Civil Organizations and Protest Movements in Israel: Mobilization around the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

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Ci v i l Organiz ations and Protest Movements in Israel

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Ci v i l Organiz ations and Protest Movements in Israel Mo b iliz atio n a ro und t h e Isra eli-Pa l estinia n C o nfl i ct

Edited by Elisabeth Marteu

civil organizations and protest movements in israel Copyright © Elisabeth Marteu, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-61481-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Civil organizations and protest movements in Israel : mobilization around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict / edited by Elisabeth Marteu. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-230-61481-7 1. Arab-Israeli conflict—1993—-Protest movements—Israel. 2. Political activists—Israel. I. Marteu, Elisabeth. DS119.76.C58 2009 956.9405'4—dc22 2008041657 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: June 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

List of Contributors

ix

List of Illustrations

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Foreword: Movement-Countermovement Dynamics and the Dynamics of Radicalization Prof. Bert Klandermans Introduction: Exploring New Perspectives: Israeli Civil Mobilization and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Elisabeth Marteu

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1

I

Israeli Settler Mobilizations

1

After the Gaza Withdrawal: The Settlers’ Struggle over the Meaning of the Israeli National Identity David Khalfa

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American Orthodox Immigrants’ Mobilization and Integration in Israel Wasfi Kailani

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2

II Israeli Peace Movements 3

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Political Activism and Legitimacy in Israel: Four Groups between Cooperation and Transgression Karine Lamarche

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Framing, Misframing, and Reframing: The Fiddler at Beit-Iba Checkpoint Ruthie Ginsburg

91

vi

5

6

7

Contents

Activists Squeezed between the “Apartheid Wall” and the “Separation Fence”: The Radicalism versus Pragmatism Dilemma of Social Movements: The Case of the Israeli Separation Barrier Yuval Feinstein Doves of a Feather: A Comparative Analysis of Identity-Based Peace and Conflict-Resolution Organizations (P/CROs) in Israel, Northern Ireland, and South Africa Raviv Schwartz Looking Out for the Arabs: Mobilization in Favor of the Israeli-Arab Sector in the Galilean Mitzpim Hilltop Settlements Pierre Renno

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III Palestinian Arab Organizations in Israel and Jerusalem 8

Lawyering for the Cause of the Arab Minority in Israel: Litigation as Means for Collective Action Hélène Sallon

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Arab Palestinian Women’s Organizations in Israel: Civil Organizations without National Movement? Elisabeth Marteu

187

10 The Battle for Recognition: Civil Society, Citizenship, and the Political Rise of the Negev Bedouin Richard Ratcliffe

209

11 Inhabitants’ Mobilization for City Planning in East Jerusalem Irene Salenson

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Conclusion

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Index

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9

Acknowledgments

The original project which led to this book started in April 2006 during the doctoral seminar of the French Research Center in Jerusalem (CRFJ-CNRS), which brought together young scholars working on civil mobilizations in the Israeli-Palestinian context. I am grateful to the CRFJ and all the participants of this international seminar for the scientific quality and dynamism of this doctoral meeting. I am grateful to the contributors to this book, whose contributions and patience were indispensable in the publication process. I thank the reviewers, the members of the reading committee, whose support, advice, and comments provided crucial help at various points: Samy Cohen (CERI, Paris), Sari Hanafi (American University of Beirut), Tamar Hermann (Open University, Tel Aviv), Hagai Katz (ICTR, Ben Gurion University of the Negev), Nonna Mayer (CEVIPOF, Paris), David Newman (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), Cédric Parizot (CNRS-CRFJ), Schlomo Reznik (Emek Yezreel College), Johanna Siméant (Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne). I thank Professor Bert Klandermans (Free University Amsterdam) for his foreword and his interesting and generous participation. I am especially grateful to Nonna Mayer, Cédric Parizot, and Richard Ratcliffe (Oxford University) for their unconditional support and their help all along the dissertation process.


Contr ibutors Yuval Feins tei n PhD Candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He did a master’s degree at the University of Haifa (Israel) and submitted in 2006 a thesis entitled “Between the ‘Security Fence’ and the ‘Apartheid Wall’: Dynamics of Contention between the State and Social Movements: The case of the Separation Barrier between Israel and the West Bank.” Publications: With Uri Ben-Eliezer, “The Battle over Our Homes: Reconstructing/Deconstructing Sovereign Practices Around Israel’s Separation Barrier on the West Bank,” Journal of Israel Studies 12, no. 1 (2007).

Ruthi e G ins burg PhD candidate in the Department of Hermeneutics at Bar Ilan University. Her dissertation is titled “With Open Eyes: A Critical Inquiry Into the Monitoring by Israeli Human Rights Organizations in the Occupied Territories Through Interpretative Reading of their Reports.”

Wasf i K ail ani Jordanian PhD anthropologist, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His PhD dissertation is titled “Identities in Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem: American Orthodox Jews Between the Holy and the Mundane, 2000–2007.” He has been involved in various research projects, mainly focused on Jerusalem society and Arab-Jewish boundaries and on Jordanian-Israeli relations. Publications: Gadi Wolsfeld, Eitan Alimi, and Wasfi Kailani, “News Media and Peace Building in Asymmetrical Conflicts: The Flow of News between Jordan and Israel,” Political Studies, 56, no 2 (2008).

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Contributors

Dav id K halfa PhD candidate in political sciences at the Paris-I-Pantheon Sorbonne University. A fellow of the French research center in Jerusalem (CRFJ) from 2006 to 2007, he studied the settler movement’s influence on the Israeli decision-making process. He is affiliated with the International Relations and Strategy Research Center (CRIS) and teaches as a lecturer at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). He currently works for the French Foreign Ministry as a consultant on Middle East affairs. Recent publications: “Israel-Palestine: Que restet-il de l’initiative de Genève?” Cités, Paris: PUF, no. 20 (2004); “The Settler Movement on the Verge of Schism,” Le Meilleur des Mondes 6 (February–March 2008).

