fire.â Further, the terrorist organizationsâ discipline is usually fairly good; although there are exceptions, such announced cease-fires usually do stick for a period of months at least.

As an example of a suicide campaign, consider Hamasâs suicide attacks in 1995 to compel Israel to withdraw from towns in the West Bank Hamas leaders deliberately withheld attacking during the spring and early summer in order to give PLO negotiations with Israel an opportunity to finalize a withdrawal. However, when in early July, Hamas leaders came to believe that Israel was backsliding and delaying withdrawal, Hamas launched a series of suicide attacks. Israel accelerated the pace of its withdrawal, after which Hamas ended the campaign. Mahmud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza, announced, following the cessation of suicide attacks in October 1995:

Evidence of Rationality

Nationalist Goals

A consistent goal: regain homeland
Every suicide campaign 1980–2001: coerce a foreign government with military forces in homeland
- E.g.: one of Al Qaeda's goal = expulsion of US troops from Saudi peninsula

Presenter Notes:

Suicide terrorism is a high-cost strategy, one that would only make strategic sense for a group when high interests are at stake and, even then, as a last resort. The reason is that suicide terrorism maximizes coercive leverage at the expense of support among the terroristsâ own community and so can be sustained over time only when there already exists a high degree of commitment among the potential pool of recruits. The most important goal that a community can have is the independence of its homeland (population, property, and way of life) from foreign influence or control. As a result, a strategy of suicide terrorism is most likely to be used to achieve nationalist goals, such as gaining control of what the terrorists see as their national homeland territory and expelling foreign military forces from that territory.

In fact, every suicide campaign from 1980 to 2001 has had as a major objectiveâor as its central objectiveâ coercing a foreign government that has military forces in what they see as their homeland to take those forces out. Since 1980, there has not been a suicide terrorist campaign directed mainly against domestic opponents or against foreign opponents who did not have military forces in the terrorists homeland.

Even Al Qaeda fits this pattern. Although Saudi Arabia is not under American military occupation per se and the terrorists have political objectives against the Saudi regime and others, one major objective of Al Qaeda is the expulsion ofU.S. troops from the Saudi Peninsula and there have been attacks by terrorists loyal to Osama Bin Laden against American troops in Saudi Arabia. To be sure, there is a major debate among Islamists over the morality of suicide attacks, but within Saudi Arabia there is little debate over Al Qaedaâs objection to American forces in the region and over 95% of Saudi society reportedly agrees with Bin Laden on this matter (Sciolino 2002).

Evidence of Rationality

Target selection

Democracies as the majority of targets

Why?

Democracies perceived as "soft"
Democracies tend to be more restrained in their use of force against civilians E.g., Kurds

Presenter Notes:

Suicide terrorism is more likely to be employed against states with democratic political systems than authoritarian governments for several reasons.

First, democracies are often thought to be especially vulnerable to coercive punishment. Domestic critics and international rivals, as well as terrorists, often view democracies as âsoft,â usually on the grounds that their publics have low thresholds of cost tolerance and high ability to affect state policy. Even if there is little evidence that democracies are easier to coerce than other regime types

Second, suicide terrorism is a tool of the weak, which means that, regardless of how much punishment the terrorists inflict, the target state almost always has the capacity to retaliate with far more extreme punishment or even by exterminating the terroristsâ community. Accordingly, suicide terrorists must not only have high interests at stake, they must also be confident that their opponent will be at least somewhat restrained. While there are infamous exceptions, democracies have generally been more restrained in their use of force against civilians, at least sinceWorldWar II.

In fact, the target state of every modern suicide campaign has been a democracy. The United States, France, Israel, India, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Russia were all democracies when they were attacked by suicide terrorist campaigns, even though the last three became democracies more recently than the others.

