Abstract
We analyze the differences in the socioeconomic profiles between suicide terrorists and ‘regular’ militants using a dataset of 1596 militants (including 209 suicide terrorists) from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). We find that suicide terrorists are better educated, younger, less likely to be married or have children, and less likely to live in the Gaza strip than their non-suicide counterparts. Moreover, although the profiles of Hamas and PIJ militants are distinctively different, the suicide terrorists are very similar to one another.
Highlights
suicide terrorist (Suicide) missions are deadlier and make more news than ‘regular’ terror attacks; they allow attacking hard and more valuable targets as no escape route has to be planned (Berman and Latin 2005, 2008)—in short, they spread terror more effectively than any other form of terror
Regardless of the relative weights assigned to religious motivations, altruism towards the collectively traumatized group or political considerations are for explaining suicide attacks, and no matter how different the motivations of terror group leaders and those carrying out the suicide attack may be, four elements need to be present in a suicide mission mounted by an Islamist terrorist: religious motivations, strong grievances, a tightly knit, altruistic social network, and a terror organization that plans and supports the attack logistically
The share of Hamas members is significantly larger for suicide gunners than for suicide bombers; suicide bombers are much less likely to reside in the Gaza Strip than suicide gunners
Summary
Suicide missions are deadlier and make more news than ‘regular’ terror attacks; they allow attacking hard and more valuable targets as no escape route has to be planned (Berman and Latin 2005, 2008)—in short, they spread terror more effectively than any other form of terror. Benmelech and Berrebi (2007) assemble a dataset of 148 Palestinian suicide terrorists and show that they too are better educated than the population at large They show that better educated and older suicide terrorists are assigned to attack harder targets and are more successful in killing people than others. To the extent that the literature has analyzed the characteristics of suicide terrorists, it has compared suicide terrorists exclusively to the population at large, in some specifications corrected for different age and gender profiles Such a comparison implicitly assumes that the relevant decision is between engaging in suicide missions and not engaging in terrorists’ causes at all. We survey the relevant literature on suicide terrorism; we present our dataset on deceased PIJ and Hamas militants, Sect.
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