Topic > Civilian-Centered Terrorism as a Political Tool: Analysis of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

IndexIntroductionThe Palestinian CaseConclusionIntroductionThe perceived success and failure of civilian-centered terrorist organizations have received substantial analytical attention in the context of the twenty-first century . A contestable notion among contemporary scholars – and among dissidents themselves in the international arena – the question of the definition of the political medium is perceived as unsolvable within polemical, ideological and propagandistic contexts. Whether an effective political tool or an act of defiance that reduces the international system to a state of ephemeral hysteria, terrorism – for the purposes of this study – is the imminent threat or illegal use of violence within an asymmetrical conflict. It is designed to incite both terror and psychological fear in the pursuit of political concessions through indiscriminate victimization. By sparking analyzes – such as this one – that seek to determine the strategic effectiveness of terrorist campaigns, within 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). Within this analysis, I will argue that although the Palestinians are cited as the prime example that terrorism pays, their situation actually suggests, to a large extent, the serious limitations of terrorism as a political tool. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayThe Palestinian caseIn reviving the Palestinian cause, a substantial faction of society - predominantly Palestinian civilians - ignores militant tendencies, claiming that tactical force has pushed their plight onto the international stage, legitimizing their struggle as refugees, forced displacement and lack of recognition. Its roots date back to 1948 – following the persecution and subsequent displacement of Jewish populations following the Holocaust – the Arab-Israeli conflict is considered to be the ongoing political tension, military conflicts and various disputes between the Jewish and Arab populations in the The former Ottoman Empire region of Palestine. Attributed to the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism in the Middle East, the seemingly insoluble conflict erupted into a territorial struggle over the land of Palestine, a region rich in sites of international historical, cultural and religious interest. Harnessing the growing range of transnational connections, the Palestine Liberation Organization – whose inception dates back to 1964 – has since been the embodiment of the Palestinian national movement that has managed to overcome disenchantment with the prospect of liberation through conventional means. Commonly associated with contemporary terrorism – which initiates relentless bombings, plane hijackings, sieges and artillery barrages on the Israeli community – the PLO is a Palestinian nationalist umbrella organization dedicated to the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Establishing itself as a key influence within the diplomatic sphere of the international system, evidently as an internationalized insurgency, the PLO was a nationalist response to the loss of territory. Comprised of commando groups, trade unions, professional associations and leading national figures, academic material assessing the value of terrorism as a political means often points to the Palestinian cause as an exampleof the success of terrorism in achieving political concessions. To the contrary, while the Palestinian people and their cause seemed like an unknown entity until they asserted themselves through the barrel of a gun, such a consistently deplorable system's actions under Yasser Arafat's command only served to stoke animosities and hinder the prospect of a peaceful solution intended to satisfy 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 obtaining political concessions, one might ask: when do national movements succeed? Explicitly, when and why does terrorist organizations' use of revolutionary violence within transnational movements help gain 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 such means are more effective than nonviolent strategies in achieving political goals” (Stephan and Chenoweth 2011). This, however, is a mistake. Nonviolent campaigns appear to be more negotiable than violent campaigns; the public is less likely to support a violent campaign that fails to treat civilian casualties. Unlike nonviolent campaigns, violent uprisings result in international condemnation, a breakdown of obedience among civil and civic supporters of terrorist campaigns, and the mobilization of the masses against the regime, all while simultaneously rebelling against the initiators. Evaluated from an isolated consequentialist perspective, the fascination with terrorism and the pursuit of studies on the political phenomenon may appear to be an indulgence. Although its apparent significance is disproportionate to its measurable effect on mortality statistics or rather on the stability of political regimes, the occurrence of terrorism, although directly involving relatively fewer people, nevertheless possesses distinct political importance. Within political science, the prevailing academic view is that, overall, terrorism is an entirely effective coercive strategy. The public perception is that violence is instrumental: it is a means to an end. As such, the power to hurt or threaten to hurt is bargaining power, while exploiting it is diplomacy. However, a systematic program of attack focused on civilians constitutes a distinctive type of political enterprise compared to a campaign to assassinate political figures or militarily involved personnel. When terrorist organizations are classified based on target selection, a trend emerges: terrorist organizations – that is, organizations whose combative attacks against “military” and “diplomatic” targets outnumber attacks against “civilian” targets – represent the Most cases of terrorism are partially successful. obtain political concessions. As empirical evidence shows, most terrorist organizations – such as the PLO – are strategically oriented towards targeting civilians, hijacking commercial airliners, and effectively ignoring the political notion of civilian immunity. Loren E. Lomasky, professor of political philosophy, politics and law at the University of Virginia, defined “terrorists' inability to discriminate in their choice of victims, or rather, their inability to discriminate on the basis of standard political categories” . , is itself a distinctive feature of their enterprise” (Lomasky 1991). By convention, however, targeting civilians is strategically ineffective and isstrongly associated with political failure. In such cases, such civilian-focused terrorist organizations are rendered unsuccessful in the difficult situation of political concessions. Often obscuring the legitimacy of a terrorist