Civilian Centric Terrorism as a Political Instrument: Analysis of The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (plo)

Introduction

The perceived success and failure of civilian centric terrorist organisations has received substantial analytical attention within the context of the twenty-first century. A contestable notion amongst contemporary scholarship – and dissidents themselves within the international arena –, the question of defining the political medium is perceived as irresolvable within polemical, ideological and propagandist contexts. Whether it be an effective political instrument or an act of defiance rendering the international system to a state of ephemeral hysteria, terrorism – for the purpose of this study – is the imminent threat or unlawful use of violence within an asymmetrical conflict. It is devised to incite both terror and psychological fear in pursuit of political concessions by means of indiscriminate victimisation. Eliciting analyses – such as this – that seek to determine the strategic efficacy of terrorist campaigns, within the history of terrorism, it is relatively straightforward to find examples of brutally successful and unsuccessful terrorist operations. In this paper, a tactical framework of the observed success of terrorism – both minimalist and maximalist – will be proposed with explicit reference to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Within this analysis, I will argue that while the Palestinians are cited as the foremost exemplar that terrorism pays, their plight actually suggests, to a large extent, the severe limitations of terrorism as a political instrument.

The Palestinian Case

In reviving the Palestinian cause, a substantial faction of society – predominantly Palestinian civilians – disregarding militant tendencies, asserting that tactical force propelled their plight onto the international stage whereby their refugee struggle, displacement and a lack of recognition was legitimised. Its roots originating in 1948 – succeeding the persecution and subsequent displacement of Jewish populations in the wake of the Holocaust – the Arab-Israeli conflict is observed as the 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 within the Middle East, the seemingly intractable conflict erupted over a territorial struggle for the land of Palestine, a region rich in sites of historic, cultural and religious interest internationally. Exploiting the proliferating array of transnational connections, The Palestinian Liberation Organisation – its inception occurring in 1964 – has since been the embodiment of the Palestinian national movement succeeding the disenchantment of the prospect of liberation through conventional means. Commonly associated with contemporary terrorism – initiating ceaseless bombings, airplane hijackings, sieges and artillery barrages on the Israeli community – the PLO is a Palestinian nationalist umbrella organisation dedicated to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Asserting itself as a seminal influence within the diplomatic sphere of the international system, evidently as an internationalised insurgency, the PLO was a nationalist response to the loss of territory. Comprised of commando groups, trade unions, professional associations, and prominent national figures, academic material assessing the value of terrorism as a political medium often points to the Palestinian cause as an example of the success of terrorism to achieve political concessions. Conversely, while the Palestinian people and their cause were seemingly an unknown entity until they asserted themselves through the barrel of a gun, such consistently deplorable actions under Yasser Arafat’s command only served to fuel animosities and hinder the prospect of a peaceful resolution intended to fulfil seemingly limited objectives.

Of the thirty-eight peace accords that have been signed between 1988 and 1998, an unprecedented thirty-one have failed to last more than three years. In the art of achieving political concessions, one could ask themselves, when do national movements succeed? Explicitly, when and why does the use of revolutionary violence by terrorist organisations within transnational movements assist in achieving tactical political concessions such as international recognition, territorial control, and the creation of new states? Amongst political scientists, the predominant view is that “opposition movements select violent methods because such means are more effective than nonviolent strategies at achieving policy goals” (Stephan and Chenoweth 2011). This, however, is a fallacy. Nonviolent campaigns are seemingly more amenable to negotiation than violent campaigns; the public is less likely to support a violent campaign that is careless about civilian casualties. As opposed to nonviolent campaigns, violent insurgencies result in international condemnation, a breakdown of obedience amongst civilian civic terrorist campaign supporters, and the mobilisation of the masses against the regime, all while simultaneously recoiling against initiators.

