A Game between a Terrorist and a Passive Defender

In the last two decades, terrorism has become a major issue around the world. We analyze a conflict between a terrorist (Terrorist) and a passive defender (Defender) using a simple game theoretical model. Defender is passive as her actions can only influence the costs (damages) when Terrorist attacks. We consider single and multi period games. In each period, Terrorist may attack Defender who may try to prevent damage. The games take into account the available technologies for Terrorist and his potential learning. Based on the equilibrium in these games, we make several conjectures related to political events that may change the level of violence, the technology used by Terrorist, and possible cease-fire agreements. We use three sources of data on the conflict between Israel, as Defender, and terrorist groups from the Gaza strip, as Terrorist. Based on these data, we estimate parameters for the models and present numerical examples. We show that for this conflict's political situation our data do not reject our conjectures. In addition, our conjectures provide insights into long term conflicts in general