Focusing on one historic but unsuccessful effort to achieve peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the 2000 Camp David summit, this paper presents a systematic framework for future analyses of ...the conflict. An analysis of the failure of the Camp David summit enables us to spotlight some of the deep-seated essential problems of war and peace in the Middle East. An inquiry into the substance of the summit reveals how, all in all, the conflict is based on six major issues: (1) the establishment of a Palestinian state, (2) the location of land for the Palestinian state, (3) the evacuation of Israeli settlements, (4) the partition of Jerusalem, (5) Palestinian custodianship over the Temple Mount, and (6) the refugee problem. Emphasizing the importance of national ethos, this paper defines the above mentioned six major issues in dispute that constitute the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by viewing them through the eyes of each of the rival parties. This article explains the causes of the conflict, relying on national forms of ethos that are rooted in narratives and collective identity. By establishing a profound comprehension of each of the six topics, this paper also creates the platform for possible future analyses of the conflict.
This paper sticks to the assumption that conflicts become intractable when contradicting sets of national ethos exist. Therefore, it is essential to comprehend the traits of national ethos. We ...contend that national ethos comprises three basic themes: a sense of collective victimhood, a feeling of victory, and a sense of universal justice. Based on this theoretical foundation, we took the Israeli and Palestinian mutually negating sets of ethos during the 2000 to 2005 Second Intifada as a case study. We analyzed the public speeches of Ariel Sharon as well as those of Yasser Arafat and searched for matches to the three components of national ethos in their addresses. Consequently, the empirical observations confirmed that national ethos is often based on the three distinct themes. Additionally, the data from the case study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict suggest that the three components of national ethos form fundamental barriers to reconciliation.
This article examines the social components of national resilience as the source of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ability to cope with possibly lethal blows and economic setbacks through four ...stages: (I) an account of the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War and the surprising outcome that left Iran undefeated, (II) a review of several theories that can aid us to analyze Iran’s national resilience ability, (III) an analysis of Iran’s wartime survival using the abovementioned theoretical infrastructure, (IV) a concise review of current issues in Iranian society which concludes with an evaluation of the state of Iran’s resilience regarding attacks on their nuclear program and its ramifications.
AbstractAnalysts strive to predict future scenarios of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, concentrating on the question of whether Palestinians will be willing to pay the costs of violent struggle. In ...contrast with various policy assessments, this paper takes political trust as a factor that enables us to anticipate Palestinian social reactions as a point of departure. We interviewed 90 West Bank inhabitants, focusing on six major issues: the armed struggle against Israel, democracy and human rights, the internal PLO-Hamas rift, the standard of living, corruption in the PA, and political trust in the PA. Our findings match the quantitative results of Khalil Shikaki’s PCPSR public opinion polls of the West Bank. We conclude that the lack of democracy, the continuing internal rift, the low standard of living, and the manifestations of governmental corruption erode political trust within Palestinian society. Based on research from other places around the globe, such a loss of trust dissuades recruiting people for national struggles. Accordingly, a new popular intifada seems unlikely. However, the Palestinians interviewed also objected to the occupation and its ramifications, which is not an encouraging insight for peace-seekers in the Middle East.
When nations are violently threatened, the choices that they make in order to cope with the challenge of war reflect different alternative possible reactions. They may choose to fiercely fight their ...battles; they may prefer to surrender, and sometimes the options lay in-between. One puzzle is, therefore, what makes nations fight, and more importantly—what causes them eventually to win or to lose the war. In search for an answer, this study inquires through secondary sources three historical case studies from World War II: Britain, France and Germany, and reviews how each of these major European powers acted throughout the war. After each historical description, the study examines the part that national ethos played in the manner in which each state handled war in moments of crisis. The national ethos of a people is the creed formed from the shared values and traditions through which the nation views its past, present and future; it is the integrating element that defines a nation’s identity and bonds it into a coherent social group. The study reveals how national ethos is intertwined with another phenomenon of social psychology that turns it into a crucial factor in the management of international campaigns: war enthusiasm. Since national ethos is so crucial for the results of the war that a country might lead in order to survive or prosper, it is imperative for decision makers to bear in mind that it is also subject to a process of shaping and reshaping, as the Soviets have proved in relation to their Russian national ethos during World War II. A word of caution, however, is noteworthy: a wide historical perspective shows that even though the right kind of national ethos is essential for winning a war it is far from being enough. Hence national ethos proves, at the end of the day, to be a necessary condition for military victory but certainly not a sufficient one.
