Israel Affairs

ISSN: 1353-7121 (Print) 1743-9086 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fisa20

Regional framing: Judea, Samaria and the Gaza

Strip in the eyes of the security elite

Asaf Lebovitz

To cite this article: Asaf Lebovitz (2015) Regional framing: Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip in
the eyes of the security elite, Israel Affairs, 21:3, 422-442, DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1036557

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2015.1036557

Published online: 10 Jun 2015.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 158

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fisa20
Israel Affairs, 2015
Vol. 21, No. 3, 422–442, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2015.1036557

Regional framing: Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip in the

eyes of the security elite
Asaf Lebovitz*

Department of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

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.
Keywords: security networks; military – civic relations; civil discourse;
peace process; framing area; Judea and Samaria (West Bank)

Introduction
Social discourses which accompany political and military conflicts are important
factors in explaining the operations of security networks. In Israel, in particular,
where debate on public affairs is very open and often quite intense, orientations to
the peace process, which include the issue of relinquishing territory acquired in
the Six Day War (1967), attempt to create a common world combining shared
identity and promised security. At the same time, these ideologies, or interpretive
packages, as we shall call them, have the function of legitimating the power or
aspiration to dominance of their spokespersons.
Dominant, as well as rival, social discourses frame their intentional content.
In the case under study, political and military elites, espousing a liberal ideology,
portray the regions of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) as security liabilities.
The security topos is a commonplace interpolation in the Israeli political
narrative; it carries much emotive force in Israeli society. Because of its
multivalent significations, we will present an account of its layered meanings.
The study begins with a review of discourse types connected to security
threats and their impact on relations between the military and civilian echelons.
This is followed by a brief discussion of shifting orientations in social discourse

*Email: asaf.lebovitz1@mail.huji.ac.il

q 2015 Taylor & Francis

 Israel Affairs 423
within Israeli elites, and their impact on the nation’s capabilities in coping with
future existential threats. Accordingly, it is argued that the dynamic nature of
discourse types emanating from Israel’s security networks determines how Judea
and Samaria are framed and subsequently creates three models for action relating
to any peace process. These modes of discourse stem from military and civilian
structures. The models show that the security networks themselves are not static
entities but rather are shaped by the societal discourse to which each subscribes.
The study then demonstrates how the security networks have operated when
engaged in the peace process, beginning with Yitzhak Rabin’s second
government (1992) and ending with the completion of Ehud Olmert’s
government (2009). The concluding section examines differences in perceptions
of the peace process over this time period, as well as territorial changes perceived
as an existential need by heads of government.

Existential threats and the implications for relations between the civilian and
military echelons
A ‘continuing existential threat to states’ can be defined as a long-term threat,
genuine or imaginary, to any state’s sovereignty or independence, stemming from
external factors such as hostile nations, or by internal factors such as minority
groups, dwindling resources, or central government’s lack of legitimacy.1 Such a
threat can take shape from the historical circumstances in which the threatened
state was founded, and the nature of its struggle for independence. Perceived
existential threats can also stem from a combination of geopolitical factors in the
‘securitization’ process. This term relates to a discourse that defines political
matters as security-related, thus promoting the notion that such matters pose an
existential threat to collective security.2
Researching military – society relations, Barak and Sheffer maintain that non-
formal ties between heads of the army and the security establishment, and their
counterparts in the civilian echelons, create a security network of army people,
capitalists, politicians and public policy formulators.3 Within the security
network, personnel exchanges occur as individuals transfer from one sector to
another and close relationships form among their leaders. By advancing specific
policies allied to their positional entrenchment in the network, these leaders are
able to leverage decision-making processes in the state. The authors show that in
Israel’s case, the narrower security establishment, assisted by security networks
through its discourse, accumulates substantial influence in shaping policy in the
spheres of politics, society, economics and culture.
The formation of security networks undermines the classical democratic
ethos that subordinates the military to the civilian ranks. What emerges is a
hybrid discourse among presumably equal partners. With the intermingling of
these spheres, the language of communication often panders to the rhetoric of
persuasion. Thus, it is worth decoding the types of social discourse that various
actors use at different periods.
424 A. Lebovitz
In the sociological and political sense, the concept of framing embraces an
assortment of interpretations, associations, narratives and contexts that structure
attitudes and approaches in society towards social and political phenomena, and
help process related information.4 Thus, framing is conducted through a
discourse that is promoted via social and political forces. This mechanism
enables one to identify a political phenomenon with a specific problem, and to
discern the phenomenon’s liability for creating the problem. It also enables
strategic forecasts for solving a problem, and spurs motivation to create change
and ‘solve the problem’.5 Accordingly, the framing action constitutes the
exercise of power by political actors through social and media discourse; in turn,
social structuring is generated and functions as a filter and interpretive means for
processing attitudes to social and political phenomena, people and
organizations.6 Through speeches and proposals for action, the ‘securitization’
discourse in Israel allows a continuing existence for the perceived existential
threat and thus preserves the structure of security networks that are characterized
by an integrated relationship between civilian and military echelons.7

