Terrorism against Israel

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Israeli-Palestinian peace process

Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip
Negotiating parties

Palestine Liberation Organisation
Israel
Israel-Palestinian peace process series
Primary negotiation concerns
Israeli leaders
Palestinian leaders
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Other proposals

Since the failure of the Camp David Summit in the summer of 2000, many acts of violence were committed by individuals, militant Palestinian groups, and members of the Palestinian National Authority against Israeli civilians. More than 2,600 Palestinians and at least 875 Israelis have died since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000.

Contents

[edit] Early history

See also: List of Terrorist Attacks Against Israel Before 1967

After the establishment of the British Mandate of Palestine, the intake of Jews increased dramatically, a result of persecution of Jews in Europe, as well as the success of Zionist ideas. There had been a steady influx of Jews to Palestine since the 1880s. It was not until the Arab Palestinians began to feel in earnest that they could become a minority, that their leadership turned to violence hoping to compel the British administration to limit further Jewish immigration.

This tactic was proven successful after the Jerusalem pogrom of April, 1920, an attack on old Yishuv incited by Haj Amin Al-Husseini (subsequently the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem), when the British blamed the Zionists, arrested their leadership and halted Jewish immigration. In the aftermath of the riots in Palestine of May, 1921 and a change in administrators of the British Mandate, the administration, headed by high commissioner Herbert Samuel changed its policy regarding a promise to establish the Jewish National Homeland in Palestine (the reason behind the Mandate given to them by the League of Nations) by "fixing by the numbers and interests of the present population" the future Jewish immigration.

Syrian-born Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, after whom the "military wing" of Hamas is named, created one of the first terrorist groups in the history of the British Mandate of Palestine. The group, called the Black Hand, was responsible for the deaths of at least ten Jews. After it killed a Jewish police officer, al-Qassam was hunted down and killed by British police.

During the 1929 Palestine riots Arabs killed 133 Jews, between 65 and 68 in the 1929 Hebron massacre alone. A commission of enquiry into the events lead by Sir Walter Shaw notes that the violence was not premeditated.

During the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, bombings, riots, and murders, all of them carried out on a systematic basis, left hundreds of people dead.

The same techniques were used by Arabs in the first stage of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. However, efficient conduct by the Haganah managed to constrain the attacks. Eventually, the war turned into a wide conflict with Arab nations invading from abroad, in which Israel obtained independence and Jordan and Egypt took over parts of Mandatory Palestine.

Between 1969 to September 1970 the PLO with a passive support from Jordan fought a war of attrition with Israel. During this time, the PLO launched artillery attacks on the moshavim and kibbutzim of Bet Shean Valley Regional Council as well as attempted to launch attacks by fedayeen on Israeli civilians. These attacks came to an end after the PLO expulsion from Jordan in September 1970.

[edit] After 1967

In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories on which more than a million Palestinians lived, many of them refugees of the war of 1948. Some of the residents of the occupied territories belonged to various militant movements. The PLO's earlier influence in these lands was limited by Egypt and Jordan (who saw it as a Syrian proxy); however, in 1967 it began to rapidly take over the existing infrastructure. Many Palestinians fled to Jordan and de-stabilized its political system. Within months, Israel was again the target of a wave of attacks (at that time mainly consisting of, but not limited to bombings), that originated either in the Palestinian population within the occupied territories, or in Jordan, which was no longer able to contain them.

Israel's army and security services retaliated forcefully and eventually devised tactics that made it possible to stop the attacks. By 1970, members of most major Palestinian terror networks in West Bank and Gaza were identified and arrested, while the PLO's attempts to take over Jordan only led to armed response by King Hussein, and the formers' exile. Yasser Arafat and the PLO moved to South Lebanon.

The Palestine Liberation Organization has launched numerous raids on Israeli targets from Lebanon. In addition, in the 1970s and early 1980s, various arms of the PLO have carried out a wave bombings, killings in synagogues and public airports and airplane hijackings across Europe, the most famous being the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics, by a group called "Black September".

In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in order to expel the PLO from there. The operation succeeded in making Arafat and numerous PLO members flee to Tunis. During the operation, Israel became entangled with the local population. By 1985 Israel withdrew from all of South Lebanon but for a strip of about 10 miles wide (intended at preventing mortar and rocket fire at Israel's northern cities). However, Israel's prolonged stay and Arab and Iranian support had led to the strengthening of the Shi'ite-Muslim group Hezbollah that began to execute attacks against Israeli and Western targets, military and non-military alike.

[edit] The First Intifada

In December 1987 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza rose up in a popular civil revolt (named Intifada, Arabic for "uprising"), opposing the continued Israeli occupation. While the Intifada began spontaneously, by January 1988 it was already under the direction from the PLO headquarters in Tunis. However, the Intifada also signified the rise of Islamic opposition groups to the secular PLO leadership, namely Hamas (led by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (see Intifada for more details about the causes and effects of the Intifada).

The Intifada's terrorist effects on the Israeli population concentrated in two main areas. First, provocateurs paid by PLO caused the daily creation of large mobs, stoning Israeli cars and attacking Israelis[citation needed]. Secondly, on the general background of the unrest, there were numerous deliberate attacks made sometimes in remote areas against Israelis. The attacks were varied in type and style, but many of them could be described as "local initiatives", that did not require a central planning apparatus. An example of such an attack would be the Tel Aviv Jerusalem bus 405 massacre of July 6, 1989, in which 14 bus passengers were killed as an Arab assaulted the bus driver as the bus was driving by the edge of a cliff.

