Israel, the Palestinian Factions, and the Cycle of Violence

In this study we extend our previous work to examine the dynamic relationship between violence committed by Palestinian factions and that committed by Israel during the Second Intifada. We find a statistically significant relationship between Israeli fatalities claimed by groups associated with the ruling political party, Fatah, and subsequent Palestinian fatalities. We do not find a similar relationship for Israeli fatalities claimed by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian factions. We conjecture that these differences are due to the different positions of the factions vis-a-vis bargaining over a two-state solution to the conflict as well as the organizational structures of the factions.

[1]  Eli Berman,et al.  Hard Targets: Theory and Evidence on Suicide Attacks , 2005 .

[2]  Barbara F. Walter,et al.  You have printed the following article : Sabotaging the Peace : The Politics of Extremist Violence , 2007 .

[3]  Ira N. Gang,et al.  WHO IS THE ENEMY? , 2004, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[4]  Mia Bloom,et al.  Palestinian Suicide Bombing: Public Support, Market Share, and Outbidding , 2004 .

[5]  Robert T. Gannett.  Bowling Ninepins in Tocqueville's Township , 2003, American Political Science Review.

[6]  Walter Enders,et al.  The Effectiveness of Antiterrorism Policies: A Vector-Autoregression-Intervention Analysis , 1993, American Political Science Review.

[7]  Esteban F. Klor,et al.  Are Voters Sensitive to Terrorism? Direct Evidence from the Israeli Electorate , 2007, American Political Science Review.

[8]  John A. C. Conybeare,et al.  Retaliating against Terrorism: Rational Expectations and the Optimality of Rules versus Discretion , 1994 .

[9]  David A. Jaeger,et al.  The Cycle of Violence? An Empirical Analysis of Fatalities in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict , 2005, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[10]  Martin B. Schmidt,et al.  The Impact of Coalition Offensive Operations on the Iraqi Insurgency , 2007 .

[11]  Esteban F. Klor,et al.  On Terrorism and Electoral Outcomes: Theory and Evidence from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict , 2006 .

[12]  Asaf Zussman,et al.  Assassinations: Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Israeli Counterterrorism Policy Using Stock Market Data , 2006 .

[13]  R. Pape,et al.  The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism , 2003, American Political Science Review.