Political Echelons Research Articles

From Oslo to Be’eri: how the 30-years-long peace delusion led to Hamas’s 10/7 massacres

ABSTRACT The failure to prevent Hamas’s slaughter of some 1,300 Israelis on 7 October 2023 – the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – is a direct result of an emergency phone consultation three hours before the terror group’s invasion of Israel with the participation of the IDF’s and Shin Bet’s top leaders, who decided to do nothing despite acute warning signals and failed to alert the Gaza division commander and the political echelon to the imminent attack. Had they taken the minimal precautionary measures, the catastrophe would have been averted altogether. To fully understand the mindset underlying this monumental blunder requires tracing its evolution within the context of the 30-years-long Oslo peace delusion in general, and during the turbulent year preceding the 10/7 massacres in particular. That is: the substitution of a grand strategic deception aimed at Israel’s destruction for a true peace process and the attendant emasculation of the IDF’s military capabilities and combative/offensive ethos, on the one hand, and the unravelling of Israel’s sociopolitical fabric that culminated in the 2023 mass civil disobedience that enticed Hamas into action, on the other. Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposed the Oslo process from the outset and managed to neutralise its most catastrophic potential calamity – the establishment of a Palestinian state committed to Israel’s destruction in the West Bank and Gaza – failed to extricate Israel from this disastrous course and was ironically forced to bear its full brunt on 7 October 2023.

If You Want War, Prepare for Peace: The Role of Peace in Clausewitz’s On War

The military is one of the largest and most centralized organizations in most countries. Since the early days of the State of Israel, the military echelon has assumed broad responsibility that goes beyond what is customary in democratic countries. The Intelligence Directorate and the Planning Division enjoyed the status of almostexclusive sources of national intelligence assessments and political-security planning, respectively. The purpose of this article is to examine and describe the extent of the military echelon’s influence on the political echelon, with emphasis on political-strategic planning and national intelligence assessments. The article discusses the influence of the military, as a bureaucratic organization, on the political echelon in the decision-making process in the political-security sphere, arguing that decisions on foreign and security issues do not always favor the much more powerful organization. To this end, I will examine the model of bureaucratic-organizational dynamics as manifested in Israel during the First Intifada. The starting point of the bureaucratic-organizational decision-making model developed by Halperin and Ellison is that there is organizational heterogeneity within the government system, and decisions reflect the different interests and strengths of the decision-makers and organizations taking part in the process in a manner that always favors the most powerful.

The ascent of the Israeli economists: a historical perspective

ABSTRACT From the Zionist movement’s early days, it mobilised scientific and technical knowledge in order to implement its goals. Economists were also recruited for this mission, but not as decision-makers; they agreed with the political decision makers’ goals and policies and were involved in their implementation. The economists’ secondary status lasted up until the 1980s, when they helped to overcome the hyper-inflation crisis. They were mobilised to back the politicians, who implemented an unusual heterodox massive stabilisation plan. Its success became the economists’ springboard for massive political-economic influence. It was only after the program’s success, that their economic position gradually became central. Their position became dominant in the 1990s, after the politicians implemented privatisation, which opened up the neoliberal era in Israeli socio-economic policy. The political echelon accepted the neoliberal ideology as framework, while the economists actually applied it.

Demanding a bigger role: Palestinian women in politics and decision making

ABSTRACTThe political participation1 of Palestinian women in its many forms has been significantly influenced by Palestinian history. The male-dominated society and political system have hindered women’s prominence in society and in politics. Although slowly on the rise, lack of women’s representation and their voices is reflected in the low number of women in higher political echelons and in policy and decision making in general. After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and 19952 in 1993, women were integrated in state building processes, yet formal female participation was weak and marginalized and their representation, despite women’s political activism, remained low and not to the extent hoped for. This paper sheds light on the Palestinian women’s involvement in politics and decision making firstly in the pre-Oslo era under non-indigenous Palestinian government and then in the post-Oslo era after the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority, with focus on involvement in negotiations with Israel and internal Palestinian reconciliation efforts. It also focuses on UNSCR 1325, the degree of influence it has had on women’s engagement and the mechanisms established to enhance a bigger role for women in politics and decision making, leading towards a larger role in nation-state building and reconciliation and peace negotiations. Recommendations are offered for measures to increase future participation.