The Kurds, which straddle Turkey and Iraq, illustrate the point that suicide terrorist campaigns are more likely to be targeted against democracies than authoritarian regimes. Although Iraq has been far more brutal toward its Kurdish population than has Turkey, violent Kurdish groups have used suicide attacks exclusively against democratic Turkey and not against the authoritarian regime in Iraq. There are plenty of national groups living under authoritarian regimes with grievances that could possibly inspire suicide terrorism, but none have. Thus, the fact that rebels have resorted to this strategy only when they face the more suitable type of target counts against arguments that suicide terrorism is a nonstrategic response, motivated mainly by fanaticism or irrational hatreds

Does Terrorism Work?

A high success rate… but small gains

Presenter Notes:

Perhaps the most striking aspect of recent suicide terrorist campaigns is that they are associated with gains for the terroristsâ political cause about half the time. As Table 1 shows, of the 11 suicide terrorist campaigns that were completed during 1980â2001, six closely correlate with significant policy changes by the target state toward the terroristsâ major political goals.

Coercive success is so rare that even a 50% success rate is significant, because international military and economic coercion, using the same standards as above, generally works less than a third of the time

But no goals central to the targetâs national wealth or security

US had no big stake in Lebanon Israel withdrew in 1985, but maintained a security buffer Israelâs withdrawal from Gaza and West Bank in 1994-5, but 167% increase in settlementsâŠ 1997 release of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin in 1997, but ignores the hundreds of imprisonments and targeted assassinations No major concession in Sri-Lanka

Presenter Notes:

BUT NOT CENTRAL SUCCESS. While suicide terrorism has achieved modest or very limited goals, it has so far failed to compel target democracies to abandon goals central to national wealth or security.

â- Examples: When the United States withdrew from Lebanon in 1984, it had no important security, economic, or even ideological interests at stake. Lebanon was largely a humanitarian mission and not viewed as central to the national welfare of the United States. Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in June 1985 but remained in a security buffer on the edge of southern Lebanon for more than a decade afterward, despite the fact that 17 of 22 suicide attacks occurred in 1985 and 1986.

Israelâs withdrawals from Gaza and the West Bank in 1994 and 1995 occurred at the same time that settlements increased and did little to hinder the IDFâs return, and so these concessions were more modest than they may appear

Sri Lanka has suffered more casualties from suicide attack than Israel but has not acceded to demands that it surrender part of its national territory. Thus, the logic of punishment and the record of suicide terrorism suggests that, unless suicide terrorists acquire far more destructive technologies, suicide attacks for more ambitious goals are likely to fail and will continue to provoke more aggressive military responses.

Similarly, he counts as a victory the Israeli decision to release Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin from prison in October 1997, ignoring the hundreds of imprisonments and targeted assassinations of Palestinian terrorists throughout the Oslo âpeace process.

â- Papeâs data therefore reveal only that select terrorist campaigns have occasionally scored tactical victories, not that terrorism is an effective strategy for groups to achieve their policy objectives. In the aggregate, however, the terrorist groups achieved their main policy objectives only three out of forty-two timesâa 7 percent success rate.31 Within the coercion literature, this rate of success is considered extremely low. It is substantially lower, for example, than even the success rate of economic sanctions

So what explains success or failure of the terrorists campaign?

Terrorists' strategy matters

Objectives:
- Limited
- Maximalist objectives
Target selection:
- Civilians
- Army

Presenter Notes:

limited objectives typically refer to demands over territory (and other natural resources); maximalist objectives, on the other hand, refer to demands over beliefs, values, and ideology, which are more difficult to divide and relinquish. Empirical research on interstate bargaining has demonstrated that limited issues are more likely to be resolved than demands over maximalist issues;

As in other political contexts, a terrorist group is said to have limited objectives when its demands are over territory. Specifically, the group is fighting to either (1) evict a foreign military from occupying another country, or (2) win control over a piece of territory for the purpose of national self-determination. By contrast, a terrorist group has maximalist objectives when its demands are over ideology. In this scenario, the group is attacking a country to either (1) transform its political system (usually to either Marxist or Islamist), or (2) annihilate it because of its values.

The data suggest that, for terrorist groups, limited objectives are far more likely to be conciliated than maximalist objectives. Coercion succeeded in three out of eight cases when territory was the goal, but it failed in all twenty-two cases when groups aimed to destroy a target stateâs society or values

The key variable for terrorist success was a tactical one: target selection. Groups whose attacks on civilian targets outnumbered attacks on military targets systematically failed to achieve their policy objectives.

