Territorial withdrawal as multilateral bargaining: Revisiting Israel’s ‘unilateral’ withdrawals from Gaza and southern Lebanon

ABSTRACT

This essay tests competing scholarly approaches to territorial withdrawal in two cases seldom scrutinised by theorists: the Israeli exits from the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon. The dominant framing of these cases as ‘unilateral’ suggests Israel withdrew without bargaining with actors in the international system. These cases therefore apparently illustrate the primacy of domestic politics in facilitating or precluding withdrawal. Yet, this essay delineates often-overlooked causal paths emanating from: (1) violent Israeli bargaining with the enemy and (2) diplomatic Israeli bargaining with third parties. Hence, this essay demonstrates withdrawal is dependent on bargaining with external actors, even in ‘unilateral’ cases.

KEYWORDS:

• Bargaining
• Israel
• unilateralism
• territorial conflict
• withdrawal

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr. Reinoud Leenders, Professor Joel Peters, Dr. Alex Gould and Netta Geist Pinfold for their invaluable feedback on earlier iterations of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ David Edelstein, Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2008), 88–90.

² Ahron Bregman, Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories (London: Penguin 2015), xxviii.

³ Arie M. Kacowicz, ‘The Process of Reaching Peaceful Territorial Change: The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Comparative Perspective’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 27/2 (1996), 215–245.

⁴ Ian Lustick, Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza (New York: Cornell University Press 1995), 43.

⁵ Ibid., 121.

⁶ Dov Waxman, The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defining/Defending the Nation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2006), 3.

⁷ Avraham Sela, ‘Civil Society, the Military, and National Security: The Case of Israel’s Security Zone in South Lebanon’, in Gabriel Sheffer and Oren Barak (eds.), Militarism and Israeli Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2010), 77.

⁸ In 2003, Ariel Sharon became the first sitting Israeli prime minister to publically refer to Israel’s territorial control as ‘occupation’, see Kelly Wallace, ‘Sharon: “Occupation” Terrible for Israel, Palestinians’, CNN, 27 May 2003.

⁹ Israel occupied a large swathe of Lebanon, including what would later become the security zone, from 1982. However, the security zone as a distinct territorial unit resulted from the Israeli withdrawal from the rest of Lebanon in 1985; see Daniel Sobelman, New Rules of the Game: Israel and Hizbullah After the Withdrawal from Lebanon (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies 2003), 3.

¹⁰ Ahron Bregman, Israel’s Wars: A History Since 1947 (London: Routledge 2013), 268.

¹¹ Sobelman, New Rules of the Game, 9.

¹² Sela, ‘Civil Society, the Military, and National Security’, 78.

¹³ Author interview with Dr Yossi Beilin, 2 Jan. 2017.

¹⁴ Clive H. Schofield, ‘Elusive Security: The Military and Political Geography of South Lebanon’, GeoJournal 31/2 (1993), 149.

¹⁵ Shlomo Brom, Israel and South Lebanon: In the Absence of a Peace Treaty with Syria (Tel Aviv: The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies 1999), 11.

¹⁶ Author interview with Major General (Ret.) Danny Yatom, 27 Jun. 2017.

¹⁷ James Bennet, ‘Israelis Blow Up Buildings in the Gaza Strip’, The New York Times, 27 Oct. 2003.

¹⁸ Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Address by PM Ariel Sharon at the Fourth Herzliya Conference, 18 Dec. 2003’.

¹⁹ Author interview with Advocate Dov Weisglass, 7 Jun. 2017.

²⁰ BBC News, ‘Sharon Speech on Gaza Pullout’, 15 Aug. 2005.

²¹ Daniel Lieberfeld, ‘Parental Protest, Public Opinion and War Termination: Israel’s Four Mothers Movement’, Social Movement Studies 8/4 (2000), 388.

²² Sela, ‘Civil Society, the Military, and National Security’, 83.

²³ For the IDF protest, see Daniel Byman, A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counter-Terrorism (New York: Oxford University Press 2011), 175; for the open letter, see Mazal Muallem, ‘Why So Many of Israel’s Security Hawks Have Become Doves’, Al Monitor, 27 Jun. 2016.

