Policy Sciences (2005) 38: 177–194
C Springer 2005
Political culture, alternative politics and foreign policy:
The case of Israel
GUY BEN-PORAT & SHLOMO MIZRAHI
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Abstract. This article analyzes how sociopolitical dynamics within a state can help explaining foreign
policy. We show that under certain conditions, the public can be involved in ways that extend beyond expressing opinions that act as constraints on policy makers, and also takes active initiatives that eventually
shape foreign policies. The article explains how sociopolitical processes in Israeli society, which transformed the nature of citizen–politician relations from a top-down to a bottom-up orientation, gradually
led to shifts in foreign policy regarding the conflict with the Palestinians. The Israeli public has adopted
an approach to solving social problems by unilateral initiatives, as part of its attempts to shape foreign
policy from the bottom up, due to continuous government failure to provide public services, combined with
blocked influence channels. As long as Israeli politicians ignored these changes, they failed to mobilize
support for policies imposed from the top down and lost their positions of power.
Introduction
The relationships between social and political processes in a given society and the
formation of foreign policy have been studied by scholars in the field of international
relations using the concept of two-level analysis (Putnam, 1988; Iida, 1993; Evans
et al., 1993; Schneider and Cederman, 1994; Mo, 1995; Schultz, 1998). The two-level
game literature has established solid micro foundations for the theory of international
bargaining. Most importantly, this research tradition has shown that the amount of
uncertainty in the international system is not a given, but can be manipulated for
better or worse. This ambiguous potential is the essence of a two-level dilemma in
world politics, in which domestic politics affect international behavior both positively
and negatively and vice versa – Clearly, international conditions also affect domestic
politics, which again affect foreign policy.
In this article, we address the impact of social and cultural processes on the relations
between citizens and politicians and the side-effect of these relations on foreign policy.
We attempt to demonstrate that, under certain conditions, the public can be involved in
ways that extend beyond expressing opinions that act as constraints on policy makers.
The public, or sections of the public, also take initiatives that eventually shape foreign
policies. These initiatives can be legal and include new ideas that attempt to reset the
political agenda but can also be semi-legal or illegal. In terms of policy studies, we
define these initiatives as alternative politics, in which citizens dissatisfied with the
government’s performance and skeptical of the regular democratic means of protest,
take a proactive course of action and attempt, at times illegally, to supply a public good
or governmental services they find missing (Lehman-Wilzig, 1991, 1992). Thus, the
public creates a threat to the government monopoly with respect to the public product,
compelling the politicians to change the policy in accordance with the demands made
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by the public. We find this to be a central feature of the political culture in Israel
and a significant explanatory factor of political processes, domestic and also foreign
(Mizrahi and Meydani, 2003). Differently stated, we argue that the political culture of
unilateral initiatives (legal, semi-legal, and illegal) has penetrated all political systems
including the government and underscores the dynamics of the Israeli–Palestinian
peace process, both within Israel and between Israel and the Palestinians.
The arguments are elaborated through an empirical analysis of dynamics in Israeli
society for the years 1992–2004 and the debates over the territories occupied in the
1967 war. More specifically, the article attempts to explain the transformation of
Israeli (foreign) policy towards the conflict with the Palestinians from a policy that
has been basically shaped from the top down (top-down orientation), into a policy
which has been shaped from the bottom up (bottom-up orientation). A bottom-up
approach usually presupposes that the public is not a unitary actor and that policies are
influenced not only directly, by narrowing the options available for decision makers,
but also indirectly, by influencing the coalition-building processes among elites and
by strengthening or weakening the positions of bureaucracies or single actors within
the government (Risse-Kappen, 1991). In this article, we extend this view and show
that the public, through the use of “alternative politics” can actually shape foreign
policy and impose its influence upon politicians who then respond positively.
We identify two policy paradigms adopted by Israeli policymakers. The first, the
“New Middle East” highlighted the role economic cooperation could play in the
transformation of the conflict and the second, “unilateral withdrawal and the security
fence” was based on Israeli perceptions of “no partner” on the Palestinian side. These
two paradigms, despite their difference, were attempts by policymakers, operating
within a two-level game framework, to find a way to circumvent the negotiation
of those issues that are deadlocked between Palestinian demands and the perceived
Israeli public refusal to yield. But, while the New Middle East never materialized
(and, in fact has been likened to a “pipe dream”) (Ben-Porat, 2005a), the unilateral
withdrawal and the fence were translated into a concrete plan. In this article, we
explain the difference between the two paradigms by the changes in the political
culture and participation patterns of the Israeli society. Specifically, the “New Middle
East” paradigm was a top-down effort by policymakers and the economic elite, while
the unilateral initiatives and the fence are a bottom-up process compatible with the
transformation of Israel’s political culture.
In the next section, we discuss the mutual relations between internal politics and
foreign policy. In the third section, we present a theoretical framework for explaining
the evolution of alternative politics as informal institutions. In the fourth section, we
explain the evolution of the two policy paradigms mentioned above, as well as the impact of alternative politics and systemic changes in Israeli society on these paradigms.
