Merari, director of the Project on Terrorism at the Jaffee Center in Tel Aviv University, has established himself as perhaps the pre-eminent specialist on terrorism. A key to his success has been the project's extensive data base; by virtue of his access to the quantitative nature of terrorist activity, Merari has been able to transcend the limitation on specific details that plagues most students of the subject.
The strength of this approach is evident in the present book, a study of Palestinian terrorism outside of Israel. While this represents but a minuscule fraction (less than 4 percent) of the attacks conducted against Israel itself, the authors show that international PLO activities have had a disproportionately large influence on the evolution of terrorism — coming up with such techniques as aircraft hijacking, airport attacks, blowing up aircraft in flight, and the taking hostage of diplomats. The statistics (covering 1968-1984) tell a fascinating story. They show that though only twelve attacks have occurred on U.S. soil, Americans have been targeted fifty-one times; conversely, all the major European states have hosted many more attacks against Israeli and American targets than against their own nationals. For example, forty-three attacks occurred in Italy, but only eight of those were directed against Italians; in Turkey the figures are twenty-three and zero. Equally instructive is that Israelis have been targeted 131 times and Arabs 121 times. Or this: despite a 1974 PLO decision to cease terrorism outside Israel, the annual rate of incidents has stayed exactly even. This slim volume offers the best single source for information on worldwide PLO activities.