The decline of republican discourse and the rise of ethno-liberal discourse

Peled and Shafir hold that under the Labour movement’s hegemony in pre-state
Israel republican discourse characterized Jewish society. One of the central
components of this discourse was equality of all citizens before the law.
However, in its underlying socialist orientation, individuals and groups were
expected to commit to the collective, security-oriented, Zionist-pioneering
project. The institutional backbone of the Zionist project was the army, service in
which conferred symbolic, as well as tangible, rewards. The armed forces in the
pre- and early state years were composed mostly of secular Ashkenazi men from
the middle classes and the kibbutz and moshav movements. Statist republican
discourse gradually shifted its emphasis from pioneering to military service
values, thus ‘securitizing’ social discourse. This was accomplished by
heightening existential threats to the state’s capacity for survival. As a result,
surplus material assets were channelled to this hegemonic sector at the expense of
more equitable distribution to peripheral groups such as the Oriental Jews
(Mizrachim), the Arab population, and those who adhered to the ultra-Orthodox
stream of Judaism.8 The army’s status and the pervasive military ethos
contributed in general to the development of security networks and intensified the
security establishment’s dominance in shaping political policy.9
The outcomes of the Six Day (1967) and Yom Kippur (1973) wars initiated
the decline in republican discourse as a result of the heavy price that the
hegemonic sector had paid for Israel’s security, which became too high compared
to the social and political benefits.10 Affluent secular Ashkenazi Jews viewed
security as a heavy burden, particularly after 1973. The security gains seemed to
them limited; moreover, they regarded excessive defence investment as no longer
serving their interests within Israeli society. Their priorities shifted. They were
 Israel Affairs 425
now more prone to exchange the symbolic rewards conferred on those serving in
the army for material, economic, political and cultural benefits in the civilian
sphere. In short, a materialistic ethos in which prevailing individualistic and
consumer-oriented values permeated the Israeli elite. With the decline in prestige
of symbolic rewards granted by the army, there was a resultant depreciation of
collectivist pioneering values.11
More attentive and open to social changes taking place in Western countries
than other sectors of the population, the Israeli elite became infused by a liberal
ethos marked by globalization, a free-market and human rights claims. This
heralded the rise of a liberal discourse highlighting values of individual liberty,
consumer rights and quality-of-life issues. Global identity overshadowed
parochial and local attachments. As noted above, this discourse eroded the
previous nationalist-collectivist orientation typical of Israeli republican
discourse. The Israeli – Palestinian dispute was now thought to hinder Israel’s
economic integration into the wider world. Additionally, the loss of the Labour
party’s hegemony in the 1977 political reversal sharpened awareness among
secular Ashkenazim that they were no longer receiving sufficient rewards in the
civil –political sphere in return for their presence in the military high command.12
The new turn in liberal discourse resulted in a different mechanism for framing
the Judea, Samaria and Gaza Strip regions (henceforth, JSGS), the acquisition of
which in 1967 seemed to be in accord with its nationalist and collectivist
orientation as a biblical historical Jewish symbol. This outlook was now replaced
by a perception of the regions as a burden to economic growth, quality-of-life and
free markets. Individualist, secular values attuned to the Western liberal
discourse along with a global identity sharply contrasted with the historical
Jewish significance of the region. These regions were thus framed as ‘guilty’ of
preserving the state of hostilities between Israel and its neighbours, an
anachronistic millstone impeding a transition from republican collective values
to individualistic liberal ones.13
At the same time, ethno-national discourses began to emerge among marginal
groups in Israeli society, challenging the upper middle class secular Ashkenazi
hegemony. These discourses maintained that the chief element underlying the
state’s creation was a Jewish ethos, both in its ethnic and religious aspects;
moreover, socio-economic exclusion was not in accord with the earlier
collectivist/national values. Israel’s societal divides revealed that religious
people, Mizrahim and immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in general
formed the majority of residents in peripheral regions and comprised the lower
socio-economic strata of society. On the other hand, native-born Ashkenazim in
the upper middle class resided for the most part in Tel Aviv and the centre of the
country.14
The closeness of most peripheral Jewish groups in Israel to Jewish tradition,
or their affiliation with a national Jewish grouping, makes Judaism in their view
the main component on which Israeliness must rely – and not the ethos of
security, pioneering and liberalism. In their discourse, citizenship depends on
426 A. Lebovitz
ethno-religious attachment to Judaism, or support for the Jewish collective as a
nation (for example, Israel’s Druze citizens). These marginal groups use ethno-
national discourse – that perceived as conservative (compared to the ‘revisionist’
liberal one) – as a catalyst for social change that may accrue to their advantage.15
They have also internalized the army’s importance in providing symbolic
rewards and boosting their social and civil status. While the elite became
alienated from the army and its reward system, members of marginal groups
sought intensive involvement in the military sphere accompanied by expectations
of symbolic enhancements derived from their perception of army service as
meaningful. They gave shape to alternative symbolic rewards for military
service, such as learning Torah, and thus advanced a cherished dual role as
combatant and religious devotee.
Those identified with the ethno-national discourse, which perceives the liberal
discourse as seemingly preaching civic equality for all Israelis, has actually
developed a set of secular and capitalist values that by and large reflects the outlook
of secular Israelis from the middle and upper classes, and thus justifies the existing
economic, cultural and social orders.16 On the other hand, the ethno-national
discourse calls for ethnically based equality, thus justifying social assistance and
cultural equality for all Jewish groups, even those that are not necessarily liberal and
secular. The emphasis on Jewish identity in this discourse frames JSGS (especially
Judea and Samaria) differently – as the cradle of Judaism and also as possessing
sanctity as the heart of the historical Land of Israel.17
The rise of liberal discourse reduced willingness among the secular
Ashkenazi elite to use force in confronting existential threats to Israeli society.
This reluctance found expression primarily in the ‘crisis of motivation’ and in the
ongoing erosion of secular Ashkenazi youth conscripted into the IDF. Together
with the drop in military enlistment figures, there was enlistment in ‘safe’ units, a
development which has been labelled the ‘grey refusal’.18
This process led to changes in the army’s structure, transforming line and
senior staff into roughly two composite bodies: field troops largely staffed by
those subscribing to the ethno-national discourse; senior command troops and
elite units staffed by those who adhere to the liberal discourse. Since the early
1990s, Mizrahi, immigrants from the Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS) of former Soviet Republics, wearers of knitted skullcaps, Druze youth,
some of the Bedouin, as well as a small group of ultra-orthodox youngsters, have
formed the majority in the field combat army. The political cohesiveness of these
disparate groups, each evoking its own ethno-nationalist discourse, emerges in
Knesset voting patterns which corroborate their mutual identification through
these common values.19 On the other hand, senior officers are chiefly composed
of secular Ashkenazim, since most of the senior command was inducted into
military service when the republican discourse still dominated.20 The process that
began in the mid-1980s has resulted, in the first decade of the twenty-first century,
in a stratified division of the army between the field level with its marginal groups
espousing a right-wing orientation and identified with the ethno-national
 Israel Affairs 427
discourse, and the senior command and knowledge-intensive units staffed by
people from the mostly secular Ashkenazi upper middle class, articulating a left-
wing orientation associated with the liberal discourse.21
Alongside these processes, the perceived existential threat continued to
dominate Israeli discourse: Hizballah, with its strong Iranian support in Lebanon;
and the growing Palestinian terrorism in the form of two Intifadas. During the
1990s, the threat posed to Israel’s Jews by Palestinians on both sides of the Green
Line intensified, although the liberal discourse used by Israeli society’s dominant
group created a gap between the strong legitimacy of using force, and the weak
legitimacy of investing resources for use by military forces.22
My principal argument is that the peace process is the main tool used by the
security networks and the elite, of which it is a part, that both identifies with
the liberal discourse and the ‘legitimacy gap’ between the will to use force
and the unwillingness to sustain casualties. Therefore, peace is considered a
response to existential threats to Israel and simultaneously enables promulgators
of the liberal discourse to promote economic growth, individualism and equal
rights. In ‘securitizing’ its narrative, the dominant political network facilitates the
transition from a warfare framework to a peace process and the latter is
augmented by norms that might otherwise be sacrificed where bellum parare
guides state policy.23 In practice, their ideological position is advanced by using
their know-how and tools, and by powerfully framing JSGS as an existential
demographic security and political burden for Israel.24

