The Israeli Peace Movement: A Shattered Dream

The Israeli Peace Movement: A Shattered Dream By Tamar S. Hermann

Publisher: Cambridge University Press 2009-09-14 | 320 Pages | ISBN: 0521884098 | PDF | 1.5 MB

This books deals with the predicament of the Israeli peace movement, which, paradoxically, following the launching of the Oslo peace process between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993, experienced a prolonged, fatal decline in membership, activity, political significance, and media visibility. After presenting the regional and national background to the launching of the peace process and a short history of Israeli peace activism, the book focuses on external and internal processes and interactions experienced by the peace movement, after some basic postulates of its agenda were actually, although never explicitly, embraced by the Rabin government. The analysis brings together insights from social movement theory and theories on public opinion and foreign and security policymaking. The book's conclusion is that, despite its organizational decline and the zero credit given to it by the policymakers, in retrospect it appears that the movement contributed significantly to the integration of new ideas for possible solutions to the Middle East conflict in the Israeli mainstream political discourse.

Contents

Acknowledgments page vii

1. Introduction 1

2. Exploring Peace Activism – A Road Map 12

Theoretical and Historical Milestones 14

Peace Movements as Social Movements and National Security

Agents 29

Methodology 40

3. Mapping the Israeli Sociopolitical Terrain 45

Historical-Ideological Legacies 45

Sociopolitical Cleavage Structure 47

Israeli Grassroots Political Participation Landscape 51

4. Paving the Road to Oslo – Israeli Peace Activism through 1993 62

The Israeli Peace Movement: Basic Features 62

Walking Down the Footpath – the Prestate and the Formative

Phase (1925–1966) 74

Exploring the Country Road – from the 1967 War to the

Aftermath of the 1973 War 79

Hitting the Highway – from the Israeli-Egyptian Peace to the First

Gulf War (1978–1991) 88

A Curve in the Road – 1992–1993 108

5. The Path Strewn with Obstacles (1993–2008) 111

Road Signs 111

The Rest Area Zone 120

The Bumpy Road Zone 149

The Checkpoint Zone 174

The Dark Tunnel Zone 189

The Dead-End Point 213

v

vi Contents

6. A Path Finder – Exploring New Ways or Getting Lost? 240

Effecting National Policy 243

Relations with the Political Establishment 244

Establishing Facts on the Ground 245

Reaching Out to the Jewish-Israeli Public 246

Relations with Arab Israeli Citizens and the Palestinians in the

Territories 249

Intramovement Relations 255

Modifying the Jewish Israeli Discourse on Peace and Security 257

Increasing the Level of Political Pluralism 259

Influencing Specific Policies 259

Improving Israel’s External Image 260

Magnifying Silenced Voices and Public Sectors 261

Appendix 1: List of Israeli Peace Groups 267

Appendix 2: Israeli Jewish Public Opinion on the Oslo Process

(1994–2008) 276

Oslo monthly support index 276

Oslo monthly support by levels of religious observance 276

Oslo monthly support by gender 277

Oslo monthly support by ethnic origin 277

Oslo monthly support by income 278

Oslo monthly support by level of education 278

Bibliography 279

Index 305

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