This volume seeks to explore whether the current violence, its origins and dynamics can best be understood as a manifestation of civil war. In so doing, it considers how the use of violence by all parties has been conditioned and/or constrained by the domestic factors pertaining to their societies, how external actors have dealt with the violence internally, and how this has impacted on their relations with Israel and the Palestinians, and what does the conduct and scope of the al-Aqsa Intifada suggest about the broader issue of state boundaries and state legitimacy in the contemporary Middle East?

This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal Civil Wars.

Clive Jones is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds, UK. His publications include Soviet Jewish Aliyah (1996), Israel - Challenges to Democracy, Identity and the State (with Emma C. Murphy, Routledge 2002) and International Security in a Global Age (co-editor with Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, 2000). His latest book, Britain and the Yemen Civil War 1962-65 will be published in Spring 2004

Ami Pedahzur is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, and the Deputy Chair of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa, Israel. His latest books include Political Parties and Terrorist Groups (with Leonard Weinberg, Routledge, 2003), and The Israeli Response to Jewish Extremism and Violence - Defending Democracy (2002). He is also the editor of the E-Extreme Newsletter (the newsletter of the standing group on Extremism and Democracy in the European Consortium of Political Research).