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Soldiers and The Use of Force: Military Activism and Conservatism During The Intifadas

Year 2016, Volume: 21 Issue: 2, 57 - 80, 01.07.2016

Abstract

Are soldiers more prone and likely to use force and initiate conflicts than civilians? To bring a new insight to this question, this article compares the main arguments of military activism and military conservatism theories on Israeli policies during the First and Second Intifadas. Military activism argues that soldiers are prone to end political problems with the use of force mainly because of personal and organizational interests as well as the effects of a military-mindset. The proponents of military conservatism, on the other hand, claim that soldiers are conservative on the use of force and it is the civilians most likely offering military measures. Through an analysis of qualitative nature, the article finds that soldiers were more conservative in the use of force during the First Intifadas and Oslo Peace Process while they were more hawkish in the Second Intifada. This difference is explained by enemy conceptions and by the politicization of Israeli officers

References

  • Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1977; Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985.
  • Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crises, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. 4 Huntington
  • Edward T. Imparato, General MacArthur: Wisdom and Visions, Paducah, Turner Pub. Co., 2000, p. 131. 6 Betts
  • Sechser, “Are Soldiers Less War-Prone than Statesmen?”, p. 750.
  • Jerel A. Rosati and James M. Scott, The Politics of United States Foreign Policy, Belmont, Thomson Wadsworth, 2007, pp. 154-155.
  • Stephen Philip Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, District of Columbia, Brookings Institution Press, 2004, p. 98.
  • Huntington, The Soldier and the State, p. 61.
  • Sechser, “Are Soldiers Less War-Prone than Statesmen?”, p. 750-751.
  • Ibid.,p. 751; Weeks, “Strongmen and Straw Men: Authoritarian Regimes and the Initiation of International Conflict”, p. 333.
  • Yoram Peri, “The Israeli Military and Israel’s Palestinian Policy: From Oslo to the Al Aqsa Intifada,” Peaceworks, No. 47 (2002), at www.usip.org/sites/default/files/pwks47. pdf (last visited 2 October 2013).
  • Zeev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising – Israel’s Third Front, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1990, pp. 115-116.
  • Yoram Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room: How the Military Shapes Israeli Policy, Washington D.C., United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006, p. 165.
  • Azmi Bishara, “Israel Faces the Uprising: A Preliminary Assessment,” Middle East Report, No. 157 (1988), www.merip.org/mer/mer157/israel-faces-uprising, (last visited 11 June 2014).
  • “Israeli Proposes Ouster of Arabs”, New York Times, 31 July 1987.
  • Yitzhak Shamir, “Israel’s Role in a Changing Middle East”, Foreign Affairs, Vol.60, No. 4 (1982), p. 789.
  • Yitzhak Shamir, Summing Up: An Autobiography, New York, Little, Brown and Company, 1994, p. 102.
  • Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, New York, W.W. Norton, 2001, p. 465.
  • Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman, Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 55.
  • Shamir called Peres “a defeatist with a scalpel who wants to put Israel on the operating table so he can give away Gaza today, Judea and Samaria tomorrow, and the Golan Heights after that.”; Don Peretz, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising, Boulder, Westview Press, 1990, p. 41.
  • “Rabin Ordered Beatings, Meir Tells Military Court”, Jerusalem Post, 22 July 1990.
  • “Israeli Army Feels Pressure from Unrest”, St. Petersburg Times, 25 February 1988.
  • Robert Slater, Rabin of Israel: Warrior for Peace, New York, Harper Paperbacks, 1996, pp. 418-420.
  • Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, p. 92.
  • Glenn Frankel, Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on the Hard Road to a New Israel, New York, Simon Schuster, 1994, pp. 87-88.
  • “Army Chief of Staff Urges Leaders to Open Talks to End Uprising”, Washington Post, 18 March 1988.
  • David Horowitz, Shalom, Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, New York, New Market Press, 1996, pp. 117-118.
  • “Israeli Troops Kill 2 Arabs in Clash with Protestors”, Los Angeles Times, 19 March 1988.
