Table of contentsIntroductionThe Palestinian caseConclusionIntroductionThe perceived success and failure of civilian-centric terrorist organizations have been the subject of considerable analytical attention in the context of the 21st century. . A questionable notion among contemporary researchers – and among dissidents themselves on the international scene – the question of the definition of the political medium is perceived as insoluble in polemical, ideological and propagandist contexts. Whether an effective political instrument or an act of defiance plunging the international system into a state of ephemeral hysteria, terrorism – for the purposes of this study – is the imminent threat or illegal use of violence within an asymmetric conflict. It is designed to incite both terror and psychological fear in the pursuit of political concessions through indiscriminate victimization. In prompting analyzes – such as this one – that seek to determine the strategic effectiveness of terrorist campaigns, in the history of terrorism it is relatively easy to find examples of brutally successful and unsuccessful terrorist operations. In this article, a tactical framework of the observed success of terrorism – both minimalist and maximalist – will be proposed with explicit reference to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). As part of this analysis, I will argue that although the Palestinians are cited as the best example of paid terrorism, their plight actually suggests, to a large extent, the serious limitations of terrorism as a political instrument. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe Palestinian CaseIn reviving the Palestinian cause, a significant faction of society – mainly Palestinian civilians – ignores militant tendencies, claiming that tactical force propelled their plight onto the international stage, legitimizing their struggle for refugees, their displacement, and their lack of recognition. With its roots dating back to 1948 – following the persecution and subsequent displacement of Jewish populations following the Holocaust – the Arab-Israeli conflict is observed as an ongoing political tension, military conflicts and various disputes between Jewish and Arab populations. in the former Ottoman Empire. region of Palestine. Attributed to the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism in the Middle East, this seemingly intractable conflict erupted over a territorial struggle over the land of Palestine, a region rich in sites of international historical, cultural and religious interest. . Exploiting the proliferation of transnational connections, the Palestine Liberation Organization – established in 1964 – has since become the embodiment of the Palestinian national movement that successfully disenchanted the prospect of liberation through conventional means. Commonly associated with contemporary terrorism – incessant bombings, hijackings, sieges and artillery barrages against the Israeli community – the PLO is a Palestinian nationalist umbrella organization dedicated to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Establishing itself as a determining influence in the diplomatic sphere of the international system, obviously as an internationalized insurgency, the PLO was a nationalist response to the loss of territory. Comprised of commando groups, unions, professional associations, and prominent national figures, academic papers assessing the value of terrorism as a political means often cite the Palestinian cause as an example of the success ofterrorism to obtain political concessions. Conversely, while the Palestinian people and their cause were seemingly an unknown entity until they asserted themselves at the barrel of a gun, such an entity was still deplorable. The actions carried out under the command of Yasser Arafat n have served only to fuel animosities and hinder the prospect of a peaceful resolution intended to achieve apparently limited objectives. Of the thirty-eight peace agreements signed between 1988 and 1998, an unprecedented thirty-one failed to last. more than three years. In the art of winning political concessions, one might ask: when do national movements succeed? Explicitly, when and why does the use of revolutionary violence by terrorist organizations within transnational movements help secure tactical political concessions such as international recognition, territorial control and the creation of new states? Among political scientists, the predominant view is that “opposition movements choose violent methods because these means are more effective than nonviolent strategies in achieving their political goals” (Stephan and Chenoweth 2011). This is, however, an error. Nonviolent campaigns are apparently more amenable to negotiation than violent campaigns; the public is less likely to support a violent campaign that does not care about civilian casualties. Unlike nonviolent campaigns, violent insurrections result in international condemnation, disobedience among civilian supporters of civic terrorist campaigns, and mobilization of the masses against the regime, while simultaneously repelling their initiators. Evaluated from an isolated consequentialist perspective, the fascination with terrorism and the pursuit of studies on the political phenomenon can appear as an indulgence. Although its apparent importance is disproportionate to its measurable effect on mortality statistics or rather on the stability of political regimes, the appearance of terrorism – although directly involving a relatively small number of people – is nevertheless of political importance distinct. In the field of political science, the dominant scholarly view is that, overall, terrorism is an entirely effective coercive strategy. The public is left with the impression that violence is instrumental – it is a means to an end. As such, the power to harm or threaten harm is a power of negotiation, and its exploitation is diplomacy. However, a program of systematic assault focused on civilians constitutes a type of political enterprise distinct from that of a campaign aimed at assassinating political figures or military personnel involved in the military. When terrorist organizations are classified by target selection, a trend emerges: terrorist organizations – that is, organizations whose combative strikes against “military” and “diplomatic” targets outnumber attacks against “civilian” targets – represent the majority of cases of partial success. obtain political concessions. As empirical evidence shows, the majority of terrorist organizations – like that of the PLO – are strategically oriented towards targeting civilians, hijacking commercial airliners and effectively ignoring the political notion of civilian immunity. According to Loren E. Lomasky – Cory Professor of Political Philosophy, Politics and Law at the University of Virginia – “the inability of terrorists to discriminate in their choice of victims, or rather their inability to discrimination on the basis of standard political categories.” , is initself