Tamar Hermann

Divided yet United: Israeli-jewish Attitudes Toward the Oslo Process

This article examines Israeli-Jewish attitudes toward the Oslo process, as it has been unfolding in the years 1994-2001. We found that despite the turbulence and frequent crises associated with it, the aggregated attitudes toward the Oslo process have been remarkably stable during most of this period. We explain this stability by the persistent division of Israeli society into two entrenched publics - pro-Oslo and anti-Oslo - each of which displays distinct sociopolitical and demographic attributes. However, we have also found that, along with its bifurcated structure, Israeli-Jewish public opinion consists of yet another, unifying layer. The latter was manifested in the largely consensual reactions to critical internal and external events related to the Oslo process, as well as in common views about the existential threat posed by the Palestinians to Israels security and its continuation as a Jewish state. We discuss these results in the context of recent debate about the relevance of public opinion to foreign policymaking in general, and consider their bearing on Israeli policies regarding the Oslo process in particular.

A Path Strewn with Thorns: Along the Difficult Road of Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking

Five years down the road from the signing of the first Oslo Declaration of Principles (September 1993), the Israeli-Palestinian peace process had considerably slowed down, even if it was still alive, as the optimists maintained.1 The immediate post-Oslo Accords euphoria of autumn 1993 had long since dissipated in the wake of the near breakdown of the negotiations, confirming that much more than the signing of formal documents was needed for a state of war to be transformed into a state of peace.

The Latitude of Acceptance

This article answers two related questions: did the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin bring about significant changes in the attitudes of Israeli Jews toward antigovernment protest, and were there systematic group differences in these attitudes before and after Rabins assassination? The empirical findings of four public opinion surveys point to a significant decline in overall support for antigovernment protest immediately after the assassination, apparently reflecting the shock effect of the murder. The decline was noticeable across the entire spectrum of political and sociodemographic segments of the public, and the plateau attained shortly after the assassination remained almost intact afterwards. Findings also indicate significant group differences in attitudes toward political protest, especially before the assassination. The changes in attitudes were systematically related to two hypothesized influences: guilt by association and socioeconomic status.

People’s Diplomacy and People’s Vigilantism: Israeli Grassroots Activism 1993–2003

From Kashmir and Sri Lanka in the East, via the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans, the Basque country, Northern Ireland, to Latin America on the other side of the globe, the involvement of civil society organizations in the various phases and aspects of ethnonational conflicts has become more and more visible and widely acknowledged by politicians, academics, and activists alike. Yet the theoretical as well as empirical discussion of the role of civil society organizations as such in the management of ethnonational conflicts, in their furtherance or, alternatively, resolution, is too often one-sided and simplistic. It is argued here, that although armed civil militias and peace groups are actually manifestations of the same type of sociopolitical actor – civil society, only rarely are they regarded as such, instead usually being conceptualized as sharply dissimilar entities. As a result, the body of research as well as the individual researchers dealing with the first manifestation – terrorism and guerrilla – usually turn a blind eye to the peace activism, and vice versa: those focusing on peace activism are mostly oblivious to the terror and civil violence.