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Abstract
The dominant societal discourse of actors comprising Israel's security networks influences their choices for solutions to the perceived existential threat to the state from the demands and actions of the Palestinian authorities. Israeli elites, who are identified with the liberal discourse, propose to solve this problem by withdrawing, either unilaterally or via a peace process, from the Judea and Samaria region conquered in the 1967 war. This discourse requires the ‘securitization’ of the political process and the framing of Israeli control of Judea, Samaria and Gaza as an existential burden. By framing the security narrative in this way, the liberal elite seeks to draw support from most Israelis, who subscribe to an alternative ethno-national discourse, for abandoning the region.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Barak Oren and Gabriel Sheffer, “The Study of Civil–Military Relations in Israel: Traditional Approaches, Gaps, and a New Approach,” Israel Studies 12, no. 1 (2007): 1–27.
2. Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap De Wilde, Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
3. Barak Oren and Gabriel Sheffer, “Israel's ‘Security Network’ and its Impact: An Exploration of a New Approach,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38, no. 2 (2006): 235–61.
4. Robert Entman, “Tree Beard. Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (1993): 51.
5. David Snow and Robert Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization,” International Social Movement Research 1 (1988): 197–217.
6. Robert Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
7. Barak Oren and Gabriel Sheffer, “Continuous Existential Threats, Civil–Security Relations, and Democracy: A Comparative Exploration of Five Small States” (lecture, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, March 2008).
8. Yoav Peled and Gershon Shafir, Who is an Israeli? The Dynamic of Complex Citizenship [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2005).
9. Uri Ben-Eliezer, “Military Society and Civil Society in Israel: Cases of Anti-militarism and Neo-militarism in a Postmodern Era” [in Hebrew], in In the Name of Security: The Sociology of War and Peace in Israel in Changing Times, ed. Majid Al-Haj and Uri Ben-Eliezer (Haifa: Haifa University Press, 2003), 32; Yagil Levy, From the People's Army to the Army of the Peripheries [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2007).
10. Levy, People's Army, 59.
11. Ibid., 54.
12. Ibid., 58; Yoram Peri, “Changes in the Security Discourse in the Media and Changes in Citizens' Outlooks in Israel” [in Hebrew], Tarbut Ve-Demokratiya 4–5 (2001): 233–265.
13. Dror Eidar, “The Mother of all Disengagements: On the Repression of the Metaphysical and on the Aestheticization of Peace in Israel's Cultural Discourse” [Hebrew], Akademot 22 (2008): 52–64; Snow and Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization.”
14. Peled and Shafir, Who is an Israeli?, 397.
15. Ibid., 120.
16. Ibid., 358; Uri Ram, The Globalization of Israel. McWorld in Tel Aviv, Jihad in Jerusalem (New York: Routledge, 2007), 452.
17. Ben-Eliezer, “Military and Civil Society in Israel”; Menachem Klein, The Geneva Initiative: The View from Within [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2006).
18. ‘Grey refusal’ is the phenomenon in which secular Ashkenazi youth distance themselves from service in combat units, where there is a high likelihood of engagement in military hostilities. Levy, People's Army, 91.
19. Levy, People's Army, 82. Segmenting the Eighteenth Knesset's results by religious, ethnic and geographic cross-sections shows the dominance in peripheral regions of the Likud, Shas and Israel Beitenu parties. This contrasts with the dominance of the Labour, Kadima and Meretz parties in central regions and long-established localities with mostly secular and Ashkenazi residents. See the 2009 election map: http://go.ynet.co.il/long/content/xml/SearchMap_2.html; http://www.knesset.gov.il/Tql/knesset/Knesset13/html/19940509@[email protected]
20. Levy, People's Army, 205.
21. Ibid., 140.
22. Ibid., 283.
23. Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan, From Gains of War to Dividends of Peace [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2001).
24. Peled and Shafir, Who is an Israeli?, 42; Eidar, “Mother of all Disengagements,” 52–64; Entman, Projections of Power.
25. Levy, People's Army, 99; Koby Michael, Influence of the Army on the Transition Process from War to Peace: The Case of Israel [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Schwartz Institute for Conflict Studies, Hebrew University, 2004).
26. Levy, People's Army, 267; Shlomo Ben-Ami, A Frontline without a Home Front [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Miskal, 2004).
27. Ben-Ami, A Frontline without a Home Front, 111; Ben-Eliezer, “Military and Civil Society,” 71.
28. Ben Ami, A Frontline without a Home Front, 43.
29. Ben Ami, A Frontline without a Home Front, 390; Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, The Seventh War [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Miskal, 2004), 87.
30. Dov Weissglas, in Dividing the Nation: Israelis thinking about the Disengagement, ed. Ari Shavit [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter, 2005), 105–20.
31. Michael, Influence of the Army, 198.
32. Levy, People's Army, 208.
33. Ibid., 217.
34. See Tzipi Livni, in Dividing the Nation [in Hebrew] (see note 30), 133–7.
35. Michael, Influence of the Army, 200.
36. Levy, People's Army, 106.
37. Amos Harel, “Military Rabbinate to Soldiers: Sometimes Brutality is Needed,” Ha'aretz, January 26, 2009; Harel and Issacharoff, Seventh War.
