Terrorism is by no means a recent development, nor are the international legal efforts to cope with it. Several international conventions pertaining to the struggle against specific terrorist acts have been adopted, and the UN is currently negotiating a comprehensive convention that would forbid any type of involvement in international terrorism. In most of the existing international conventions, terrorism is perceived as a criminal offense that must be dealt with according to criminal law (hereinafter: the Law Enforcement Paradigm).
However, in light of the recent emergence of fundamentalist groups that are capable of causing severe damage, which until recently could only have been caused by foreign armies, a new paradigm is being considered – one that suggests viewing the war on terror as a military struggle rather than a criminal one (hereinafter: the Armed Conflict Paradigm). According to this paradigm, countries may sometimes take drastic measures that do not correspond with the Law Enforcement Paradigm, such as the killing of terror-suspects (targeted killings), prolonged administrative detention without trial, and military actions in a foreign country – measures that usually characterize military operations in times of war.
This brief paper, which will examine these two paradigms in the context of international law and will survey the implications of adopting one over the other, is based on the assumption that international law is a major consideration that influences the anti-terrorist policy adopted by international organizations, by countries and by the public.