Isn’t it ironic that "
terrorism", a word in everyone’s mouth now, and arguably the most debated issue over the last five years, has yet to be explicitly defined? Neither the United Nations, nor less prestigious institutions, - let alone individual nations- have ever dared to propose a concise definition of the word “terrorism”.
Owing to the recrudescence of terrorism in the recent weeks, Kofi Annan looks more eager to convince all the protagonists on a single and clear definition. According to
this article, he seems to have convinced Amr Moussa the head of Arab League for accepting this definition: Terrorism is "
any intentional maiming or killing of civilians as terrorism, regardless of cause". Amr Moussa’s reaction "This is a definition we can agree on", certainly under the pressure of the last bombings in London and Charm Sheikh, is not in line with that of the Arab states, who are not reluctant for condemning terrorism per se but do not want this definition to be applied to Palestinian suicide bombings, because, they say, this should be seen as a "
right of national liberation movements to fight foreign occupation".
In my view, this attitude, in addition of being morally unacceptable, is defensive and counterproductive. If anything, it is only fueling the misunderstanding between Muslim and Western civilizations. What are Arab States expecting when they show reluctance to back such a clear statement as "
intentional maiming or killing of civilians is terrorism, regardless of cause", other than a further alienation of Muslims and Arabs from the rest of the world? My guess is that Arab leaders fear the anger of the Arab “Street” that a condoning of Annan’s proposal might entail. They will be seen, they think, as “selling the Palestinian cause” and acting as a proxy of Western imperialism. This is nonsense and the kind of things, which are preventing us from moving ahead.
Instead of adopting a hardly defendable stance, Arab states should be much more offensive. They should condemn any Palestinian suicide bombings targeting civilians. They just can’t hide behind the eternal excuse of resistance. After all, Bin Laden and company, use this very argument to justify terrorism, which, they claim, is a response to injustices done to Palestine, Iraq and other Muslim lands. By offensive, I mean they should not only accept without questioning Annan’s proposal, but go beyond. They should say, that yes, Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians is terrorism. They should insist, moreover, that the definition of terrorism stated above should be as protective of civilians as possible. By this, I mean that any excuse by somebody (or some entity) killing civilians that he (it) intended to kill some “enemy” that happened to be close to them is unacceptable. In this case, any bombing of an enemy is some urban street or place should be considered as terrorism. Accordingly, Sheikh Yassine and Rantissi assassinations should be declared as terrorism because along with them many civilians were assassinated. Otherwise, the definition of terrorism above will be useless. Any suicide bomber might also claim that killing those civilians in Israel was intended to kill the military personnel that happened to be 30 meters away… The moral of the story is that, to effectively fight terrorism, we shouldn’t play games with coherence. Either we decide once for all to be coherent either we must admit that we are fooling ourselves and are acting irresponsibly.