²⁴ For the Gaza figure, see Meir Elran, ‘Disengagement Offshoots: Strategic Implications for Israeli Society’, Strategic Assessment 8/2 (2005), 6–10; for Lebanon, see Yehuda Ben-Meir, ‘After the Withdrawal from Lebanon: Effects on Israeli Public Opinion’, Strategic Assessment 3/1 (2000), 18–20.

²⁵ Sela, ‘Civil Society, the Military, and National Security’, 84–86.

²⁶ Charles D. Freilich, Zion’s Dilemmas: How Israel Makes National Security Policy (New York: Cornell University Press 2012), 122, 189.

²⁷ Gleiss claims that the exit from Lebanon was the least traumatic Israeli exit; Joshua Gleiss, Withdrawing Under Fire: Lessons Learned From Islamist Insurgencies (Virginia: Potomac Books 2011), 104. For the reaction of the Israeli right-wing to the disengagement plan, see Sergio Catignani, Israeli Counter-Insurgency and the Intifadas: Dilemmas of a Conventional Army (London: Routledge 2008), 171–173.

²⁸ Amongst others, see Dalia Dassa Kaye, ‘The Israeli Decision to Withdraw from Southern Lebanon: Political Leadership and Security Policy’, Political Science Quarterly 117/4 (2001), 561–585; Gleiss, Withdrawing Under Fire and Eyal Lewin, ‘The Disengagement from Gaza: Understanding the Ideological Background’, Jewish Political Studies Review 27/2 (2015), 15–32.

²⁹ Catignani, Israeli Counter-Insurgency and the Intifadas, 170.

³⁰ Robert H. Mnookin, Ehud Eiran and Shula Gilad, ‘Is Unilateralism Always Bad? Negotiation Lessons from Israel’s Unilateral Gaza Withdrawal’, Negotiation Journal 30/2 (2014), 87.

³¹ Kaye, ‘The Israeli Decision to Withdraw’, 562.

³² Jonathan Rynhold and Dov Waxman, ‘Ideological Change and Israel’s Disengagement from Gaza’, Political Science Quarterly 11/1 (2008), 11–37.

³³ The most notable – and arguably successful – of these cases is the Israeli withdrawal from the entire Sinai Peninsula. The territory was captured from Egypt in the June 1967 war and exchanged in full in return for a peace treaty, in a process that was concluded in 1982.

³⁴ Yaakov Amidror, ‘The Unilateral Withdrawal: A Security Error of Historic Magnitude’, Strategic Assessment 7/3 (2004), 15.

³⁵ Gal Luft, ‘Israel’s Security Zone in Lebanon – A Tragedy?’ Middle East Quarterly 7/3 (2001).

³⁶ Nadav Shragai, ‘The Disengagement: The Unanswered Question’, The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 21 Feb. 2016.

³⁷ See Joel Peters, ‘The Gaza Disengagement: Five Years Later’, The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 4/3 (2015), 33–44.

³⁸ Charles D. Freilich, Zion’s Dilemmas, 147.

³⁹ Charles Osgood, An Alternative to War or Surrender (Champaign: University of Illinois Press 1962).

⁴⁰ David Lefkowitz, ‘On Moral Arguments against a Legal Right to Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention’, Public Affairs Quarterly 20/2 (2006), 115–134.

⁴¹ Eric Fromm, ‘The Case for Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament’, Daedalus 89/4 (1960), 1015–1028.

⁴² Edward J. Lawler, Rebecca Ford and Michael D. Large, ‘Unilateral Initiatives as a Conflict Resolution Strategy’, Social Psychology Quarterly 62/3 (1990), 240.

⁴³ Michael D. Large, ‘The Effectiveness of Gifts as Unilateral Initiatives in Bargaining’, Sociological Perspectives 42/3 (1999), 526; Fromm, ‘The Case for Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament’, 1015.