Security networks, securitization and regional framing as tools for

promoting the peace process and territorial change: three models
Security networks intensively involve the military echelon in shaping and
advancing the peace process, thereby granting it numerous gains. The latter
contributes to the strengthening of the security networks, both in the peace
process itself, perceived as an undertaking of the ‘civil’ sphere, and as the
antithesis of the longstanding securitization process of Israel’s social discourse.
Both echelons benefit: in the first place, the political echelon needs the military
echelon’s approval for the process. This is due to the Israeli public’s difficulty in
reconciling itself to withdrawal from JSGS and to the inherent risks of the peace
process, which is perceived as contradicting the security discourse and increasing
existential threats to Israel. The military’s support for the peace process is viewed
by Israel’s general public as reliable, given the prevailing perception that the
army speaks with one voice, and thus all its members support the peace process in
a professional way, unaffected by partisan social discourse.25
Secondly, the military echelon also helps to blur the notion that the peace
process serves only the interests and values of the secular, liberal Ashkenazi
group, since the army is perceived as a body that subscribes to the ethno-national
discourse. Indirect involvement of soldiers and officers in the peace process
weakens its identification with a specific societal group.26 The army’s
428 A. Lebovitz
intervention in the peace process thus enables the blurring of its senior members’
involvement in the liberal discourse, and strengthens Israelis’ perception of the
army as a professional, national ‘people’s army’, without sectoral interests. In the
ethno-national discourse, the army is considered a distinctive Jewish defensive
force with a national-religious mission. Thus, a priori, peripheral groups for
which the army has great prestige find difficulty in associating it with the liberal
discourse.27 The military echelon, associated with the ethno-national discourse,
also makes it possible to fine-tune the framing of JSGS as a demographic and
political burden or, at the least, those regions whose security benefits for Israel
are doubtful.28
Thirdly, in a situation where some senior officers hesitate to support any
peace process, particularly if they tend to subscribe to the ethno-national
discourse, security networks are used more intensively. As a consequence, in the
absence of full support for the peace process from top military echelons, political,
cultural and economic actors resort to an argument based upon ‘existential need’,
that is, to the state’s viability. Civil society organizations, as well as politicians
and public figures who are at home in the liberal discourse and exploit their
security background and contacts to push ahead with the political process, seek
by all means to circumvent the ‘problematic’ military echelon. In this evasive
action, their speech shifts between liberal and ethno-national intercourse.29 When
security-network actors, familiar with the liberal or dual discourse, frame JSGS
as an existential burden on Israel, they mean, as noted above, its endangerment
both as a Jewish and a democratic state. They also point to the counter-discourse
as contributing to the weakening of Israel’s international status. These
orientations constitute a securitization of territorial changes in those regions,
even in the absence of any peace process.30
Fourthly, assigning the army responsibility for implementation of the peace
process, with all its implications, allows the political echelon to use all aspects of
security know-how to shape political agreements while still casting responsibility
on the army for implementing them. This has the consequence of transforming
political decision-making and territorial withdrawals into professional military
decision-making; in practice, the army replaces the blurred policy of the civil
echelon with operative decisions.31 What the military echelon gains from
maintaining security networks and its involvement in shaping political processes
is the ability to continue serving as a dominant partner in Israel’s strategic
planning, and a monopoly over national intelligence assessments.32
Collaboration between civil and military actors also generates dysfunction,
and this impacts negatively on both the peace process and the liberal values of the
actors themselves. Members of the military are involved in designing the peace
process, and bring with them, in addition to their planning and intelligence know-
how, the security establishment’s typical thinking patterns, perceptions and
discourse. The army stresses security and policy issues in political negotiations,
defers economic, cultural and societal issues, and sets security commitments as
indices for success of the process. These are ‘landmines’ that challenge the peace
 Israel Affairs 429
process in security terms and reduce the prospect for success.33 Similarly,
framing JSGS as an existential burden weakens liberal values and reinforces
particularist ethno-national values concerning a Jewish majority and fear of the
Arab ‘other’. It helps weaken the liberal discourse and boosts the dual discourse
which integrates ethno-nationalist elements.34
At this point, three models emerge as ways in which security networks
function in the peace process and in the framing of the regions. In the first model,
the liberal discourse is shared by all actors in the security networks, while in the
other two models there is no common discourse, and thus there is no consensus
that a peace process is necessary.
In the first model, all actors in the security network subscribe to the liberal
discourse in which a shared set of values, norms, worldviews and interests is
expressed. Political, security and business actors, supported by members of civil