Internal politics and foreign policy
Foreign policy analysis “unpacks the black box” of foreign policy decisions and
focuses on the people and units that make up the state. The “national interest”
accordingly, is viewed “as the interests of various players – not all of which may
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coincide, and not all of which are coherently related to anything resembling an objective national interest” (Hudson and Vore, 1995). Therefore, a state operates in both
the domestic and the international dimensions as it seeks “both to compete with other
states by mobilizing resources internally, and to use its international role to consolidate its position domestically” (Halliday, 1994: p. 84; see also Barnett, 1991). As
such, internal and external factors that are apparently unrelated become related in the
actions of decision makers in economic decisions and in the security field (Barnett,
1991; Katzenstein, 1978; Sapin et al., 1954: p. 43). The pursuit of internal and external goals, however, is not necessarily complementary (Barnett, 1991) and involves
the possibility of raising internal instability or external hostility. Because the state is
situated in both domestic and international structures, policymakers play a two-level
game, in which they attempt to make foreign and domestic policies compatible. As
Putnam (1988) puts it:
The politics of many international negotiations can usefully be conceived as
a two-level game. At the national level, domestic groups pursue their interests
by pressuring the government to adopt favorable policies, and politicians seek
power by constituting coalitions among those groups. At the international level,
national governments seek to maximize their own ability to satisfy domestic
pressures, while minimizing the adverse consequences of foreign developments.
Neither of the two games can be ignored by central decision-makers, so long
as their countries remain interdependent, yet sovereign.
Under these conditions, policymakers have to take account of and attempt to balance external pressures and internal demands. It has been argued, however, that the
two-level game is more a metaphor than a full-fledged theory, lacking three essential
building blocks: specification of domestic politics, of the international environment,
and the state’s foreign policy preferences (Moravcsik, 1993; Trumbore, 1998). The
understanding of the two-level game, therefore, requires the unpacking of the domestic and the international levels. Indeed, research into foreign policy has examined
the role of leaders, elites, bureaucracies, societal groups, and also of wider issues of
domestic structure and coalition-building processes (Risse-Kappen, 1991), as well as
of public opinion and political culture.
The role of public opinion has been a major source of debate, regarding its impact
on governmental decisions to go to war or to negotiate peace. While some scholars
argue that public opinion lacks coherence and structure with regard to foreign policy
and, therefore, does not have a large impact on its conduct, others find more stability
in public opinion and identify recognizable ideological positions (Hudson and Vore,
1995). Public opinion, therefore, can act as a constraint on decision-makers, who have
to take into account political reprisals for their action or nonaction (Mo, 1994, 1995).
It has often been argued that these constraints make democracies less prone to war, because governments must build consensus for the use of large-scale violence (Russett,
1993). Other studies have found nondemocratic regimes also sensitive to domestic politics and public opinion (Lamborn, 1991; Lebow, 1981). In crisis situations,
democratic and nondemocratic regimes alike have been found to produce a policy
process largely closed to widespread participation (Trumbore and Boyer, 2000). Not
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only war, but also peace, can present leaders with a two-level game dilemma. Perceptions or myths established during conflict become embedded in countries’ domestic
politics and are difficult to dislodge. Institutions or political actors whose goals and
missions are related to these myths will resist attempts to change them (Richter, 1992).
In peace negotiation, like in war, public opinion can act as a constraint that limits government’s negotiation leverage. Public opinion seems to matter most when there is
a lack of congruence between the public’s preferences and decision maker’s preferences, when the issue under negotiation is of intense interest and when the public has
either direct or indirect power to ratify an international agreement (Trumbore, 1998).
In Putnam’s original model, statesman negotiate internationally and ratify agreements locally (Putnam, 1988; Moravcsik, 1993). While public opinion is susceptible
to framing efforts (Shamir and Shikaki, 2005), the government is not the only agent
involved in shaping win-sets. Final outcomes depend fundamentally on domestic interest groups (Evans, 1993) that can either mobilize public opinion or take initiatives
that actively influence foreign policy. Thus, diplomacy can not only respond to domestic interests, restructure domestic interests (Evans, 1993), but also be structured
by domestic initiatives and developments. Domestic institutions are important both in
filtering the forces that confront policymakers and in constituting the relevant actors
(Caporaso, 1997). Once citizens are mobilized on a certain issue, governments have to
pay attention to voter opinion in both domestic and foreign policymaking (Trumbore,
1998). In the US, for example, ethnic or diaspora politics was found to be an important
determinant in US foreign policy (Glazer and Moynihan, 1975; Shain, 1994). Beyond
opinion, citizens, as will be described in detail below, can take matters into their own
hands, create alternatives, and influence the decision making process. To illustrate,
Thomas Risse-Kappen (1994) explains how intellectual communities helped hasten
the end of the Cold War. These epistemic communities developed ideas and formed
transnational networks that cooperated with “new thinkers” in foreign policy institutes
and elsewhere in the former USSR. In an elaborate study of “transnational advocacy
networks”, Keck and Sikkink (1998) argue that these networks can provide alternative channels of communication, so that voices suppressed in their own societies can
gain influence in the international arena, which can, in turn, reverberate in their own
countries. Network actors not only bring new ideas, norms and discourses, but also
promote implementation by pressuring target actors to adopt new policies (Keck and
Sikkink, 1998: p. 3). Thus, when domestic actors who aim to change local or national
policies find government inaccessible or deaf to their demands, they may seek international connections to express their concerns (Keck and Sikkink, 1998: p. 12) or
alternatively, turn to domestic initiatives that extend beyond normal politics to change
or create policies. In terms of policy studies, this conduct can be conceptualized as
alternative politics. We elaborate this concept, below.
Alternative politics as informal institutions
The concept of alternative politics has been developed to describe a situation in
which people who are dissatisfied with policy outcomes independently provide public
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services via nongovernmental or semi-private, often illegal or semi-legal, channels.
Alternative politics does not include all privately provided services but rather only
those that are designed to be provided by the government according to the formal
institutional setting.