⁴⁴ For prominent examples, see R. Harrison Wagner, ‘Bargaining and War’, American Journal of Political Science 44/3 (2000), 469–484 and Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1960).

⁴⁵ Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 21.

⁴⁶ Oxford English Dictionary, ‘Unilateral’.

⁴⁷ Edelstein, Occupational Hazards, 6.

⁴⁸ Rynhold and Waxman, ‘Ideological Change and Israel’s Disengagement’, 569.

⁴⁹ Kaye, ‘The Israeli Decision to Withdraw’, 563.

⁵⁰ Tami Amanda Jacoby, Bridging the Barrier: Israeli Unilateral Disengagement (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company 2007), 122.

⁵¹ To many critical voices, ‘the disengagement plan was condemned as an act of strategic folly, undermining Israel’s security’; Peters, ‘The Gaza Disengagement’, 35.

⁵² Sela, ‘Civil Society, the Military, and National Security’, 77.

⁵³ Catignani, Israeli Counter-Insurgency and the Intifadas, 80.

⁵⁴ Author interview with Brigadier General (Ret.) Shlom Brom, 16 Nov. 2016.

⁵⁵ Mordechai Gazit, Israeli Diplomacy and the Quest for Peace (London: Frank Cass 2002), 148.

⁵⁶ Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013), x.

⁵⁷ See Luft, ‘Israel’s Security Zone in Lebanon – A Tragedy?’

⁵⁸ Richard Augustus Norton, ‘(In)security Zones in South Lebanon’, Journal of Palestine Studies 23/1 (1993), 71; Schofield, ‘Elusive Security’, 160.

⁵⁹ For figures in 1993, see Anthony H. Cordesman, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Escalating to Nowhere (Conneticut: Praegar Security International 2005), 39; for 1998, see Hugh Levinson, ‘South Lebanon: Israel’s Vietnam?’ BBC News, 23 Dec. 1998.

⁶⁰ Byman, ‘A High Price’, 222.

⁶¹ Between January and March 1999, polls registered the first majority support for unilateral withdrawal: Asher Arian, ‘Israeli Public Opinion on Lebanon and Syria’, Strategic Assessment 2/1 (1999), 19–23.

⁶² Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis, The Strategic Balance of Israel’s Withdrawal from Gaza (Molad: The Center for Renewal of Israeli Democracy 2016), 8.

⁶³ Author interview with Dov Weisglass.

⁶⁴ Author interview with Colonel (Ret.) Itamar Yaar, 26 Jan. 2017.

⁶⁵ Shlomo Brom, ‘The Withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, One Year Later’, Strategic Assessment 4/2 (2001), 22–27.

⁶⁶ Luft, ‘Israel’s Security Zone in Lebanon – A Tragedy?’

⁶⁷ Arian, ‘Israeli Public Opinion on Lebanon and Syria’.

⁶⁸ For polls, see Asher Arian, Public Opinion on National Security (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Centre For Strategic Studies 2000), 33; for casualties, see Dalia Dassa Kaye, ‘The Israeli Decision to Withdraw’, 570.

⁶⁹ Ben Sasson-Gordis, The Strategic Balance of Israel’s Withdrawal from Gaza, 11.

⁷⁰ Gleiss, Withdrawing Under Fire, 89.

⁷¹ Cordesman, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 50.

⁷² Author interview with Yitzhak Mordechai, 28 Jun. 2017.

⁷³ Jonathan Spyer, ‘Israel and Lebanon: Problematic Proximity’, MERIA Journal (2009).

⁷⁴ Sela, ‘Civil Society, the Military, and National Security’, 79.

⁷⁵ Brom, Israel and South Lebanon, 26.

⁷⁶ Freilich, Zion’s Dilemmas, 142.

⁷⁷ Ben Sasson-Gordis, The Strategic Balance of Israel’s Withdrawal from Gaza, 23.

⁷⁸ Elisha Efrat, The West Bank and Gaza Strip: A Geography of Occupation (Oxford: Routledge 2006), 178.

⁷⁹ Eival Gilady, ‘Background to the Disengagement Plan’, Journal of Palestine Studies 35/1 (2005), 181–183.

