OZJF’s framework for terrorism and extremism is built to be forceful about violent movements and careful about everyone else. The distinction matters, both morally and analytically: a framework that cannot separate an armed group from the civilian population it claims to represent is a framework that produces bad policy and worse rhetoric.
Definitions we use
We use the operational definition of terrorism that appears in U.S. law and in the materials of the National Counterterrorism Center: premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. Extremism is the broader category of ideological commitment to the use or glorification of such violence as a legitimate political tool. The Congressional Research Service overview of terrorism-related statutes is a useful plain-English reference for how these terms operate in American law.
Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations
The U.S. Department of State maintains the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. Four designations are central to OZJF’s issue coverage.
Hamas, designated in 1997, governs Gaza and led the October 7, 2023 attacks. Its founding charter and its 2017 document both commit the organization to armed struggle against Israel, and its conduct in office, including mass-casualty attacks on Israeli civilians and the taking of more than 240 hostages, is consistent with that stated posture.
Hezbollah, designated in 1997, is a Lebanon-based armed political movement funded primarily by the Islamic Republic of Iran. It maintains a rocket and missile arsenal oriented at Israeli population centers and has carried out attacks on American and Jewish targets across three continents.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), designated in 1997, is a smaller Iran-backed armed group operating primarily from Gaza. It has been a frequent participant in rocket campaigns against Israeli civilians and has continued to operate alongside Hamas.
The Houthis (Ansar Allah) were re-designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. government in 2024 following a sustained campaign of attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea and missile and drone attacks directed at Israel. Coverage of the designation and its scope appears in ongoing CRS reporting on U.S. policy toward Yemen.
Designation is not a rhetorical label. It is a legal and administrative finding with material consequences for financing, travel, and prosecution, and OZJF treats it as the baseline for how we describe these organizations.
The Palestinian Authority martyrs fund
The Palestinian Authority’s practice of paying stipends to the families of individuals imprisoned or killed while carrying out attacks on Israelis, commonly called the martyrs fund or “pay for slay,” was the direct subject of the bipartisan Taylor Force Act (Public Law 115-141), which conditioned certain U.S. economic assistance on the PA ending such payments. The law is named for Taylor Force, a U.S. Army veteran and graduate student murdered in Jaffa in 2016 by a Palestinian attacker whose family subsequently received payments. The existence and structure of the fund are not contested. That is an important data point for readers trying to assess the current PA as a potential peace partner.
UNRWA and the Colonna review
In early 2024, allegations surfaced that a number of staff of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) had participated in the October 7, 2023 attacks or were members of Hamas or allied factions. The independent review led by Catherine Colonna, commissioned by the UN Secretary-General, examined the agency’s neutrality mechanisms and made a series of recommendations. The review did not dispute the presence of serious problems; it assessed the sufficiency of UNRWA’s safeguards and the work required to rebuild them. OZJF cites the review itself rather than secondhand summaries, and we treat UNRWA as an institution that requires structural reform, not as a caricature to be dismissed.
What effective counter-extremism looks like
Effective counter-extremism is specific. It names organizations, not populations. It follows the money. It holds educational institutions and media platforms accountable for glorification and incitement. It distinguishes between a civilian who lives under an armed group’s rule and the armed group itself. The comparative framework we use to analyze these movements is developed in /research/comparative-extremism, and the underlying sources are catalogued in /research/terror-designations and /research/sources.
What this page is not
This page is not permission to treat Palestinian civilians as combatants. They are not, and we will not write as if they are. It is a framework for describing, with sources, the organized armed movements whose conduct has made peace harder and whose ideology deserves to be named.