organization's political objectives, the occurrence of civilian casualties is not simply incidental to the practice of terrorism as a political tool. However, it constitutes a shift in the psychological perception of such revolutionary violence within the international system. This is because, unlike a campaign that ambushes military patrols or rather assassinations of diplomats, civilian-focused terrorism “will prompt a different degree of attention than those of us who are civilians and who recognize that, had it not been for the case, it would have been us who could have been fodder for the terrorists' ambitions” (Lomasky 1991). Therefore, while terrorism has the innate ability to attract media attention, raise the profile of political agendas, demonstrate the price of resistance to terrorist demands and the influx of new recruits, terrorist groups will rarely achieve their desired political objectives . In the context of the Palestinian struggle, civilian-focused terrorism has been seen to cause more harm than good towards Palestinian aspirations, obscuring their national struggle and delegitimizing their claims. On the one hand, the Palestinian cause has been a useful means to spread international contempt against Israel and also to generate support among Arab states for greater regional unity against the “common Zionist enemy.” On the other hand, the ripe situation of the refugee issue has offered a convenient way to divert attention from internal problems, focusing popular discontent outward, against Israel, for the injustice done to the Palestinians. However, the revolutionary violence that subsequently attracted media attention serves to simultaneously delegitimize the PLO's nationalistic predicament in the context of the international arena, which is conditioned to sympathize with civilian objectives. Therefore, the Palestinian Liberation Organization's poor success rate is inherent in the tactics of terrorism itself. Although recognized as a means of generating publicity for the Palestinian cause as “without the armed struggle, the Palestinian issue would have remained nothing more than yet another refugee problem along with many other displacements”, there is little evidence to suggest that terrorist organizations demand political concessions. by governments attacking their civilian populations. Indeed, 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 stalemate. Specifically, such indiscriminate violence has fostered not only a disconnect between the Palestinians' expected concessions and Israeli public perception, but "an extremely negative impression of the Palestinian revolution in world public opinion, presenting it in the form of piracy and highway robbery." (Merari and Elad 2019 ). While achieving secondary results such as international recognition and exacerbated financial support, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine complained that such indiscriminate revolutionary force “has caused the loss of sympathy in world opinion – a sympathy for which they have worked so hard." to be promoted” (Merari and Elad 2019). Denoted within contemporary political science studies, the fundamental thesis is that civilian-focused terrorist groups – whose indiscriminate victimization fosters the aforementioned illegitimacy – failto force political concessions because they poorly communicate their political objectives. Terrorist organizations in the international arena are observed to pursue one of two types of political objectives: limited or maximalist. A civilian-focused terrorist organization is considered to have inherently limited political objectives when its demands are in relation to territorial pursuits, whereby the group is engaged in a struggle to evict a foreign military or gain control over a piece of territory purposes of national self-determination. -determination. In contrast, a terrorist organization is considered to have adopted maximalist objectives when its demands are predominantly ideological, where its desires reflect the need to transform the political system of the target country or to effectively annihilate it as a result of its values. The prevailing academic perspective is that narrow political objectives are increasingly likely to be appeased, as – while intuitively understandable – targeted countries are entirely reluctant to make concessions to civilian-focused terrorist organizations whose objectives are perceived as maximalist. That said, however, the political objectives of terrorist organizations are becoming increasingly difficult to codify. It is not uncommon for targeted countries – such as Israel – to assume that civilian-focused terrorist organizations have maximalist intentions when exercising revolutionary violence as a result of using revolutionary violence, even though this may not be the case. While facilitating Palestinian notoriety in the international arena – correlating the rise to diplomatic legitimacy – the civilian-focused Palestinian terrorist campaign, while procedurally rational, has served to delegitimize and induce apprehension in relation to the already inconsistent rhetorical situation of the Palestinian cause. The Palestine Liberation Organization provided a so-called political stage in which numerous Palestinian groups maintained autonomous strategies and structures. While exemplifying the pursuit of predominantly limited, ambiguous, or rather idiosyncratic political objectives, the disconnect between seemingly moderate Palestinian intentions and Israeli inferences severely undermined concessions and aroused a kind of trepidation among the Israeli masses in negotiating with those thought to be were maximalist objectives. . By sanctioning diplomatic methods in addition to the concept of militaristic tendencies, the Palestine Liberation Organization's campaign can be recognized as a form of Palestinian domestic politics through other means. Largely motivated by the regime's subservience to Jordanian representatives regarding who would ultimately gain legitimate representation of the Palestinian people, the PLO sought to consolidate external recognition rather than alleviate apprehensions among its constituents. As such, “the movement nevertheless remained fragmented and competitive, leading to ineffective violence and strategic failure across time and space” (Krause 2013). Furthermore, as pointed out by Paul Thomas Chamberlain, Israeli forces deduced from the “short-term consequences of terrorism – the death of innocent civilians, mass fear, loss of confidence in the government to offer protection, the economic contract and the 'inevitable erosion of civil rights'. freedom – the goals of the Palestine Liberation Organization” (Chamberlain 2012). In the context of the First Intifada, Israeli reluctance to accommodate Palestinian objectives highlights that (1) the limited but politically ambiguous use of civilian-focused Palestinian terrorism had extreme?