Evaluated from an isolated consequentialist perspective, fascination on terrorism and the continuation of scholarship regarding the political phenomenon may appear an indulgence. While its apparent significance is disproportionate to its measurable effect on mortality statistics or rather the stability of political regimes, occurrence of terrorism – though directly involving a relatively minor number of people nonetheless possess distinct political importance. Within the realm of political science, the prevailing scholarly standpoint is that, overall, terrorism is an entirely effective coercive strategy. Public perception is that violence is instrumental – it is a means to an end. As such, the power to hurt or to threaten hurt is a bargaining power, whereby to exploit it is diplomacy. However, a systematic civilian centric program of assault constitutes a distinctive sort of political enterprise than does a campaign to assassinate political figures or militarily involved personnel. When terrorist organisations are categorised by target selection, a trend emerges: terrorist organisations – that is, organisations whose combative strikes on ‘military’ and ‘diplomatic’ targets outnumber attacks on ‘civilian’ targets – account for the majority of the partially successful cases of obtaining political concessions. As empirical evidence puts forth, the majority of terrorist organisations – such as that of the PLO – are strategically oriented around the targeting of civilians, hijacking commercial airliners and effectively disregarding the political notion of civilian immunity. Denoted by Loren E. Lomasky - the Cory Professor of Political Philosophy, Policy and Law at the University of Virginia –, “terrorists’ failure to discriminate in their choice of victim, or rather, their failure to discriminate on the basis of standard political categories, is itself a defining feature of their enterprise” (Lomasky 1991). By convention, nevertheless, the targeting of civilians is strategically ineffective and is strongly associated with political failure. In such instances, such civilian centric terrorist organisations are rendered unsuccessful in the plight for political concessions. Often tarnishing the legitimacy of a terrorist organisations political objectives, the occurrence of civilian casualties is not merely adventitious to the practice of terrorism as a political instrument. Though, it constitutes a variance in the psychological perception of such revolutionary violence within the international system. This is because, as opposed to a campaign that ambushes military patrols or rather assassinates diplomats, civilian centric terrorism “will elicit a different degree of attention from those of us who are civilians and who recognise that, but for fortune, it is we who might have been fodder for the terrorists’ ambitions” (Lomasky 1991). Therefore, while terrorism has the innate capacity to attract media attention, raise the profile of political agendas, demonstrate the price of resisting terrorists’ demands, and influxes in the number of fresh recruits, terrorist groups will rarely accomplish their desired policy objectives.

Within the context of the Palestinian struggle, civilian centric terrorism has been witnessed to achieve more harm than good in regard to Palestinian aspirations, tarnishing their national struggle and delegitimising their grievances. On one hand, the Palestinian cause was a useful means by which to marshal international opprobrium 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 conditions of the refugee issue offered a convenient way to deflect attention from domestic problems by focussing popular discontent outwards, against Israel, for the injustice done to the Palestinians. However, the revolutionary violence that has subsequently attracted media attention serves to simultaneously delegitimise the nationalistic plight of the PLO within the context of the international arena, who are conditioned to sympathise with civilian targets. Hence, the poor success rate of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation is inherent to the tactic of terrorism itself. Though recognised as a means of generating publicity for the Palestinian cause as “without armed struggle, the Palestinian issue would have remained no more than yet another refugee problem alongside the many other displacements”, there is little evidence to suggest that terrorist organisations exact policy concessions from governments by attacking their civilian populations. In fact, the existential threat in which PLO poses to the civilian Israeli masses has directly caused what can only be recognised as a political stalemate that has lasted for decades. Specifically, such indiscriminate violence fostered not only a disconnect between Palestinian intended concessions and Israeli public perceptions, but “an extremely bad impression of the Palestinian revolution in world public opinion, presenting it in the form of piracy and highway robbery” (Merari and Elad 2019). While reaching secondary achievements such as that of international recognition and exacerbated financial support, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine lamented that such indiscriminate revolutionary force “has brought about the loss of sympathy in world opinion – a sympathy for which they have worked so hard to foster” (Merari and Elad 2019).