To explain the evolution of alternative politics as informal institutions, we apply
New Institutionalism where any process of change starts with a certain “reality”
characterized by a certain institutional status quo (Mantzavinos et al., 2004). As
long as that institutional framework, i.e., the formal and informal rules of the game,
provides sufficient help for citizens to solve social problems, it is likely to be stable.
The institutional setting also specifies the role of government and of publicly supplied
services, as well as the available channels for citizens to express grievances when they
are dissatisfied with outcomes. One of the main reasons for citizens’ dissatisfaction
with the government can be termed “government failure” i.e., the inefficient provision
of governmental services (Weimar and Vining, 1998). Government failure may appear
in various degrees and it may motivate citizens to adopt a wide variety of strategies
or alternative problem-solving mechanisms. Citizens’ response to government failure
may range from physically leaving the society by emigration (exit), through active
expression of dissatisfaction via protest and political participation (voice), to passive
acceptance of the situation combined with social alienation (neglect). We rely here
on Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty model (1970) and its extensions (Rosbult
and Lowery, 1985; Lyons and Lowery (1986). These strategies correspond to many
analyses of political participation which we do not review here due to space limitations.
The availability of each strategy, as well as the cost-benefit calculations attached
to it, are a function of the formal institutional setting in a given society. For example,
in democracies, most of these strategies are available at relatively low cost, while in
authoritarian regimes, both the exit and voice options usually bear high costs. When
there are certain institutional shortcomings that produce government failure, as long
as the existing institutional setting provides sufficient tools for improving outcomes,
either through the actions of government or civil society, citizens are likely to respond
to government failure using these tools. In other words, when citizens are dissatisfied
with policy outcomes, they attempt to improve outcomes through the channels made
available by the institutional setting – i.e., prevailing formal and informal rules at
both the governmental civil-society level.
It follows that when the institutional setting not only produces government failure
but also fails to provide sufficient tools for improving outcomes, citizens are likely
to adopt alternative problem-solving approaches. This may occur when citizens feel
that influence channels are blocked, meaning the “voice” option is exhausted. This
is more likely to happen when the political, administrative, and economic systems
are relatively centralized. Unilateral initiatives, or a “do-it-yourself ” approach, may
be viewed as such an alternative problem solving approach. It suggests that when
people are dissatisfied with outcomes and they believe that all the existing mechanisms to influence and solve social problems are blocked, they must devise their
own institutional arrangements. From the aggrieved citizens’ perspective, progress
is understood in terms of unilateral initiatives, in the sense that these initiatives are
independent of the existing institutional setting and are coordinated neither with the
government nor with other sectors in society since all influence channels are blocked.
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This often means that these initiatives are often illegal or semi-legal. Thus, we argue
that continuous government failure, combined with blocked influence channels both
at the state and the social level, potentially trigger the evolution of an alternative
problem solving approach – unilateral initiatives. When, due to government failure,
this problem solving approach is applied by citizens to improve outcomes and proves
successful, it gradually transforms the belief system. This process of continuously
applying unilateral initiatives for solving social and political problems constitutes the
evolution of alternative politics as informal institutions.
Furthermore, through this process the public creates a threat to the government
monopoly with respect to the production of public goods and services, compelling
politicians to change policy in accordance with the demands made by the public. In
other words, in many cases, politicians react to pressures of this kind, by legalizing
the illegal institutions created by certain groups in the society. This indeed has been
the reaction of the Israeli political system with respect to the illegal settlements, the
pirate cable operators, the black economy, the private payments to public physicians,
and the privately paid supplements to state education (Lehman-Wilzig, 1992; Mizrahi
and Meydani, 2003). Alternative politics is, therefore, a central feature of the political
culture in Israel and a significant explanatory factor of political processes.
Alternative politics, systemic changes in Israeli society and the policy towards
the conflict with Palestinians
In this section, we attempt to explain the impact of alternative politics, which evolved
as a dominant informal institution in Israel in the 1980s and 1990s, on the process
of policy formation in general and on Israeli foreign policy towards the conflict with
the Palestinians in particular. The core argument is that, due to the existence of
the structural starting conditions described above, Israeli society underwent learning
processes. The learning process created the conditions for the evolution of alternative
politics as informal institutions and later led to institutional change in all areas of
life, as well as at all decision-making levels. In particular, it transformed the nature of
relations between citizens and politicians from a top-down to a bottom-up approach
and significantly changed the principle of the separation of powers.
The evolution of alternative politics and bottom-up orientation in Israeli society
Historically, before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, many of the political, social, and economic institutions of the Jewish community developed through
channels that were either semi-legal or totally illegal under the British Mandate. This
development took place through the creation of facts on the ground and by forcing a
certain reality on the British authorities (Horowitz and Lissak, 1978, 1989; Migdal,
2001; Shprinzak, 1986; Lehman-Wilzig, 1992). Later on, after the foundation of the
State, in the 1950s and 1960s, the political, economic, and administrative systems
were extremely centralized (Horowitz and Lissak, 1989). The combination of extremely centralized systems and a tradition of influence through semi-legal channels
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had a significant effect on the political culture in Israel. The extreme centralization
prevented the development of alternative power bases, such as interest groups and
greatly slowed down the development of a civil society with liberal features. Furthermore, due to the problem of collective action, no public pressure arose to change the
situation, as long as policy outcomes were not catastrophic (Horowitz and Lissak,
1978; Arian, 1997).
Such a catastrophe did indeed occur, with the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which triggered public dissatisfaction and loss of faith with the policies of the Labor party.
