Michael Rubin reviews Islamic Terror Abductions in the Middle East, by Shaul Shay; Palestine and Transjordan: Geographical Handbook, by the Naval Intelligence Division; and Yemen into the Twenty-First Century, edited by Kamil A. Mahdi, Anna Würth, and Helen Lackner.

Kidnapping has become a tactic of choice among Middle Eastern terrorists. Shay, a research fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel, adds a great deal of valuable analysis in his systematic exploration of the phenomenon.

Shay starts with the basics, a succinct overview of the debate over the definition of terrorism, where a lack of consensus has undercut attempts to counter it. An accompanying discussion over abduction--its phases of preparation, motivations, timing, and state reaction--provides a useful theoretical base from which to examine abductions in Palestinian-controlled areas, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.

Shay's discussion of Palestinian abduction focuses on Hamas. While providing an overview of abductions in the pre-Oslo period, he transforms the 1994 abduction of Israel Defense Forces soldier Nachshon Wachsman into a case study, analyzing the preparations, participants, and execution of the kidnapping, as well as the botched rescue attempt and its aftermath. He then concludes the chapter by summarizing the main characterizations of Hamas abductions, going into such detail as the types of vehicles and weapons used.

Accompanying his discussion of Hezbollah kidnapping in Lebanon is rich analysis of the Iranian role. He is precise and details the division of labor among various Iranian agencies and powerbrokers. He provides brief studies of abductions occurring between 1986 and 2000, including the famous case of missing Israeli airman Ron Arad. The July 2006 abductions that sparked the summer war between Israel and Hezbollah are covered in a short epilogue.

Shay's analysis of Israeli policy is insightful. While Jerusalem's policy toward negotiating with terrorists might appear inconsistent, Shay suggests the deciding factor relates to the quality of operational data. If Israeli officials feel confident in their intelligence, they utilize force but, if uncertain, they negotiate. As a result, they are much more likely to strike a deal with terrorists based in foreign states than those operating in Palestinian areas.

A separate chapter examining foreign hostages in Lebanon is useful for its comparison of the U.S., French, German, Swiss, and Kuwaiti policies toward terrorist demands.

Compared to his other case studies, Shay's attention to Iraq and Yemen falls short. He neither goes into the depth nor breadth of his other chapters. His discussion of the Islamic tradition of decapitation is useful, but here he does not match the detail offered by Timothy Furnish, a professor at Georgia Perimeter College.[1] And while he limits his focus to the Middle East, attention to the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, not to speak of the many beheadings in southern Thailand, would have strengthened his work.

A succinct final chapter weaves together the cases studies and elucidates patterns. Shay concludes that terrorists regard kidnapping as a strategic tool to extract concessions. Abductions occur in waves, with terrorists favoring the tactic when operating in regions where Western states have limited intelligence capability and where the ability of the abductees' home country to stage military reprisals is limited. He concludes, more controversially, that capitulation to terrorist demands can sometimes prevent additional abductions from that country but, at the same time, such surrender encourages terrorists to target citizens of other countries to extract similar concessions from them.

Hostage-taking is, unfortunately, here to stay. While the price of Shay's study might put off the general reader, Islamic Terror Abductions is a sound investment for both policy practitioners and journalists.

Palestine and Transjordan: Geographical Handbook

In 1915, the British admiralty established a geographical section within its Naval Intelligence Division to compile comprehensive handbooks to various countries and territories across the globe. Palestine and Transjordan is a facsimile reproduction of the 1942 edition.

Rich in maps and sketches, chapters cover physical geography; the coast; climate, vegetation, and fauna; history; people; population distribution; administration; public health; agriculture and industries; banking and commerce; ports and inland towns; and communication.

The manual's dispassionate narrative--written before Israel's creation--peels back layers of subsequent dispute and recrimination that have characterized Arab-Israeli history to reassert facts basic but often ignored. Sections on demography remind the reader that not only did many Jews immigrate to Palestine but that many Arabs also fled because of nineteenth-century oppression there. Ottoman misrule led many Arabs to leave Palestine for places as far away as South America. Whereas political leaders such as Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser later sought to impose a single, inflexible definition of Arab, the Naval Intelligence Division describes in society a heterogeneity no longer appreciated by many policymakers. Bedouins were "pure Arabs," but Egyptians and other North Africans enjoyed their own distinct identity. Muslims fleeing Russian advances in the Caucasus and Turks employed in Ottoman administration added to the demographic complexity.

While it is fashionable to blame Israel's creation for many Arab woes, British analysts in 1942 located the kernel of such problems elsewhere: in the difficulties of Palestinian Arabs in facing modernity. They placed blame for the disruption in Arab society not on Jewish immigration but on Arab birth rates, burgeoning since the late 1920s, which traditional agriculture methods could not accommodate. Because most Jews were urban, the two communities' conflict was limited. Indeed, the British hoped that Palestinian Jews and Arabs might strike a symbiotic relationship: "It does not appear impossible . . . that the development of industries by the Jews, if it would give additional employment to the Arabs, might lead the two peoples to live side by side in mutual benefit, and so settle the outstanding political problems of both." Unfortunately, though, the British analysts noted that "the Arabs object to industrialization."

The value of Palestine and Transjordan justifies its presence in any serious library on Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian history, but the price of this public-domain reprint is patently absurd.

Yemen into the Twenty-First Century

In recent years, Yemen, a backwater for centuries, is in the news as Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland and an important battlefield in the war on terrorism. But don't expect this volume, assembled by researchers and lecturers at Exeter University (Mahdi and Lackner) and the Free University of Berlin (Würth), to touch these subjects as this collection of papers dates from a conference that took place in 1998. Rather, subjects covered include political economy, the legal system, environment, and social and regional issues. Left unaddressed—by the editors' own admission—are foreign relations, military affairs, and party politics.

Many articles show their age. Charles Schmitz, an associate professor at Towson University, for example, seeks to extrapolate future challenges to the Yemeni society based on economic indicators from the early 1990s. What once may have been timely becomes silly when delayed publication means, in effect, skipping over a decade of more recent statistics. Drew University professor Nora Ann Colton's section on labor migration raises eyebrows because it addresses "the Gulf crisis" without reference to the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent fall of the Saddam Hussein regime.

Such datedness is a pity. Scholarly literature on Yemen is sparse, and many of the chapters are serious. The contributors have not substituted theory for research. Analysis of the judiciary and its machinations is useful. Updating former presidential legal advisor Hussein al-Hubaishi's chapter on commercial litigation would be especially valuable given growing U.S., European, and Chinese interest in investment in the region. Also in need of expansion are the articles on medical care and health. Given its potential, how frustrating it is that Yemen into the Twenty-First Century remains stubbornly in the twentieth.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.

Notes
[1] Timothy R. Furnish, "Beheading in the Name of Islam," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2005, pp. 51-7.