Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence

Kydd, Andrew H.; Walter, Barbara F.

doi:10.1162/002081802320005487

Cited by 336 publications

(238 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…A related possibility is that rocket attacks are used by Palestinian factions (particular extremist ones) to solidify their position and reputation among the Palestinian population (31)(32)(33)9). Finally, attacks may be used to affect political opinion in Israel (34-36), cause economic damage to Israel (37,38), or, more generally, to derail the peace process (12,39).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Both sides retaliate in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Haushofer

Biletzki

Kanwisher

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Ending violent international conflicts requires understanding the causal factors that perpetuate them. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israelis and Palestinians each tend to see themselves as victims, engaging in violence only in response to attacks initiated by a fundamentally and implacably violent foe bent on their destruction. Econometric techniques allow us to empirically test the degree to which violence on each side occurs in response to aggression by the other side. Prior studies using these methods have argued that Israel reacts strongly to attacks by Palestinians, whereas Palestinian violence is random (i.e., not predicted by prior Israeli attacks). Here we replicate prior findings that Israeli killings of Palestinians increase after Palestinian killings of Israelis, but crucially show further that when nonlethal forms of violence are considered, and when a larger dataset is used, Palestinian violence also reveals a pattern of retaliation: (i) the firing of Palestinian rockets increases sharply after Israelis kill Palestinians, and (ii) the probability (although not the number) of killings of Israelis by Palestinians increases after killings of Palestinians by Israel. These findings suggest that Israeli military actions against Palestinians lead to escalation rather than incapacitation. Further, they refute the view that Palestinians are uncontingently violent, showing instead that a significant proportion of Palestinian violence occurs in response to Israeli behavior. Well-established cognitive biases may lead participants on each side of the conflict to underappreciate the degree to which the other side's violence is retaliatory, and hence to systematically underestimate their own role in perpetuating the conflict.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Both sides retaliate in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Haushofer

Biletzki

Kanwisher

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Rebels often constitute rival factions that compete with each other through balancing, 7 spoiling, 8 defecting, 9 and outbidding. 10 Given the range of options available to rebels to manage their rivalries, why do some turn to fratricide?…”

Section: The Spectrum Of Competitive Factionalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fratricidal Rebels: Ideological Extremity and Warring Factionalism in Civil Wars

Hafez

2017

Terrorism and Political Violence

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Why do rebels kill each other? When confronting a formidable regime, rebels often descend into warring factionalism rather than forge unity across their ranks to reap the advantages of cooperation. This article tackles the puzzle of inter-rebel fratricide. It explores power and resource competition arguments, and contrasts them with ideological mechanisms that can drive inter-rebel violence. It argues that ideological extremity is central to rebel fratricide. Rebel organizations with common ideological origins can still compete with each other based on their degree of centrism and extremism, making them ideologically distant. This proximity-distance paradox makes their cohabitation mutually threatening. Ideological challengers from the same family tree are particularly threatening to one's group cohesion, and if successful, guarantee one's political marginalization within the broader movement. Extremist groups are likely to respond to these threats with fratricide, while ideologically centrist ones will rely on other strategies such as balancing, outbidding, or defecting to manage their rivalries. Algeria's civil war, 1992-2002, is a plausibility probe case study that illustrates these causal mechanisms. The study contributes to a burgeoning literature on the role of ideology in armed civil conflicts.

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“…Although secular Palestinian nationalists dominated the campaign and the consequent Oslo Accords, two offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), emerged as important players in the latter part of the First Intifada. These two religious groups aspired to create an Islamic Palestine governed by sharia law and refused to recognize Israel as a legitimate state (Brym and Andersen 2011;Kydd and Walter 2002). The coexistence of multiple Palestinian groups undermined the unity of Palestinian resistance during the First Intifada, and by spring 1990, Palestinians were killing more fellow Palestinians than Israeli soldiers were (Pearlman 2008(Pearlman /2009Rigby 1991).…”

Section: Tactical Regimes and The Israeli-palestinian Conflict Enviromentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving Beyond Deterrence

2012

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Rational choice approaches have long suggested that reducing unwanted behavior requires raising the costs (or perceived costs) of a behavior through the threat of punishment-a process commonly referred to as deterrence. In the eighteenth century, Beccaria ([1764] 1983) argued that the state should punish law-breakers just enough so that the burdens of punishment outweigh any pleasure derived from perpetrating the crime-an idea that directly informs U.S. criminal law, military strategy, and a host of other social policy domains. Scholars have since applied the notion of deterrence to a range of areas, including nuclear doctrine (Brodie 1959) AbstractRational choice approaches to reducing terrorist violence would suggest raising the costs of terrorism through punishment, thereby reducing the overall expected utility of terrorism. In this article, we argue that states should also consider raising the expected utility of abstaining from terrorism through rewards. We test effects of repressive (or punishing) and conciliatory (or rewarding) actions on terrorist behavior using the newly developed GATE-Israel dataset, which identifies events by Israeli state actors toward Palestinian targets on a full range of counterterrorism tactics and policies from 1987 to 2004. Results show that repressive actions are either unrelated to terror or related to subsequent increases in terror, and conciliatory actions are generally related to decreases in terror, depending on the tactical period. Findings also reveal the importance of understanding the role of terrorists' constituencies for reducing violence.

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Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence

Cited by 336 publications

References 7 publications

Both sides retaliate in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Both sides retaliate in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Fratricidal Rebels: Ideological Extremity and Warring Factionalism in Civil Wars

Moving Beyond Deterrence

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