In order to change policies and/or replace the government, the public mainly used
democratic, legal tools, such as demonstrations, strikes, use of the media as well as
the ballot box. By the late 1960s, however, illegal courses of action had also become
noticeable. The illegal settlements in the territories occupied in 1967 were an attempt
to establish facts on the ground and force a certain reality on the government.
During the 1970s and 1980s, sociopolitical processes, discussed elsewhere
(Mizrahi and Meydani, 2003), led to the inability of the government to produce
efficient and stable policy decisions, as well as to political stalemate. This intensified
the feeling among the Israeli public that the government continuously faltered to provide public services, combined with the sense that influence channels were blocked.
The crisis was even deeper than a systemic governmental inability to provide services, because there were no other agreed social mechanisms of compromising and
solving conflicts between sectors and groups in society. The deep cleavages cutting
through Israeli society – religion vs. secular, hawks vs. doves, and Jews vs. Arabs
– have made compromise and central decision making all the more difficult and,
consequently, encouraged more groups to pursue alternative politics.
Given these conditions, large sectors of Israeli society employed unilateral initiatives as a problem solving approach. The 1980s were characterized by a significant
growth in the “black-market economy” – particularly regarding illegal trade in foreign
currency, “gray-market medicine” – expressed in a semi-legal private supply of health
services using public facilities, “gray-market education” – expressed in the occupation of privately paid teachers, and the evolution of independent private schools and
pirate cable networks – all of which are alternatives to publicly provided services i.e.,
informal institutions (Lehman-Wilzig, 1992; Mizrahi and Meydani, 2003). Indeed,
during the 1980s it became clear that, for many people, only unilateral initiatives
could help improve their situations. Furthermore, most of these initiatives were institutionalized via the formal rules of the game and became part of governmental
policy.
The emergence of informal institution embodies an even deeper change in informal
institutions, i.e., the nature of relations between citizens and politicians in Israel. In
the 1950s and 1960s, these relations were informally based on a top-down orientation,
in the sense that policies were decided through a highly centralized system with very
limited participation of citizens. In the 1980s and 1990s, on the other hand, the nature
of these informal relations was transformed, and recast in a bottom-up orientation.
In this new informal status-quo, citizens identify policy problems and solved them
unilaterally, by forming substitutive informal institutions. In doing so, they actually
signaled the required institutional change to politicians and thus institutional changes
as well as specific policies and outcomes were initiated from bottom up.
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In the following analysis, we argue that this transformation can explain the
movement from a top-down oriented policy towards the conflict with Palestinians,
as expressed in the New Middle East concept, to a bottom-up oriented policy that led
the Israeli government to adopt the plan of unilateral separation from the Gaza Strip
and North Samaria (in the West Bank).
Oslo and the New Middle East – top-down orientation
The “New Middle East” written by Shimon Peres (1993), Israeli Foreign Minister
between 1992–1995 and former Prime Minister, outlined a vision of a peace project
between Israel, the Palestinians, and the wider Arab world, on the basis of what
was perceived as a new reality and new possibilities associated with globalization.
Within Israel, this concept indicated a paradigmatic shift among policymakers and
bureaucrats away from the conceptualization of conflict as inevitable, permanent or
intractable (Ben-Porat, 2005a, 2005b). The New Middle East (hereafter, NME) was
intended to provide a blueprint for the future of the region, on the basis of economic
rationality, peace, democracy, cooperation, mutual gain, and general prosperity.
Globalization, on the one hand, and the continuation of the conflict, on the other,
provided Peres in the 1990s with a powerful rationale for peace that converged with
business and professional perceptions developed earlier. According to this plan, economic cooperation would be followed by increasing, ongoing political understanding
until stability was achieved. The NME shared the optimism of liberal accounts of
globalization and faith in market economics as forces of rationality and progress.
Peace and global integration would be the way for the Middle East to escape a web
of poverty, backwardness, and hatred. Like in the European Union, it was argued,
the economic transformation would introduce new interests, a new rationality and
a “zeitgeist” that at once was both inevitable and desirable for the Middle East to
follow (Ben-Porat, 2005a). These ideas were well received by Israel’s liberal elites,
whose desire to “normalize” Israel was translated into a three-part agenda that included economic and political liberalization, termination of the conflict, and global
integration (Ben-Porat, 2005c). While the Israeli economy had been on a rapid path of
liberalization since the mid-1980s, the continuation of the conflict was perceived as
impeding economic progress and holding back Israel from the path of globalization.
This policy was directed from the top down and was intended to resolve the two-level
game by offering incentives both to Palestinians and the Israeli public. Specifically,
the NME prescribed economic growth (resulting from peace) as a win–win situation
that would bridge the differences between Israelis and Palestinians and, consequently,
appeal to both publics and enable them to accept the compromises their leaders would
negotiate.
Indeed, the Oslo Agreement between Israel and the PLO, signed in 1993, attempted
to set forth a peace process on the basis of mutual recognition, co-existence, mutual
dignity, and security. Yet, the Oslo Agreement was essentially different from the vision
of the NME, as its core embodied a partition that would supposedly answer Israel’s desire to maintain its Jewish status, as well as the Palestinian demand for independence.
