Politics and Violence in Israel/Palestine

Democracy versus Military Rule

Lev Luis Grinberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781135275884
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

The Israeli regime is a paradox. Considered a democracy, it has no recognized borders and controls the majority of Palestinians by military rule, while the resistance of non-citizen Palestinians exerts major influence over politics and policies.

Drawing on detailed academic research and a broad knowledge of Israeli politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this book narrates and analyzes the political developments of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas, explaining the dangers to future negotiations and how hopes for a settlement have been dashed by the ongoing violence. The author explores the internal Israel and Palestinian politics, showing how they influence the conflict and explaining the central role of military organizations in shaping the relations towards the other nation. With particular relevance to current events, he analyzes the Unilateral Disengagement from Gaza and the second Lebanon War, which account for the deterioration into the present violence and political crisis, explaining the need for international mediation in order to reach a peace agreement and suggesting a new innovative model for future Israeli-Palestinian relations.

1 Introduction

If we would ask Israelis whether Israel is a democratic state, we could expect a single-word response that is virtually unanimous: yes. However, were we to ask where the state of Israel is – where its borders are – we would never receive a simple answer. The borders of Israel are contested: there is no consensus among Jewish citizens of the state where its borders are, where they should be, or even what the legitimate procedure is to decide on them.

This is the theoretical and political paradox that intrigued me and led me to write this book. It is a paradox because the existence of recognized borders for a nation-state, which define the equal citizens of the state, is a precondition of democracy. The majority of Israelis do not recognize the borders of their own state, although they consider it a “Jewish democracy” – a term that ignores the civil and political rights of the Palestinians under military occupation and economic domination, and ignores the formal and informal discrimination of Palestinian citizens within the imagined borders of the “sovereign” state, namely the preoccupation borders between 1949 and 1967 – the so-called Green Line¹ (Smooha, 1993).

The state of Israel has multiple borders for different purposes. The state includes the Palestinian population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for purposes of military and economic control, but excludes them legally by maintaining two different legal regimes – the area within the pre-1967 borders ruled by democratic law and elective government, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip under military law (Kretzmer, 2002; Hajjar, 2005; Grinberg, 2008b; Azoulay and Ophir, 2008). Multiple borders, however, are not the only paradox in the democratic character of Israel. According to Israeli discourse and institutions, full citizenship is granted only to Jewish citizens, considered the legitimate owners of the entire land, and therefore they have the right to decide where they can settle and where the borders of the state lie. The Jewish settlers in the occupied territories are deemed part of legal and democratic Israel; they have full citizenship rights and are protected by the Israel Defense Force (Yiftachel, 1993, 2006; Eldar and Zertal, 2004).²

Is this a real paradox? Despite the political construction of Zionism as a national movement, its pioneers perceived themselves, spoke, and acted as founders of a settler society (Kimmerling, 1983; Shafir, 1989). European colonial expansion and the establishment of settler societies assumed that the “new” lands belonged to the settlers: they appropriated the land and did not recognize the equal rights of the local populations. So the question is: what is so peculiar about the Israeli– Palestinian case? The European settlers in the Americas and Australia displaced, subjugated, and sometimes exterminated indigenous peoples. The United States even imagined itself a democracy at the same time as the indigenous populations and African slaves were not considered part of “we the people” (Mann, 2005).

The peculiarity of the case is not related to the capacity to imagine Israel a democratic regime, but to the obstacles in the way of realizing that democracy due to its specific historical path (Grinberg, 1999). The Israeli–Palestinian case is more complex than “regular” settler polities due to its peculiar path of institution-building as it created a dual democratic–military regime in two historical moments: the 1948 war, which institutionalized borders of a formal “democratic” regime,³ and the 1967 war, which institutionalized the military regime. In each war, Palestinians who remained under the dominion of the Jewish state were incorporated into different institutional arrangements: those in the first group were awarded civil and political rights, though they remained discriminated against and unequal, while citizenship rights were denied to the occupied Palestinian population after 1967. This peculiar path created a dual regime of domination under one state, a Jewish democracy in the pre-1967 border and a military regime beyond the Green Line (Grinberg, 2008b). A third stage of this unusual path took place in 1993 following the first Palestinian Intifada, when a Palestinian Authority was established to rule the Palestinian cities defined as “Area A.” This third period is the subject of analysis of this book. It begins with the description and analysis in Chapter 3 of the historical events that led to the institutionalization of a peculiar dual military–democratic regime.