This research discusses whether various educational approaches can bridge the wide gaps between national narratives of the Holocaust, augmented by the Act on the IPN: 44, and the reactions that ...followed it in Israel, Poland, and the West. We start with a brief account of the Polish narrative of the World War II experience, and the Israeli narrative of the Holocaust. We then give an account from the field: during January and February 2020, we visited the Majdanek Concentration Camp Museum, where we met and interviewed some of the local guides; we also went to the Grodzka Gate Centre in Lublin and discussed things with their guides. For the Israeli narrative, we referred to surveys and interviews of IDF reserves officers who participated in the "Witnesses in Uniform" project of commemoration delegations to Poland. Our analyses show that in each of the two societies one can find national narratives that can create paths of compromise and conciliation. The findings indicate the existence of a spirit that can enable each group to stick to its own heritage yet at the same time to respect the narratives of others.
The article reviews the development of the modern idea of Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) whose buds appeared after the First World War, matured during the Cold War and demonstrated in 1982 in ...the First Lebanon War by the Israeli Air Force, and in 1991 in the Iraq War by the American Army. After analyzing the essence of RMA, with reference to the concept of both evolution and revolution of military technologies and doctrines, the article suggests that two types of revolutions should be distinguished. The first is a revolution in military affairs in the broadest sense in which a paradigm shift in the nature of war is occurred, and it is possible to apply it mainly by superpowers. The second, is a limited revolution that is essentially an approach of solving a military problem, suitable for small countries. The article examines these ideas and shows that Operation Mole Cricket 19, in which Syrian missile batteries made in the USSR were destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 1982, is a revolution in military affairs of the second type.
In political science, war is generally considered the most traumatic event a nation faces, often posing threats to a nation’s very existence. The challenge of surviving the war may, therefore, prove ...central to the life of a nation. However, national resilience during war has not yet been fully investigated. National Resilience during War: Refining the Decision-Making Model, by Eyal Lewin, searches for the mechanisms of national resilience through a deep inquiry into nine different case studies taken from the scenery of World War II. Following a multi-disciplinary attitude, a business management model is adopted (the PEST and SWOT model) and political, economic, social, and military-technological factors are analyzed for each of the case studies. The result is a comprehensive political decision-making model on a national level that can serve as a means for leaders to navigate successfully in geopolitical turbulence as well as for social scientists to better understand the defeats that different countries suffer and the victories that others demonstrate. This research, however, goes further by refining the model and pointing to the exact combination of factors that are crucial for a nation's ability to win its wars. Using a qualitative comparative analysis technique, the exact combination is traced. The results emphasize that the winning scheme blends political and social factors together: leadership, positive psychology and an inspiring national ethos prove to be a necessary, though not a sufficient, conditional combination for success. National Resilience during War fills a significant gap in the literature on the politics of war.
For two months during the war in Gaza (summer of 2014) Hamas bombarded the kibbutzim in the vicinity using rockets and mortar shells, and exercising tunnel warfare. A century after its establishment ...dilemmas about kibbutz life similar to those arising during the decades of struggle were raised by members when they had to stand the test of survival under fire: with rockets and mortars landing should they stay or leave? Consequently, should those who left be referred to as “deserters” betraying the oath to stand bravely against all hazards or should they be tolerated and excused? To answer these questions, we review Israeli ideological connections of security and settlement in the Zionist Movement and the Kibbutz Movement and present quantitative and qualitative research about kibbutz members from the north and south of the country. We show that the fundamental values of the Kibbutz Movement, and particularly commitment to the collective and bearing the burden of national and societal missions, continue to exist despite growing individualism. The dual symbol of the sickle and the bayonet standing for a combination of security and settlement has not faded away. Rather it has changed its form. Going beyond this specific case study we call for a re-evaluation of the perception of conflict between seemingly contradictory orientations of contemporary kibbutz members and link our analysis to collectivist and individualist attitudes in current-day Israeli society and the kibbutz social environment in particular. We show the emergence of intertwined orientations that simultaneously promote each other in practice thus awarding significance to a new, more conditional, concept of sickle and bayonet.
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