The promise of economic growth, nevertheless, remained in the background of the
agreement and underscored its logic. However, three significant obstacles challenged
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the possibility of partition. First, since the 1970s, Israel had been building a system
of settlements across the West Bank and Gaza, so by 1993 over 100,000 Israelis were
living on the land of the would-be Palestinian state. Second, Palestinians who had fled
or been deported from Israel in the 1948 war were demanding, for themselves and
their progeny, “the right of return” to their original homes from the refugee camps and
other places of habitation. And, third, both sides lay uncompromising national and
religious claims to the city of Jerusalem. The Oslo Agreement attempted to maintain
a balance between cooperation and partition. Partition was to be achieved gradually,
through a series of interim agreements involving Israeli withdrawal and established
cooperation. The difficult issues mentioned above, which could not be resolved at this
stage, were deferred to a later stage, in the hope that trust and cooperation built up in
the interim agreements would facilitate their resolution.
The Oslo process moved slowly, as Israeli leaders attempted to balance between
Palestinian demands and a reluctant Israeli public. Cooperation between Israelis and
Palestinians after 1993 did not change the overall situation as it suffered not only from
the lingering effects of 25 years of occupation and high levels of inequality, but was
also sacrificed in order to maintain popular domestic support. Israel’s imposition of
closures on the territories in response to terrorist attacks, put an end to many initiatives
of economic cooperation, while the replacement of Palestinian with foreign laborers
created a de-facto economic separation between Israel and the Palestinians. Security
cooperation also suffered from the contradictions of the demands and expectations of
both sides and external and internal pressures.
With limited cooperative measures, the peace process gradually focused on the element of partition and separation and developed a zero-sum dynamic of territoriality
that neither approached transformation nor brought the sides any closer to agreement
on the issues not subject to partition (Ben-Porat, 2005b). Each side blamed the other
for breaching the agreement and refused to cooperate before the other party fulfilled
its obligations. Israel was concerned with the Palestinian Authority’s lack of commitment to combat fundamentalist terrorism and the continuation of inflammatory
anti-Israeli propaganda in the Palestinian media and schools. The Palestinians were
frustrated by Israeli military checkpoints across the West Bank and Gaza and perceived the continuation of building in the settlements as an Israeli attempt to determine
unilaterally the borders of the final agreement.
Israeli policymakers operated within the two-level game dilemma described above,
as the pressure from “without” vis-à-vis the Palestinians was matched by pressures
from within as the peace process failed to instill sufficient domestic support. On
the external level, it was not only Palestinian demands for Israeli withdrawal but
also demands from foreign powers (especially the United States), from Arab states
that just initiated diplomatic and economic relations with Israel, and also indirect
pressures from economic investors who demanded and expected the continuation of
the peace process. The external dimension became significant in the late 1980s due to
the United States government deeper involvement and to Israel’s growing desire for
global integration. In 1991, President George Bush was able to enforce the Madrid
conference upon an otherwise reluctant Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. US
loan guarantees of $ 10 billion required for the absorption of the mass immigration of
Jews from the crumbling Soviet Union were conditioned upon Israel’s participation
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in the conference. While the Madrid Conference had no real results, it set a precedent
for Israeli–Palestinian negotiations, and the level of American involvement deepened
during the Clinton administration. The pressures of foreign investors concerned about
stability and interested in the advancement of the peace process were relayed to
the government through the Israeli business community, itself a strong supporter of
the process (Ben-Porat, 2005c). Yet, American involvement and the various other
pressures in the 1990s never reached the level of those of the mid-1970s when the
Ford and Carter administrations had a crucial role in the peace agreement between
Eygpt and Israel.
On the domestic level, however, Israeli policymakers found it difficult to convince
the public of their policies. While much attention was given to the cooperation between
the government and the business community that underscored many of the policies and
business initiatives associated with the process, the peace process in general remained
top-down and was perceived to be elitist. Despite the economic growth in Israel
following the Oslo accords, popular support for the peace process remained tepid. The
right-wing, especially the nationalist-religious settlers who described the agreement
a “sell out” strongly protested the implementation of the accords. In addition, large
sectors of the Israeli public remained indifferent to the peace process, feeling it mainly
promoted the interests of the elite (Ben-Porat, 2005a). Thus, in adhering to a top-down
policy approach, the government failed to incorporate the moderate right, consisting
of many lower-class Mizrachim (Jews that immigrated from Muslim countries, or
their descendents) who voted for the Likud but held moderate views regarding the
future of the territories. In a Gallup poll published in a daily paper shortly after the
ceremony in Washington and at the peak of the “peace festival” only 33% said that
the agreement with the PLO would improve their economic well being, while 51%
foresaw no change (Yedioth Aharonot Daily, September 15, 1993). Polls conducted
by a Tel Aviv research center in the summer of 1994, after a celebrated economic
year, found general support for the agreement quite modest. Less than 52% of Jewish
Israelis expressed support for the peace process, while almost half perceived the
territorial and political “price” of the agreement too high (Yaar et al., 1996).
The victory of the right wing and anti-agreement Likud party in the 1996 elections
was indicative of the declining support for the process. Although most Israelis had
recognized the need for a territorial compromise since the late 1980s, the fact that the
specific nature of the agreement was imposed from top down and reflected the views
and interests of elite groups, created a situation in which many Israelis felt alienated
to the peace process. They believed they were not enjoying its fruits but rather paying
the price of a deteriorating security situation. In the next 3 years, relations between
Israel and the Palestinians further deteriorated. Under American pressure, the newlyelected Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, signed two agreements (Hebron and
Wye) but frustrated Palestinians with demands for “reciprocity” and the delay of
redeployments.
