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Suicide Bombings and Targeted Killings in (Counter-) Terror Games

NERA Economic Consulting

Edward H. Kaplan

School of Management Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, School of Medicine Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

This article develops sequential game models for key operational terrorist (how often to attack) and government (how often to execute targeted killings) decisions taken during a (counter-) terror campaign such as the second intifada. Key results include the following: The government initiates targeted killings when the marginal number of Israeli civilian lives saved from prevented terror attacks exceeds the marginal number of Palestinian civilian lives lost in such ``hits''; targeted killings are not employed if they are either ineffective or extremely effective at thwarting terror (since terrorists will not induce their use); even after accounting for downstream terror attacks motivated by prior targeted killings, a civilian casualty—minimizing government can optimally order targeted killings over time; and low-level cycles of violence can occur when the government is more patient than the terrorists, but higher, stable levels of violence result when the terrorists are the more patient players in the game.

Key Words: suicide bombings • targeted killings • game theory • operational decision making • terrorism • counterterrorism • Israeli—Palestinian conflict

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