⁸⁰ Ed Blanche, ‘Light at the End of Lebanon’s Tunnel?’, Jane’s Intelligence Review 5 (1999).

⁸¹ David Hirst, ‘South Lebanon: The War That Never Ends?’, Journal of Palestine Studies 28/3 (1999), 6.

⁸² For further analysis of the RMA, see Freedman, Strategy: A History, 214–236.

⁸³ Cordesman, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 49.

⁸⁴ Xinhua General News Service, ‘Israel Deploys Arrow-2 Missiles Along Israel – Lebanon Border’, 27 May 2000.

⁸⁵ Robert Zelnick, Israel’s Unilateralism: Beyond Gaza (Stanford: The Hoover Institute 2006), 41.

⁸⁶ Nicholas Blanford, Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel (New York: Random House 2011), 203.

⁸⁷ Cordesman, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 104–130.

⁸⁸ Bregman, Cursed Victory, 293.

⁸⁹ Ahron Bregman, ‘Israel and the Arabs: Exclusive Peace’, Television Documentary Archive 2/1–22: Interview Transcripts, the Liddell Hart Military Archives, King’s College, London.

⁹⁰ Lisa Beyer, ‘The Time Has Come to End a Tragedy’, Time Magazine, 5 Jun. 2000.

⁹¹ Yossi Kuperwasser, ‘The Arab Attitudes Towards the 2005 Unilateral Disengagement: A First-Hand Account from an Israeli Insider’, The Jerusalem Institute for Public Affairs, 18 Feb. 2016.

⁹² Ron Tira, ‘Shifting tectonic Plates: Basic Assumptions on the Peace Process Revisited’, Strategic Assessment 12/1 (2009), 91–107.

⁹³ Ben Sasson-Gordis, ‘The Strategic Balance of Israel’s Withdrawal from Gaza’, 11.

⁹⁴ Wagner, ‘Bargaining and War’, 113.

⁹⁵ Kacowicz, ‘The Process of Reaching Peaceful Territorial Change’, 242.

⁹⁶ For Israeli–Syrian negotiations, see Ahron Bregman, Elusive Peace: How the Holy Land Defeated America (London: Penguin 2005), 3–72.

⁹⁷ Government of Israel, ‘Resolution Regarding the Disengagement Plan’, 6 Jun. 2004 in Itamar Rabinovich and Jehuda Reinharz (eds.), Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present (New England: Brandeis University Press 2008), 543.

⁹⁸ Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (New York: Crown Publishing Group 2011), 138.

⁹⁹ Steven R. Weisman, ‘A Bush Aide Criticises Israel for Not Doing More to Foster Peace’, The New York Times, 12 Dec. 2003.

¹⁰⁰ For the Roadmap, see Yoram Meital, Peace in Tatters: Israel, Palestine and the Middle East (London: Lynne Rienner 2006), 163.

¹⁰¹ Author interview with Dov Weisglass.

¹⁰² Freilich, Zion’s Dilemmas, 181.

¹⁰³ Uri Ben-Eliezer, Old Conflict, New War: Israel’s Politics Toward the Palestinians (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2012), 164.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid.

¹⁰⁵ Author interview with Major General (Ret.) Giora Eiland, 10 Jul. 2017.

¹⁰⁶ Shlomo Brom ‘After the Withdrawal from Lebanon: Three Scenarios’, Strategic Assessment 3/1 (2000), 10.

¹⁰⁷ Bregman, Elusive Peace, 282–284.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., 283.

¹⁰⁹ Author interview with Dov Weisglass.

¹¹⁰ Aluf Benn, ‘The Ambiguous Way Forward: The Puzzle of Sharon’s Intentions’, The National Interest 82 (2005), 147.

¹¹¹ Author interview with Danny Yatom.

¹¹² Author interview with Giora Eiland.

¹¹³ Kacowicz, ‘The Process of Reaching Peaceful Territorial Change’, 215–245.

¹¹⁴ Elliott Abrams, ‘Hillary Is Wrong About the Settlements’, The Wall Street Journal, 26 Jun. 2009.