a defining characteristic of their business” (Lomasky 1991). However, by convention, targeting civilians is strategically ineffective and is strongly associated with political failure. In such cases, these civilian-centered terrorist organizations fail to obtain political concessions. By often tarnishing the legitimacy of terrorist organizations' political objectives, civilian casualties are not simply incidental to the practice of terrorism as a political instrument. However, this constitutes a divergence in the psychological perception of such revolutionary violence within the international system. Indeed, unlike a campaign that ambushes military patrols or instead assassinates diplomats, civilian-centered terrorism "will garner a different degree of attention from those of us who are civilians and who recognize that, without luck, it was we who could have fueled the terrorists' ambitions” (Lomasky 1991). Therefore, although terrorism has the innate ability to attract media attention, raise the profile of political agendas, demonstrate the price of resisting the demands of terrorists and an influx of new recruits, the Terrorist groups will rarely succeed in achieving their desired political goals. In the context of the Palestinian struggle, civilian-centered terrorism has done more harm than good to Palestinian aspirations, tarnishing their national struggle and delegitimizing their grievances. On the one hand, the Palestinian cause was a useful means of mobilizing international opprobrium against Israel and also of generating support among Arab states for greater regional unity against the "common Zionist enemy." On the other hand, the plight of the refugee question offered a convenient means of diverting attention from domestic problems by focusing popular discontent outward, against Israel, because of the injustice done to the Palestinians. However, the revolutionary violence that subsequently attracted media attention simultaneously serves to delegitimize the nationalist plight of the PLO in the context of the international arena, which is conditioned to sympathize with civilian targets. The Palestine Liberation Organization's low success rate is therefore inherent to the terrorist tactic itself. Although recognized as a means of publicizing the Palestinian cause because "without armed struggle, the Palestinian question would have remained just another refugee problem among the many other displacements", there is little evidence to suggest that the organizations Terrorists demand political concessions. governments by attacking their civilian populations. In fact, the existential threat that the PLO poses to the Israeli civilian masses has directly caused what can only be recognized as a decades-long political impasse. More precisely, such indiscriminate violence has not only fostered a disconnect between the concessions envisaged by the Palestinians and the perception of the Israeli public, but also "an extremely bad impression of the Palestinian revolution in world public opinion, presenting it in the form piracy and highway robbery” (Merari and Elad 2019). ). While achieving secondary achievements such as international recognition and increased financial support, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine lamented that such blind revolutionary force "caused the loss of public sympathy." world – a sympathy for which they worked so hard. promote” (Merari and Elad 2019). Noted in contemporary political science research, the fundamental claim is that groupsCivilian-centered terrorists – their indiscriminate victimization fostering the aforementioned illegitimacy – fail to compel political concessions because they poorly communicate their political objectives. We observe that terrorist organizations on the international scene brandish one of the following two types of political objectives: limited or maximalist. A civilian-centered terrorist organization is seen as having inherently limited political goals when its demands are tied to territorial pursuits, whereby the group engages in a struggle either to expel a foreign army or to gain control of part of the territory for the purposes of national autonomy. -determination. Conversely, a terrorist organization is seen as having adopted maximalist goals when its demands are predominantly ideological, with its desires reflecting the need to transform the target country's political system or effectively destroy it because of its values. The dominant academic perspective is that limited political goals are increasingly likely to be appeased, because – while intuitively understandable – target countries are completely reluctant to make concessions to civilian-centered terrorist organizations whose objectives are perceived as maximalist. However, in saying this, the political goals of terrorist organizations are becoming increasingly difficult to code. It is not uncommon for targeted countries – such as Israel – to assume that civilian-centered terrorist organizations have maximalist intentions when carrying out revolutionary violence due to the use of revolutionary violence, even though this may not be the case. -not be the case. While facilitating Palestinian notoriety on the international stage – in correlation with the rise to diplomatic legitimacy – the civilian-centered Palestinian terrorist campaign, while procedurally rational, has served to delegitimize and create apprehension compared to the already incoherent rhetoric of the Palestinian cause. The Palestine Liberation Organization provided a so-called political scene in which many Palestinian groups retained autonomous strategies and structures. While illustrating the pursuit of essentially limited, ambiguous or rather idiosyncratic political goals, the disconnect between the Palestinians' apparently moderate intentions and Israeli deductions has seriously undermined the concessions and created some apprehension among the Israeli masses to negotiate with what were considered maximalist goals. . Sanctioning diplomatic methods in addition to the notion of militaristic tendencies, the Palestine Liberation Organization campaign can be recognized as a form of Palestinian domestic politics in other ways. Largely motivated by its regime's submission to Jordanian representatives over who would ultimately gain legitimate representation for the Palestinian people, the PLO sought to solidify external recognition rather than assuage apprehensions among its constituents. As such, however, “the movement remained fragmented and competitive, leading to ineffective violence and strategic failure across time and space” (Krause 2013). Moreover, as Paul Thomas Chamberlain pointed out, Israeli forces have inferred "short-term consequences of terrorism – the deaths of innocent civilians, mass fear, loss of confidence in the government to offer protection, economic contract and the inevitable erosion of civil society. freedoms – the goals of the Palestine Liberation Organization” (Chamberlain 2012). In the context of the First Intifada, the reluctance?