Kar i ne L amarc he PhD candidate in social sciences at EHESS and ENS—Centre Maurice Halbwachs (Paris). She is assistant lecturer at the University of Lille III. She leads research about the antioccupation movements in Israel. Her recent publications: “Obéissance et désobéissance en Israël. L’objection de conscience en question” in Obéir/désobéir. Les mutineries de 1917 en perspective, ed. Nicolas Mariot et André Loez, Paris: La Découverte, 2008. “Sous le regard des mères: l’observation des checkpoints par les femmes du groupe israélien Machsom Watch,” Confluences Méditerranées (2006).

E li sab eth M arteu PhD from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) in cooperation with Ben Gurion University (Israel). She is assistant lecturer in political science at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. She was a fellow of the French research center in Jerusalem (CRFJ), 2004–2006. She is involved in researching Palestinian civil organizations, women’s groups, and transnational mobilizations. Recent publications: “Genre et nation en mouvement: les nouveaux enjeux de la mobilisation féminine arabe en Israël,” Raisons politiques, 24 (2006). “Some Reflections on How Bedouin Women relate to Politics: Between political Marginalization and Social Mobilization,” Bulletin du CRFJ 16 (2005).

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R i c hard Ratc li ffe Richard Ratcliffe is just completing his PhD on the politics of nonformal education and social activism among the Negev Bedouin, Israel, at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford University. As part of this study, he spent three years working with different Bedouin NGOs in Israel as a consultant, researcher, and teacher. He is the author of “The Moment of Education: The Politics of Education among the Negev Bedouin, Israel,” in Aspects of Education in the Middle East and North Africa, ed. C. Brock and L. Levers (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2007).

Pi er re Renno PhD candidate and assistant lecturer in political science at Paris 1-Sorbonne University (CRPS). He graduated from the Institute of Political Studies of Rennes (2002) and from the DEA in International Relations at Paris 1-Sorbonne University (2003). He used to be a research fellow at Paris 1-Sorbonne (2003–2006) and at the French Research Center in Jerusalem (CRFJ) in 2007. Recent publication: “L’introuvable déségrégation ethnique des villages communautaires galiléens,” Bulletin du CRFJ 17 (2006).

Irene S alens on PhD in geography and city planning, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University, December 2007. Her dissertation was titled “Aménager la ville imaginée: Politiques et stratégies urbaines à Jérusalem [Planning the Imagined City: Planning Policies and Urban Strategies in Jerusalem].” She was welcomed at the French research center in Jerusalem (CRFJ) from 2003 to 2005 (Grant Lavoisier and Seurat). She is currently assistant lecturer at the Institute of Planning and Environment, University of Reims. Recent publication: “Jérusalem en 2020 sous l’œil des urbanistes,” Bulletin du CRFJ, 16 (2005).

Hél ène S al lon PhD candidate in political science at the Institut des Sciences du Politique, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, France, and a former fellow of the French research center in Jerusalem (CRFJ). Her paper “The Judicialization of Politics in Israel: The Promotion of Arab Collective Claims in the Judicial Arena” has been published in Bulletin du CRFJ 16 (2005).

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Contributors

R av iv S c hwartz Raviv Schwartz completed his doctoral degree at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, where he was a recipient of the prestigious Kreitman Fellowship. His research has focused on issues related to philanthropy, Diaspora-Israel relations and their effects on Israeli society. He has also conducted a series of independent research efforts, commissioned by governmental and non-governmental sources in the areas of intergroup relations inside Israel and comparative aspects of conflict in Israel, Northern Ireland and Cyprus. He is currently teaching at the Hebrew University in an MA program in “Community Leadership and Philanthropy Studies”.Recent publications include “Sponsors or Spoilers: Diasporas and Peace Processes in the Homeland,” in ed. G. Ben-Porat The Failure of The Middle East Peace Process? A Comparative Analysis of Peace Implementation in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland and South Afirica, Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; with Gidron Benjamin, Yael Elon, and Avital Schlanger, The Sector of Philanthropic Foundations in Israel: Characteristics, Functions, Relationship with Government and Patterns of Management, Israeli Center for Third Sector research, Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev, 2006.

I llu strations Tab les 6.1 Strategy for analysis of data 6.2 Summary of main findings 8.1 The three main organizations lawyering for Arab-Palestinian minority rights in Israel

140 141 170

Fig ures 1.1 Evacuation of a young woman by the Israel defense forces during the 2005 Gaza disengagement (Photo: Shay Shmueli, AFP, August 17, 2005) 1.2 Settlers from the Gush Katif praying before the arrival of the Israeli soldiers (Photo: Shay Shmueli, AFP, August 03, 2005) 3.1 A demonstration of “Courage to Refuse.” On the pennant, one can read, “Israelis refuse to serve in the Territories,” and under the blue star, “Refusing for Israel.” (Photo: Karine Lamarche) 3.2 Woman from Machsom Watch in discussion with an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint in the West Bank (Photo: Dafna Banai) 4.1 Below, the “Fiddler at Beit-Iba,” photographed by Horit Heram-Peled, 2004 http://www.horit.com. Above, “Irritating tones,” photographed by Dana Yosef, 2004. 5.1 Demonstration in Bil’in: Clash between protesters and soldiers (Photo: Yuval Feinstein) 9.1 Palestinian flag in a demonstration organized by the Arab Communist Party in Nazareth, May 1, 2008 (Photo: Elisabeth Marteu) 9.2 Demonstration of Islamic women after the death of Sheikh Yassin, Nazareth, March 2004 (Photo: Charlotte Shama)