Why? The basic contention is that civilian-centric terrorist groups fail to coerce because they miscommunicate their policy objectives. Even when a terrorist group has limited, ambiguous, or idiosyncratic objectives, target countries infer from attacks on their civilians that the group wants to destroy these countriesâ values, society, or both. Because countries are reluctant to appease groups that are believed to harbor maximalist objectives, CCTGs are unable to win political concessions

In short, target countries view the negative consequences of terrorist attacks on their societies and political systems as evidence that the terrorists want them destroyed. Target countries are understandably skeptical that making concessions will placate terrorist groups believed to be motivated by these maximalist objectives.

EXAMPLES: example1 : Russiaâs Response to the 1999 Apartment Bombings Russiaâs response to the three apartment bombings that killed 229 Russian civilians in September 1999 helps illustrate why terrorist groups that target civilians are strategically ineffective. Before news of the bombings reverberated throughout Russia, there was widespread agreement among Russians that Chechen objectives were limited to establishing an independent Chechen state. During this period, most Russians favored territorial compromise. After the apartment bombings, however, large segments of Russian society fixated on their short-term consequences and inferred from them that the presumed perpetrators (the Chechens) surreptitiously wanted to destroy Russia. This view that the Chechens are irredeemably committed to destroying Russia has eroded support for granting Chechen independence. (See Abrams pp 61-62)

example 2: Americansâespecially in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacksâhave tended to ignore al-Qaidaâs rationale for violence. Instead of focusing on al-Qaidaâs policy demands, they have fixated on the effects of the terrorist attacks and inferred from them that the terrorists are targeting the United States to destroy its society and values. These inferences have hampered al-Qaida from translating its violence into policy successes in the Muslim world.

Ben Laden ultimatum is for the United States to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia, âLand of the Two Holy Places.â His statements indicate that he objects not only to the U.S. stationing of troops in âthe holiest of places,â but also to U.S. bases serving as a âspearhead through which to fight the neighbouring Muslim peoples.â

Second, al-Qaida spokesmen say that its terrorist acts are intended to dissuade the United States from supporting military interventions that kill Muslims around the world. In the 1990s these interventions included âCrusader warsâ in Chechnya, Bosnia, and East Timor. Bloodshed in Israel and Iraq during this period generated the most intense opposition. Since the September 11 attacks, al-Qaidaâs condemnation of the United States has focused on events in these two countries

Third, al-Qaida communiquÃ©s emphasize the goal of ending U.S. support for pro-Western Muslim rulers who suppress the will of their people. Al-Qaida leaders routinely denounce the House of Saud and President Pervez Musharrafâs Pakistan in particular as the most âoppressive. A prominent al-Qaida website has equated U.S. financial and political support of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to colonization.

Fourth, al-Qaida leaders describe Israel in similar terms, as a colonial outpost. Based on the organizationâs communiquÃ©s, al-Qaidaâs final objective is thus to destroy the âZionist-Crusader alliance,â which enables Israel to maintain its âoccupation of Jerusalemâ and âmurder Muslims there

Terrorists as Spoilers

Sabotaging the peace

Terrorists successful at destroying peace processes
In negotiations, uncertainty about the other side's ability and willingness to carry out its side of the bargain
if a terrorist act occurs, unsure if it is because of inability or unwillingness to crack down

Presenter Notes:

On Sunday 25 February 1996 a Palestinian student stepped onto a crowded bus in Jerusalem and detonated a bomb, killing twenty-six Israelis. One week later a second Palestinian detonated a bomb on a Jerusalem bus, killing eighteen Israelis. The following day a known Muslim extremist lay down on a busy street in Tel Aviv and blew himself up along with ten Israelis. These attacks were designed to undermine and halt what extremist groups viewed as the humiliating and misguided Palestinian-Israeli peace process, and within three months they had achieved this goal. On 26 May 1996 Israelis replaced Prime Minister Shimon Peres with the more hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu, and soon thereafter negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority stalled. Although the bombings were clearly the work of a small band of Palestinian extremists, these extremists were able to convince a majority of Israeli citizens to walk away from a peace process most of them strongly supported.

