ABSTRACT
The 1968 hijacking of an aeroplane by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is often held to have initiated an era of regular conflict between states and non-state actors in Israel–Palestine and on many other fronts throughout the world. Hence the term terrorism is problematic since it seems to conflate two ideas: the deliberate terrorizing of civilians and force used by non-state actors. This chapter focuses on the second of those two ideas and accept that terror can be inflicted upon people by their own government, by other governments and by other entities, non-state actors. Historically, the most prevalent and successful form of political non-state violence has come from movements claiming to represent a nation using force to achieve independence for their people. Violent secessionists represent a major security threat for the states from which they aim to secede but they rarely threaten other states, other than through fear of a copy-cat uprising in their own territory.
