The architecture of international counterterrorism law is the subject of Chapter 2. It is a branch of public international law that has emerged from an evolving special legal regime to regulate action to prevent and punish terrorism and to tackle terrorists. International counterterrorism law is a matrix of global terrorism treaties and dedicated United Nations Security Council resolutions that require the incorporation of offences into domestic law combined with the salient rules of international humanitarian law and the law of law enforcement. These rules, which regulate when and against whom force may be used in counterterrorism, are supplemented by (though are sometimes inconsistent with) the content of regional treaties and domestic legislation. The standards and laws are subject to the constraints and oversight of international human rights law. The chapter also describes the content and adherence of regional counterterrorism treaties.

Chapter 3 covers national criminal law on terrorism worldwide. A total of 188 States (of the total of 197 recognized by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in his capacity as treaty depositary) have domestic legislation in place specifically criminalizing acts of terrorism. Despite certain commonalities, the definitions of these crimes are unique to each individual State. At the time of writing, only one State, Micronesia, had no dedicated legislative provisions on terrorism of any form in its domestic law. A further seven States – the Republic of Congo, Dominica, Eritrea, Kuwait, Sierra Leone, Suriname, and Yemen – repress the financing of terrorism with criminal sanction but do not also establish the perpetration of an act of terrorism as a distinct criminal offence.

Open-source intelligence is readily available and inexpensive. Hamas collected a lot of information from open sources, mainly the Israeli press. In this case, Hamas exploited the fact that Israel is a democratic state with a relatively free press to get valuable information for its operations. This sort of collection activity became more organized after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip and was Hamas’s main source for strategic analysis. This chapter describes the intelligence content Hamas gathered from open sources and that content’s contribution to its activities.

Since its founding in 1987, the political and ideological dimensions of the terror organization Hamas have been well discussed by scholars. In contrast, this innovative study takes a new approach by exploring the entire scope of Hamas’s intelligence activity against its state adversary, Israel. Using primary sources in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, the author analyzes the development of Hamas’s various methods for gathering information, its use of this information for operational needs and strategic analysis, and its counterintelligence activity against the Israeli intelligence apparatus. The Hamas Intelligence War against Israel explores how Hamas’s activity has gradually become more sophisticated as its institutions have become more established and the nature of the conflict has changed. As the first full-length study to analyze the intelligence efforts of a violent non-state actor, this book sheds new light on the activities and operations of Hamas, and opens new avenues for intelligence research in the wider field.

Since its founding in 1987, the political and ideological dimensions of the terror organization Hamas have been well discussed by scholars. In contrast, this innovative study takes a new approach by exploring the entire scope of Hamas’s intelligence activity against its state adversary, Israel. Using primary sources in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, the author analyzes the development of Hamas’s various methods for gathering information, its use of this information for operational needs and strategic analysis, and its counterintelligence activity against the Israeli intelligence apparatus. The Hamas Intelligence War against Israel explores how Hamas’s activity has gradually become more sophisticated as its institutions have become more established and the nature of the conflict has changed. As the first full-length study to analyze the intelligence efforts of a violent non-state actor, this book sheds new light on the activities and operations of Hamas, and opens new avenues for intelligence research in the wider field.

The conclusion chapter sums up the contribution of Hamas’s intelligence to the organization’s activities associated with its struggle against Israel. It details the strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s efforts to gather intelligence on Israel, counter Israeli intelligence activity, and assess Israel’s intentions and capabilities. This chapter also examines lessons from the case study of Hamas that may be applied to a general understanding of intelligence warfare by VNSAs.

The chapter analyzes Hamas’s use of intelligence to conduct successful operations against Israel. The combination of intelligence gathering and clandestine activities, as described in the previous chapters, led to several high-quality operations against Israel. For example, in an attack in 2006, Hamas successfully abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit and was able to keep him hidden for years, despite Israel’s efforts to find and rescue him in the tiny Gaza Strip. In addition, Hamas created a “bank” of targets through its intelligence-gathering efforts. This structured list of vulnerable quality targets was used to focus rocket attacks against Israel and find locations for suicide attacks.

The chapter explores Hamas’s strategic analysis and study of Israel and the IDF. As part of its intelligence warfare, Hamas strove to increase its knowledge of the enemy. This chapter describes Hamas’s accumulation of intelligence about Israeli weaponry, IDF units, Israeli battlefield tactics, operational training, and so on. The organization particularly sought information about the capabilities of Israeli armored vehicles in order to inform its use of anti-tank weaponry. The chapter also illustrates how Hamas disseminated this knowledge in its ranks. This chapter goes on to analyze Hamas’s operational preparations for war after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Further, it examines Hamas’s ongoing assessment of the possibility and characteristics of a large-scale Israeli attack, and in particular the analysis of the Israeli political and social situation used by Hamas in order to form such an assessment. In this manner, the chapter discusses the influence of Hamas’s “enemy image” of Israel – an image based on the organization’s Palestinian Islamic ideology as well as its interpretation of events and social processes in Israel – on the organization’s assessment of its enemy. The chapter also sheds light on the organization’s difficulties in strategic analysis of Israel.