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Fo rewo rd Movement-Counter movement Dynamics and the D yna mi cs o f R a di ca li z at i o n

Prof. Bert Klandermans (Free University Amsterdam)

Israeli society has many cleavages, but one big conflict—the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. Social mobilization seems to always be somehow related to this all-embracing struggle. Civil Organizations and Protest Movements in Israel: Mobilization Around the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict bears witness to this observation. A group of young scholars tries to make sense of movements and mobilization on both sides of the controversy. They describe the trajectory movements, movement organizations, and activists have gone through over the past decades and try to understand the “why” of these trajectories. Social movements evolve over time, and so does the national and international context in which they develop. Social movements are rooted in civil society and make use of the social capital accumulated in civil society. In deeply divided societies such as Israel, and in the past Northern Ireland and South Africa, one may wonder whether there exists one civil society or several. Whose society are we talking about in those countries, that of the white or the black South Africans, that of the Protestants or the Catholics in Northern Ireland, that of the Arabs or the Jews in Israel? Obviously, in each of those countries only one segment of the populations sharing the same territory controlled the state. Inevitably, conflicts about the distribution of commodities develop (be it land, jobs, income, or welfare), and equally inevitably, the state takes sides with those who control the state. The history of the three conflicts illustrates that it is very difficult—although not impossible—to get away from the vicious circle of one population group mobilizing to claim its rights vis-à-vis the other, which in turn mobilizes to defend its rights.

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Such a movement-countermovement dynamic tends to keep itself rolling (Meyer and Staggenborg 1996). Every revival of movement activity on one side generates new activity on the other side. Each of the three countries provides numerous examples of how attempts to mediate or resolve the conflict are undermined by activities of radicals on both sides. Sometimes, when the movement seems on the decline, action staged by the countermovement helps it to revitalize and vice-versa. Movement-countermovement dynamics easily turn into a process of radicalization. Gradually, the more radical groups on both sides take over and make it more difficult—sometimes even dangerous—for the moderates to carry on. As a consequence, politics in a society may radicalize altogether. Increasingly, organizations are forced to take sides. Multiorganizational fields become divided into opposing sectors that do not interact anymore. Processes like these are not easy to roll back; as a result a deeply divided society develops, where population groups see each other as enemies.

Movement Dynamics Social movement literature describes these movement dynamics in terms of the changing mobilizing context in a country, that is, in terms of the changes in the demand and supply of protest and in terms of mobilization (Klandermans 2004). The demand side of protest refers to the potential of protestors in a society; the supply side refers to the characteristics of the social movement sector in a society; mobilization refers to the techniques and mechanisms that link demand and supply. A proper understanding of the dynamics of protest requires insight into each of the three aspects. Demand for protest is determined by the level of grievances in a society. If the level of grievances rises in a society, more and more people are prepared to take part in protest. In deeply divided societies the level of grievances is inevitably high. The dynamics described in the previous paragraphs make for a strong demand for protest on both sides of the divide. Yet, as strong as the demand for protest might be—as high the level of discontent is—without an appealing supply of protesters nothing would happen. The supply side of protest concerns the characteristics of the social movement sector in a society, its strength, its diversity, and its contentiousness. In a deeply divided society we find organizations at both sides of the cleavage that are staging and offering opportunities for people to take part in protest. These organizations will keep the controversy alive, as they have a

Foreword

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vested interest in the continuation of the conflict; after all, the conflict is their raison d’être. As a consequence, chances are high that a movement-countermovement dynamic will evolve. The supply side of protest usually concerns a network of organizations, some of which are established for the reason of the conflict, some of which are drawn into it. Not unlikely, these organizations receive support from outside allies, which gives an international element to the situation. This certainly holds for many of the organizations involved in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. Demand and supply would still not bring citizens very far if effective processes of mobilization did not bring a demand for protest together with a supply of protest opportunities. Communication networks are of crucial significance in that respect. In a situation of high demand and supply, which is the case in deeply divided societies, no sophisticated persuasion techniques are needed to get people up in arms; they are eager to take it to the street.

Motivati onal Dynami c s How do individual citizens become involved in protest movements? Social movement literature distinguishes three fundamental reasons why movement participation might be appealing to people: people may want to change their circumstances, they may want to act as members of their group, or they may want to express their views. I suggest that together these three motives account for most of the demand for collective political action in a society. Social movements may supply the opportunity to fulfill these demands, and the better they do, the more movement participation turns into a satisfying experience. In order to refer in brief to these three types of transactions of demand and supply I will use as shortcuts the words instrumentality, identity and ideology. Instrumentality refers to movement participation as an attempt to influence the social and political environment; identity refers to movement participation as an expression of identification with a group; and ideology refers to movement participation as an expression of one’s views. Social movement organizations are more or less successful in satisfying demands for collective political participation, and we may assume that movements that are successfully supplying what potential participants demand gain more support than movements that fail to do so. Movements and movement organizations can be compared in terms of their effectiveness in this regard.

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Foreword

R adic al iz ati on Instrumental, identity, and ideological motives play an important role in processes of radicalization. In a first step of radicalization collective identities politicize. That is to say, people start to define their collective identity in opposition to some other group. In a second step, ideological motives become increasingly important and also more important than instrumental motives. As a consequence, it becomes more and more difficult to define compromises. In a third step, the range of acceptable beliefs, attitudes, and behavior becomes narrower and narrower, while the range of unacceptable beliefs, attitudes, and behavior becomes wider and wider; beliefs, attitudes, and behavior people are indifferent about become more and more rare. All this is accompanied by ever stronger identification and ever stronger ideological convictions. Such processes of individual radicalization are paralleled at the level of multiorganizational fields. Increasingly, organizations are forced into alliances with some organizations and into conflict with others. Eventually, organizations with strong ideological stands find themselves at opposite sides of the societal divide.

