On an early afternoon in April 2006, Sami Hamad walked up to the Rosh Ha’ir shwarma and felafel stand in Tel Aviv. The restaurant’s security guard, Binyamin Hafuta, took notice and stopped Hamad at the door. The restaurant had been the target of a suicide attack three months before and the owners weren’t taking chances. Seconds later, Sami detonated his explosive device. Seventy people were wounded and nine killed in the attack, including the security guard. Did Hafuta’s actions save lives? Mark Harrison finds he likely did.
Bystanders interventions, such as challenging the attacker or informing security forces, is common. Out of the 103 Palestinian suicide attacks from 2000 to 2003, 40 experienced interventions by bystanders. Tragically, bystander interventions nearly always trigger an attack, killing the good samaritan. There are only two cases of interventions preventing an attack entirely.
In a 2006 article [PDF] in the journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Harrison argues that interventions by bystanders reduce suicide attack casualties by preventing attackers from selecting optimal locations. The author finds 45.1 casualties occur on average when an attacker was not challenged, while only 16.9 casualties occur on average when a bystander intervened. He argues that bystander interventions take the initiative away from suicide attackers:
“Possibly, however, challenges in low-value locations prevented attackers from proceeding to higher-value targets. If the targets in Israeli society were arrayed in order of diminishing value … they would form steps on a ladder … The higher-value targets at the top of the ladder were cafés and buses; intermediate targets were commuter queues and shoppers in crowded streets and stores.
…
Think of the typical attacker as setting out to climb this ladder: to reach a café she had to pass a checkpoint, walk along a street, enter and leave a store, wait for a bus, and travel on it to the destination. At each step the attacker was screened by the watchful eyes of soldiers, security guards, shoppers, and commuters. By passing each step without challenge she gained access to a target of higher value. If challenged at any stage, she ended the game in sudden death. If this is the right analogy, then the effectiveness of screening is measured not just by the victims saved at each step but also by those saved because some attackers were challenged before they could reach targets of higher value.”
Harrison’s findings have strong implications. First, bystander interventions do save lives, but tragically almost always at the cost of the intervener. Second, populations under threat from suicide attackers benefit from a policy and norm of actively challenging suspicious individuals. The active challenging adds a level of randomness to a state’s security system that potential attackers must deal with. That is, while suicide attackers can plan on how to evade the static security locations, the chance of being challenged on every street and restaurant increases the probability a random intervention prevents or (more likely) mitigates an attack.
Work Cited:
Mark Harrison, “Bombers and Bystanders in Suicide,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29, no. 2 (2006): 187-206.
Christopher Albon is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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