After addressing Hamas’s intelligence collection in previous chapters, this chapter focusses on Hamas’s efforts to counter Israeli intelligence efforts against it. To overcome Israel’s attempts to infiltrate its ranks, Hamas went to great lengths to screen those wishing to join it, while diligently acting to detect collaborators with Israel, both within its ranks and in the broader society in which they operate, while applying internal compartmentalization to the organization. To counter Israel’s SIGINT activity, Hamas tried to avoid the use of wireless communications, and also made use of encryption, both in telephone communication and in correspondence; over time, Hamas developed an internal communication system that is separate from the public system. To defeat Israel’s GEOINT efforts, Hamas tried to conceal its activities to the greatest extent possible. This included a range of strategies, including camouflage, the assimilation of military installations in civilian surroundings, and the use of subterranean spaces. Regarding open-source media publications, Hamas developed the awareness of the need to impose censorship to hide certain characteristic signs of its activity.

The chapter deals with Hamas’s human intelligence (HUMINT) activity. Hamas, of course, makes use of the most traditional method of intelligence gathering – information from human sources. This chapter details how Hamas first recruited local sources for short periods and specific missions. Gradually, sources were recruited who could operate outside of Israel; these sources were sent on longer-term and more advanced missions. Hamas also used the internet, i.e., social media and email, to contact and handle potential sources. This chapter also describes how Hamas turned collaborators with Israel into double agents and ran operations using these agents.

The chapter sheds light on Hamas’s signal intelligence (SIGINT) and cyber warfare. It describes how, in the first decade of the 2000s, Hamas gained SIGINT capabilities that made it possible for Hamas to intercept the camera broadcasts of IDF UAVs, as well as the IDF’s visible tactical communication traffic. In the 2010s, Hamas began to invest in cyber warfare. This chapter also surveys Hamas’s successful use of various hacking methods to penetrate the smartphones of IDF soldiers and officers, extracting information and installing spyware and using social engineering techniques; descriptions of several real-life cases are included for illustration.

Chapter 6 looks at political responses to the MENA migration to Europe from 2011, the most harshly exclusionary case in my study. The migration mixed asylum seekers fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, with labor migrants from other MENA states. The chapter tracks Europe’s progression from initially cautious receptiveness of asylum seekers to policies of exclusion of MENA migrants from the continent. It shows that the growing numbers, migrant “mix,” and terrorist attacks by (mostly non-migrant) Islamic extremists in Europe combined to undermine need-based deservingness, empower populist parties and feed xenophobic media. The chapter focuses on the EU’s turn to militarized securitization of its land and sea borders and ‘externalization of borders’ to Turkey and Libya, policies that ended the migration surge by indiscriminate physical exclusion of migrants and asylum seekers. Case studies show the varied effects of and responses to the migration in the five European cases and in Russia, which received much smaller numbers. Responses to the MENA migration brought international migration to the core of Europe’s politics, entrenched populist parties, and showed the failure of the Geneva Convention asylum system in the 21st century.

Spying in South Asia’s conclusion addresses the impact of the end of the Cold War, and the onset of a ‘war on terror’, on British and American intelligence relationships with India. It explores the rationale behind Indian governments’ softening of anti-CIA rhetoric from the mid-1980s, and the implications for New Delhi’s intelligence agencies of the precipitous collapse of the USSR, and the abrupt conclusion of the Cold War. It assesses factors underlying the post-Cold War recovery of Western secret services from the position of public pariahs in India to that of New Delhi’s principal partners in intelligence and security matters. In 1947, as the Cold War dawned and the newly independent subcontinent confronted formidable threats to its stability and security, New Delhi turned to London and Washington for covert support. Some half-a-century later, after decades of what might best be described as circumscribed cooperation compromised by conflict and conspiracism, the intelligence services of India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, once more found compelling reasons to put their differences aside, and work together as close partners in a new secret war.

This chapter gives an overview of the long history, nature and significance of terrorism for international relations. It first addresses the topic’s recent prominence. Terrorism is by no means the most brutal type of violence, especially compared to wars in which states have killed millions of people. But it garners outsized attention through its symbolic nature. Only by educating ourselves can we rob terrorism of the source of its power. Second, it addresses key academic debates, which usually go back to the definition. The chapter argues that there are core areas of international agreement about what a terrorist act is, and that it can and should be distinguished from other types of violence. It also explains the lively debate over digital technology and the future of terrorism. Third, it lays out intellectual frameworks that help us to understand and analyse terrorism, including types of terrorism, historical patterns and the strategies used by terrorist groups. The chapter concludes with reflections about what is at stake in countering this type of illegitimate act.