Arab-Israeli Conflict and Terrorism
According to President Obama, terrorism remains the primary security threat to the United States today and for the foreseeable future.
i It is therefore imperative to understand terrorism’s origins and motives in order to properly combat it and maintain US security. Naturally, there are many explanations for terrorism in the Middle East, each with a distinct contribution to the bigger picture.
But most attribute terrorism to “root causes” of the terrorist’s own society, such as poverty or political oppression.
ii Perhaps the most obvious “root cause” for Middle
Eastern terrorism is the Arab-Israeli Conflict (AIC), which has raged for more than
60 years. Undoubtedly it fuels extremism, but to what extent (especially with activities targeting the US) is unclear. In other words, it is uncertain that if the Arab-
Israeli conflict were solved peacefully, modern Middle Eastern terrorism would still exist.
This essay hopes to clarify this uncertainty by analyzing the impact of the AIC on terrorism. It will first consider the abstract roots of terrorists – what drives them to resort to violence against non-combatants? It will then examine whether the AIC satisfies the criteria discussed, and whether such behavior would exist in absence of the conflict. Finally, it will look at other possible factors of the Middle East that could explain its greater terrorist activity.
What Drives People to Terrorism?
The impetuses to engage in terrorism are many and varied. Earlier research, for example, focused on individual factors like personality disorders and psychopathology.
iii But the surprising “normality” of individual terrorists debunked much of this research.
iv Now, a growing body of data suggests that the political and social environment, rather than the individual, more adequately explain why people become terrorists. This explanation can include the impact of globalization on group identity (and fear of cultural annihilation), the existence of political oppression, socio-economic inequality, and of course social injustice.
v More generally, it claims that terrorism rears its ugly head when people perceive some social or political wrong and believe that violence is the only effective means of correcting it.
Similarly, this explanation describes terrorism as “the warfare of the weak”, or “the means by which groups that lack material or political power fight what they see as oppressive forces.” vi That is, terrorism is a measure of last resort, when no other means can achieve the terrorists’ desired goals.
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Other theories emphasize terrorism’s “collective identification.” viii They demonstrate that terrorists usually identify with a larger community, which they feel has incurred some social injustice. This gives them a sense of purpose and belonging to justify their actions and give them cause for self-sacrifice (i.e. suicide bombings).
ix This sense of community occurs within the terrorist organization as well, as most members have an extremist ideology that further validates their actions.
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Finally, most theories highlight characteristics of the terrorist’s own country.
Though poverty seems to have little impact, political representation and freedom

can influence the degree of terrorism, especially during periods of transition.
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Countries with medium levels of political freedom are most susceptible to terrorism, as are countries that are transitioning from an authoritarian government to a democratic one. The country’s level of education and relationship with the globalized world may matter as well – countries that suffer from globalization, for example, are more prone to terrorist activity. xii However, since individual nations have a myriad of confounding variables that could contribute to terrorism, it is difficult to pinpoint the most effective ones. We should therefore be cautious when attributing the degree of terrorism to variables like political freedom and geography.
These explanations are theoretical, but they give a good impression of the potential roots of terrorism. In the next section, I will consider each explanation in the context of the AIC, and determine whether the conflict perpetuates those roots.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict’s Role in Middle Eastern Terrorism
The AIC began at the turn of the 20 th century, when Jewish settlers started immigrating to the Holy Land under the ideology of Zionism. But the conflict as we know it today began after WWII, when Israel declared itself a state, drove out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and captured land in subsequent wars. The
AIC is usually blamed for the majority of Middle Eastern terrorism, but using the explanations given above, we will see that some of that blame is unfounded.
The first explanation attributes terrorism to the perceived existence of some social wrong, and the belief that only violence can correct it. The AIC certainly presents a social wrong in the form of occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel and ill treatment of Palestinians themselves. To the Palestinians, the conflict is one of national liberation and the removal of an oppressive authority. Indeed, for many it is an existential struggle for statehood and identity. Furthermore, large swaths of
Palestinians see peace negotiations as fruitless, since they have failed to achieve a
Palestinian state for 60 years. As such, those people truly see violence as the only means of driving Israel back (though, arguably, the fruits of armed resistance have amounted to greater harm than negotiations in the past). This combination of a perceived social injustice – the oppression of the Palestinians – and the perceived necessity of violence to counteract it is a potent environment for terrorism, especially given the military might of Israel in the region.
In addition, the shared experience of the Palestinians satisfies the “collective identity” explanation. Palestinian terrorists of course feel attached to the oppressed
Palestinian community, giving them a just cause to fight and die for. They also have forms of extreme Islam to vindicate their actions, giving their tactics and sacrifices greater weight (i.e. dying in the name of Allah).
The ambivalent degree of political freedom in the Palestinian territories and the constant transitioning – both caused by the AIC somewhat – exacerbate the situation as well. Though Palestinians partake in elections, the political system’s effectiveness in the face of Israeli and international control is questionable.
Furthermore, elections are relatively new to the Palestinians, the first one being only 20 years ago. The period of institutional transition continues today, given the

