IGCSE History

• Home
• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
    • The impact of the First World War
    • Immigration
    • Henry Ford and mass production
    • Farming in the 1920s
    • The Stock Market Boom
  • 1929 - 1941
    • The Wall Street Crash
    • The Depression
    • The policies of Hoover
    • Roosevelt and the New Deal
    • Reactions to the New Deal
• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
  • Collective Security
    • The Versailles Settlement
    • The Foundation of the League of Nations
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations
    • Successes and failures of the League of Nations
    • Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • Appeasement
    • Manchuria
    • The Disarmament Conference
    • Abyssinia
    • Hitler and the League
    • Appeasement in action
• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
    • Reform under Liu and Deng
    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
    • The impact of the Cultural Revolution
    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Reforms of the economy
    • The Democracy Movement
    • China in the 1990s
• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
  • Indo-China
    • The end of the French Empire
    • Vietnam 1954 - 1965
    • US involvement in Vietnam
    • The unification of Vietnam
    • Laos and Cambodia
  • South-East Asia
    • The struggle for control of Malaya
    • The creation of Malaysia
    • Singapore
    • Suharto and Indonesia
    • Sukarno and Pancasila
• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
    • The Suez Crisis
    • Superpower involvement in the Middle East
    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
    • The war of Yom Kippur
    • The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
    • Lebanon and the occupied territories
    • Successes and failures from Camp David to Oslo
• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
  • The Somme and Passchendaele
  • The War at Sea
  • The defeat of Germany
• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • Advertising and consumerism
  • New forms of entertainment
  • Prohibition
  • Gangsterism
  • Hollywood
• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
  • Sea and aerial warfare
  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
• Links

International terrorism

Terrorism began in earnest after the Six Day War. Until then most violence had been directed against Israelis troops and civilians. From the late 1960s terrorism was directed against any country that supported Israel. The aim was to force countries to withdraw support from Israel and so isolate it in the Middle East

To many people in the West, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which had been founded in 1964, was the main terrorist organisation. In fact most of the international terrorism was carried out by extremist groups. In 1968 the PFLP (the Peoples' Front for the Liberation of Palestine) began to hijack aircraft and killed more than fifty hostages. In 1970 the PFLP hijacked four airliners with 600 passengers and then destroyed three on the ground at Dawson’s Field in Jordan. In 1972 Black September received a $5,000,000 ransom for a German airliner and then killed eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games.

Terrorist attacks became common in 1973, mostly committed by splinter groups. But Arafat decided that the PLO proper would only carry out raids against Israel. For example in 1976 a bomb killed eight Israelis in Jerusalem and in 1978 guerrillas killed thirty-nine Israeli holiday-makers near Tel Aviv.

In the same year an Israeli aeroplane was hi-jacked and flown to Entebbe in Uganda. The passengers were rescued, however, by an operation carried out by Israeli Special Forces. The Israeli armed forces proved very successful in countering the threats from terrorists. Mossad the Israeli Secret Service was probably the most effective agency of all. As always, Israelis proved very successful because they had nowhere to run to. Israel was their last hope so they were prepared to defend it to the last.

The War of Yom Kippur

Links