Hillel Frisch

Motivation or Capabilities? Israeli Counterterrorism against Palestinian Suicide Bombings and Violence

Abstract Scholars have expressed doubts about the ability of counterterrorism to cope with suicide bombings, resulting in tit-for-tat or loop-like and repetitive violence and counter-violence without meaningful, let alone decisive results for the stronger side. Such skepticism may explain why so much of the recent literature on terrorism and insurgency is focused on the factors motivating the challenger rather than upon the insurgents capabilities. This article demonstrates the extent to which Israeli offensive measures have reduced considerably the impact of Palestinian violence on the Israeli protagonist corroborating research that counterterrorism should adopt an offensive escalating strategy against the insurgent.

Fuzzy nationalism: The case of Jordan

This article, on the basis of a case‐study of Jordan, argues that engaging in the construction of collective identity is a much more complex task than dealing with the relationship between a territorial or pan‐nationalism as either a binary apposite or as synthetic dualism. In Jordan, the construction of nationalism is deliberately fuzzy and eclectic due to security concerns. Jordans eclectic collective identity, based on four often discordant elements ‐ lineage and family, usually advanced by the monarchy; civic identity, promoted by both society and the monarch; the (pan)‐Arab identity; and religion ‐ deals with inner tensions facing the integrity of the Jordanian state and society.

The Egyptian Army and Egypt's ‘Spring’

Abstract After Mubaraks ouster, the Egyptian senior command had assumed a guardian role similar to the former Turkish model despite a shoddy performance in maintaining public order and the questionable loyalty of the lower ranked officers and the ordinary soldiers. Its relative success in managing the transition was due to the willingness of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists to negotiate as stakeholders in the system rather than to battle in the streets against the Army. The Muslim Brotherhoods strategy worked. In August 2012, recently elected President Morsi subordinated the military by removing the veteran Minister of Defense, the Chief-of-Staff, and other key officers. The military caved in without a whimper.

Religion, State, and the International System in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Why do conflicts between states and national movements continue to be “nationalist”, concerned almost exclusively with self-determination and control over territory, rather than crusades on behalf of faith? Our basic claim is that the nature of the present international system bolsters the dominant position of nationalists in a given conflict with an opposing political entity, as well as within their own constituency. For this reason, the Palestinian leadership has never entered a power-sharing arrangement with the Islamists, and in Israel, the consociational arrangement with the national religious camp floundered when this internal arrangement threatened Israel’s relationship with its key ally, the USA, and jeopardized its standing in the international community. Religion expresses, however, important primordial values, particularly in Palestinian society, and is often a crucial dimension of collective identity. It is only natural, then, that nationalists use religious groups and their symbols as a means in the struggle to achieve their national or state-centered goals.

Explaining third world security structures

Why did the Palestinian Authority established in 1994 create 12 security forces when Eritrea, which achieved independence in 1994, made do with one conventional army? This article attempts to explain the variation in the structure of national security systems in Third World states as a function of two basic factors: the states political and social heterogeneity and the states relative importance to US foreign policy and security concerns. Authoritarian one-party and centralizing states tend to fragment their security forces more than states that cultivate social or political pluralism. Fragmentation is a classic exercise of divide and rule. But a tradeoff exists between fragmentation and assuring internal security on the one hand, and ensuring offensive capabilities to ward off external enemies, on the other. Hence the importance of a strong foreign ally – preferably the United States. According to this model, centralized homogenous states enjoying US protection will tend to fragment or bifurcate their security systems most.

Strategic Change in Terrorist Movements: Lessons from Hamas

Existing literature is weak in explaining strategic change among terrorist movements, especially regarding the question of why these organizations often switch between contesting the external enemy, usually the government or the occupying power, and the internal arena in which they compete against fellow rebel groups. A rebel force facing diminishing returns from a formerly successful tactic with no equally effective tactical substitute in sight is likely to switch from conflict against a government to achieve dominance in the rebel camp. The terrorist movement will switch from the external to the internal arena even if such substitution compromises the overall goals of the rebel camp. The following article explores these dynamics in Hamass strategy in the latest round of conflict between the movement and Israel.

The Role of Armies in the Arab Uprisings – An Introduction

The following special issue on the role of armed forces focuses on what explains the considerable variation in both how these uprisings played themselves out and their political outcomes. At least three basic dimensions – duration, political intensity and the magnitude of violence – the variation Between the six states covered in this issue – Egypt, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Yemn and Bahrain – has been considerable even on a proportionate basis. The range of political outcomes within these six cases has been considerable, ranging from a more or less stable transition to democracy in Tunisia to the Syrian case where there is considerable fear that Syria will break up into sectarian mini-states.

The Arab vote in the Israeli elections: The bid for leadership

Arab voting patterns in the 15th general elections hardly differed from the previous elections held in 1996. Once again, Arabs proved in their strategic vote for the prime minister of their choice to be the sector or segment of Israels voting public most loyal to the left-wing candidate; 94.3 per cent of Arab voters voted for Ehud Barak. Once again, they proved to favour, like Israels ultra-Orthodox, parties whose sectoral identity was beyond dispute. Of those 69.5 per cent of Arab voters who voted for the non-Zionist Arab or predominantly Arab parties; 31.1 per cent voted for the United Arab List (UAL) compared to 25.6 per cent in the previous elections, 21.3 voted for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (DFPE) compared to 36.9 per cent in 1996, and 16.8 per cent for the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) which in the previous elections ran as a coalition partner with the DFPE as the National Democratic Bloc (NDB) (see Table 1). The UAL, an alliance between the nationalist Arab Democratic Party (ADP) and the southern branch of the Islamic Association, increased its representation in the Knesset from four to five seats, the DFPE managed to hold on to its three seats, and the UDA, better known as Balad, which ran alone to the Knesset, for the first time managed to secure two seats (see Table 2). This was the highest percentage of the Arab vote these parties ever drew. Participation was high as in the previous elections; 339,164 voters, 70 per cent of those eligible (excluding mixed towns where Arab voting patterns are hard to assess) cast their votes, slightly lower than in the previous elections and significantly lower than projections. Eligible Arab voters accounted for 12.1 of the total eligible voters (11.1 in the 1996 elections). Ten Arabs (including Druze) were elected to the

The 2009 Knesset elections: a foreign affairs perspective

Israels general elections in 2009 yielded three major outcomes: 1) the replacement of the bi-polar system that characterized Israeli electoral politics between 1977 and 2003 in which most parties are aligned to one of the two principal parties by a more flexible multi-party system. 2) The nearly total collapse of the Labor party and the Zionist left; for the first time since the 1920s, the Labor party was no longer a major political player, and 3). Kadimas electoral relative success, despite scandals haunting it since 2006. Kadima has basically superseded Labor without necessarily adopting its ideology. We argue (contrary to Henry Kissingers quip that Israel never had a foreign policy but only a domestic policy) that primarily external factors and processes – chiefly the failure of the Oslo process in the 1990s – yielded these three outcomes.

PAN-ARABISM AND ITS COMPETITORS: ISLAMIC RADICALS AND THE NATION STATE

Abstract Islamism may already be showing signs of meeting a more powerful ideological force: state nationalism. Islamists devote far more energy to attempting to take over existing states than to attacking the West. It is conceivable that, as with Pan-Arabism before it, the grandiose ideals of Islamism will be no match for the economic, military, and media might of the nation-states into which both Arabs and Muslims are separated. These appear to shape peoples identity even more than do their potentially revolutionary shared religious tenets.