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Maria Alvanou
Notes
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The Arabic term “Intifada” means the “uprising” and has been used to describe the fight
of the Palestinians against the Israelis. Regarding suicide bombings in Israel, data are
available on-line from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs site
(http://mfa.gov.il/mfa/terrorism-
%obstacle20to%peace/palestinian%20terror%20since%202000/) and the International
Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism data base (http://www.ict.org.il/arabisr_frame.htm).
Also, for a resource file on the issue and the Palestinian perspective on
it, see Michele Esposito, “The Al-Aqsa Intifada: Military Operations, Suicide Attacks,
Assassinations, and Losses in the First Four Years,” Journal of Palestine Studies, 134,
no.2 (Winter 2004), pp. 85-122.
This is not the first time that Palestinian armed groups have used suicide bombings to
target Israeli civilians, although the scale and intensity of the current wave of attacks is
unprecedented. Between September 1993 and the outbreak of the latest clashes between
Palestinians and Israelis in late September 2000, Palestinian groups carried out fourteen
suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians, mostly in 1996-97, killing more than
120 and wounding over 550. Suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians in late
February and early March 1996 killed fifty-six and injured more than 150. Five attacks
in 1997 killed twenty-nine and wounded more than two hundred. The last suicide
bombing prior to the current unrest was an attack in November 1998 that wounded
twenty-four. There were no Palestinian suicide bomb attacks against civilians in 1999 or
2000.
It is a known and over discussed fact that there is no uniform definition of terrorism and
no universal consensus to it. Just indicatively the US State in Title 22 of the U.S. Code,
Chapter 38, Section 2656f(d) defines terrorism as: “Premeditated, politically motivated
violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub national groups or
clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience”; the definition of the
United Nations reads as follows: “any act intended to cause death or serious bodily
injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a
situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to
intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to
do or to abstain from doing any act” (Article 2(b) of International Convention for the
Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, May 5, 2004).
Borrowing Justice’s Potter Stewart’s famous words: “I shall not today attempt to further
define [pornography]…but I know it when I see it”, In: Jacobellis v. Ohio, June 22,
1964.
Although the research literature on terrorism has been expanded dramatically since the
1970s, not that adequate work has been done by criminologists or has appeared in
criminology journals.
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