The news that the most wanted terrorist in the world, certainly in the last decade – a title that Bin Laden himself said he was proud to bear – was eliminated prompts an initial sigh of relief and perhaps even a sense of satisfaction that a person who was directly responsible for the deliberate murder of thousands of innocent people has finally met his due. Still, even at this early stage it is appropriate to consider some issues the assassination raises: its effect on future al-Qaeda activities, the response we may expect from Bin...
Over a decade has passed since the eruption of the second intifada, a grueling period for Israel with the long, sustained, and intensive series of terrorist attacks launched by terrorist organizations against civilians and soldiers of the State of Israel. Most difficult were the suicide attacks, generally carried out in urban centers and causing large numbers of casualties – dead and wounded – among the civilian population. Predictably, therefore, the terrorism phenomenon became a dominant issue on Israel’s national and popular...
The book includes seventeen analytical essays written by INSS and outside researchers. Focus is on Israel’s potential, at times at variance with US administration efforts, to navigate current and prospective national security challenges. The ongoing challenges represented by the Palestinian issue and Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions are well documented, as are implications of internal Israeli politics, Arabs in Israel, international terrorism, trends in Egypt and Lebanon, and other regional developments.
In 2009, efforts by al-Qaeda and the various global jihad splinter groups affiliated with it to carry out terrorist activities with familiar operational characteristics – showcase multi-casualty attacks and suicide bombings – continued unabated in locales around the world. This year most of the activity shifted away from the Iraqi arena, which in recent years was the focus for global jihadists, to the Afghanistan and Pakistan combat arena. In the Afghan-Pakistani arena, al-Qaeda and other jihadists operate alongside local Taliban...
For years Israel has been subject to extortion by terrorist organizations holding Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage, with their release conditional on the release of hundreds of imprisoned members of these organizations. If there was a realistic chance of releasing its citizens by force, Israel chose that route; lacking that option, Israel consistently paid a steep price for the release of its captives. This policy was formulated over decades, starting in the late 1960s. Consequently, terrorist organizations, depending on their...
The recent attempt to cross borders in an act of terrorism, with explosive devices originating in Yemen destined via cargo planes for the United States and neutralized before their activation, should come as no surprise. It is an example of al-Qaeda Central’s intensifying efforts in the last two years to wage terror attacks against the United States, Europe, and Arab allies taking part in the coalition against fundamentalist Islamic terrorism.
Between the end of the 1960’s and the mid 1980’s, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and its various offshoots pioneered an innovative terrorist strategy, along with several related tactics. The PFLP’s innovation lay, first, in the identification of the global community as the primary target audience for Palestinian activism; second, in the selection of the aviation system as the prime target for their attacks; and third, in the incorporation of foreign nationals into their operations....
From mid 2005 suicide terrorism from Judea and Samaria stopped being a significant component of the IDF’s war on Palestinian terrorism, thus marking the end of a long, demanding process that began with the Israeli government’s decision to launch Operation Defensive Shield and have the IDF operate in Palestinian cities. It is difficult to determine precisely when the process concluded, but around the middle of 2005 the number of suicide attacks from Judea and Samaria dropped to a very low level, and since then this general...
Suicide bombings are not a new phenomenon in the annals of contemporary terrorism. Hizbollah in Lebanon was the first to make modern use of this weapon; it was later adopted by other organizations around the world. What characterizes modern suicide terrorism and sets it apart from suicide attacks carried out from the first century until the middle of the 20th is that it is perpetrated by means of explosives carried on the suicide attacker’s body or on some type of mobile platform driven by the suicide attacker into his target,...
Nine years after the 9/11 attacks, there is a growing sense among academic, government, and think tank counterterrorism analysts that al-Qaeda is losing the battle against its enemies, led by the West in general and the United States in particular. Indeed, there are ample signs that al-Qaeda is in trouble, including its loss of important operational leaders; defeat or near defeat of various al-Qaeda franchises outside the Afghan-Pakistani headquarters; and a slew of ideological challenges leveled against the group by some of its...
While al-Qaeda and Hamas have become household terms, far less familiar is the man behind the idea of al-Qaeda, the Palestinian sheikh Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, who also did much to support the establishment and entrenchment of Hamas. This essay traces the links between Azzam and these two radical Islamic organizations and outlines his major influence on central components of their agendas – jihad (holy war) and istishhad (martyrdom).
The Middle East has recently operated under the not implausible fear that a regional war is about to break out. Therefore, Israel is closely following any sign of growing closeness among the members of the radical axis, a relationship that peaked with the Damascus summit in February 2010 and the transfer of – or at least what seemed like the intention to transfer – “balance destabilizing” weapons to Hizbollah. It is therefore important to understand the extent to which the axis – Iran, Syria, Hizbollah, and Palestinian...
