Terrorism: Counter-Terrorism Strategies in Middle East, Latin America

This essay delves into the multifaceted issue of terrorism, specifically examining counter-terrorism strategies implemented in the Middle East and Latin America. The analysis focuses on Israel's controversial policies, including targeted killings and selective assassinations, evaluating their effectiveness and ethical implications. The paper explores the complexities of these approaches, considering the challenges of isolating targets, minimizing civilian casualties, and the potential for unintended consequences such as increased recruitment of terrorists. The essay also references specific examples, such as the targeted killing of Salah Shehada, to illustrate the practical difficulties and intelligence gaps associated with these strategies. Ultimately, the essay assesses the overall impact of these counter-terrorism measures, providing a comprehensive overview of the subject matter.

Running head: TERRORISM 1
Author’s Name
Professor’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Date

TERRORISM 2
Terrorism in the Middle East and Latin America
Israel came up with some very controversial counter-terrorism policies to manage their
problems regarding terrorism. Some of these strategies involve putting up walls and selective
assassinations. For instance, the U.S policy used its drones to attack people like Anwar al-
Awlaki, an approach would also be considered as targeted assassination (Rabi & Plaw, 2019).
Targeted killings are not the best way to counter terrorism because they have no value
because one cannot question a dead person; thus, an arrest is always the best strategy.
Nevertheless, this approach was embraced by Israel because they usually find themselves in an
awkward position where the masterminds of terror attacks prove difficult to arrest without
causing a substantial risk to the security forces (Ganor, 2018). Isolating some culprits from the
innocent individuals or their members is a very complicated process, hence making it difficult to
make an arrest. Notably, Israel has faced numerous opposition from the Palestinian security
forces, which help with the counter-terrorism initiative to boost their image to the citizens of
Palestine (Abrahms & Mierau, 2017).
The selective assassinations are very long and complicated processes because Israel has to
devise ways to execute these killings, an approach that involves intelligence, which should be
timely, accurate, and actionable. The government made the necessary resources to create
advanced humans and signals that have intelligence capabilities, which pass the information to
the appropriate organizations dealing with security (Shereshevsky, 2018). The data is first shared
with the headquarters before moving it among the intelligent officers.

TERRORISM 3
Israel has tried to make the necessary steps to minimize the deaths on innocent lives because
only the target lists only comprise of persons who cannot be captured easily. They only put in the
list arch terrorists who are leaders, bomb makers, and senior terror attack planners (Ganor, 2018).
Also, before the execution of the targeted killings, the officials in the Israeli authority gather
adequate information about the targets. Consequently, the approach confirms if individuals in the
list have committed an act of terror through thorough cross-checking. The government have even
prohibited conducting any selective assassination in the crowd which includes narrow streets to
protect the innocent (Rabi & Plaw, 2019).
However, the approach has still not worked for Israel because they have missed a lot of
chances to kill terrorist leaders in parades because of the crowds. There is also some inevitable
panic involved which might follow because such attacks would impact on innocent lives. For
example, Israel failed to execute the targeted killing of Salah Shehada, who was a military chief
for Hamas for a long time (Shereshevsky, 2018). Initially, they wanted to make an arrest, but
their soldiers were too exposed because the arrest would be discovered. Significantly, anytime
they tried making a selective assassination, he was always surrounded the innocent, including his
daughter. Eventually, they decided to attack him on July 23, 2002; an intelligence gap caused an
issue that killed 14 other victims including his daughter (Rabi & Plaw, 2019). The bomb was
meant to hit an empty building with only Salah Sheheda inside because the information even
mentioned the daughter would be away from home. Another problem with the selective
assassination it only increases the number of terrorist recruits (Ganor, 2018).

TERRORISM 4
Reference
Abrahms, M., & Mierau, J. (2017). Leadership matters: The effects of targeted killings on
militant group tactics. Terrorism and Political Violence, 29(5), 830–851.
Ganor, B. (2018). Conflict Management and Counter-Terrorism in Israel and the Middle East
Study Tour in Israel The International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at The
Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzeliya.
Rabi, S., & Plaw, A. E. (2019). Do Israeli Targeted Killings Comply with High Court of
Justice’s Guidelines? Israel Law Review, 53.
Shereshevsky, Y. (2018). Targeting the targeted killings case-International lawmaking in
domestic contexts. Mich. J. Int’l L., 39, 241.