The Threat of Terrorism 1235

A security alert in London, July 2005, not long after the explosion of terrorist

bombs in three subway trains and on a bus.

events occurring far away, and to the terrorism these events have generated.
Terrorists detonated cars packed with bombs in front of U.S. embassies in
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in the summer of 1998,
killing 213 people and wounding more than 5,000 in the latter attack.
Islamic fundamentalists were also responsible for terrorist attacks in Arab
states where fundamentalists wanted to impose strict religious rule.
Islam is not the only religion in which aggressive fundamentalism has
emerged. In Israel, Jewish extreme nationalist groups, in coalition with the
Likud party, have helped shape Israeli hard-line policies toward Palestinian
demands for an independent state. The Palestinian question divides public
opinion in Europe. The Palestinian minority in Israel demands an indepen­
dent Palestinian state. Groups of Palestinian militants have undertaken
murderous attacks on Israelis. In a cycle of violence that has become tragi­
cally common, the Israeli government often responds by razing villages or
by further restricting the rights of Palestinians. The assassination of
Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing Israeli in 1995 was a blow to peace in the
Middle East, which in some ways hinges on the Palestinian situation. In
1996, the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat struck from the Palestine Libera­
tion Organization's charter the call for the destruction of Israel. However,
the “peace process”—as U.S. officials refer to it optimistically—began to
break down in 2000.