Stu dy i ng th e Is r aeli -Pales ti ni an Confli ct Conflicts like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have everything to make them last and radicalize. The papers in this volume underscore this argument. This is not to say that nothing could be done to ease the situation and to work on peaceful solutions. In that respect, understanding movement-countermovement dynamics and the dynamics of radicalization is an important step. The efforts of this group of young scholars are a good example of such an attempt to understand. Radicalization is a process that evolves both at the individual level and the movement level. It is difficult to say what comes first: do individuals radicalize because movements radicalize, or do movements radicalize because individuals radicalize? After all, radicalization is a process that evolves gradually in interaction between the two levels. Therefore, those who want to understand radicalization need to understand both levels and how they interact. Similarly, campaigns to counter radicalization must take both levels into account. At the same time, if we do not understand the movement-countermovement dynamic, we may miss the point as well. We must try to understand both sides of the divide. If we don’t, our efforts can easily be interpreted as taking sides. Remember that in a radicalized environment there is hardly room for neutral or moderate positions.

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Referenc es Klandermans, Bert. 2004. The demand and supply of participation: Social psychological correlates of participation in a social movement. In Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. David A. Snow, Sarah Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 360–79. Oxford: Blackwell. Meyer, David S., and Suzanne Staggenborg, 1996. Movements, countermovements, and the structure of political opportunity. American Journal of Sociology 101: 1628–61.


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Introduction

Explor ing New Perspectives Is r ael i Ci vi l Mo b ili z at i o n a nd the Is r aeli- Pales ti nia n C o nf l i ct

Elisabeth Marteu

I

n May 2008, Israel celebrated its sixtieth birthday with official ceremonies and popular events. At the same time Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza commemorated the Nakba, as they name the “catastrophe” of the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. Sixty years after the establishment of the State of Israel, Israeli society is fragmented, socioeconomic tensions are strengthening, the crisis of trust in politics and politicians is culminating, and the Zionist myth of the Sabra, the new idealistic Israeli citizen, has been contested Arab citizens, who composed nearly twenty percent of the Israeli population, are not integrated in a state which defines itself as “Jewish and democratic,” and no peace solution with the Palestinians seems realistic in the near future. Since the development in the mid-1970s of the first massive social movements in Israel various political and civil groups have emerged within the public sphere. Both the transformation of the Israeli liberal economy as well as the failure of the Oslo peace process have intensified the establishment of interest- and identity- or community-based organizations that mix social and political repertoires of action. Israel faces an unprecedented situation where various and opposing visions I owe special thanks to Nonna Mayer (CEVIPOF, Paris), Cedric Parizot (CNRSCRFJ Jerusalem), and Richard Ratcliffe (Oxford University) for their helpful comments and advice on this chapter.

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Elisabeth Marteu

of society struggle to change the state’s social and political nature. Jewish settlers, peace activists, anarchists, and feminists, but also Arab nationalists and Islamists are contesting the Israeli public sphere and are changing its configuration. In this, Israel is located at the crossroad of national, regional, and international tensions that challenge its current and future stability. The outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000 marked the failure of the Oslo peace process and accelerated the rise of both Israeli and Palestinian extremist movements refusing dialogue and cooperation. Subsequent peace actions such as the Geneva Initiative conducted after the failure of the Taba talks in 2001 did not succeed and confirmed the current weakness of mainstream peace coalitions. Jewish settlers intensified their occupation of Palestinian lands with the more or less tacit support of Israeli authorities. The Gaza withdrawal in 2005 evacuated eight thousand settlers, representing only two percent of the total settler population in the Palestinian Territories. In spite of this localized failure, settler mobilization is still very active and well integrated within the Israeli parliamentary system where they constitute a political force to be reckoned with. Ehud Olmert’s government, elected in 2006 after the forced departure of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, just authorized in April 2008 the construction of hundred housing units in El Kana and Ariel, two settlements in northern West Bank. In spite of the road map established by the Quartet for Israeli Palestinian peace (United Nations, USA, European Union and Russia), settlements and violence continue. Furthermore, in order to reduce formal contacts with Palestinians and to prevent potential suicide attacks, Israel started in 2002 the construction of the controversial separation wall. The current situation in the Palestinian Territories and more specifically in Gaza is very chaotic. The death of Yasser Arafat in November 2004, the longstanding charismatic leader of the Palestinian resistance, and the 2006 electoral success of Hamas provoked unprecedented inter Palestinian conflict and reprisals. Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority since 2005, did not manage to contain Islamist protest in Gaza where they unilaterally proclaimed the creation of an Islamic Republic in June 2007. On a regional level, the consequences of the last Lebanon war in summer 2006 and the current Lebanese political instability accentuate regional tensions along with the American “crusade” against Syria and Iran. Israel is thus located within a complex and unstable regional and international framework that influences its internal civil society. In nearly thirty years pro- and antisettlement movements have intensified

Exploring New Perspectives

3

and enlarged their struggle, and Arab citizens have organized publicly their national claims. The public communalization of Palestinian citizens of Israel has intensified over the last five years. Arab citizens support the Palestinian Intifada, en masse they contested the Israeli invasion in South Lebanon in 2006 and the Israeli military intervention in Gaza in December 2008–January 2009. They now largely claim their distinctive Arab and Palestinian identity. In 2007, Arab organizations published four texts and declarations asking notably for the recognition of Israel’s responsibility in the Nakba, a strict democratic equality between Jews and Arabs, and a minority status for Arab citizens.1 Since the conflict operates as one of the main oppositional matrices within Israeli society, multicultural, multiethnonational, as well as multipartisan tendencies are reflected in civil organizations and movements. The objective of this book is thus to analyze the impact of the conflict on the structuration of Israeli civil movements and to move beyond the common bipolar vision between pro- and antipeace groups that masks a variety of different positions and a changing reality. How do civil movements illustrate the composite and conflictual nature of the Israeli society? How do civil movements challenge the identity of the Israeli state? How do civil movements inform on the current changing nature of the Israeli state and its relations with the Palestinians?