society in the spheres of law, culture, education and the media, serve as important
agents in the promotion of peace negotiations and territorial concessions. The
military echelon in this model, because of its common values with the civilian
‘liberal’ echelon, helps the civilian echelon in promoting the peace process. It is
perceived as successfully coping with the legitimacy gap and the existential
threat to Israel.
In this model, the goal of the military echelon’s help is shared, harmonious and
relatively useful for both the military and civilian echelons. At the macro level,
collaboration between the two echelons helps advance the peace process and the
whole range of its liberal values and interests. At the micro level, collaboration is
independently beneficial for each echelon – that is, it establishes in the eyes of the
public the legitimacy of the process by projecting the army’s dominance in matters
of strategy and intelligence.35 In this model, framing JSGS as an existential burden
is part of the securitization of the peace process by civilian and military actors
alike, and softens the territorial price that the process entails.36
The second model is characterized by disharmony between the military
echelon, which is associated with the secular Ashkenazi class and subscribes for
the most part to the liberal discourse, and the civilian political echelon composed
to a great extent of marginal groups and generally subscribing to the ethno-
nationalist discourse. The military echelon continues its encouragement of the
peace process – a fortiori if it was involved in planning it – when political
circumstances accord with the first model. In contrast, paradoxically, the civilian
echelon is worried by the peace process and notices its inherent dangers. Thus,
while the military echelon considers the peace process an existential need, the
civilian echelon may see it as threatening security, values and identity, as well as
Israel’s existence. The political echelon denies framing JSGS as existential
burdens, but rather views them as assets for collective Jewish identity. In this
model, the military echelon targets other civilian and security actors in the
security networks who also subscribe to the liberal discourse, aiming to
encourage the political echelon to continue the territorial withdrawal process.
Thus, people from the army, joined by others from institutions of higher learning,
430 A. Lebovitz
business, society, culture and law, and strongly cross-fertilized by retired officers,
work together to encourage the political echelon to adopt the peace process. This
networking also functions to restore harmony in the security networks. Moreover,
the military echelon encourages securitization of the political echelon,
emphasizing the existential burden for Israel of retaining JSGS. Ultimately, the
political echelon will be forced to accept the goals of most actors in the security
network, and to comply with the peace process and territorial withdrawals.
The third model of intervention by security networks, like the second, is also
typified by disharmony between civilian and military echelons. However, in this
case, the military echelon is staffed by officers mostly subscribing to the ethno-
nationalist discourse and is therefore hostile to a peace process led by civilians
subscribing to the liberal discourse. In the wake of demographic changes in the
composition of combat forces, namely through the entry of marginal groups who
challenge the prevailing liberal discourse, a cadre of top officers forms whose
ethos is to handle perceived threats to Israel’s existence by using force and which
views the conflict as a zero-sum game. Officers subscribing to the ethno-national
discourse consider the army as a force protecting and strengthening Jewish
autonomy and power. They have doubts about liberal aspirations for peace, which
they associate with blurred Jewish identity and inclusion in a global world which
damages that identity. For the same reason, the military echelon refuses to see
Israeli control of JSGS as an existential burden: it emphasizes and encourages
framing those regions as vital for Israel’s values and security.37
By way of contrast, the political echelon considers the peace process as an
existential need and the use of force as an inadequate, destructive option. In this
model, the political echelon opts for an expedited process of securitizing political
efforts; it prioritizes the security component in negotiations, and frames control
of JSGS as an existential burden. At the same time, the military echelon does not
hesitate to occasionally use power to a degree opposed to the civilian echelon’s
preferences, thereby compounding the difficulties of the political process. In this
model, then, the other actors in the security networks find it hard to establish
public legitimacy for the peace process, which is increasingly perceived as a
factor which heightens rather than reduces existential threats to Israel.
Paradoxically, when the army loses faith in the peace process and territorial
concessions, it causes other actors in the security networks to stress the existential
aspect, and thus to halt the erosion of public legitimacy for abandoning JSGS.
Unlike the disharmony found in the second model, which the actors and
security networks overcome by forcing the civilian political echelon to opt for the
peace process, this third model shows a weakening of the power of liberal actors
in the security networks in the absence of military support for them.

The peace process as an existential need for Israel, 1993– 2009

Four prime ministers governed Israel during the period in which these three
models operated (1993 – 2001): Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres (1992 –1996),
 Israel Affairs 431
Binyamin Netanyahu (1996 – 1999) and Ehud Barak (1999 – 2001). Each one’s
term of office was typified by a different approach towards the peace process and
JSGS. For different reasons, each head of state chose the peace process path.