Fewer, Bigger – Stronger? The Political Consequences of Local Government Mergers in Switzerland

Local Government (LG) mergers are an increasingly common phenomenon, and yet surprisingly little research has looked into their political consequences. This article advances the hypothesis that where LG mergers lead to fewer but bigger entities, vertical influence increases at the expense of collective lobbying and in favour of more direct, personal interventions at higher political echelons. To test these two propositions, a cross-sectional analysis of all Swiss cantons as 26 independent LG systems is followed by a qualitative, longitudinal study of a single canton.The implications from both types of analysis are that in terms of LG mergers one is well advised to not only think horizontally but also vertically, i.e. as regards the functions and influence of (the new) municipalities. Normatively speaking, one might either want to encourage or block the direct representation of lower level polities.

A comparative review for understanding elite interest and climate change policy in China

China’s climate change policy has rapidly evolved from one of neglect to necessity with sinologists drawing on a wide range of theories in trying to explain this shift. The rising influence of citizens' movements coupled with international pressure are often cited as significant drivers behind the government’s evolving climate change strategy. But can the influence of public pressure and international lobbying offer a complete explanation for the government’s dramatic policy changes? In this article, we advance theoretical pluralism where three contending schools of thought are made complementary to offer distinct explanations for understanding the mechanisms and rationale for Beijing’s elite-driven climate change policy. In brief, by bridging three separate theoretical streams including rational choice theory, authoritarian environmentalism and advocacy coalition framework, we show that the interests of elites in China’s upper political echelon are the driving force behind the country’s climate change policy.

Ending the Second Lebanon War: the interface between the political and military echelons in Israel

The termination of the Second Lebanon War (2006) is among the most unusual in wars between Israel and Arab states. A classic example of an asymmetrical confrontation between a sovereign state and a guerrilla organization controlling part of a neighbouring state and operating against its will by means of terrorism, the war had far-reaching ramifications for Israeli decision makers in terms of defining the enemy and setting the termination goals of the conflict. In this respect great significance is attributed to the influence of the interface between the military and political echelons on formulating the war's termination strategy, especially in light of the high status enjoyed by the military in Israeli democracy.

Counterinsurgency's Impact on Transitions from Authoritarianism: The Case of South Africa

Counterinsurgency's impact on transitions from authoritarianism remains poorly understood and under-theorized. Using archival sources and interviews with ex-rebels, this paper examines the apartheid counterinsurgency programme's hidden history. A programme of clandestine violence and intelligence operations orchestrated at the regime's highest military and political echelons, it intensified during the 1990–1994 transitional period. This paper analyses its impacts on the state and its security sector during and after the negotiated transition. By marginalizing former rebels with high popular legitimacy, counterinsurgency compromised South Africa's process of security sector reform, while helping to preserve entrenched criminal networks and racist tendencies within the police and army. This has perpetuated institutional illegitimacy and corruption, and weakened security sector responses to South Africa's post-transition surge of violent crime, thereby undermining democratic consolidation. Apartheid counterinsurgency has also left lasting impacts at the social capital and participatory levels, contributing to the erosion of trust between civil society and the state.

What Happened to Israeli Military Thought?

This article addresses the following question: how can one explain the neglect of the intellectual aspects of the profession on the part of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)? The explanations offered for that neglect are a mixture of cultural and societal factors. The cultural explanation focuses on Israeli strategic culture; the traditional Israeli perception of the combination of rich experience and experience-based intuition as a winning ticket; the tendency to extol improvisation; a cult of material strength; and a strong belief in technology. The social explanation stresses the declining attractiveness of a military career for qualitative young Israelis. The article contends that change can take place only if the IDF undergoes a process of institutional intellectualism – if not willingly then one imposed by the political echelon.

Public Responsibility of Elected Officials in Israel: Crossing the Bounds of ReasonablenessOri Arbel-Ganz teaches in the Department of Political Science, Bar-Ilan University. David Nachmias teaches at The Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya, Israel.

Public Responsibility of Elected Officials in Israel: Crossing the Bounds of ReasonablenessOri Arbel-Ganz teaches in the Department of Political Science, Bar-Ilan University. David Nachmias teaches at The Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya, Israel.

The Dilemma behind the Classical Dilemma of Civil—Military Relations

There is a common desire to seek a proper equilibrium that will assure civilian superiority over the military and prevent the military's intervention in domestic affairs. This article addresses the unique situation in Israel during the Oslo process, in which the military was deeply involved in the political process and influenced the political echelon by its knowledge and persuasive argumentation, mostly in private intellectual encounters between the echelons. We show how the military led the civilian arm to make choices that eventually determined strategy. The military with its knowledge infrastructure was hegemonic in this encounter, its influence was significant, and civil control was weak or inefficient. The Discourse Space model used in this article provides complementary tools for describing and analyzing the encounter between the echelons. The model provides an appropriate examination of how this encounter was conducted and what outcomes it produced, at least for the Israeli case.

