ABSTRACT
The Israeli state has been involved in a struggle for its security since its establishment in 1948. Alongside wars fought at least once every decade with one or more of its neighbouring Arab states, Israel has confronted terrorism almost constantly – and with greater intensity following Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six-Day War. As a result of that war, close to one million Palestinians were placed under direct Israeli military occupation, and within a decade the Israeli settler movement started to expand to these areas. In the following years, Israeli civilians and soldiers within Israel, as well as Israeli embassies, the national airline and civilians outside became the targets of an unprecedented wave of terrorist bombings, shootings and kidnappings, largely perpetrated by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Subsequently, the late 1980s saw the eruption of the first Palestinian intifada largely targeted against the Israeli occupation, which triggered an unprecedented era of violence, interrupted only briefly by the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. The second intifada erupted following the failed Camp David Summit in 2000, with suicide bombings becoming the weapon of choice. More recently, Hamas and other Palestinian factions opposed to negotiating with Israel have resorted to high-trajectory weapons aimed at Israel from the Gaza Strip, and from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah.