The first model: the Rabin and Peres period (1992 – 1996)
In the early 1990s, two types of discourse formed in Israeli society, replacing the
longstanding republican discourse: the liberal discourse and the ethno-nationalist.
The liberal discourse gradually became prevalent among the secular Ashkenazi
middle class, particularly since 1985 when the Israeli welfare state began to
crumble and globalization was spreading. Political and security events in the
region, the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and growing American hegemony
strengthened the liberal discourse in matters pertaining to the market economy
and the peace process.38 During the first Gulf War (1991), the Israeli home front
was, for the first time, the target of a distant missile attack to which Israel did not
respond. Among Israelis subscribing to the liberal discourse, this reaction
sharpened the irrelevance of republican values and the use of force.
The political ‘turnabout’ of 1992 brought young, liberal politicians such as
Haim Ramon, Yossi Beilin and Uri Savir into the political echelon. They
encouraged and helped shape the Oslo Accords with the PLO in 1993.39 The
Accords were initially drafted in a format which clearly reflected liberal
discourse. Anticipation of fresh orientations in the region suggested a redemption
motif expressed in the call for a ‘New Middle East’, with an emphasis on
economic growth, Palestinian rights and an energized peace process. Through the
abandonment of collectivist obligations to the Zionist enterprise, the playing
down of imminent military conflict, and a diminished importance attributed to the
weight of past history and national identity, Israel as a mobilized society began to
ebb.40 Prime Minister Rabin, as well as the political and security actors who
staffed security networks around him, adopted the idea that exercising force was
no longer relevant to Israel. Dan Shomron, a former Chief of Staff (CoS), said
that the conflict with the Palestinians should be solved politically, and not by
force, while General (res.) Shlomo Lahat held that military force could not wage
war for ever.41 Rabin was quoted as believing that ‘the Scud missiles on Tel Aviv
[ . . . ] made all of Israel into a battle front’. The mass departure from the Greater
Tel Aviv area during the Gulf War strengthened his concern both that a war with
Syria would create many casualties, and his understanding that JSGS does not
grant Israel security.42 The perceived and growing existential threat to Israel
following artillery fire at civilian locations, plus the globalization process, the
free market and flourishing individualism, convinced Rabin that Israeli society
was no longer capable of paying the price entailed in using force.43
Thus, Rabin saw the peace process as an instrument by which Israel could
cope with the legitimacy gap. He simultaneously advanced the process of peace-
plus-globalization which was an economic interest and a value-based vision for
the affluent, secular Ashkenazi group around the prime minister. As a former
432 A. Lebovitz
army man, Rabin had greater trust in army people than in civilian politicians who
emphasized the need for a ‘New Middle East’. Although Uri Savir, director of the
Foreign Ministry, would officially head the process, Rabin decided that the army
would in fact steer it. The prime minister intensively involved senior officers in
negotiations, and the army implemented and supervised the Oslo Accords, as well
the process of withdrawal from JSGS.44
Rabin needed to deploy military sponsorship over the process, not just for
political and personal reasons, but also because of the Israeli public’s limited
support for the Accords and because marginal groups subscribing to the ethno-
nationalist discourse objected to them. As noted, the peace process stemmed from
the liberal discourse, and the new policy indeed led to economic growth in Israel,
foreign investments, enhanced privatization and global involvement of the Israeli
economy. All these developments continued in Peres’ period. However the peace
process, which his supporters saw as positive and advancing liberal interests and
values, was perceived by proponents of the ethno-nationalist discourse as
negative and threatening for exactly the same reason. Many Israelis felt that
peace only benefited the affluent, that it undermined the welfare state and the
nationalist-collectivist identity of Israeli Jews, increased inequality, ruined
employment prospects of disadvantaged people, and projected the universal
secular message that Israel was ‘a country like any other’.45
Those feelings were exacerbated with the exit from government of Shas, the
only political party representing a peripheral group that agreed to join Rabin’s
government. For followers of Shas, the government was considered totally
secular and elitist. The threat that peripheral groups felt from the peace process
could have led Rabin and his supporters to apply a policy of shoring up the
welfare state, moderating the vision of economic peace, and emphasizing
collective Jewish identity with its traditional symbols. Such a policy would,
however, have affected liberal values and interests competing with those of the
ethno-nationalist discourse, the same social and economic values and interests
that spurred Rabin to initially opt for the peace process.46 Rabin then initiated
greater involvement of army people in the process, on the premise that among
peripheral groups the IDF is a factor that protects and unites the Jewish collective.
This was the first step in the securitization of the Oslo process and it slightly
marginalized the liberal vision of ‘the New Middle East’ for the sake of a
‘security-based’ liberal discourse. In any event, we must recall that, for Rabin and
the military actors and also for Shimon Peres and Foreign Ministry people, the
motive for the peace process itself derived from a shared liberal discourse.47
Another outcome stemming from army involvement, which securitized the
Oslo process, was the framing of the JSGS regions and their Jewish settlements as
a security and demographic burden on the Jewish state; withdrawal from them
would be considered not a liberal dovish step but an existential Israeli need – that
is, a course intended to maintain the very viability of the state. Rabin was quoted
as saying: ‘The IDF is primarily responsible for the security of 98% of Israelis’
(apart from the settlers), and that he hoped the State of Israel would ‘get rid of
 Israel Affairs 433
Gaza’ and the burden of controlling millions of Palestinians in Judea and
Samaria.48 This, despite Rabin’s vision of the 1967 territories, like the Etzion
Bloc and the settlements around Jerusalem, as assets, not burdens.49 Statements
by ministers in Rabin’s government condemning the sites sacred to Judaism in
Judea and Samaria also strengthened the region’s framing as unnecessary for the
Israeli state.50
Even when the peace process did not provide a practical alternative to security
threats, such as conflicts with Hizballah, Rabin’s government opted to deploy only
the air force, avoiding a ground incursion into Lebanon. Rabin’s assassination and
the accession to power of Peres – an even clearer representative of the vision of
liberal-civilian-capitalist peace – required the new prime minister to use power
elsewhere, in Lebanon in spring 1996.51 Nevertheless, in May 1996, Peres’ election
propaganda emphasized the liberal values and interests inherent in continuing the
peace process and territorial withdrawal: economic growth, encouragement of
international corporations to relocate to Israel, initiation of social liberalization
processes, the granting of personal freedom [examples?], and strengthening
Western culture. Headed by Peres, the Labour Party’s election campaign
highlighted the retreat from ‘Jewish particularism’ in favour of international
summit conferences, economic and tourist initiatives, and the Middle East’s entry
into the global arena. This strengthened the framing of JSGS as part of the past, an
impediment to Israeli economic prosperity based on the values of liberalism.
By way of contrast, Netanyahu’s election campaign stressed the hazards
reflected in continuing the peace process for the physical security of Jews and
Jewish symbols, like Jerusalem.52 Netanyahu united the groups subscribing to the
ethno-nationalist discourse into a social body alarmed by the process, the terror
and the globalization accompanying it. The election results clearly showed the
defeat of the affluent, secular Ashkenazi group in the Jewish public, and the
coalition of the liberal discourse in the established political system made way for
Netanyahu’s ‘coalition of minorities’.53