  • “Shomron: Intifada Can’t be Eradicated”, Jerusalem Post, 11 January 1989.
  • “Shamir Raps Shomron Remark on Intifada”, Jerusalem Post, 12 January 1989.
  • “Arens, Shomron Disagree on State of PLO Terrorism”, Jerusalem Post, 5 February 1989.
  • “The Military Has Exhausted Its Ideas”, Jerusalem Post, 25 January 1989.
  • “Retiring Israeli Army Chief Would Trade Land for Peace”, Washington Post, 20 March 1991.
  • Schiff and Yaari, Intifada, p. 33.
  • Horowitz, Shalom, Friend, p. 112.
  • Schiff and Yaari, Intifada, p. 145.
  • Ian Lustick, Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and The West Bank-Gaza, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1993, p. 412.
  • Martin van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force, New York, Public Affairs, 1998, p. 345.
  • David Makovsky, Making Peace with the PLO: The Rabin Government’s Road to the Oslo Accord, Boulder, Westview Press, 1996, p. 101.
  • Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room, p. 35.
  • Efraim Karsh, Arafat’s War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest, New York, Grove Press, 2003, p. 133.
  • Clayton E. Swisher, The Truth about Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process, New York, Nation Books, 2004, p. 43.
  • Charles D. Freilich, Zion’s Dilemmas: How Israel Makes National Security Policy, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2012, p. 173.
  • Uri Savir, The Process: 1,100 Days that Changed the Middle East, New York, Random House, 1998, p. 202.
  • For more information about Netanyahu’s political philosophy, see, Benjamin Netanyahu, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place among the Nations, New York, Warner Books, 2000.
  • Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room, p. 84.
  • Itamar Rabinovich, Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs, 1948-2003, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004, p. 172.
  • Akiva Eldar, “Military Intelligence Presented Erroneous Assumption on Palestinians”, Haaretz, 10 June 2004.
  • Swisher, The Truth about Camp David, p. 344.
  • Ehud Barak, “Israel Needs a True Partner for Peace”, New York Times, 30 July 2001.
  • Yagil Levy, Israel’s Materialist Militarism, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2007, p. 132.
  • Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy, New York, Oxford University Press, 2006, Kindle Edition.
  • Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room, p. 102.
  • Gilead Sher, The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations, 1999-2001, New York, Routledge, 2006, p. 204.
  • Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington, New York, Crown Publishers, 2011, p. 136.
  • “IDF Chief: Palestinians Preparing for Drawn-Out Conflict”, Haaretz, 31 July 2001.
  • Gideon Alon, “Peres Attacks Mofaz for Calling Authority ‘Terrorist Entity’”, Haaretz, 24 July 2001.
  • Aluf Benn, “Foreign Ministry Proposes New Initiative to Prevent Escalation”, Haaretz, 27 July 2001.
  • Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “PM Sharon Addresses the Knesset’s Special Solidarity Session”, at http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2001/Pages/PM%20Sharon%20 Addresses%20the%20Knesset-s%20Special%20Solidari.aspx 16 September 2001 (last visited 15 August 2014).
  • Giora Eiland, “The IDF in the Second Intifada”, Strategic Assessment, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2010), p. 31-32.
  • Steven Erlanger, “Israel’s Military Rethinking Action in the Gaza Strip,” New York Times, 11 May 2002. Mofaz also overstepped the boundary between the political and military echelons in this period as he threatened to resign if the government accepted an international investigation on the violations of international law during the military operations, especially the one in the Jenin refugee camp. Peri, “The Israeli Military and Israel’s Palestinian Policy”, p. 43.
  • Moshe Ya’alon, “Restoring a Security-First Peace Policy”, in Dan Diker (ed.), Israel’s Critical Security Requirements for Defensible Borders: The Foundation for a Viable Peace, Jerusalem, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2011, Kindle Edition.
  • Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room, p. 106.
  • Patrick Tyler, Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country and Why They Can’t Make Peace, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012, p. 461.
  • Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room, p. 203.
Year 2016, Volume: 21 Issue: 2, 57 - 80, 01.07.2016