split and subsequent reunification of the West Bank and Gaza. At such times, competing ideologies butt heads, making it easier for extremists to become active.
Combined, the political environment, the sense of community, and the social injustice of the Palestinians undoubtedly spur terrorism. The existence of organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which focus primarily on the
AIC, can attest to that.
However, the AIC does less to explain the existence of transnational, Middle
Eastern terrorist groups, like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham
(ISIS). For one, these groups identify less with the Palestinian struggle. Though they certainly believe in the social injustice wrought by the Israeli occupation, it is not their raison d’être like it is for strictly Palestinian groups. The transnational organizations’ goals, such as global jihad and the retreat of Western influence on
Islam, have too great a scope to stem from the AIC alone. Indeed, if the conflict was the end-all root, different terrorist organizations would have comparable goals, but this is not the case. Their members’ political freedom and representation are far removed from the AIC. Therefore, that the conflict causes these external organizations to form is doubtful. More likely, the AIC is a cause celebre around which groups like Al-Qaeda can rally.
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In light of this, if Israel had never been created, terrorism in the Middle East would still exist. Though groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad would never have sprouted, larger transnational groups would have found ample reasons to form; apart from the AIC, there are still many regional factors that satisfy the explanations for terrorism given above. We turn to those now.
Other Middle Eastern Characteristics that Cause Terrorism
The AIC is not the only Middle Eastern crisis contributing to terrorism. Arabs find cause for terrorism in many military, cultural, and identity conflicts that surpass the AIC significantly. First and foremost is the clash of US foreign policy and
Middle Eastern livelihood. For example, one of the tipping points for Osama bin
Laden was the US military presence in Saudi Arabia. For him and others, the US repulsion of Iraq in the Gulf War was humiliating for Arabs, and the continued stay of US forces in the Holy Land, sacrilegious. They felt (and continue to feel) that it was their religious duty to expel the “infidels.” Furthermore, Arabs in repressive countries dislike US cooperation with their authoritarian governments. They claim hypocrisy when the US supports political tyrants, given the US’s own rhetoric and history. Finally, Arabs fear that US-led globalization and westernization will taint
Islam, leading to an identity crisis for many Arabs. They resort to violence because they fear cultural annihilation.
Second, military conflicts like those in Iraq and Syria produce terrorist organizations as well. Groups like ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra (an Al-Qaeda affiliate) stem directly from the Iraq War and Syrian Civil War, both of which occurred over
50 years after the AIC started. The West’s heavy involvement in these wars, of course, makes it a target for terrorist activity. But even military struggles that do not involve the West, like the Egyptian crisis, can create terrorism; it just targets the
Arab regime in question.

These alternative sources of terrorism in the Middle East satisfy the above explanations. The Islam identity crisis naturally hits all Muslims, who feel that violence is the only answer to halt years of US military operations and rid Islam of western influence. The threat to Islam also provides an extreme ideology to vindicate their responses to what they perceive as US injustice. Finally, the unstable political climate of the Middle East is a breeding ground for terrorism – coups, political repression, and ethnic strife all lend themselves to terrorist activities.
Conclusion
Though the AIC undoubtedly contributes to the alarming degree of terrorism in the Middle East, it is not the only contributor. Ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel has led to the creation of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, but it is more of an excuse for than a cause of transnational terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda. These groups lament the social injustice done to the Palestinians, but for them, it is merely an example of larger injustices perpetrated by the West upon Islam and the entire
Middle East. Solving the AIC will certainly calm the immediate region, but it will do relatively little to squelch terrorist activity in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and East Africa. i 2014 West Point Commencement Speech, President Obama ii http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/8/html iii http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195399325.00
1.0001/oxfordhb-9780195399325-e-007 iv http://www.transnationalterrorism.eu/tekst/publications/WP3%20Del%205.pdf, v page 12 http://www.transnationalterrorism.eu/tekst/publications/WP3%20Del%205.pdf, page 15-18 vi http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/11/terrorism.aspx vii http://terrorism.about.com/od/causes/a/causes_terror.htm viii http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/8/html ix http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/11/terrorism.aspx x http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/8/html xi http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/aabadie/povterr.pdf, page 3 xii Social Science for Counterterrorism: Putting the Pieces Together, by Paul K. Davis,
Kim Cragin, page 15 xiii http://www.mepc.org/articles-commentary/commentary/israeli-palestinianconflict-and-war-terror