Extremists are surprisingly successful in bringing down peace processes if they so desire. Between 1988 and 1998, fourteen peace agreements were signed between combatants engaged in civil war. If terrorist violence occurred during negotiations, just one in four treaties (25 percent) were put into effect. However, if terrorist violence did not occur, six out of ten treaties (60 percent) were implemented

In what follows, we argue that extremists succeed in destroying a peace settle- ment if they are able to foster mistrust between more moderate groups that must implement the deal; they fail if the moderate groups retain an adequate level of mutual trust in each other's willingness to fulfill the deal. The purpose of extremist violence is not to achieve anything directly in a military sense, nor to signal that the extremist group opposes the peace treaty, which is already known. The purpose is to exacerbate doubts among those on the targeted side that the moderate opposition groups can be trusted to implement the peace deal and will not renege on it later

The basic story goes like this: Whenever two sides negotiate a peace agreement, there is uncertainty about whether or not it is self-enforcing. Each side fears that though it may carry out its side of the bargain, the other side will not, catapulting it back to war on disadvantageous terms. Some Israelis, for example, feared that if Israel returned an additional 13 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians as mandated by the Wye accord, the Palestinian Authority would relaunch its struggle from an improved territorial base. Extremists understand that moderates on the other side of the table fear being taken advantage of and will look for signs that their former enemy will violate an agreement. They understand that targeting these moderates with violence will increase their fear and make them increasingly less likely to implement any terms. Thus terrorist bombs are designed to persuade a targeted group that the seemingly moderate opposition with whom it negotiated an agreement will not stop terrorism, and hence cannot be trusted to implement the deal. In fact, even if moderate leaders are willing to aggressively suppress their own terrorists, terrorists know that isolated violence might still convince the target to reject a deal. This is because the targeted group may not be able to readily observe the extent of the crackdown and must base its judgments primarily on whether terrorism occurs or not. Even an aggressive strategy of self-policing will not necessarily convince the targeted group to proceed with a settlement if a terrorist attack slips through. Extremist violence, therefore, plays on the uncertainty that exists between more moderate groups and can lead them to reject a peace settlement even if majorities on both sides initially favored the deal.

The Palestinian-Israeli Peace Process

Presenter Notes:

If our theory is valid, Hamas's violent attacks should coincide with the ratification and implementation of individual peace accords; these are opportunities to prevent anticipated cooperation by increasing mistrust. Similarly, Hamas should also step up its attacks prior to Israeli elections in which Labor is the incumbent party in an effort to persuade voters to install the less cooperative and less trusting hard-line Likud party. Successfully doing so is another means to prevent future cooperation.

From 1993 to 2001, Hamas concentrated its violence around six major events: (1) the September 1993 signing of the Oslo I peace accord, (2) the May 1994 signing of the Cairo agreement, (3) the October 1994 signing of a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, (4) the 1996 Palestinian and Israeli elections, (5) the October 1998 signing of the Wye agreement, and (6) the February 2001 Israeli elections .
October-November 1993. Hamas launched its first series of attacks on Israel on 4 October 1993, three weeks after Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat signed their first peace accord. The secret negotiations and the signed settlement caught Hamas off guard and only after the accord was made public did Hamas began its campaign to derail the peace process. In the future, Hamas would not wait until an agreement was signed with Israel to launch its attacks and would target its violence for the weeks and months preceding the final ratification of an accord.

