Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

GENOCIDE • 209and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The shift in emphasis to relativelynonnegotiable issues in September 2000, such as the question of ultimatesovereignty over Jerusalem, pushed the two parties back intoviolent conflict. In addition, with the death of Yasir Arafat in 2004and the debilitating stroke of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharonin early 2006, the replacement of strong leaders with much weakerleaders on both sides arguably has made resolution of this conflictmore difficult. According to Kenneth Stein’s analysis, the active engagementof the United States and the direct involvement of the U.S.president as mediator always helped promote the Arab-Israeli peaceprocess, which seems to confirm Greenhalgh’s conflict resolutionmodel. Likewise, the Greenhalgh model would indicate that relativedisengagement in the Arab-Israeli peace process by the United Statessince 2001, along with the reluctance of the administration of GeorgeW. Bush to deal directly with Arafat and the Palestinian Authority,may have contributed to the worsening of this conflict.GENEVA PROTOCOL OF 1925. See WEAPONS OF MASS DE-STRUCTION.GENOCIDE. Genocide usually refers to attempts to destroy a national,ethnic, religious, or racial group by killing off members of the group,instances of which could either be considered war crimes or terroristacts, depending on the identity and motives of the perpetrator.The United Nations Convention on Prevention and Punishment ofthe Crime of Genocide declared genocide a punishable offense in1946 and became effective treaty law in 1951. According to thisconvention, genocide includes “any of the following acts committedwith intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic,racial or religious group, such as: a) killing members of the group;b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated tobring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) imposingmeasures intended to prevent births within the group; e) transferringchildren of the group to another group.”In general, when such actions are carried out by the military forcesof a recognized belligerent, these would be considered war crimes.When carried out by nonstate groups, these actions would be consideredterrorist acts and when carried out by a nation-state againstits own subjects or citizens, genocide would be considered a form of