A M u lt ip l e Overv iew f or a C omplex Reali ty This book is the result of a scientific meeting and cooperation between young scholars and PhD candidates working on civil mobilization. The different articles that were discussed in April 2006 on the occasion of the first research seminar organized by the French Research Center in Jerusalem, offer a variety of original and unique case studies and reflections on civil mobilization. They provide different points of view from the settlers, the peace camp as well as the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians living in Jerusalem. They are based on information and interviews collected during the PhD candidates’ fieldwork, articulating ethnographic interviews, participant observation, and statistical analyses. They provide also different theoretical orientations, and thus concepts can be used in different manners and different meanings. The collective volume respects contributors’ choices and specificities. It is the first time that a single book offers such a complex overview, putting into perspective different case studies and theoretical tools on the post-Oslo Israeli and Palestinian societies.

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Elisabeth Marteu

Our objective in this collective volume is to highlight the different facets of civil mobilization organized around the conflict, more specifically during the last eight years and the new configuration of the Second Intifada. Among other things, groups opt for different positions and ideologies, they use different forms of contention, they gather different members, they are differently covered by the media, and they influence differently the public authorities. The ambition in bringing them together is to offer a comprehensive overview of this civil sphere that will reveal the inner heterogenic and uncertain social reality in Israel. In August 2007 the Israeli army forcibly evacuated several Israeli settler families in Hebron. The much-publicized mobilization of the settlers was reminiscent of the large demonstrations and protest actions organized against the Gaza withdrawal in summer 2005. Despite its heterogeneity, the settler movement is politically influential and well covered in the Israeli media. Initiated in the mid-1970s, today this social movement constitutes one of the main political movements in Israel. Alongside this “rightist” collective mobilization we find the “left wing” groups struggling against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. Tens of Israeli peace and antisettlement organizations constitute the “peace camp.” Again established in the mid1970s (Cathala 1990), these structures gained power and legitimacy during the 1990s and the Oslo peace process. It was primarily the first Palestinian Intifada (1987–1993) that provoked the publicization of the Palestinian resistance movement and the rise of various peace and antioccupation initiatives (Lockman and Beinin 1989). It also contributed to the international mediatization of the conflict. Various civil groups started to send messages of support and to organize demonstrations of protest against the Israeli military occupation. In Israel, too, various civil groups mobilized to support the Palestinian cause: women’s silent vigils were organized by Women in Black, protest actions and solidarity activities were initiated by Dai La’Kibush, and public calls for military boycott organized by the refuznik members of Yesh Gvul (Kaminer 1996). Their success, observable in Israeli-Palestinian civil activities and campaigns as well as the famous “people to people” programs, is increasingly only a memory today (Palestine Israel Journal 2005). The failure of the Oslo peace process and the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000 provoked an unprecedented crisis in the peace camp, not least since peace organizations gather different—even opposing—ideologies and strategies of action. Thus the broad heterogeneity of the Israeli peace camp encompasses radical


5

and violent demonstrations, coexistence programs and dialogue, vigils and silent sit-ins, as well as international advocacy campaigns. In the bipolar picture of the Israeli protest movements, between the apparent powerful settler movement and the less influent peace activists, several other actors have increasingly come to defend their own position. Most notably, the Arab citizens of Israel also started their public involvement in protest action from the mid-1970s, more precisely since the demonstrations of the 1976 Land Day. Their contention culminated in October 2000 when thirteen Palestinians were killed during demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian uprising. Arab civil organizations mushroomed in the 1990s and constitute today a large and active civil sphere using both subversive and more integrationist repertoires of action. Since 2006 their positioning is interesting, since they both struggle for the recognition of their minority status and claim their Israeli civil rights, but at the same time they vividly support the Palestinian cause and assert their solidarity with the struggle of the Occupied Territories. Identity belonging and pragmatic reality operate as correlated and coextensive parameters. Nevertheless, at the opposite of the partisan influence of the settlers or the more relative political links of the peace activists, Israeli Arab organizations do not intend to cooperate with Arab parties. They prefer to be involved in the civil sphere in order to get people legitimacy without official partisan connections. Their spatially and temporally limited political influence and the lack of internal coordination hinder them from becoming a real social movement, following Tilly and Tarrow’s definition (2007, 8). All of these organizations and movements are organized around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the various concerns deriving from it. They constitute a complex and multiple civil mobilization that is highly politicized and active in the public sphere. Their action is intended to challenge and to configure the “Jewish and democratic” legal definition of Israel (Basic Law 1992). Each group has its own definition of the Israeli state and the ideal Israeli democracy. Their conflict is a struggle around the characteristics, the nature, and the future of Israel. Furthermore, these issues are not limited to the Israeli-Palestinian space but are also widely spread around the world, gaining support from various international groups and individuals. They thus constitute an original phenomenon whose interdependence and opposing objectives reveal the composite nature of Israeli society. Finally, these civil groups and movements around the conflict are heterogeneous and changing. In nearly twenty years of public activism, notable transformations have affected the Israeli protest movements.