Complex regimes were also established by European settlement in the north and south of Africa, where indigenous peoples were integrated into the economy and denied equal political rights. This is why the decolonization of Algeria and the democratization of South Africa became models for possible future Israeli– Palestinian relations (Shafir, 1999; Lustick, 1993). I will argue here, however, that the Israeli case differs from these, too. Hence, both solutions are difficult to apply: first, there is no clear and agreed border capable of separating Israel from Palestine, as the Mediterranean separates France from Algeria; and, second, there is no single, unified legal system of discrimination that encompasses all Jews and Palestinians even in inequality (as was the case with the Apartheid regime), which would facilitate the struggle for democratic transition by recognizing the principle of equal citizenship. In short, in the peculiar Israeli–Palestinian settlement and dual military–democratic regime, there is no recognized border that separates the national communities and none that contains them both.

In the absence of recognized borders, it is very difficult to contain conflict by political dialogue; hence, conflict usually deteriorates into violence (Mann, 2005). The theoretical basis of my analysis rejects the common wisdom that violence is a form of politics; following Arendt (1969), I view violence as the negation of politics. While politics is based on recognition, representation, dialogue, mediation, bridging coalitions, and agreements, violence is based on non- or mis-recognition of the other, physical presentation of coercive power, confrontation, unilateral actions, and the imposition of conditions by the most powerful. Both are forms of power relations of the state, but they are competing and frequently opposed principles of conflict management. The tension between politics and violence – their mutual negation and the type of dynamics they generate – is a major theme in all chapters of this book.

This theoretical argument does not mean that, in concrete cases, politics and violence cannot take place at the same time and even sometimes by the same actors; nonetheless, violence is always used by the dominant elites to prevent or bypass negotiations by unilateral action, and politics is used to contain conflicts from violent deterioration by means of representation and negotiation. In reaction to their non-recognition, oppressed groups also exert violence, and sometimes succeed in imposing political negotiations on the rulers. However, violence can lead to politics only when both sides conclude that they cannot achieve their goals by force, and the dominant group acknowledges the legitimacy of the claims of the dominated and recognizes their representatives, opening negotiations with them.

This book seeks to comprehend the two-directional movement: first from Israeli military repression and Palestinian violent resistance toward mutual recognition in September 1993; and, second, the reverse – from peaceful negotiations to violent confrontation in October 2000. The first question of my research, initiated in 1994, was: how can the opening of political space prevent violence, given the absence of recognized borders (Grinberg, 1994)? Later I modified this question, asking why a process initially imagined and designed to open political space for negotiation deteriorated into a vicious dynamic of escalating violence (Grinberg, 2000, 2002, 2008b). After the theoretical and historical background in Part I, Part II looks at the process of mutual recognition between the state of Israel and the PLO and the negotiations of 1993–5.

I would like to be straightforward about my understanding of the relationship between theory, research, and the personal position of the researcher. The distinction and opposition between politics and violence is a theoretical construct based on my own moral position that supports dialogue and recognition, while rejecting coercion and unilateral impositions. I do this consciously, and am aware that my interpretation of political dynamics is influenced by my moral preferences. The theoretical tools I suggest here are intentionally designed to facilitate a political critique of politics. Social theories do not describe and interpret “objective realities” but social constructs, and when they do suggest interpretations, they themselves become participants in the social construction of reality. We do so either consciously or not, and our theoretical concepts always have moral and political implications, and become “normative.” The moment that politics and violence are interpreted as a continuum of two mutually supportive forms of power relations, our theory becomes a non-critique of violence, and unintentionally legitimizes it by presenting it as a “normal” and expected form of power relations.

The most explicit form of a “normative” social theory in the last two decades has been neo-liberal economics, which assumed the role of advisor to political decision-makers about what the correct economic policies should be. They succeeded without a significant critique of their ideological bias because they presented neo-liberal theory as value-free, as an “objective science,” hiding the power interests and power relations in the “free markets” (Williamson, 1994). Here, I do the opposite, suggesting a normative theory of politics that exposes power interests and power relations, without advising what should be done, but attempting to comprehend why events developed in a way opposite to what the actors had declared they wanted. This analysis may lead to political conclusions about what can be achieved in the future (see Chapter 11), but their implementation obviously depends on political interests, political power, and political will.