The second model: the Netanyahu period (1996 –1999)

Binyamin Netanyahu’s election as prime minister and the forming of the
coalition he headed reflected the tendency of most Jewish Israelis to subscribe to
the ethno-nationalist discourse. In particular, the coalition comprised marginal,
excluded groups. Netanyahu was the most ‘civilian’ prime minister – he was not
a former senior officer, or a former commander of a Jewish underground
organization – until Ehud Olmert. The principal actors in the security networks
did not like his government, nor did they agree with its social discourse.54 While
Netanyahu’s coalition objected to the peace process and territorial concessions,
and, to some degree, to capitalist neoliberal policy, senior officers remained
committed to the peace process. They were led by Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-
Shahak, who was among the architects of the Oslo Accords, Military actors saw
the criticism that Netanyahu’s coalition levelled at the Oslo process as criticizing
434 A. Lebovitz
the IDF, which had helped reconstitute the army’s covenant with the Left and the
secular Ashkenazi class to its former state under the republican discourse. Now
the army became the principal advocate for the process, and the need to withdraw
from parts of JSGS.
Netanyahu’s government tried simultaneously to use the army to heighten its
legitimacy among the secular, liberal Ashkenazi elites, and to adapt itself to
market interests by restraining and using power according to the liberal discourse,
and through a measured advance in the peace process, involving army officers.55
In the IDF, field and combat units were staffed more and more by soldiers
associated with ethno-nationalist peripheral groups which were alienated from
the peace process and supported Netanyahu’s ethno-nationalist coalition. The
government ruled by maintaining a balance between the two types of discourse,
managed the peace process with substantial suspicion, and ultimately signed the
Hebron and Wye agreements which entailed Israeli military withdrawal from an
area around Hebron. In any event, his government did not frame JSGS as a
political burden, and stressed, for example, that withdrawing from the holy city of
Hebron was intended to strengthen the town’s Jewish population which would be
more legitimized and protected following the withdrawal.56
Encouraged by the army, Netanyahu’s government adopted the Oslo Accords
but underscored restraint because of the agreement’s inherent hazards. An aspect
lacking in the process was the civil factor, namely, seeking economic peace and a
‘New Middle East’. Now the army became the significant representative of the
liberal discourse and the liberal, cultural, economic and security players who
formed the security networks.57 During this period, the civilian political echelon
was also promoting candidates from the senior officer echelon who sided with the
ethno-nationalist discourse and also came from marginal groups. CoS. Lipkin-
Shahak was thus replaced by Shaul Mofaz, a right-wing, traditional Mizrahi,
rather than by Matan Vilnai, a Labour party representative. In this way, the
civilian political echelon tried to fit the high command to its own socio-ethnic
structure and to the ethnic composition of the field combat forces.58

The third model: the Barak period (1999 –2001)