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The balance of power between settlers and peace groups has changed, as has that within the Israeli peace camp between Zionist moderates and radical groups. In spite of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, settlers are strongly influential within the parliamentary system. Furthermore, the creation by Ariel Sharon in November 2005 of the center-right Kadima party, which won the parliamentary elections by gathering both supporters of the Likud and the Labor Party illustrates a shift in political tendencies and the more rightist orientation of the Israeli electorate. Peace groups are fragmented and competing for legitimacy and political influence; some groups radicalized their activities on the border while other stand in the mainstream leftist Zionist ideology. The continuation of the conflict seems to weaken Arab and Jewish peace initiatives. Protest movements are thus still very active, but they affect differently the Israeli public sphere, and they have different political impact on Israeli public policy. Israeli Arabs, too, are divided between contentious but integrationist organizations and silent but more radical ones. This ambivalence is mostly characterized by the tensions that have emerged with the success of the Islamic movements. The emergence of an Islamonationalism, mostly erected upon the embers of a Palestinian nationalism incapable of managing internal affairs as well as negotiating peace, reflects the failure of the older figures of authority and legitimacy and their replacement by more radical and nonconsensual trends. They do not influence Israeli authorities but intend to bypass them and to propose alternative solutions. Israeli society is thus penetrated by opposite political visions and different civil organizations. In 2009 the situation seems to give the settler movement more prominent political strength, whereas radical peace groups affray Israeli public opinion and Israeli Arabs stand overtly out of the consensus. The politicization and radicalization of some civil movements evidence the growing boundaries and borders that have been settled within the Israeli society and between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The failure of the Oslo peace process and the outbreak of the Second Intifada reconfigured Israeli society, Israeli civil organizations, as well as sociopolitical challenges facing the Israeli regime.

State o f th e Art: E x is ti ng Studi es o n Civ il M ob il iz ation i n Is rael The wide majority of Israeli studies dedicated to civil movements focused on state-society relations in the changing neoliberal Israeli economy. This economic and structural pattern explains why studies


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on civil organizations have been dedicated largely to interest groups and more recently to third-sector organizations.

I n terest G roups The presupposition of the state as a source of authority and regulation as well as a focus of public contention is central to the wide majority of these studies. The reason is rooted in the specific history of the Israeli regime, the existence of quasi-state and institutional organizations before the state, the long-term interpenetration between state and third sector, mostly visible in the first years of the Israeli state with its corporatist system, and finally the institutionalization of the multiethnic confessional social pattern. Following a structural and socioeconomic approach some studies have focused on interest groups and their relations to the state authorities (Drezon-Tepler 1990; Yishai 1991 and 1998a). They have studied associations as well as trade unions and institutional foundations. All of them describe the historical evolution of the Israeli regime and its relationship with institutions and elites according to the following trajectory: (1) Before 1948, the Jewish immigrants’ affairs were managed by various quasi-state and politically based organizations. (2) During the early statehood, a statist ideology (mamlakhtiut), promoted by Ben Gurion, organized the state centrality into a party-state system and a corporatist regime. (3) Since the mid-1970s, the decline of statism has been characterized by a political pluralism, economic privatization, the differentiation of elite composition, and the growing mobilization of interest groups. Scholars conclude that Israel is still today a party-state in many aspects but at the same time the emergence of other centers is transforming the state in a mixture of corporatist, elitist and pluralist models. “Israel mixes three forms of participation in the policy process: the assertive form, where groups have a considerable influence, if they do not hold the lead; a cooperative pattern, where they are partners to policy making; and the exclusivist form, where associations take a limited role in shaping public decisions” (Yishai 1991, 307).

Th ird- Sec tor Organi z ati ons Following this interrogation on state-society relations, a second body of scholarship has developed around another concept, that of “thirdsector organizations.” The Institute for Third Sector Research at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva has been the leading institution for such research for nearly ten years. These scholars mainly use an

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economic and structural approach to analyze the sector of nonprofitmaking institutions in Israel.2 They focus on the sector’s economy, state-society relations, and the political culture of such Israeli organizations, including those inherited from the prestate period (Gidron 1997). This structural-functionalist approach is rooted in a consideration of the Israeli welfare system and its specificity, where Anheier and Salamon’s typology of welfare regimes is seen as too hermetic to fit the Israeli situation and needs to be adapted to its proper history and social composition (Gidron et al. 2003). For Gidron et al., this Israeli distinctiveness is marked in the “communovoluntarism” of the Israeli welfare system nurtured by the Jewish philanthropic tradition in the diaspora and the strong form of statism that characterizes the Israeli regime. ICTR scholars also pay also special attention to public policies and patterns of government funding to third-sector organizations (Gidron and Katz 2001). This approach reveals the historical evolution of state-society relations, the transformation of the former socialist regime, the emergence of sectoral and community-based organizations, and finally the Israeli paradox, which combines an interventionist welfare system with a diverse range of nonprofit organizations. Those studies focus on the neoliberal assumption of private organizations and the transformation of the welfare state prerogatives under the post-1970s triptych “modernization, individualism, and privatization.” More recently Gidron and Hasenfed (2005) have focused on the involvement process and used the collective action theoretical framework to study multipurpose hybrid voluntary organizations. Having defined the differences between civil society, social movements, and nonprofit organizations, they use various theoretical tools such as the study of political opportunities and resource mobilization, psychosocial studies, and frame analysis. Since no single theoretical perspective can explain the whole social reality, they refer to a variety of frameworks of thought.