[edit] The Palestinian Authority

See also: List of Hamas suicide attacks, List of Palestinian Islamic Jihad suicide attacks, and Palestinian revolving door policy

In 1993, Israel completed the Oslo Accords, a series of negotiations with the PLO, resulting in mutual recognition, the agreement on the cessation of violence, and the forming of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA or PA). One of PA's obligations, as stated in the Oslo Accords, was the prevention of Palestinian attacks against Israel.

Initially, as both Israel and the United States agree, the PA carried out its obligations. In accordance with the agreement, it transformed the Intifada infrastructure into a government-like apparatus. However, several times in the years since 1993, there were several waves of Palestinian terrorist attacks. The Palestinian Authority did not arrest the leadership of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others. This led some members of the Israeli public to suspect that the regularity of the attacks - many waves came when the Israeli public reaction could be beneficial to some Palestinian aim during negotiations, along with numerous documented facts of incitement against Jews and Israelis in official PA-controlled media, schools, and mosques[1] - meant that PA complicity could be taking place[2].

[edit] The al-Aqsa Intifada

See also: List of massacres committed during the Al-Aqsa Intifada and List of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades suicide attacks

In Autumn 2000 the Second Intifada began. The Palestinians blame Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli opposition leader, for inciting the Intifada with a trip to the politically sensitive Al-Aqsa Mosque with a large group of Israelis, while Israel claims the PA started it intentionally to improve the Palestinian positions at the negotiating table after the failure of the Camp David talks during the summer of 2000.

Over 100 suicide bombings, mainly targeting city buses, restaurants and open air gathering places, have taken place in Israel, killing more than three hundred civilians. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah are said to have at their disposal enormous quantities of weapons and explosives, which all sides agree are not made by the individual bombers themselves but at informal factories in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip[citation needed]. Israel names the towns of Hebron, Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah as centers of this activity.

Israel claims that the PA's position regarding violence was shady in the first place. While condemning some attacks, the PA has never arrested figures of importance to the terrorist networks, confiscated their weaponry or publicly denounced future violence against Israelis. Operatives from the Fatah movement of Yasser Arafat, the head of the PA, and Palestinian policemen are known to have participated in a large number of attacks themselves. A radical change of the PA position was that imprisoning militants, even those who targeted Israeli civilians, may be seen as collaborating with Israel.

During Israel's military operations begun in the late spring of 2003 into the West Bank (including the town of Jenin) the Israeli government has obtained and published thousands of pages of internal Palestinian Authority documents which demonstrate that the PA has been covertly funding and directing, many of the suicide bombings[citation needed]. The head of the United States' CIA has gone on record as saying that these documents are without a doubt real, and prove that Arafat personally orders attacks through his Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. The Palestinian Authority initially responded by saying that these documents were taken out of context. The PA's current position is that the documents never existed and that they are fabrications. The change in position is interpreted by many in the US and Israel as tacit admissions that the documents were authentic.

As a result of the military operations, reestablishing Israeli control over areas ceded to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords, the number of attacks has dropped significantly, from several a week to one a month.

Notwithstanding the continued European general condemnation of any violence towards civilians, Israelis included, Israel continues to complain that acts taken against European citizens are always labeled as terrorist, but that similar actions against Israelis are seldom labeled as such.

[edit] Discussion of against Israel during the al-Aqsa Intifada

Palestinian political violence has an extended history that predates the founding of the state of Israel by several decades. Examples include the 1929 Massacre in Hebron and other cities. The discussion below focuses on the issue of the Palestinian National Authority in curbing or inciting violence. In the Oslo Accords the Palestinian National Authority undertook to end all incitement against Israel, Israelis and Jews.

Many Israelis and Americans blame suicide bombings on the indoctrination of Palestinian children, from kindergarten to college age, with propaganda, citing official Palestinian Authority television shows for 5 and 6 year olds teaching them songs about killing Jews[citation needed]. Jordanian and Egyptian books used in the schools belonging to Islamic movements are sources of incitement on their own right. Given such a climate of hatred over so many years, they say, it is not surprising that some Palestinian children are eventually convinced to become Islamic militants[3].

Some advocates also feel that this does not hold true for the educational institutions of Palestinian authority itself, saying that a new generation of Palestinian textbooks released in the year 2000 is more tolerant. In particular, a study of Palestinian textbooks by Professor Nathan Brown of George Washington University in Washington, DC, while not dismissing the allegations entirely, noted that the books were "largely innocent of these charges"[4].

However, critics claim that these books, while not inciting directly for violence, still present an excessively jingoistic nationalistic image that in effect denies Israel's right to exist.

A survey conducted by Gaza Community Mental Health Programme on children living close to major checkpoints in Khan Yunis and Rafah in Southern Gaza Strip states that 54.6% of the children show symptoms of severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). More than 50% had seen dead or injured people, in 23% of the cases the person was a family member.

Several prominent leaders of Palestinian islamist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have stated that they are fundamentally opposed to the existence of the state of Israel.

Some commentators argue that the extent of the violence against Israel is greatly exaggerated, pointing out the combined homicide rate including deaths from militant attacks is still lower than that of many Western countries. For example, E.V. Kontorovich writes in the NY Post, "The State Department last month issued a travel warning urging Americans to 'defer travel to Israel' because the place is too dangerous - the second such warning in four months. Yet Israel is still safer than America - let alone other nations for which State does not offer warnings."

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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