There are several international conventions that define war crimes, but there is no internationally accepted definition of terrorism. There is not one international convention that actually condemns terrorism.
One definition of terrorism was given by the Convention of the Organization of the Islamic Conference on Combating International Terrorism in 1999:
Terrorism means any act of violence or threat thereof, notwithstanding its motives or intentions, perpetrated to carry out an individual or collective criminal plan with the aim of terrorizing people, or threatening to harm them or imperiling their lives, honor, freedoms, security or rights, or exposing the environment or any facility or public or private property to hazards or occupying or seizing them or endangering a natural resource or international facilities or threatening their stability, territorial integrity, political unity, and sovereignty of independent states.
A terrorist crime "is any crime executed, started or participated in to realize a terrorist objective in any of the contracting states or against its nationals." This is a very thorough definition; however, in Article 2 of this regional convention by the Conference of Islamic States, it says, "peoples' struggle including armed struggle against foreign occupation, aggression, colonialism, hegemony, aimed at liberation in accordance with the principles of international law, shall not be considered a terrorist crime."
In other words, attempts to define the attack on the World Trade Center or attacks in Israel as terrorism would be scuttled by the Conference of Islamic States. The Islamic states insist that fighting an occupation cannot be considered terrorism. Similarly, Hizballah in Lebanon claims that what they are doing today, or before Israel withdrew from Lebanon, is not terrorism. It is resistance, they claim, something that is permitted according to international law.
In fact, there is no such right of resistance to occupation in international law. When placing the question of terrorism opposite the question of international war crimes, we meet the difficulty that terrorism has not yet been defined as a war crime. The components of terrorism are war crimes, and the international community is working to develop a definition of the crime of terrorism.
Israel faces the dilemma of having bilateral commitments with the Palestinians, including commitments by the Palestinians not to engage in terrorism. In a letter signed on the eve of the first Oslo agreement in 1993 on the White House lawn, part of an exchange of letters between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, Arafat undertook not to carry out acts of terror, to bring to trial those who had been involved in terror, and to solve all future problems with respect to settling the questions between the two parties in a peaceful manner. There are very detailed provisions in the various agreements with the Palestinians requiring them to fight terror, collect illegal arms, fight incitement, and do all sorts of things.
How are we going to deal with the fact that there is terror being carried out on a daily basis in Israel? To explode a bus is very similar to exploding planes on the World Trade Center. How is the international community going to deal with this? Are we going to continue to see this double standard? While everybody acknowledges that there is terror and that Israel has the right to fight terror, when Israel does fight terror it is accused of carrying out war crimes.
One definition of terrorism was given by the Convention of the Organization of the Islamic Conference on Combating International Terrorism in 1999:
Terrorism means any act of violence or threat thereof, notwithstanding its motives or intentions, perpetrated to carry out an individual or collective criminal plan with the aim of terrorizing people, or threatening to harm them or imperiling their lives, honor, freedoms, security or rights, or exposing the environment or any facility or public or private property to hazards or occupying or seizing them or endangering a natural resource or international facilities or threatening their stability, territorial integrity, political unity, and sovereignty of independent states.
A terrorist crime "is any crime executed, started or participated in to realize a terrorist objective in any of the contracting states or against its nationals." This is a very thorough definition; however, in Article 2 of this regional convention by the Conference of Islamic States, it says, "peoples' struggle including armed struggle against foreign occupation, aggression, colonialism, hegemony, aimed at liberation in accordance with the principles of international law, shall not be considered a terrorist crime."
In other words, attempts to define the attack on the World Trade Center or attacks in Israel as terrorism would be scuttled by the Conference of Islamic States. The Islamic states insist that fighting an occupation cannot be considered terrorism. Similarly, Hizballah in Lebanon claims that what they are doing today, or before Israel withdrew from Lebanon, is not terrorism. It is resistance, they claim, something that is permitted according to international law.
In fact, there is no such right of resistance to occupation in international law. When placing the question of terrorism opposite the question of international war crimes, we meet the difficulty that terrorism has not yet been defined as a war crime. The components of terrorism are war crimes, and the international community is working to develop a definition of the crime of terrorism.
Israel faces the dilemma of having bilateral commitments with the Palestinians, including commitments by the Palestinians not to engage in terrorism. In a letter signed on the eve of the first Oslo agreement in 1993 on the White House lawn, part of an exchange of letters between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, Arafat undertook not to carry out acts of terror, to bring to trial those who had been involved in terror, and to solve all future problems with respect to settling the questions between the two parties in a peaceful manner. There are very detailed provisions in the various agreements with the Palestinians requiring them to fight terror, collect illegal arms, fight incitement, and do all sorts of things.
How are we going to deal with the fact that there is terror being carried out on a daily basis in Israel? To explode a bus is very similar to exploding planes on the World Trade Center. How is the international community going to deal with this? Are we going to continue to see this double standard? While everybody acknowledges that there is terror and that Israel has the right to fight terror, when Israel does fight terror it is accused of carrying out war crimes.
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