In the summer of 2000, 7 years after the signing of Declaration of Principles,
Ehud Barak, the newly elected Israeli Prime Minister of the Labor party and Yasser
Arafat met in Camp David for a crucial negotiation. Barak, who initiated the summit,
declared his intention to pass over the interim agreements that, for reasons discussed
above, had only been partially implemented and reach a final agreement that would
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put an end to the conflict. Despite breaking away from Oslo’s interim steps in favor of a
comprehensive package of peace, Camp David was also a top-down initiative, a continuation of the old dynamics, pushing its zero-sum nature to the edge and overburdened
by the history of the previous 7 years of negotiations. The all-or-nothing approach,
Barak’s attempt in Camp David proved a poor gamble, as Israel and the Palestinians
entered the negotiations after 7 years that not only left them little confidence in each
other, but also with difficult domestic settings that made compromises even more
difficult. The continuing reality of, on the one hand, the continuation of settlements,
checkpoints, and economic instability, and, on the other, anti-Israeli propaganda, terrorism, and lack of action against Palestinian fundamentalist groups, left both publics
skeptical of the other’s commitment to peace.
Two weeks of negotiations failed to bridge the differences and the sides departed
without reaching an agreement, blaming each other for the failure of the summit. The
situation led eventually to the breakdown of the talks and Barak’s concluding statement
that all understandings reached were “null and void.” The Palestinian frustrations of
the previous 7 years exploded after a visit of Israeli opposition leader, Ariel Sharon,
to the Temple Mount, a visit meant to demonstrate Israel’s sovereignty over the site.
The subsequent clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians escalated into
unprecedented levels of violence, ending the peace process and, shortly after, Barak’s
term in office. To a large extent during the 1990s, Israeli leaders failed to balance the
two-level game of foreign policy and also ignored the central sociocultural dynamics,
which transformed the nature of citizen-politician relations from a top-down to a
bottom-up orientation and required grass root support mechanisms. The combination
of these two misinterpretations of Israeli society created significant gaps between it
and its leaders, leading to the failure of the top-down oriented policy approach. These
gaps triggered, on the one hand, public attempts to define a solution to the escalating
conflict and, on the other, learning processes among Israeli leaders who gradually
responded to bottom-up dynamics, as explained in the next sub-section.
The fence and unilateral disengagement – bottom-up orientation
In the summer of 2002, the Likud-led government, headed by Ariel Sharon, decided
on the construction of a separation fence between Israel and the Palestinian territories
in the West Bank. The election of Sharon after the collapse of the Camp David talks
was a result of a growing consensus among Israelis of the “no partner” thesis offered
by Barak after Camp David. While the Likud was elected because of its hard-line
approach towards the Palestinians, it did not take long to realize that the tough military
strategy it relied on was at most, only partially able to bring security. The right-wing
Likud had previously objected to the idea of the fence, raised by the Labor party
and other dovish factions, as it was concerned that a fence, even if built for security
purposes, would eventually draw the border between Israel and the Palestinians. But,
the growing numbers of Israeli casualties from suicide bombers who infiltrated from
the West Bank into Israel and the growing public pressure for security, caused the
government to change its mind and support the construction of the fence. While it
was the government that took action in both cases it was, we argue, responding to
pressures from below and, in the case of the fence, even following initiatives taken by
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citizens. Furthermore, we argue that the political culture of unilateral initiatives (legal,
semi-legal and illegal) has penetrated all political systems including the government
and, therefore, can explain the unilateral policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians.
Like the Oslo process described above, the fence was a strategy that sought to
circumvent the main issues (settlements, Jerusalem and refugees) and to strike a
balance between external demands for compromise and internal opposition. But, as
will be elaborated below, the fence was a different strategy in three important and
interrelated ways. First, in the wake of Camp David and the subsequent cycle of
violence, a large number of Israelis became disenchanted with the peace process but,
especially as violence escalated, were interested in separation as a security measure.
Second, unlike Oslo, the decision to build a fence was very much a bottom-up process,
influenced by citizens who organized demands and by local initiatives that sought to
create security which the government failed to supply. Third, since it was based on local
politics, this strategy ignored Palestinian demands and interests. The empowerment
of domestic politics, in other words, tilted the balance of the two-level game and
inspired a short-term, immediate solution to the ongoing security crisis.
The concept of a fence between Israel and the Palestinians was not new to the
political discourse in Israel. Israeli liberals have often used the threat of a bi-national
state, or the need to preserve the Jewish State from a prospective Arab majority,
as the rationale to end the occupation. From the time of Oslo, especially when the
process was undermined by violence, the fence was raised as a fallback position,
a security measure Israel could or should use unilaterally, if the Palestinians failed
to cooperate. In 1995, after a series of suicide bombings, the government began
examining the possibility of separation. Two appointed committees, one under the
supervision of the Ministry of Police and another under the supervision of the Ministry
of Finance, produced reports that recommended that the police and military should
monitor and limit entry of Palestinians to Israel. In March 1996, after a suicide
attack on a public bus in Jerusalem, the government decided to pursuit a strategy of
separation by creating a seam zone with monitored passages and preventing illegal
entry of vehicles and people. The military introduced a working plan to implement
the government’s decision and some 300 million Israeli sheqels were allocated by
the government. But, these plans were never implemented and an investigation by
the state comptroller found that, despite the checkpoints, people and vehicles crossed
the seam zone and entered Israel almost without interference. Thus, the 1997 report
concluded that none of the recommendations and decisions regarding the seam zone
was implemented (State Comptroller, 1997). The state comptroller addressed the issue
again 5 years later in a more detailed report that found, again, that little was done by
the government during that period. Between September 2000 and July 2002, after the
collapse of the Camp David summit, 82 suicide bombers from the West Bank crossed
into Israel. The terrorists, the report complained, had no difficulty in reaching their
targets and were unimpeded by military checkpoints. The report concluded: “. . . The
fact that no effective and real action was taken in the seam zone to seriously limit the
entry of terrorists from the West Bank into Israel is unacceptable” (State Comptroller,
2002).
