Mideast Security and Policy Studies - The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies - December 23, 2006 - Back to Resources Page

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Is it really true that counterterrorism leads to aimless and repetitive conflict as many scholars claim? Mia Bloom in a well-cited article argues that Israeli counterterrorism motivated the Palestinian factions to increase terrorism and the support insurgents receive from wider society: "Surprisingly enough, Israelis rallied around the extreme right, thinking that hawkish policies would deter future attacks. In fact, the long-term ramifications on the Palestinian polity will encourage rather than deter future attacks." Elsewhere in the article, Bloom is even more disparaging about Israeli offensive measures to reduce Palestinian terrorism: "The Israelis and Palestinians appear to be in a dead-locked battle of assassination-suicide bombing assassination- suicide bombing in an unending causal loop… encouraging yet more 'martyrs.'"2 She concludes, “…in the long run, the number of attacks will increase because groups vying to lead the Palestinians will use violence as their main source of recruitment and mobilization.”

Bloom is hardly alone in focusing on the motivation of the insurgent as being crucial in explaining the intensity of violence and in questioning the presumed effectiveness of Israeli counterterrorist actions. According to Scott Atran, “repeated suicide actions show that massive counterforce alone does not diminish the frequency or intensity of suicide attacks."4 Even Richard Boucher, then State Department spokesperson under the hawkish Bush administration doubted the value of Israel's offensive moves, primarily targeted killings, when he stated in July 2001 that "Israel needs to understand that targeted killings of Palestinians don't end the violence, but are only inflaming an already volatile situation and making it much harder to restore calm."

If counterterrorism indeed breeds more violence because it increases motivation amongst the insurgents in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as Bloom and others predicted, why then did suicide attempts decline from its peak in 2003-2004 by over one-third (from 184 to 119 attempts) and successful suicide attacks decrease by over 40 percent (from 26 to 15)? Even more dramatically, why did the number of Israeli fatalities from suicide bombing and other forms of Palestinian violence drop by 75 percent from its peak in 2002 within two years, leading, as the paper will demonstrate, to a turn-around in the Israeli economy?

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Mideast Security and Policy Studies - The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies - December 23, 2006 - Back to Resources Page