¹¹⁵ Author interview with Dov Weisglass.

¹¹⁶ US President George W. Bush, Letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on the Disengagement Plan, 14 Apr. 2004 in ‘The Sharon Unilateral Disengagement Plan (Assorted Documents)’, Journal of Palestine Studies 33/4 (2004) 85–107.

¹¹⁷ Ibid.

¹¹⁸ Ibid.

¹¹⁹ Rice, No Higher Honor, 283.

¹²⁰ Author interview with Giora Eiland.

¹²¹ Bregman, Elusive Peace, 74.

¹²² Ibid.

¹²³ Kacowicz, ‘The Process of Reaching Peaceful Territorial Change’, 242.

¹²⁴ United Nations, ‘Secretary General Receives Confirmation from UNIFIL of Full Withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon’, 16 Jun. 2000.

¹²⁵ Ben Sasson-Gordis, The Strategic Balance of Israel’s Withdrawal from Gaza, 14.

¹²⁶ Elliott Abrams, ‘Hillary Is Wrong About the Settlements’.

¹²⁷ Mark Heller, ‘The International Dimension: Why So Few Constraints on Israel?’, in Shlomo Brom and Meir Eiran (eds.), The Second Lebanon War: Strategic Perspectives (Tel Aviv: The Institute for National Security Studies 2007), 209–214.

¹²⁸ Peters, ‘The Gaza Disengagement’, 33.

¹²⁹ Ibid.

¹³⁰ Dov Waxman, ‘From Controversy to Consensus: Cultural Conflict and the Israeli Debate over Territorial Withdrawal’, Israel Studies 13/2 (2008), 73.

¹³¹ Peters, ‘The Gaza Disengagement’, 36.

¹³² Luft, ‘Israel’s Security Zone in Lebanon – A Tragedy’.

¹³³ Benn, ‘The Ambiguous Way Forward’, 148.

¹³⁴ Kaye, ‘The Israeli Decision to Withdraw’, 563.

¹³⁵ M. L. R. Smith and J. Stone, ‘Explaining Strategic Theory’, Infinity Journal 4 (2011), 27–30.

¹³⁶ Stacie E. Goddard, Jeremy Pressman and Ron E. Hassner, ‘Time and the Intractability of Territorial Disputes’, International Security 32/3 (2008), 191–201.

¹³⁷ Adam Roberts, ‘Transformative Military Occupation: Applying the Laws of War and Human Rights’, American Journal of International Law 100/3 (2006), 580–622.

¹³⁸ Ron E. Hassner, ‘To Have and to Hold: Conflicts Over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility’, Security Studies 12/4 (2003), 1–33.

¹³⁹ Ron E. Hassner, ‘The Path to Intractability: Time and the Entrenchment of Territorial Disputes’, International Security 31/3 (2006), 107–138.

¹⁴⁰ For examples of bargaining in war, see James D. Fearon, ‘Rationalist Explanations for War’, International Organization 49/3 (1995), 379–414 and Wagner, ‘Bargaining and War’; for a rare example of application of the framework to negotiations, see Kacowicz, ‘The Process of Reaching Peaceful Territorial Change’.

¹⁴¹ Carl Von Clausewitz (Michael Howard and Peter Paret trans. and eds.), On War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Everyman’s Library 1993).

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Rob Geist Pinfold

Rob Geist Pinfold holds a PhD in War Studies from King's College London. Currently, he is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Division of International Relations at the University of Haifa, a Neubauer Research Associate at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and an Affiliated Researcher at the Centre for Grand Strategy, King's College London. His PhD examines the interaction between Israeli foreign and security policy, employing the Israeli withdrawals from the Gaza Strip, southern Lebanon and the Sinai Peninsula as case studies. His work has been published in the academic journal, Mediterranean Politics, and the British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, amongst others. His first book entitled Understanding Israel: Political, Societal and Security Challenges is a jointly edited volume with Professor Joel Peters and was published by Routledge in October 2018. Previously, Rob served in teaching positions at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom and the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.