Abstract

References

  • Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1977; Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985.
  • Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crises, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. 4 Huntington
  • Edward T. Imparato, General MacArthur: Wisdom and Visions, Paducah, Turner Pub. Co., 2000, p. 131. 6 Betts
  • Sechser, “Are Soldiers Less War-Prone than Statesmen?”, p. 750.
  • Jerel A. Rosati and James M. Scott, The Politics of United States Foreign Policy, Belmont, Thomson Wadsworth, 2007, pp. 154-155.
  • Stephen Philip Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, District of Columbia, Brookings Institution Press, 2004, p. 98.
  • Huntington, The Soldier and the State, p. 61.
  • Sechser, “Are Soldiers Less War-Prone than Statesmen?”, p. 750-751.
  • Ibid.,p. 751; Weeks, “Strongmen and Straw Men: Authoritarian Regimes and the Initiation of International Conflict”, p. 333.
  • Yoram Peri, “The Israeli Military and Israel’s Palestinian Policy: From Oslo to the Al Aqsa Intifada,” Peaceworks, No. 47 (2002), at www.usip.org/sites/default/files/pwks47. pdf (last visited 2 October 2013).
  • Zeev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising – Israel’s Third Front, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1990, pp. 115-116.
  • Yoram Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room: How the Military Shapes Israeli Policy, Washington D.C., United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006, p. 165.
  • Azmi Bishara, “Israel Faces the Uprising: A Preliminary Assessment,” Middle East Report, No. 157 (1988), www.merip.org/mer/mer157/israel-faces-uprising, (last visited 11 June 2014).
  • “Israeli Proposes Ouster of Arabs”, New York Times, 31 July 1987.
  • Yitzhak Shamir, “Israel’s Role in a Changing Middle East”, Foreign Affairs, Vol.60, No. 4 (1982), p. 789.
  • Yitzhak Shamir, Summing Up: An Autobiography, New York, Little, Brown and Company, 1994, p. 102.
  • Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, New York, W.W. Norton, 2001, p. 465.
  • Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman, Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 55.
  • Shamir called Peres “a defeatist with a scalpel who wants to put Israel on the operating table so he can give away Gaza today, Judea and Samaria tomorrow, and the Golan Heights after that.”; Don Peretz, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising, Boulder, Westview Press, 1990, p. 41.
  • “Rabin Ordered Beatings, Meir Tells Military Court”, Jerusalem Post, 22 July 1990.
  • “Israeli Army Feels Pressure from Unrest”, St. Petersburg Times, 25 February 1988.
  • Robert Slater, Rabin of Israel: Warrior for Peace, New York, Harper Paperbacks, 1996, pp. 418-420.
  • Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, p. 92.
  • Glenn Frankel, Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on the Hard Road to a New Israel, New York, Simon Schuster, 1994, pp. 87-88.
  • “Army Chief of Staff Urges Leaders to Open Talks to End Uprising”, Washington Post, 18 March 1988.
  • David Horowitz, Shalom, Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, New York, New Market Press, 1996, pp. 117-118.
  • “Israeli Troops Kill 2 Arabs in Clash with Protestors”, Los Angeles Times, 19 March 1988.
  • “Shomron: Intifada Can’t be Eradicated”, Jerusalem Post, 11 January 1989.
  • “Shamir Raps Shomron Remark on Intifada”, Jerusalem Post, 12 January 1989.
  • “Arens, Shomron Disagree on State of PLO Terrorism”, Jerusalem Post, 5 February 1989.
  • “The Military Has Exhausted Its Ideas”, Jerusalem Post, 25 January 1989.
  • “Retiring Israeli Army Chief Would Trade Land for Peace”, Washington Post, 20 March 1991.
  • Schiff and Yaari, Intifada, p. 33.
  • Horowitz, Shalom, Friend, p. 112.
  • Schiff and Yaari, Intifada, p. 145.
  • Ian Lustick, Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and The West Bank-Gaza, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1993, p. 412.
  • Martin van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force, New York, Public Affairs, 1998, p. 345.
  • David Makovsky, Making Peace with the PLO: The Rabin Government’s Road to the Oslo Accord, Boulder, Westview Press, 1996, p. 101.
  • Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room, p. 35.
  • Efraim Karsh, Arafat’s War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest, New York, Grove Press, 2003, p. 133.
  • Clayton E. Swisher, The Truth about Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process, New York, Nation Books, 2004, p. 43.
  • Charles D. Freilich, Zion’s Dilemmas: How Israel Makes National Security Policy, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2012, p. 173.
  • Uri Savir, The Process: 1,100 Days that Changed the Middle East, New York, Random House, 1998, p. 202.
  • For more information about Netanyahu’s political philosophy, see, Benjamin Netanyahu, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place among the Nations, New York, Warner Books, 2000.
  • Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room, p. 84.
  • Itamar Rabinovich, Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs, 1948-2003, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004, p. 172.
  • Akiva Eldar, “Military Intelligence Presented Erroneous Assumption on Palestinians”, Haaretz, 10 June 2004.
  • Swisher, The Truth about Camp David, p. 344.
  • Ehud Barak, “Israel Needs a True Partner for Peace”, New York Times, 30 July 2001.
  • Yagil Levy, Israel’s Materialist Militarism, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2007, p. 132.
  • Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy, New York, Oxford University Press, 2006, Kindle Edition.
  • Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room, p. 102.
  • Gilead Sher, The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations, 1999-2001, New York, Routledge, 2006, p. 204.
  • Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington, New York, Crown Publishers, 2011, p. 136.
  • “IDF Chief: Palestinians Preparing for Drawn-Out Conflict”, Haaretz, 31 July 2001.
  • Gideon Alon, “Peres Attacks Mofaz for Calling Authority ‘Terrorist Entity’”, Haaretz, 24 July 2001.
  • Aluf Benn, “Foreign Ministry Proposes New Initiative to Prevent Escalation”, Haaretz, 27 July 2001.
  • Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “PM Sharon Addresses the Knesset’s Special Solidarity Session”, at http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2001/Pages/PM%20Sharon%20 Addresses%20the%20Knesset-s%20Special%20Solidari.aspx 16 September 2001 (last visited 15 August 2014).
  • Giora Eiland, “The IDF in the Second Intifada”, Strategic Assessment, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2010), p. 31-32.
  • Steven Erlanger, “Israel’s Military Rethinking Action in the Gaza Strip,” New York Times, 11 May 2002. Mofaz also overstepped the boundary between the political and military echelons in this period as he threatened to resign if the government accepted an international investigation on the violations of international law during the military operations, especially the one in the Jenin refugee camp. Peri, “The Israeli Military and Israel’s Palestinian Policy”, p. 43.
  • Moshe Ya’alon, “Restoring a Security-First Peace Policy”, in Dan Diker (ed.), Israel’s Critical Security Requirements for Defensible Borders: The Foundation for a Viable Peace, Jerusalem, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2011, Kindle Edition.
  • Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room, p. 106.
  • Patrick Tyler, Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country and Why They Can’t Make Peace, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012, p. 461.
  • Peri, Generals in the Cabinet Room, p. 203.
There are 64 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Journal Section Articles
Authors