(NOTE: The Oslo I accord, as it was called, had obtained concessions from both sides. In it, the Israeli government promised to give the Palestinians control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Jericho and withdraw its troops from those areas within four months. Within nine months, a Palestinian Council would be elected to govern and police the West Bank and Gaza for a five-year interim period. In return, Yasir Arafat and the PLO agreed to stop terrorism and amend a clause in the Palestinian National Covenant that called for the destruction of Israel. The agreement also called for additional negotiations within two years on control over Jerusalem and the status of 120,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied territories )

From 4 October to 7 November, Hamas detonated four bombs, killing three Israelis and injuring twenty-nine others. The violence had no effect on the peace process. Arafat and Rabin continued to meet, and both sides began implementing the accord soon after it was signed. Two factors appear to explain this. First, Rabin's soft-line Labor party placed a high value on peace and was inclined to sustain the peace process even in the face of terrorist attacks. Second, although Arafat had promised that the PLO would try to prevent violence, most Israelis did not believe Arafat had the ability to suppress all terrorist activity even if he tried A poll by the Guttman Institute immediately before the signing of the Oslo accord found that "75 percent of Israelis expected violence to increase as a result of the accord, even though most of them supported [the accord]."20 And Shimon Peres, Israel's minister of defense at the time, was fond of saying that "although Israel does not expect the [PLO] to produce 100 percent success, it would like to see 100 percent effort."21 Many Israelis seemed to understand that Arafat was in a difficult position.22 If Arafat clamped down too harshly on Hamas, he risked chasing the Palestinians into the arms of more militant groups and eroding the PLO's support base. In addition, Israelis seemed to recognize that Arafat did not yet control the areas from which Hamas operated and could not, therefore, be expected to keep violence fully in check. The fact that Arafat was willing to arrest some Hamas soldiers seemed to satisfy Israelis, at least for the time being. Thus in accordance with hypothesis 3b, terrorist attacks had less of an impact on Israel's level of trust at this point in the peace process because Arafat was viewed as likely to be weak in his ability to police Hamas.

Hamas launched its second series of attacks in April 1994, one month before Rabin and Arafat signed the Cairo agreement of May 1994.23 This second accord outlined the terms by which the PLO would take charge of the Gaza Strip and Jericho and promised that within twenty-four hours one thousand Palestinian policemen would replace departing Israeli troops in those areas. Once again, Hamas's attack failed to halt the peace process. Two factors help explain this. Hamas continued to face an Israeli public pessimistic about the PLO's ability to end the violence. By 1994, only 35 percent of Israelis believed that the PLO could control terrorism even after taking over Gaza and Jericho.24 As hypothesis 3b indicates, the less confidence there is in the opposition's ability to suppress the extremists, the smaller the decline in trust after a terrorist incident. This second series of terrorist attacks, therefore, served only to confirm what Israelis already believed: Arafat and the PLO would have great difficulty preventing all violence from striking Israel. It did not yet seriously undermine their beliefs about Arafat's willingness to do so. Hamas had also chosen to direct its attacks against hard-line settlers living in the occupied territories, believing that pressure from this group of Israelis would force Rabin to reject the accords. This strategy, however, left the majority of Israeli citizens and most of Rabin's supporters unaffected by the costs of violence.25 If Hamas wished to shift public opinion and pressure Rabin into abandoning the peace process, it would have to target attacks at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where most Israelis and most of Rabin's supporters lived.

October 1994. Hamas's third cluster of attacks, two weeks prior to the signing of the Israeli-Jordan peace treaty of October 1994, also failed to destroy the peace process.26 Once again, Israeli beliefs about Arafat's relative strength were at play. Although the PLO was to have taken administrative control of the West Bank and the Gaza strip immediately following the signing of the May 1994 Cairo agreement, the organization still did not have full control over most major Palestinian popula- tion centers by December 1994. The majority of Israelis, therefore, did not expect Arafat to be able to prevent all terrorist attacks launched from these areas from occurring. As one senior U.S. official pointed out, Israelis realized that Arafat "with his undermanned, ill-trained, and poorly equipped police forces" could not wipe out the terrorism that the Israeli police and army had been unable to stop for decades.27 Additionally, Arafat's political support among the Palestinians was declining, and the Israeli government knew this. A poll conducted by the Center for Palestine Research and Studies in the West Bank town of Nablus in November 1994 found for the first time that Arafat did not have the support of the majority of Palestinians.28 Not only did Arafat not have full control over Palestinian activity, but his power within the Palestinian community was declining. A weak Arafat appeared to be getting weaker. It was expected, therefore, that some terrorist violence would get through