The 1999 elections again brought the Labour party to power under the leadership
of Ehud Barak. Barak launched an intensive peace process with Syria and the
Palestinians. The election campaign that preceded Israel’s withdrawal from
South Lebanon reflected the intensifying liberal discourse among the Israeli elite.
Its actors, such as the Four Mothers movement and the media, stressed the high
price of the IDF’s remaining in Lebanon’s Security Zone. In this way, the liberal
discourse helped to emphasize the conditioning of military service, the
importance of the individual soldier’s well-being, and the high cost of continued
use of force. It empowered the framing of certain regions as costly burdens for
Israeli society. For the Barak government, withdrawal from Lebanon was an
effective response to the liberal discourse.59
 Israel Affairs 435
The start of the peace process with the Palestinians, as early as the preparation
talks at Andrews Air Force base and afterwards the Camp David Summit, took
place against the backdrop of Barak’s government being deserted by factions
identified with the ethno-nationalist discourse. Barak opted for a secular and
social agenda on domestic affairs. Involved in the summit were security actors
and retired army people identified with the liberal discourse, including Amnom
Lipkin-Shahak, Shaul Arieli, Danny Yatomand Gilad Sher, some of whom had
represented the IDF senior command during the Rabin and Peres periods.60 In
this way, the first model was adopted by a range of actors in the peace process to
help the security networks, particularly following the army’s criticism of the form
which the hasty withdrawal from Lebanon took. With the outburst of violence by
the Palestinians in the three ‘Days of Rage’ that preceded the summit meetings,
senior army people who had previously subscribed to the ethno-nationalist
discourse immediately expressed their hostility to the peace process.61
The ethno-nationalist discourse’s dominance in the political sphere soared
with the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000 and the army’s return
to combat operations. Barak left for the Camp David summit meetings without
support from ethno-nationalists in his coalition, because the fresh violence
caused most Israeli Jews to feel they were subject to genuine threats from
Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Convinced that the Palestinians
were not seeking an agreement, many now felt sure that force was legitimate.
It was reflected in the Israeli army’s reaction to the outbreak of riots.62
Demographic and social changes in the fighting forces made it easier for Israelis
subscribing to the liberal discourse to support a more bellicose stance towards
Palestinian disturbances, because the combat forces were staffed to a great extent
by soldiers from peripheral ‘ethno-national’ groups with which the ‘liberal’
Israelis were less familiar.63
During Cabinet discussions on whether to accept the ‘Clinton Outline’, which
included a massive Israeli withdrawal from JSGS, CoS Mofaz opposed its
adoption. The discussions took place at a time of increasing Palestinian violence.
Field troops exercised great pressure to use force against the perpetrators,64 and
their voices were joined by liberal elements in the security networks, cultural and
media circles, and political arena. At the same time, those who continued to
frame JSGS as a security burden encountered difficulties since the talks focused
more on questions of national symbols such as Jerusalem and the Temple Mount,
and less on regions that could be framed as simply demographic and security
burdens.65
Under the circumstances, the political echelon thought the army’s response
disproportionate and did not agree with the policy of Barak’s minority
government to proceed with the peace process even under fire. Minister Shlomo
Ben-Ami maintained that ‘a treaty is slowly taking shape . . . between people in
the security establishment . . . and others, that comes close to harming
fundamental principles of democracy, with a tendency to propose military
solutions’.66 This reflected the growing tension between the political and military
436 A. Lebovitz
echelons. Bearing in mind that the army supported continuing the peace process,
especially after the failure of the Camp David summit and continuing discussions
at the Bolling Air Force base in Washington and the Taba resort in the Sinai
Peninsula, the civilian political echelon intensified securitization of the process.
Participants in the process defined continuing negotiations as an existential need
for Israel, and the ultimate stage before total deterioration in security, and a
binational state. Discussing the question whether to participate in the Taba
summit, on the eve of elections, former CoS Lipkin-Shahak noted: ‘Stopping the
talks will cause a major increase in violence’.67 During cabinet peace discussions
in January 2001, Peres maintained that halting the talks could be ‘a genuine
catastrophe [ . . . ] Arafat will do everything he can to cause hell here’.68 Danny
Yatom argued: ‘We must realize that the failure of the process might lead to the
unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state . . . , a deterioration in security and a
grave threat to Israel’.69 Sher, who was close to Barak, declared that ‘ceasing the
talks will isolate Israel and [escalate] fighting even more . . . Israel’s relations
with Arab countries . . . could change . . . rapidly’.70 Framing JSGS as close to
an existential burden was the declared reason why Barak joined the Camp David
discussions; the failure of the talks ruled out continued framing due to the
outbreak of Palestinian violence, and the assumption in Israel that the reason for
the Israeli – Palestinian dispute is not only the 1967 regions. Framing the region as
an existential demographic burden on Israel remained central to Barak’s grounds
for withdrawing from them, while the failure of negotiations was attributed to
Yasser Arafat.71 Palestinian violence thus gravely harmed the positioning of the
peace talks as an existential Israeli need, though not the framing of JSGS as an
existential burden on the state of Israel.
By the eve of the 2001 elections, as legitimacy for the peace talks decreased,
it became more necessary for pro-negotiation actors in the security networks to
emphasize their inherent existential need. The goal was to shore up Israeli
support for the process. In the final days of Barak’s government, however, the
ethno-nationalist discourse dominated the political sphere, though not the
economic one, while the army’s social structure bridged the legitimacy gap and
enabled the resumption of a policy of force, even without a republican discourse.

