Israel and the Palestinians in a Changing Neighbourhood

The political and strategic landscape of the Middle East and North African region has changed dramatically since late 2010 and the events now loosely defined as the ‘Arab Spring’. The dust has yet to settle in many Arab capitals and 2013 is set to be another defining year for the greater Middle East as regional actors, particularly new Islamist-led governments, take on more direct roles in influencing political, military and social developments in the Arab world. Israel and the Palestinian factions of Hamas and Fatah are not immune to these developments and while progress towards peace has been all but non-existent, change in the region must not necessarily lead to more tensions and conflict. The EU and US should work to establish greater Arab ownership of the diplomatic process, convince Israel that its security is best served by assuming a proactive approach to its changing neighbourhood and strive to harness the new realities in the region to modify the incentive calculus of the major domestic players in the conflict.     

Terrorism and subversion of the state: Italian legal responses

Political assassinations constitute a specific form of violence intended to take someone else's life against that person's wish. The act of killing (the ‘event') is distinguished from the cultural interpretation given to that act (the ‘rhetorical device'). The essay examines the rhetorical device as a cultural artifact to construct and interpret the deliberate serious attempt(s) to kill a specific actor for political reasons having something to do with the political position (or role) of the victim, and with the symbolic‐moral universe out of which the assassin/s act(s). This universe generates the legitimacy and justifications required for the act, which are usually presented in quasi‐legal terms although the acts are typically not the result of a fair legal procedure.     

Latin American terrorism and the Soviet connection revisited

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a number of scholars and journalists argued that the USSR was sponsoring terrorism as a means of low‐intensity conflict against the non‐communist world. This view was endorsed by the Reagan administration. This article assesses what substance there is behind such charges as they relate to Latin America. Its main argument is that sponsorship of terrorists has usually occurred as a byproduct of Soviet support of armed revolution as a tactic rather than for terrorism as such. Soviet willingness to assist armed struggle has varied over the last three decades. The article concludes that, given the current priorities of Soviet Latin American policy, Moscow's sponsorship of armed struggle, including terrorism, is decreasing and will almost certainly continue do so.     

Reluctant Appeaser: Douglas Hailsham and the German Problem 1932–1938

This article considers the ministerial career of Douglas Hogg, first Viscount Hailsham, during the 1930s and, in particular, his attitude towards the appeasement of Germany. Although Hailsham was a leading Conservative in the inter-war period and held key posts during the 1930s, his role in Britain's policy of appeasement has been overlooked. He was consistently wary of the Nazi menace and as Secretary of State for War from 1931–1935 he urged a firm line towards Hitler's Germany. As the decade progressed, however, the inescapable realities of Britain's international predicament drove Hailsham to support the government's appeasement policy, at least until September 1938. Although he forecast the near inevitability of the Second World War, he could not devise a viable alternative to the appeasement of Germany. Hailsham's experience thus offers a significant addition to the historiography of appeasement and to understanding the distinctions between “appeasers” and “anti-appeasers.”