After three failed attempts to destabilize the peace process, Hamas significantly limited its attacks on Israel. Hamas detonated only two bombs from October 1994 to February 1996 and then chose to halt all terrorist activity after July 1995-the longest period of inactivity since attacks began in October 1993. This fits the first and fourth predictions made by the model. As long as a trusting Rabin remained in power and as long as Israelis perceived Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to be weak, Hamas had little incentive to launch additional attacks. Rabin appeared to have a sufficiently high level of trust in Arafat to make additional violence ineffective. This situation changed dramatically on 20 January 1996 when the Palestinians held their first-ever election. Not only did Arafat win a landslide 88 percent of the vote, but the largest turn-out of Palestinian voters came from Gaza, Hamas's home base.30 Arafat's victory, especially among Palestinians living in Gaza, made it clear to Israel that Arafat was in fact quite strong and could pursue Hamas more aggressively without fear of losing legitimacy or popular support.31 Hamas renewed its attacks on Israel soon after the Palestinian election. This is in line with hypothesis 3b, which states that extremist violence will be more effective in lowering the government's level of trust when the government believes opposi- tion moderates to be strong and thus capable of suppressing the extremists. On 25 February 1996 Hamas initiated its most sustained offensive against Israel since its inception, killing 102 people and injuring more than 80 others in less than three weeks.32 This time Hamas's attacks succeeded. From February to May 1996, public support in Israel for the peace process declined by its greatest percentage.33 This dramatic shift in public opinion led directly to the Labor government's defeat in the May 1996 elections, opening the door for the more hard-line Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Three single suicide bombs detonated over the next two years provided Netanyahu with reasons to delay the implementation of previously agreed- upon terms and bring the peace process to a halt Why did Hamas finally succeed? First, the January 1996 Palestinian vote gave Arafat the political mandate necessary to take strong action against Hamas and raised Israeli expectations that terrorism would decline. The fact that violence increased in both number and intensity in the months following this election signaled to the Israeli government and public that Arafat was more likely to be untrustworthy than weak. By March 1996, even peace-seeking Israelis began to suspect that Arafat was unwilling rather than unable to pursue Hamas and, therefore, could not be trusted to fulfill the terms of a peace agreement

Hamas did not launch another sustained attack on Israel until July 1998 when a flurry of diplomatic activity made it appear as if Netanyahu would break his negotiating freeze with the Palestinians.35 From July to October 1998 when the Wye accord was signed, Hamas launched ten attacks on Israel. This time, however, violence did not stop Netanyahu from pressing ahead with a land-for-peace deal with Arafat, and on 23 October 1998, the two men signed the Wye agreement.

(note: The Wye agreement set a detailed timetable for the Israelis to withdraw from an additional 13 percent of the West Bank, making Israeli withdrawal contingent on Palestinian compliance with weapons collection, arrest of suspects, and other security provisions. For additional details, see Morris 1999, 647. )

By 1998, three factors were working against Hamas. First, Arafat's increased efforts to thwart terrorist attacks as well as the significantly reduced number of attacks from May 1996 to July 1998 shifted public opinion in favor of once again pursuing peace with the Palestinians. As Figure 5 shows, Israeli support for the Oslo peace process rose from a low of 43.9 percent in August 1997 to a high of 57.3 percent in October 1998 when Wye was signed.37 Second, Netanyahu was forced to reopen meaningful talks with the Palestinian Authority after public opinion polls in October 1998 showed that a majority of Israelis supported the peace process and named Netanyahu as the primary reason for the lack of progress.38 Netanyahu, who enjoyed only a slim margin of victory in the 1996 elections, could not ignore public opinion, and when it became clear that the median voter supported negotiations, Netanhayu was forced to respond. Third, the Wye accord included special provisions to reassure Israelis that the Palestinians would comply with the terms. Israeli would not be forced to withdraw from territory until the Palestinian Authority had fulfilled important security requirements, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency would serve to monitor and validate Palestinian performance on its promise to fight terrorism. This last provi- sion would remove much of the uncertainty regarding Arafat's willingness to pursue Hamas and served to signal his true desire for peace. The result was to rebuild Israeli trust and reduce the effectiveness of any subsequent attacks