The Israel Defense Forces as an epistemic authority: An intellectual challenge in the reality of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict

The changes in the nature of warfare and its transformation toward Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) intrastate conflict have challenged the patterns of interaction between the political and the military echelons in Israel. It seems that the political echelon's superiority is maintained at the institutional and formal levels, but on the substantive level, which demands relying on knowledge and systematic staff work, the political echelon's position is weakened and loses its validity. Introducing the military echelon in Israel as an epistemic authority regarding the violent confrontation and the main outlines of the military knowledge development process might clarify why the absence of the required dialogue between the echelons and the weakness of the intellectual effort increased the military's influence over the shaping of Israeli conflict-management strategy. The argument's validity and its explanatory power can be found relevant for other countries whose militaries are deeply involved in the management of LIC.

The politics of institutional reform: The ‘Declaration of Independence’ of the Israeli Central Bank

ABSTRACT Over the last two decades, increasing numbers of central banks in both developed and developing countries have gained independence from political echelons and other state bureaucracies, becoming important actors in the political arena with the capacity to significantly affect the configuration and functioning of national economies. Through a detailed process-tracing analysis, this paper studies the institutional turning point in the position of the Israeli central bank within the state institutional configuration: namely, the amendment of the Bank of Israel Law in 1985 which prohibits the central bank from providing loans to the government to finance budgetary deficits. The analysis focuses on the conditions that facilitated the institutional change, as well as on the actors and mechanisms that were involved in the process. This legislative amendment, which opened the path to the increasing independence of the Bank of Israel, was the result of the constitution of a new cross-national field of policy-making, comprised of both local and foreign political actors: the Israeli Ministry of Finance, the US government and a cross-national network of Israeli and American academic economists. Mechanisms of both inter-state dominance and expert power operated and interacted with each other within this field, producing synergetic effects that fostered the dynamic that led to central bank independence.

Military Knowledge and Weak Civilian Control in the Reality of Low Intensity Conflict?The Israeli Case

The changes in the nature of warfare and its transformation toward intrastate conflicts—known in military jargon as Low Intensity Conflict (LIC)—pose a challenge to the nature of the interaction between the political and the military echelons in general and in Israel—where such a conflict has been a protracted reality since 2000—in particular. While, in these instances, political supremacy is maintained on institutional and formal levels, on the substantial level, which requires reliance on knowledge and systematic staff work, the political position is weakened and substantive civilian control is wanting. I characterize the interactions between the political and the military echelons in Israel during the last half-decade as a "discourse space" imbued with military content and characterized by a blurred political directive. The concept of "epistemic authority" is borrowed from the field of social psychology. Showing how Israel's military echelon has become an "epistemic authority" with regard to the confrontation with the Palestinians, in the eyes of both the general public and the political echelon in Israel, is elucidated through both the nature of the political-military interaction during this period and the weakness of civilian control of the military. The operations launched by the Israeli military, according to its own interpretation of the politicians' intentions and following its newly developed knowledge, helped shape the conflict environment and were perceived by politicians and by most of the Israeli public as justified. The military's hegemonic role in the conflict, in its turn, resulted from the inherent weakness of political control of the military and, at the same time, was a fresh indication of it. The weakness of civilian control of the military in this period suggests that political thinking in Israel is inadequate and attests to the threat to both the supremacy of its civilian sphere and the delimitation of the military's influence over its politics.

Military Knowledge and Weak Civilian Control in the Reality of Low Intensity Conflict \-\- The Israeli Case

The changes in the nature of warfare and its transformation toward intrastate conflicts—known in military jargon as Low Intensity Conflict (LIC)—pose a challenge to the nature of the interaction between the political and the military echelons in general and in Israel—where such a conflict has been a protracted reality since 2000—in particular. While, in these instances, political supremacy is maintained on institutional and formal levels, on the substantial level, which requires reliance on knowledge and systematic staff work, the political position is weakened and substantive civilian control is wanting. I characterize the interactions between the political and the military echelons in Israel during the last half-decade as a "discourse space" imbued with military content and characterized by a blurred political directive. The concept of "epistemic authority" is borrowed from the field of social psychology. Showing how Israel's military echelon has become an "epistemic authority" with regard to the confrontation with the Palestinians, in the eyes of both the general public and the political echelon in Israel, is elucidated through both the nature of the political-military interaction during this period and the weakness of civilian control of the military. The operations launched by the Israeli military, according to its own interpretation of the politicians' intentions and following its newly developed knowledge, helped shape the conflict environment and were perceived by politicians and by most of the Israeli public as justified. The military's hegemonic role in the conflict, in its turn, resulted from the inherent weakness of political control of the military and, at the same time, was a fresh indication of it. The weakness of civilian control of the military in this period suggests that political thinking in Israel is inadequate and attests to the threat to both the supremacy of its civilian sphere and the delimitation of the military's influence over its politics.