Murat Ülgül This is me

Publication Date July 1, 2016
Published in Issue Year 2016 Volume: 21 Issue: 2

Cite

APA Ülgül, M. (2016). Soldiers and The Use of Force: Military Activism and Conservatism During The Intifadas. PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs, 21(2), 57-80.
AMA Ülgül M. Soldiers and The Use of Force: Military Activism and Conservatism During The Intifadas. PERCEPTIONS. July 2016;21(2):57-80.
Chicago Ülgül, Murat. “Soldiers and The Use of Force: Military Activism and Conservatism During The Intifadas”. PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs 21, no. 2 (July 2016): 57-80.
EndNote Ülgül M (July 1, 2016) Soldiers and The Use of Force: Military Activism and Conservatism During The Intifadas. PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs 21 2 57–80.
IEEE M. Ülgül, “Soldiers and The Use of Force: Military Activism and Conservatism During The Intifadas”, PERCEPTIONS, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 57–80, 2016.
ISNAD Ülgül, Murat. “Soldiers and The Use of Force: Military Activism and Conservatism During The Intifadas”. PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs 21/2 (July 2016), 57-80.
JAMA Ülgül M. Soldiers and The Use of Force: Military Activism and Conservatism During The Intifadas. PERCEPTIONS. 2016;21:57–80.
MLA Ülgül, Murat. “Soldiers and The Use of Force: Military Activism and Conservatism During The Intifadas”. PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs, vol. 21, no. 2, 2016, pp. 57-80.
Vancouver Ülgül M. Soldiers and The Use of Force: Military Activism and Conservatism During The Intifadas. PERCEPTIONS. 2016;21(2):57-80.