International Terrorism and the legitimacy of Resistance.

Abstract

Despite all of the efforts made by the international law in differentiating between the illegality of terrorism and legitimacy of resistance, the confusion between resistance and other acts of terrorism is still widespread among many States and groups of people. Accordingly, this research intends to figure out the difference between the terrorism and the resistance as a sole right for each state, through the utilization of a descriptive methodology, in which the researcher tends to review previous studies and literature in order to identify the historical background of terrorism, the general concept of resistance and eliminating the confusion between resistance and terrorism. It was concluded that there are fundamental differences between resistance and terrorism in terms of the role of the people in each activity, in terms of psychological and moral motivation and in terms of targeted violence. More seriously, international law has yet to be determined in a way that leaves no room for confusion between what is legitimate and what other acts of terrorism have escalated in a frightening manner in our time, which requires serious action by the United Nations to establish restrictive and distinct regimes and laws between terrorism and the legitimate resistance applied to all States and to prevent States such as the United States and Israel from combining these conditions and using them in accordance with their personal interests.