Ci v il S o c iety Alongside these studies some researches have been conducted on “civil society,” its composite nature, and its relation to the Israeli state (Yishai 1998b; Migdal 2001). Other approaches mainly integrate an identity and cultural framework to study the emergence of identity-based organizations. For instance, Gideon Doron (in Norton 1996), in his study of Jewish and Arab civil societies in Israel, describes two different spheres defined and organized by ethnoconfessional belongings. Doron defines Israel as a nonliberal democracy with the coexistence


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of two so-called civil societies that developed along religionational lines at the same time in the mid-1970s. Specific studies have been conducted also about Arab organizations. Shany Payes (2005) analyzed the emergence of a distinct Arab civil sphere highly politicized and oriented toward service provision and minorities’ rights. Its position within the Israeli society and the ambivalence of its behavior toward the public authorities raise the question of the Arab citizens’ rights and place. Oded Haklai (2004) questioned the “civil” nature of such an Arab civil society, which seems to gather mostly identity- and community-based organizations working for the interests of a specific group. This study exemplifies the ambiguities between inclusive and exclusive models of civil societies and democracies. The concept of civil society is used in some chapters of this volume; nevertheless, we recognize its imprecise character and the various academic debates around its meaning. Optimistic studies insist on the managerial virtues of so-called NGOs in correlation with the criteria of good governance, the positive role of NGOs in the democratization process, and their capacity to create transnational networks and to overpass nation-states boundaries. “Global civil societies” would be able to coordinate transnational actions and to promote democracy. However, other studies have criticized this idealistic view, like that of Challand, who identified four problematic aspects in the concept of civil society: (1) a presumption of progress, (2) a debatable autonomy vis-à-vis the state, (3) a potential dichotomy between political and civil society, (4) the cultural embeddedness of the concept in European society (2005, 50–53). As several scholars have pointed out (see Otayek 2002), the concept of civil society was imported into countries of the global South with ideological assumptions that lead to identifying civil society with modern state, legal, and plural politics and then antireligious or anti-Islamic virtues. In the Israeli context, civil society and NGOs can be analyzed as agents for change and democracy if they follow the state’s values, but they can also be perceived as community groups challenging the Israeli identity. The concept of civil society is thus a composite term that gathers different realities and interpretations.

Protest Movements Following a European-based interest in “new social movements,” many studies have focused also on protest movements such as feminist movements, environmental organizations, and human rights groups. Based on structural and cultural approaches, the studies analyze changing

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values and democratic transformation, like that of Gadi Wolfsfeld (1988), who analyzed the evolution of both peace and settler movements since the mid-1970s. Women’s associations have been a prominent topic of interest for more than twenty years. Israeli academics and feminist militants have encouraged the development of gender studies departments in several universities. They have participated in the reinterrogation of women’s social reality during the idealized yishuv period (among others Hazelton 1977; Bernstein 1992) and have analyzed the place of women in the kibbutzim (among others Tiger and Shepher 1975). They have vividly criticized the patriarchal pattern of Israeli society based on male and military domination (Azmon and Izraeli 1988; Freedman 1990; Swirski and Safir 1991; Herzog 1999; Yishai 1997). It should be noted that women constitute also a significant proportion of peace militants involved in civil organizations. Many studies have been conducted on feminist and peace organizations such as Women in Black, the Jerusalem Link, Women for Women Political Prisoners, and more recently on Machsom Watch in a national and international framework (Swirsky 2003; Golan 1996; Espanioly 1994). More generally peace organizations constitute a stimulating topic that involves both academic and nonacademic writers (journalists, experts, testimonial writers, etc.). Kaminer (1996) made quite an exhaustive description of the Israeli peace movement’s reaction after the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987. According to his analysis, peace initiatives emerged during the mid-1970s, developed during the Lebanon war in the early 1980s, and flourished in the 1990s. Kaminer rightly insists on the heterogeneity of such a social movement, showing the variety of organizations mobilized within it. Indeed the “antiwar” social movement encompasses very different militants and structures, like the Zionist moderates close to the Labor Party or the Meretz involved in Peace Now, Anarchists against the Wall, Rabbis for Human Rights, Dai La’Kibush, and even radical leftist antiZionist organizations such as the ancient Matzpen and Derech Anitzot, whose members were imprisoned. Peace organizations are still closely studied by Israeli academics, like Tamar Hermann, who wrote several papers on the heterogeneous peace movement (Hermann and Newman 1990) and the role of civil society in peace building (2006). It confirms the perceived importance of civil mobilization and protest movements as an agent for peace in the Middle East. On the rightist camp several studies emerged considering the settler movement, which is mostly described as a social and political movement sharing the characteristics of both a civil and a partisan coalition of organizations. David Newman (1985 and 2005) has written various


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papers on the movement and on its members’ sociology as well as its political influence on government policies. It is today one of the most organized, publicized, and influential social movements in Israel. All of these studies combine structural approaches on state-society relations, but they also integrate an interest for culture and identity that goes beyond a simple reflection on ideology.

R e f l ec tio ns o n State and S oci ety : Mo bil iz ati on and Democ r acy Democracy is often a core point of interrogation for the study of social movements. The idea of civil society is linked to the democratization or consolidation of an already established democracy. In this, Israel is largely considered a democracy, though with specific characteristics. For instance, Smooha developed the concept of “ethnic democracy,” in which sovereignty belongs to every citizen but the state only belongs to the Jewish nation (1990). Peled goes further and observes that Israel provides two types of citizenship, republican for Jews and liberal for Arabs (1992: 432). Israeli democracy can be either integrative or nonintegrative; it depends on the organization’s identity. This raises the question of the legitimate representativeness of the Israeli state, in particular in disputed territories such as East Jerusalem. This problem is developed in this book by the article of Irène Salenson, which focuses on residents’ associations and their relations with municipal authorities. Since Jerusalemites have a special status, their social and political activities assume different legal meanings. Petitioning before the Israeli authorities for an urban problem leads to the indirect legitimization of the Israeli sovereignty. At the same time, these residents’ associations continue to ask for financial aid to organizations based in the Palestinian Territories. This social reality reveals the complexity of relations between state and civil societies. The study of Israeli civil society facilitates understanding the nature of Israeli society and the social groups’ borders within it. It questions also the various attitudes adopted by these groups to challenge the state in greater or lesser degrees of contestation. They can use integrationist, subversive, or even violent repertoires. Diverse forms of action can be used simultaneously by a single organization or movement according to its strategies and opportunities. Every organization or movement can articulate different forms of action: advocacy, lobbying, expertise, social activities, protest demonstrations, petitions, and others. In the present collected volume, this complexity is observable in the diversity of repertoires of contention. Women’s organizations