Towards a fourth model? The dual discourse in the Sharon and Olmert
periods
The ‘unilateral withdrawal’ policy took shape during Ariel Sharon’s second term
of office. On the one hand, it emphasized the liberal values and interests of ending
the conflict without using force against the Palestinians, but paradoxically using it
against Jewish Israeli citizens in JSGS, out of consideration for the international
community. On the other hand, that policy served the interests of the Jewish
ethnic groups that fear the Palestinians in both demographic and security terms.72
The disengagement from Gush Katif in the summer of 2005 stemmed from that
dual discourse, which attracted broad agreement both from actors subscribing to
 Israel Affairs 437
the liberal discourse and those attuned to the ethno-nationalist discourse, because
of the ethos of Jewish security and ‘taking our destiny into our own hands’.
The Sharon period contributed significantly to the positioning of peace talks as an
existential need, which began during the term of his predecessor Barak, and in fact
empowered the framing of most of JSGS as an existential political, demographic
and security burden for the State of Israel.73 The founding of the Kadima party,
which caused a ‘big bang’ in Israel’s party system, may indicate that a dual
discourse, with both liberal and ethno-nationalist traits, is taking root.74
Framing the JSGS regions as an existential burden was reflected in the
adoption of the disengagement policy as a replacement for the peace process
during the Barak period, and in the spillover of the ethno-nationalist discourse
into the liberal discourse.75 The spillover occurred against the backdrop of lost
faith in universalism, a perception that mistrusted the vision of the ‘New Middle
East’ and emphasized demographic Jewish interests in separating from the
Palestinians by uprooting Gush Katif and building a separation wall.76 The shaky
public legitimacy for Olmert’s government after the summer of 2006 made it hard
for the prime minister to debate face-to-face with representatives of ethno-
nationalist groups and to apply a policy of unilateral withdrawal that was
perceived as damaging ethno-national interests. Framing JSGS as an existential
burden, despite their historical and value-based baggage for the Jewish people
and the hundreds of thousands of Israelis living there, was a subject of
disputation.77 This would appear to account for Olmert’s turn to a liberal policy
narrative which relinquished the unilateral withdrawal policy of the dual
discourse in order to win legitimacy at the very least from significant liberal
actors in the Israeli public. However, beyond the dual discourse and the mistrust
of it expressed during the Intifada in the ethno-nationalist discourse, Olmert was
committed to increasing securitization of the process, particularly because of the
meagre public support for his government and the continued framing of JSGS as
an existential burden.78 On the ‘demographic problem’, Olmert remarked: ‘The
success of the Annapolis process is vital [ . . . ] Without a two-state solution, Israel
is finished’.79 At a state memorial to Yitzhak Rabin, he declared: ‘If, heaven
forbid, we waste time, we will lose support for the two-state idea. There is no
point in enlarging on the alternative’.80
The social composition of the fighting forces and the events of the
disengagement led high-ranking officers to conclude that involving the army in
the peace process would launch a grave crisis of trust between it and the
peripheral groups from which the combat forces were structured.81 The army,
therefore, avoided involvement in the Annapolis conference of the Bush
administration between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, further eroding the
limited legitimacy of the Olmert government’s peace negotiations.
Other players in various security networks, politicians and people with a
security background also emphasized Israel’s existential need for negotiations
now being conducted by Olmert’s government and the Palestinians, and for
withdrawal from JSGS. Minister Ami Ayalon stated: ‘Continuing the status quo
438 A. Lebovitz
and political foot-dragging will lead to a binational state. The window of
opportunity for a solution based on two states for two peoples will soon close,
meaning that Israel is conceding its national Jewish home’.82
Tzippi Livni, then foreign minister, wrote:
Time is working against Israel because it is losing its international legitimacy . . .
What was once taken for granted is no longer taken for granted . . . If the two-state
solution is removed from the agenda . . . It could endanger Israel’s very existence as
a Jewish nation-state.83
Since the need for extreme securitization of the peace process in the Israeli
public’s liberal discourse emerged paradoxically against the backdrop of
withdrawal, it is also worth discussing the changing discourse on the peace
process during Olmert’s government, compared with the discourse during
Rabin’s government.84 During the Rabin period, groups within the liberal
discourse stressed the ‘fruits of peace’, its inherent justice and the commercial,
touristic and commercial gains that would follow, alongside probable security
and demographic achievements. In contrast, the prevailing discourse after the
second Intifada and the second Lebanon War stressed the threats that Israel would
be subject to without peace negotiations.85
Olmert’s term in office was typified by a modification of the liberal discourse
to the shrinking legitimacy enjoyed by the peace process.86 During Olmert’s
term, the peace process and withdrawal from JSGS were not presented as
promoting ‘peace’ but as allowing Israel to fight effectively and with broader
international approval – in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza in 2009.87 Thus, the
peace process and territorial withdrawal became major existential needs to an
extent that would most likely allow Israel to survive as a Jewish state, shorten its
lines of confrontation, and fight now and again for its existence.
During Netanyahu’s government, too, the securitization process continued
energetically both via the heads of opposition and the coalition, identified with
the liberal discourse; framing JSGS as an existential burden continued as well.
The head of the opposition reiterated:
Israel in 2020 can be one of two options: realizing the vision of a Jewish, democratic
Israel, and living in peace and security with defined borders, requires us to concede
part of the Land of Israel – to keep Israel Jewish. The other option is the default: one
state, not Jewish, and without Jewish characteristics.88
Defence Minister Barak concluded:
A comprehensive regional arrangement based on the principle of two states for two
peoples is a vital condition for preserving a Jewish majority in Israel . . . such an
arrangement is vital for the national security, which alone will ensure a solid Jewish
majority for generations.89

Summary and conclusions

To understand how security networks operate regarding a perceived existential
threat, by using force or by seeking a peace process and territorial withdrawal, we
 Israel Affairs 439
must study the socio-economic structure and type of discourse used by actors
composing those networks. A more complex perception of security networks
necessarily includes the disharmonious, dynamic nature of their members,
against the background of the social discourse and perceptions of the army as a
stratified non-unitarian body; it enables improved understanding of possible
future forms of activity of those networks. Using the three models presented here,
I maintain that there is a relationship between the degree of identification of the
military echelons with the peace process, and the degree of need among the
civilian political echelon for securitizing the peace process and framing JSGS as
an existential burden. Positioning the peace process as an existential need and
framing JSGS as an existential burden occurs principally when the liberal
discourse in which political echelons participate contradicts the ethno-nationalist
discourse. This discourse prevails in the wider Israeli public and within the
army’s ranks in particular, which are divided between two contradictory civil
discourses.
One can assume, then, that social changes in Israel are likely to affect the
shaping of new, complex types of discourse that may in turn affect the actors’
feedback and how they act within security networks. The activity patterns of
social networks are not static, and the interests and values of the actors who form
them are dynamic and varied. Continuing attempts by social scientists to explore
the changes in and effects of discourse used by security network actors will
enable improved forecasting of future policies, and a deeper understanding of
their behaviour and endeavours concerning perceptions of existential threat to the
State of Israel. We may then be able to map and predict their activities more
accurately.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Asaf Lebowitz (PhD candidate), the Department of Political Science, Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, Israel.

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.
440 A. Lebovitz
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@19940509005@005.html
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).
 Israel Affairs 441
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@19940509005@005.html
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.
442 A. Lebovitz
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?actions¼ show&id ¼ 2060&r_id ¼ 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/?w¼ //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/?w¼/1/960267andtb ¼ /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?opentalkback¼TIDREPLACE
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/