From private organizations to democratic infrastructure: Political parties and the state in Estonia

Estonia, one of the first former Soviet republics to regain independence, had to start the processes of party and state development from scratch, beginning with the development of a legal framework for political parties, establishing a regime of public party financing, and training and deploying elites in party and state administrations. In the case of the last element, a variety of career patterns has emerged as individuals have moved between political and administrative roles. The question of the neutrality of county governors and administrative department secretaries-general has been particularly contentious in what has become a close and strengthening relationship between parties and the state. This is visible in the legal status of parties, their growing reliance on public subsidies, and the substantial circulation of people between administrative and political echelons. This can partly be explained by patronage and the particular legacies of communism and state-building, but the small size of the country may have had an independent effect.

Israel and the Bomb (review)

180 SHOFAR Winter 2001 Vol. 19, No.2 Roman relations. He takes as examples the symbolism ofploughing Jerusalem when it was reconstituted as Aelia Capitolina and a story of a rabbi who refused a gift from a Roman official. It should be clear from this brief summary that the section headings are rather arbitrary, and that some ofthe essays could just as easily be placed in a different part. One suspects that the divisions were imposed on this highly diverse collection to reassure the publisher of its thematic unity. But it should also be clear that this is a remarkably interesting and learned collection of essays, many of which open up new angles of approach to the study of Judaism in the Hellenistic, and more especially the Roman periods. The diversity of the essays offers something for many different interests. Gruen and Horbury are somewhat exceptional in the volume in focusing on literary evidence, mainly from the pre-Christian period. Seth and Daniel Schwartz deal with historical issues, also from the Hellenistic age. The predominant contributions of the volume, however, are to the social history of Jews in the Roman period. Isaac and Noy (and also Rajak) deal with archeological evidence; Cotton and Oppenheimer with legal documents; Baumgarten, Levine, and Williams with community organization (Baumgarten's essay deals mainly with the Hellenistic period); Satlow, Joshua Schwartz, and Stem (and also Rajak) with cultural values and assumptions. The essays of Satlow and Joshua Schwartz are noteworthy for their attention to aspects of culture that seldom receive attention in standard treatments; Baumgarten's work is important for its thorough-going sociological approach. But there is much to be learned from all these essays, and ifthey are characterizedmore by diversity than by thematic unity, they suggest that the same may be true of Judaism in the Greek and Roman periods. John J. Collins Divinity School University ofChicago Israel and the Bomb, by Avner Cohen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. 470 pp. $29.95 (c). Israel's development of nuclear weapons, beginning about 40 years ago, and the attendant limitations on divulging information about the project officially, produce a fascinating story. Despite innumerable attempts to force the government to acknowledge that indeed it does possess the bomb, the standard position remains largely what it was in the 1960s: "Israel will not be the fIrst to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East." At one time, there might have been some doubt; the unusual formulation kept outsiders guessing. But now that it is widely accepted that Israel has such weapons, and in quantity, it is reasonable to ask whether the traditional policy still makes sense. Given the intense secrecy that has surrounded the project, Israel has never had a full-scale political debate on the subject ofnuclear weapons. With the genie out ofthe bottle, not only in the sensational fashion associated with Mordechai Vanunu's revel- Book Reviews 181 ations or in the journalistic treatment of Seymour Hersh, but finally in a scholarly format that adroitly uses recently released government archival material, perhaps the long-awaited debate canbegin. Butas Avner Cohen demonstrates so persuasively in this very thoroughly researched volume, the whole matter of nuclear weapons is such a sensitive issue that hardly anyone in Israel seems inclined to initiate public debate. Cohen analyzes the long-standing Israeli policy of opacity and demonstrates how it evolved in response to the necessities ofthe critical developmental period, when Israel was reluctant to confront openly the non-proliferation policies pursued by the United States. The U.S., for its part, played along by not compelling Israel to reveal the secrets ofthe Dimona reactor and even sent inspectors (to Israel they were just visitors) to the facility on a regular basis during the 1960s. However, Israel managed, through a combination of deception and delay, to prevent them from observing anything that might confirm the existence of a nuclear weapons program. Furthermore, all of the visits were held on Saturdays at Israel's insistence, which minimized the contact between the visitors and regular personnel at the reactor. Thus the U.S. never gathered conclusive evidence about the program. Despite strong suspicions within the intelligence community, the political echelon never...