38. Peled and Shafir, Who is an Israeli?, 42.
39. Levy, People's Army, 99.
40. Peled and Shafir, Who is an Israeli?, 397.
41. Levy, People's Army, 55.
42. Aluf Benn, “From Both Sides of the Iron Curtain,” Ha'aretz, October 12, 1994.
43. Aluf Benn, “Rock of our Existence: The Roots of Netanyahu's Policy,” Ha'aretz, August 18, 2006.
44. Michael, Influence of the Army, 193.
45. Keren Neubach, The Race: The 1996 Elections [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 1996).
46. Levy, People's Army, 100.
47. Michael, Influence of the Army, 227.
48. Zalman Shoval, “Security Areas in Judea and Samaria – How to Accept Oslo and Survive” [in Hebrew], Nativ (1999): 22–30.
49. Haggai Huberman, Against all Odds [in Hebrew] (Ariel: Netzarim, 2008).
50. Shulamit Aloni, Minister of Education claimed that the tomb of Yossef the righteous in Nablus was a fiction and that the Jewish settlers could also pray at the tomb of Rahab the harlot if they were that interested in biblical tombs. See the Knesset website (May 9, 1995): http://www.knesset.gov.il/Tql/knesset/Knesset13/html/19940509@[email protected]
51. Huberman, Against all Odds, 298.
52. Neubach, The Race.
53. Ibid.; Levy, People's Army, 105.
54. Oren and Sheffer, “Israel's Security Network,” 247.
55. Levy, People's Army, 107.
56. Huberman, Against all Odds.
57. Michael, Influence of the Army, 239.
58. Harel and Issacharoff, Seventh War, 48.
59. Yossi Beilin, Guide for a Wounded Dove [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 2001), 117.
60. Danny Yatom, “Background, Process and Failure,” The Camp David Summit: What Went Wrong?, ed. Shimon Shamir and Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 33–41.
61. Harel and Issacharoff, Seventh War, 74; Michael, Influence of the Army, 239.
62. Peled and Shafir, Who is an Israeli?, 398; Harel and Issacharoff, Seventh War, 104.
63. Levy, People's Army, 119.
64. Shlomo Ben-Ami, A Frontline without a Home Front.
65. Ibid., 403
66. Ibid., 397.
67. Ibid., 419.
68. Ibid., 420.
69. Yatom, “Background,” 34.
70. Gilad Sher, Close Enough to Touch: The Peace Negotiations 1999–2001 [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Miskal, 2001). It is also noteworthy that certain components of the ethno-nationalist discourse were found within the liberal discourse in negotiations with the Palestinians. Negotiators tried to convince Palestinians of the importance for the Jewish people of Jerusalem's holy places. See also: Ben-Ami, A Frontline without a Home Front, 444.
71. Ehud Barak, lecture at MEMRI Institute, March 5, 2002, http://www.vsite.co.il/sites/barak/content2.php?actions = show&id = 2060&r_id = 2058
72. Huberman, Against all Odds, 534; Levy, People's Army, 187.
73. Hagai Segal, “Demography” [in Hebrew], NRG, January 18, 2005, http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART/855/838.html
74. Sefi Krupsky, “Kadima Two Years on: Broken Vision?,” Walla!, November 21, 2007, http://news.walla.co.il/?w = //1198613/@@/item/printer
75. Levy, People's Army, 252
76. Weissglas, Dividing the Nation, 111.
77. Yossi Verter, “Olmert: The Disengagement is No Longer on the Agenda” [Hebrew], Walla!, August 18, 2006, http://news.walla.co.il/?w = /1/960267andtb = /i/8151305
78. Levy, People's Army, 295; Krupsky, “Kadima.”
79. Barak Ravid et al., “Olmert: Two Nations, or Israel is Finished” [in Hebrew], Ha'aretz, November 29, 2007.
80. Ronen Medzini, “Olmert at Rabin Memorial: Give up Jerusalem” [in Hebrew], November 10, 2008, http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3620426,00.html
81. Levy, People's Army, 343.
82. Attila Somfalvi, “Ayalon: I Won't be Peretz's Sheep” [in Hebrew], Ynet, April 9, 2006, http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3244968,00.html
83. Livni, Dividing the Nation, 133–7.
84. Peled and Shafir, Who is an Israeli?, 398.
85. Levy, People's Army, 116; Weissglas, Dividing the Nation, 111.
86. Levy, People's Army, 266.
87. Daniel Edelson, “Three Years since Sharon's Coma: Sharon Wanted to Leave Gaza for Good,” Ynet, January 4, 2009, http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-650156,00.html?opentalkback = TIDREPLACE
88. Livni, Dividing the Nation.
89. Attila Somfalvi and Roni Sofer, “The Sacrifice wasn't Pointless: We are Committed to Regional Peace,” Ynet, April 18, 2010, http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3877622,00.html/
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Asaf Lebovitz
Asaf Lebowitz (PhD candidate), the Department of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.