As the peace process encountered more obstacles and was further undermined by
new cycles of violence, ideas of cooperation, and a “New Middle East” gave way to
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interim agreements and a zero-sum dynamic between the negotiating sides (Ben-Porat,
2005a). The Labor Party in the 1996 campaign, losing its support due to stepped-up
terrorist attacks, adopted the slogan “we are here, they are there, a fence in between”
and abandoned the New Middle East dream. This strategy emphasized the need to
achieve security by ending the occupation, with or without Palestinian cooperation,
and by unilaterally (if necessary) drawing future borders. The fence strategy failed to
win the election, but the idea was embedded in the political discourse and re-emerged
4 years later. Not only in the political discourse, but also by local initiatives along
the frontier between Israel and the territories, the idea of the fence gradually turned
into a reality. Already in 1994, shortly after Oslo, and under the pressure of two
regional councils, Prime Minister Rabin ordered the construction of two 2.5 m-high
cement fences, 2 km in length a piece, to prevent direct shooting on Israeli houses
in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem from a town in the Palestinian territories,
200 m away. Seven years later, again under pressure from residents, the fence was
extended and heightened. In other areas, an approximately 100 km electric fence was
constructed to protect agricultural property. The minister of agriculture explained the
rational behind the construction of fences: “We are responding to the pressure of the
residents. At the moment it is politically impossible to decide on partition and this
is a local solution. Eventually, we will wake up one morning and see fences, walls,
and barriers along the whole seam line” (Ratner, 2002). The government officially
denied that the 1967 border was being re-created but, as one regional council manager
explained: “officially or unofficially, in reality the pressures from below dictate the
future border to the government and that will determine it” (Ratner, 2002).
Between 1994 and 2002, different citizens’ initiatives along the seam line created
new facts. The residents of the Gilboa regional council determined to begin building
a 12-km fence against terrorist infiltration and not wait for government action or
approval. The regional council Mayor, Dani Atar, traveled to the United States to
raise funds for the construction of the fence. “This is a message to the government,”
explained the Mayor, “there is total anarchy and disregard for the personal security
of citizens” (Ratner, 2002). Another regional Mayor explained: “I have to take care
of the security of my residents. They (policymakers) can call it a security fence or
an agricultural fence. . .if policymakers would call it separation, it would appear as
withdrawal, so they use security terms” (Ratner, 2002). Atar predicted that if the
security situation worsened, policymakers would have to adapt to the needs below
and gradually the border would become a reality.
As explained earlier, these local unilateral initiatives can be understood in terms
of alternative politics, which had become the dominant characteristic of Israeli political culture during the 1980s and 1990s. Given an intensifying government failure to
provide security, Israeli citizens adopted a problem-solving approach that had proven
successful in many other areas of life – unilateral initiatives. In that way, they eventually forced a policy shift from the bottom up.
The more terrorism took its toll, the more various groups that advocated the fence
raised their voices, demanding that the government provide the necessary funding.
The “Fence for Life” movement, established in 2001, sponsored a vigorous campaign
demanding the construction and completion of the fence to prevent infiltration of
suicide bombers, regardless of the withdrawal or the future of settlements. Israel’s
190
President, Moshe Katzav, who met with leaders of the group, expressed his support for
a security fence. The “Fence for Life” campaign attempted to circumvent the political
debate, by deliberately avoiding the discussion of withdrawal or stating a position on
the future of the territories. This position enabled the movement to receive support
from politicians of various parties.
Uzi Dayan, a retired Major General and the head of the “Forum for National
Responsibility,” a dovish movement that includes many former generals, described
the fence as a security measure with long-term significance for the preservation of
Israel as a Jewish and democratic state against the “demographic threat.”
A decisive Jewish majority must be preserved only through democratic and
moral means, otherwise it will not be a Jewish state. . .the state of Israel should
decide on its borders in the next few years, according to two considerations:
security and demography: security, so that all the citizens of Israel live in safety,
and demography, so that the nature of this state will continue to be Jewish and
democratic. (Dayan, 2002)
Thus, the fence was not only a short-term security measure, but according to some
of its proponents, also part of a wider strategy that would foster peace by reducing
friction and restoring confidence among Israelis. Similarly, unilateral disengagement
was adopted by some of Israel’s peace supporters, who believed that the idea of
separation from the Palestinians, using the vantage-point of Israeli self-interest, could
mobilize large parts of Israeli society to support an end to the occupation. The “Council
for Peace and Security,” a voluntary organization made up of retired military personnel
with dovish views, explained that since the political process had reached a dead
end, Israel should move towards unilateral separation. Separation would ease the
strain on the security budget, enhance Israel’s defense capabilities, narrow the friction
points with the Palestinians, reduce the danger of regional escalation, and contain the
“negative” demographic process in which Jews were becoming a minority between
the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. In the long run, in view of its advocates, this
partition could be the base for a renewed peace process.