To comprehend the tendency to use violence and the historical moments when violence is perceived as illegitimate, ineffective, or undesirable, I suggest to frame the question within a dynamic theory of political space. Usually the meaning of the concept “political space” is taken for granted; it is used intuitively without an explicit definition or conceptualization. I develop the concept of dynamic opening and closing of political space in Chapter 2 as the principal analytical tool of my investigation. In my definition, political space is not a physical area, but a social construct, a symbolic field of representation (Bourdieu, 1992); it is a specific sphere of power relations that is distinct from civil society and the state (Linz and Stepan, 1996); and it is a dynamic arena of contestation and containment of social conflicts within constantly changing opportunities (Tilly and Tarrow, 2007; Tarrow, 1998; Collier and Collier, 1991). Political space is differentiated from social forces and state institutions, but is framed and determined by them, and the capacity of actors to open political space depends on the power relations between state and society.

Although physical borders of states and symbolic boundaries of national communities are the frameworks that contain political space, they are also signals of violence. They are usually evidence of the use of violence in the past – by wars, colonial and imperial expansion, and the exclusionist character of national movements – and in the present they impose limits on freedom of movement and the civil rights of individuals and groups (Balibar, 2004). At the same time, however, the existence of recognized borders facilitates the containment of conflicts within them because borders open the possibility of claims to formal equality between state subjects, the peaceful expression of demands, and the organization of dominated groups. Here is the dynamic feature of political space: given recognized borders and some balance of power between rulers and dominated groups, political space of representation can be opened to facilitate the containment of conflicts by negotiation and compromise. Political space is opened between the sides in conflict, mainly dominant and dominated, but they also bridge institutional tension between the concrete and bureaucratic state institutions and the imagined national community, between civil society and the state. In short, political space bridges conflicts, is framed by recognized borders, is mediated mainly by political parties, and is institutionalized in democratic regimes.

The relevance of democracy to the research question is that dynamic processes of opening political space are opposite to the violent imposition of unilateral will. Historically, democracy was institutionalized when a balance of power emerged between ruling elites and subordinated social groups (Moore, 1966; Rustow, 1970; Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens, 1992). Democratic processes, however, are unable to solve conflicts over the geographical borders of the state or the symbolic boundaries of the nation (Offe, 1998; Linz and Stepan, 1996; Stepan, 2001).

In the absence of recognized borders, the formal democratic regime fails to contain social and political conflicts by means of representation, negotiation, and compromise. In other words, in the absence of borders, politics is displaced by violence. Military discourse, organization, and actors become dominant because the citizens they claim to protect feel fear and anger. There is nothing like blood to demarcate boundaries, mobilize tribal feelings of ethnic and national identities, and polarize communities in conflict. Military forces are located in the “external” borders of the state and thereby define the “internal” areas within which conflicts between citizens can potentially be contained by opening political space. The military, however, as an institution that specializes in the use of violence, and may interfere in “internal” politics and repress dominated groups when power relations within the state borders are not balanced or fail to be mediated by political negotiation.

The two conditions for political (non-violent) containment of conflicts – recognized state borders and some balance of power between the conflicting sides – are obviously absent in the Israeli–Palestinian case. This book aims to analyze the context that facilitated the opening of political space, its dynamics, and its subsequent violent closure. The argument is that the Oslo Process could be imagined as a peace process precisely because Israelis and Palestinians were able to imagine a border between them and a two-state solution: this is the Green Line that was legally maintained after 1967 by the dual military–democratic regime. Part III demonstrates how the imagining of the peace process continued after Rabin’s assassination in 1995, despite the fact that no political space for negotiation with the Palestinians has opened since then. The capacity to imagine a new reality is a precondition for political change, but if the imagination does not materialize, disillusion, demobilization, and a search for alternatives ensue. In institutionalized democratic regimes, this leads to voting for an opposition party in the next election. In the Israeli–Palestinian dual regime with blurred borders, it led to violence and the empowering of military discourse and actors over political discourse and elites. Part IV examines the military occupation of political space after disillusionment set in from the imagined peace, with the outbreak of the second Intifada in October 2000.

Historical developments are not here seen as inevitable, but the results of actions, agency, and path dependence – a sequence of events and crucial turning points. My theoretical approach is historical (though I discuss recent events) and it identifies with an “eventful sociology” approach (Sewell, 1996; Brubaker, 1996). Events influence political processes according to how they are interpreted, and the dynamics of opening and closing political space are crucially influenced by the struggle between competing and conflicted actors to construct their political meaning. This is why this research focuses extensively on an analysis of events and their “political construction” – how different actors and media interpreted these events, seeking to influence public opinion and impose their own discourse and views of “political reality.”