There was little terrorist activity from October 1998 to December 2000 despite both the 1999 Israeli elections and the promising July 2000 Camp David negotiations. Hamas had every reason to remain quiet as Netanyahu struggled to win the election against a soft-line challenger; terrorist violence would only serve to further shift public opinion against Netanyahu and help elect the dovish Ehud Barak, something Hamas did not want to do. Hamas also had little incentive to launch attacks while the newly elected Barak pursued negotiations with Arafat since terrorist violence at this point was unlikely to change Barak's mind and halt negotiations. Barak had been elected on the promise to relaunch the Middle East peace process and forge a deal with Arafat, and the generous terms the Israeli prime minister offered during the July negotiations seemed to support this. Hamas had learned the lesson of the 1993 and 1994 bombing campaigns: terrorism would not prevent a determined dovish prime minister from pursuing peace. Hamas's next-best strategy was to target subsequent Israeli elec- tions when the more hawkish and less trusting Likud party could be brought to power. Hamas, therefore, remained quiet for almost two years and only launched a series of new attacks in the months preceding Israel's next election. The next wave of violence, which began in December 2000, had the desired effect. Barak lost the February 2001 elections by a landslide to the right-wing hard liner Ariel Sharon, and no serious negotiations have occurred since.

Why was Hamas once again successful in achieving its goals? Two factors aided Hamas in its attempt to bring Sharon to power. First, trust in Arafat had significantly declined after he rejected what many people viewed as Barak's generous July terms. Second, Israelis continued to believe that Arafat was a strong leader and capable of halting violence at this time. Public opinion polls taken in February 2001 showed that the public believed Arafat was "in effect in full control" over what was happening on Palestinian streets.42 Yet the renewal of intifada-like violence and Arafat's willingness to release jailed members of Hamas, gave the appearance that the Palestinian Authority had no interest in preventing violence or pursuing peace.43 As violence increased, Israeli trust in the peaceful intentions of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority correspondingly declined. This low level of trust, together with the belief that Arafat had the ability to halt violence if he chose, set the stage for a successful campaign of violence by Hamas. The result was the election of a new hard-line government and an end to further progress toward peace. Of course, Hamas cannot claim sole responsibility for the recent deterioration of relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority nor for the election of Sharon. The renewal of the intifada in the wake of Sharon's October 2000 visit to the Temple Mount played a major role in diminishing Israeli trust in Arafat and support for the peace process. We do not claim, however, that the same strategy motivates both the intifada and Hamas. The intifada is best understood as a return to a war of attrition in the wake of a failed peace negotiation; both sides have returned to war in an attempt to wear down the other side and gain leverage for the next round of negotiations. What we do argue is that Hamas intentionally increased its attacks during this time in order to influence the outcome of Israel's February election and bring a more hard-line government to power. This was Hamas's best chance to prevent renewed negotiations.

Some argue that Hamas was motivated in these attacks (the March 1996 ones) by revenge for the Israeli assassination of "the engineer," a Palestinian bomb-making expert, and that, in general, reciprocity and revenge explain Israeli-Palestinian violence rather than the strategic logic we outline here. However, Goldstein and his colleagues use events data to show that in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship from 1991 to 1995, Israel reciprocated Palestinian cooperation and conflict, whereas Palestine (defined as the PLO, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and other groups directing violence or cooperation toward Israel) did not reciprocate Israel's. Goldstein et al. 2000. Thus the general case for Palestinian retaliation is somewhat weak

Today's Lecture: Review

Hard to define a typical terrorist
- suicide terrorists different from overall terrorists
Terrorist organisations tend behave strategically
- spoilers
- choose targets
- Suicide missions:
  - Aim to regain homeland
- Democracies as targets
Effectiveness:
- Yes for small concessions
- No for larger ones
- Good at destroying peace processes

Answer to Today's Puzzle

"Rational" destruction: destroy works that cannot be transported, sell the rest