The plan for unilateral separation does not aspire to generate a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, it is a temporary arrangement,
based on an Israeli initiative that is intended to serve the vital and immediate
interests of both peoples. Israel for its part will announce that in parallel with
the process of separation and redeployment along new lines, it will be prepared
to offer official recognition to an independent Palestinian state declared by the
Palestinian Authority in areas under its control. In this way, future negotiations will be held between two legitimate governments. (Council for Peace and
Security, 2004)
The Labor Party’s attempt to use the idea of unilateral separation in the 2002
election failed to make a difference for labor’s immediate political fortunes. But, the
191
new Likud government had to face the reality that despite the large number of members
of terrorist organizations, including leaders, killed or captured by Israeli military
initiatives, suicide bombings continued and worsened. Consequently, the concept of
a fence gained momentum and public support which the government could no longer
ignore. Surveys performed in 2002 sent a clear message to the government as they
indicated that a majority of Israelis (83%) supported unilateral disengagement, even
at the price of evacuation of (some) settlements and believed that the fence could
prevent or significantly reduce terrorism (Peace Index, May 2005).
In the summer of 2002, under public pressure, the Likud government began the
construction of a fence between the territories and Israel. Ariel Sharon, who had
previously objected to the fence, was forced to accede to public demands. According
to his Senior Adviser and Campaign Manager, Eyal Arad “. . . There was a situation
that the Prime Minister was blamed for every terrorist attack . . . what caused the
change was the pressure of public opinion” (Bachur-Nir, 2003). The construction
of the fence was delayed due to budgetary problems and difficulties determining its
exact course. On the one hand, Israeli settlers opposed a fence that would leave some
of them outside, and they demanded that the fence be extended eastward. On the
other hand, the American government demanded that the fence not annex territories
beyond the 1967 borders. In spite of all the difficulties, the construction of the fence
proceeded, and by spring 2005, a large part of the project was completed.
While the fence strategy was successful in terms of its ability to incorporate views
of many in the Israeli public, taking into account the two-level dilemma, it is doubtful
whether the fence can provide a long-term solution. The fence is designed to strike
a balance between internal and external pressures, but essentially ignores the Palestinians. For the Palestinians, as surveys have shown, the fence effect is devastating,
as it implies the de-facto annexation of Palestinian villages to Israel, separating them
from the West Bank. It also involves instances in which lands are confiscated from
their owners so as to accommodate the building of the fence, and cases where the
fence would separate farmers from their lands and deprive them of their livelihood.
(OCHA, 2003). Overall, the fence will severly hurt virtually all economic ties that
remain between Palestinians and Israel and will add to the economic plight of the
Palestinians. The Israeli government has stated over and again that the fence is a security measure that will not determine final boundaries, but with the large investment
in the fence, this claim seems, at best, highly questionable to the Palestinians.
The campaign for the fence was paralleled by a campaign for unilateral withdrawal
or disengagement from the Gaza Strip and from a small section of the West Bank. Unlike the campaign for the fence described above, which largely avoided the discussion
of withdrawal, other campaigns have advocated a gradual withdrawal and removal of
settlements. The disengagement plan adopted by Sharon was the logical continuation
of the fence strategy, reducing friction points between Israelis and Palestinians and
withdrawing from a densely populated area to which most Israelis were unattached.
Like the fence, this idea was also the result of the growing belief that “there is no
partner” on the other side and that, consequently, Israel should re-deploy its forces
according to its own interests. Moreover, like the fence, this initiative was supported
by many on the left, but also by the center and moderate right, who either believed that
the price of holding on to Gaza was too high, or that the withdrawal in Gaza would
192
allow Sharon to retain important parts of the West Bank. No less importantly, the
unilateral withdrawal plan, unlike the fence, received support from abroad to balance
the two-level dilemma. While in his own right wing party, Sharon’s plan to remove
all settlements from Gaza and some settlements in the West Bank was sharply criticized, polls showed general public support and it was warmly embraced by the United
States government and President Bush, who congratulated Sharon on his initiative.
Thus, on June 6, 2004, the Israeli government accepted the disengagement plan that
included the removal of all settlements in the Gaza Strip. In August 2005, following
the government decision, all the settlements in the Gaza Strip and four settlements in
the Northern part of the Westbank were evacuated.
Conclusion
This article reaches two central conclusions. First, the concept of two-level analyses
can be extended to include the possibility that the public actively shapes foreign policy
by setting the agenda. In the contexts we described, agenda setting occurs through
unilateral acts in the form of “alternative politics.” Second, the public is likely to take
such measures under certain cultural and structural conditions in which other influence
channels are blocked. As elaborated theoretically and empirically, such conditions
include continuous government failure to provide public services combined with a
widely-shared sense that conventional democratic influence channels are ineffective,
i.e., a situation of blocked influence channels. These conditions may lead to the
evolution of alternative politics as informal institutions.
More specifically, the article explains how sociopolitical processes in Israeli society
that included, on the one hand, growing frustrations with government performance
and, on the other hand, limited channels for citizens’ influence, led to the development
of alternative politics. It was this development that transformed the nature of citizen–
politician relations from a top-down to a bottom-up orientation and gradually led to
shifts in foreign policy. We argue that the Israeli public adopted unilateral initiatives
to solve social problems and that this approach was also adopted to remedy the
government’s failure to provide security. Furthermore, as long as Israeli politicians
ignored these changes, they failed to mobilize support for policies imposed from the
top down and lost their position of power.
The analysis illuminates an important aspect of two-level dynamics. When internal dynamics between the public and politicians in a given society are characterized
by a bottom-up orientation, internal and local considerations may dominate foreign
policy in ways that lead to the neglect of external or international considerations.
Specifically, by adopting the strategy of building a fence, combined with unilateral
disengagement, Israeli politicians actually responded to internal demands, thus ignoring the negotiations with Palestinians and mostly neglecting the international side in
the two-level equation. Future research could address these findings comparatively.
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