Denoted within the contemporary scholarship of political science, the fundamental contention is that civilian centric terrorist groups – their indiscriminate victimisation fostering aforementioned illegitimacy – fail to coerce political concessions because they miscommunicate their policy objectives. Terrorist organisations within the international arena are observed to wield one of two types of political objectives: limited or maximalist. A civilian centric terrorist organisation is perceived to have inherently limited political objectives when its demands are in relation to territorial pursuits, whereby the group is engaging in struggle to either evict a foreign military or obtain control over a piece of territory for the purpose of national self-determination. Conversely, a terrorist organisation is perceived to have adopted maximalist objectives when its demands are predominantly ideological, whereby their desires reflect the need to transform the target county’s political system or effectively annihilate it as a result of its values. The prevailing academic perspective is that limited political objects are increasingly more likely to be placated, as – while being intuitively understandable – target countries are entirely reluctant in making concessions to civilian centric terrorist organisations whose objectives are perceived to be maximalist. In saying this, however, the political objectives of terrorist organisations are becoming progressively challenging to code. It is not uncommon that target countries – such as that of Israel – assume that civilian centric terrorist organisations have maximalist intentions when wielding revolutionary violence as a result of the utilisation of revolutionary violence, even though this may not be the case.

While facilitating Palestinian notoriety within the international arena – correlating the ascension to diplomatic legitimacy –, the civilian centric Palestinian terrorist campaign, though procedurally rational, served to delegitimise and induce apprehension in relation to the already inconsistent rhetoric of the Palestinian cause. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation provided a so-called political stage in which numerous Palestinian groups retained autonomous strategies and structures. While exemplifying the pursuit of predominantly limited, ambiguous, or rather idiosyncratic political objectives, the disconnect between the seemingly moderate Palestinian intentions and Israeli inferences severely undermined concessions and elicited a manner of trepidation amongst the Israeli masses to negotiate with what was thought to be maximalist objectives. Sanctioning diplomatic methods in addition the notion of militaristic tendencies, the campaign of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation can be recognised as a form of Palestinian internal politics through other means. Largely motivated by their subservient regime with Jordanian representatives as to who would ultimately attain the legitimate representation of the Palestinian people, the PLO sought to solidify external recognition as opposed to ease apprehensions among its constituents. As such, “the movement remained fragmented and competitive, however, leading to ineffective violence and strategic failure across time and space” (Krause 2013). Moreover, as denoted by Paul Thomas Chamberlain, Israeli forces inferred from “the 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 liberties – the objectives of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation” (Chamberlain 2012). Within the context of the First Intifada, Israeli reluctance to appease to Palestinian objectives underscores that (1) the limited yet politically ambiguous use of Palestinian civilian centric terrorism had extreme correspondence and (2) that Israeli inferences of Palestinian objectives served to destabilise the possibility for making concessions. Such reluctance is merely a rational antecedent as though target countries are routinely coerced into making important strategic and ideological concessions to terrorists, their victories will reinforce the strategic logic for civilian centric terrorist organisations such as that of the PLO to sustain a stance of such revolutionary violence.

Conclusion

Within this analysis, it has been concluded that the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s volatile campaign amongst an ostensibly asymmetric conflict exemplifies both the glaring potential and severe limitations of civilian centric terrorism as a political medium designed to force policy concessions. Though it is clear that such revolutionary violence was able to provide the Palestinian cause a seat at the diplomatic table, one cannot deny the manner in which civilian centric terrorism has clouded the intended political objectives of the movement while undermining the efficacy of negotiations. Thus, it is clear that the PLO’s terrorist campaign against the Israeli masses exhibits that obsolete civilian centric terrorism is unlikely to be an effective instrument in achieving one’s ultimate limited political goals in asymmetric struggles. While the notion of civilian centric terrorism was adopted and supposedly renounced by the PLO in 1988 succeeding the acceptance of various UN resolutions, terrorism continues to be incentivised through means of remunerations that account for a staggering USD$355 million dollars of the budget of the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund. Simultaneously, though calls for a ceasefire ensue from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the state of the conflict remains on a knifes edge as organisations who employ terrorism as a political medium fight for control the Gaza Strip, escalating their attacks on each other. As Donald Trump – the 45th President of the United States – has slashed the United States’ contribution to UNRWA, which provides medical, educational and socioeconomic assistance to five million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Jordan, one could ask themselves, could this have been eluded if a civilian centric approach to terrorism had not been adopted?