A crucial turning point and political reversal took place due to the almost unanimous interpretation of Rabin’s assassination in November 1995 as a problem of “internal polarization,” and the reconstruction of reality that claimed that the main political goal of Israel should be to build “national unity” and seek “peace among Israelis” (Grinberg, 1999, 2000). Over the next five years, coalitions fell and internal tensions increased, until September 2000, when Palestinians reacted to their worsening situation and lack of a peace agreement by riots that evolved into the second Intifada. Only then did the sense of danger and external threat lead to Jewish national unity and virtually unanimous support for the violent repression of Palestinians. This renewed national unity was not, however, mediated by political parties and compromise on internal issues; rather, it was constantly stoked and strengthened by violence and feelings of fear and insecurity. The military occupied the political arena and became a crucial actor supported by public opinion, while political leaders were pulled along by public feelings of fear and revenge and by the escalation of violence provoked by the military. The military is seen here as a political actor, able to close political space by the use of violence (as it did in October 2000), or to open political space by demanding political negotiations (as it did in 1988)

Although the book primarily focuses on Israeli politics, Palestinian politics and actions are not regarded as “external” to the system; on the contrary, they are viewed as integral to the political dynamic – while never completely integrated, also never completely separated. For analytical purposes, I suggest a matrix of three political arenas: two “internal” arenas of national communities (Israeli and Palestinian) and one binational Israeli–Palestinian arena. The analysis of historical events and turning points shows that the political dynamics of opening and closing political space for representation and negotiation within each arena have been influenced by the opening or closing of political space in the other arenas.

Palestinians are not, however, an “external” threat or a passive victim of repression. They live under Israeli military rule, they are part of the Israeli economy, they struggle against Israeli domination, and their internal politics is deeply influenced by Israeli structures and dynamics. This is why any attempt to analyze the sequence of events that led to the escalation of violence must also include the internal Palestinian social and political tensions as part and parcel of the analysis. Comprehending this complexity demands theoretical elaboration, a reframing of Israeli politics, and questioning of the basic concepts we use in our analysis that assume the existence of two separated “national communities.”

I reject here the argument that the peace process was doomed from its inception, but I seek to understand why it failed and how it deteriorated into a much more brutal and violent situation, with the almost unanimous loss of hope for a better future. The lack of hope among Israelis and Palestinians concerns me because it has negative effects on politics (Lustick, 2008): it prevents the imagination of new futures, closing political space to new ideas. In Part IV, I suggest an explanation for why the majority of Israelis (and American and European public opinion as well) accept the official, simplistic interpretation of the failure of the peace process, blaming Palestinian inflexibility at Camp David. In the last chapter, I propose some tentative conclusions about necessary conditions for a more successful peace process in the future, based on the analysis of the events in 1992–6.

The reversal of the “peace process,” however, was not a return to the pre-1992 or pre-1988 conditions, but a step toward a much worse situation, as I have warned elsewhere: ‘the price of such a step [halting the peace process] will be the qualitative increase of repression to maintain control, more than was necessary before the process began … This is the meaning of irreversibility: there is no way back to the starting point (Grinberg, 1994: 79–80).

From its inception, violent deterioration was one possible outcome of the process, and its neglect by the peacemakers was political irresponsibility. In 1994, I was concerned by the deterministic belief that historical processes lead to happy endings. Now I am concerned by the fatalistic belief that history repeats itself, and there is always more of the same. History has no logical development and is not a loop; it is shaped by structures and conjunctures, and the interpretation and action of human beings. This book aims to demystify the past in order to facilitate the reinvention of the future.

Part I

Theoretical and historical background

2 The dynamics of political space

The opposition between politics and violence is neither modern nor related to the nation-state. In every situation of human conflict, the options exist of one side imposing its will unilaterally or both sides engaging in negotiations. These options appear in micro-level relations – in the family, between friends, at work. In the past, they also appeared at the macro level of political domination when a king or emperor had the option of using an army to impose his rule or, alternatively, negotiating a compromise with local rulers. In all these micro and macro situations, the option of preventing coercion by recourse to negotiation is made possible by direct dialogue between the sides in conflict. In its modern manifestation – related to capitalism and the nation-state, and institutionalized by the democratic rules of the game – an indirect mediation of interests takes place between actors who claim to represent the groups in conflict. This indirect and symbolic form of conflict containment by representatives of the contending sides is the orig...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• Part I: Theoretical and Historical Background
• Part II: Peace Negotiations: Between Democratization and Decolonization
• Part III: The Imagined Peace: The Illusion and Its Shattering, 1996–2000
• Part IV: The Military Occupation of Politics
• Notes
• Bibliography