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prefer to use nonviolent vigils or demonstrations; the settler movement has developed extensive media campaigns articulating symbolic and violent actions; some antioccupation groups gather every Friday in the Palestinian village of Bil’in to confront the army and claim their opposition to the security fence or wall. Karine Lamarche in this book details the various strategies adopted by leftist groups and in particular these Friday demonstrations, which function as quasi-theatrical spaces with specific actors’ functions. She studies the effects of the routinization of violent repertoires of contention and their variable positioning toward collective consensus. Similarly, Raviv Schwartz compares identity-based peace and conflict-resolution organizations in Israel, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. He examines organizations that share a priori similar social identities—such as gender and religious orientation.—and shows the effects of subidentities as well as contextual specificities. He links directly identity and modes of action to this contextual framework. It can be argued that democracy depends mostly on the state’s ability to integrate people and their claims. Then social movements depend on administrative and political capacity as well as security and police politics (Della Porta 1998). This observation has often been made of civil mobilization in Arab countries, since the so-called democratic crusade in the South has become an international challenge over the last ten years. Several studies have questioned the democratic virtues of social and protest movements, but they have largely concluded that democracy is also—and maybe above all—a state responsibility (Ben Nefissa 2004; Fillieule and Chraibi 2003). Advocacy-based associations constitute a second generation of civil organizations largely oriented toward public pressure and the implementation of public policies. The modernization and professionalization of such activities constitute a new democratic stake. In the Arab world, grassroots organizations are primarily based on community allegiance and are often oriented toward links with the public authorities, whereas advocacy organizations are directed by a middle class linked to international funding (Ben Nefissa 2004, 13–20). This raises the question of the real democratic capacity and independence of civil organizations, democratic virtues that were initially promoted by Tocqueville. The Gramscian approach based on conflict and interdependence seems to be more suited to reflecting a complex social reality. Furthermore, this theorization of democracy and the ontological classification of regimes connected to a typology of potential social movements is partial and rigid. According to Tilly and Tarrow (2007), who revised their original dichotomy between democratic and nondemocratic regimes, composite regimes


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are characterized by transgressive but also contained contentions that coexist in an uneasy synthesis. They quote the Freedom House 2000 classification, which shows that Israel provides one of the highest ratings on political rights but civil liberties are compromised by unequal protections for different segments of the citizenry. They also specifically refer to the 2005 Gaza withdrawal and the violent dispute of the settlers. They conclude that in the Israeli-Palestinian context, in the case of horizontally segmented regimes, lethal and social movement politics coincide (Tilly and Tarrow 2007, 163–72).

Ci v il S o c iety : Social or Political Alter native? Another prominent idea about civil society is its capacity to constitute an alternative sphere for social activities. Either this sphere completes state deficiencies or it gathers disaffected people. Civil society is thus a new space for outsiders who face exclusion, a new mode of governance, as Richard Ratcliffe shows in this book regarding the Bedouin mobilization and the new public interest for the Bedouin territorial cause. This raises the question of the political nature of such a sphere. Siméant criticizes the traditional assumption that civil society gathers apolitical members (2003). In her study of militant careers, she insists that many activists do not replace a political experience by a more social and humanitarian one. Yet even though many scholars note the conversion of ex-leftist political militants in professional nongovernmental organizations (e.g., in France see Siméant 2001 and in Egypt see el-Khawaga 2003), and the professionalization of politics in NGOs (e.g., in Palestine see Hammami 1995), this is not a linear trajectory. This observation can be made for several case studies introduced in this volume: Arab women’s organizations as well as leftist groups or even the settler movement gather social and political goals and activities. The Islamic movement is one of the best examples of the combined articulation of both social services and political programs. At the same time, its independent and isolated form of action questions the democratic virtues of such alternative activities.

Th eo retic al Fr amework of the Book There are many theories on social movements that have not yet been applied to the Israeli case. As mentioned above, the papers presented in this volume are intended to provide different theoretical angles of view. We do not refer specifically to the study of collective behavior and

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the socio psychological reasons for collective action, such as primarily elaborated in the 1960s in America (Davies 1969; Gurr 1970).

R ati onal C ho ic e and R es ourc e Mo bi li z ati on In the mid-1960s rational choice theory tried to explain involvement with more rational and economic variables. The rational action paradigm came to dominate the field, primarily in America and later in Europe. Mancur Olson was the first famous theoretician of such rationalism, developing a model similar to that of economic game theory. According to Olson (1965), the larger the group, the more people prefer to “free ride” on the efforts of those individuals whose interest in the collective good is strong enough to pursue it; to overcome this problem, the leaders provide selective incentives. This approach, which had the advantage of considering the actors’ rationality and proving that grievances alone could not explain mobilization, has been complemented by the resource mobilization school. The very different scholars who use this approach have concentrated their attention on how collective actors operate and how they acquire resources and mobilize support. McCarthy and Zald (1977) focused on the resources available in advanced industrial societies. For them, expanded personal resources, professionalization, and external financial support provided a solution with the emergence of professional movement organizations. They publicized the concept of social movement organizations, the social movement industry, and social movement systems to understand the structural logic of a social movement. This approach is useful in the study of a large social movement, like the Israeli peace mobilization, since it insists on studying all the different actors and structures involved. Such an approach is used in this book by Pierre Renno in his study of the leftist civil organizations that emerged in the Galilean mitzpim. He refers to both structural and biographical data to follow the trajectories of two different organizations that emerged in the early 2000s after the outbreak of the Second Intifada. In spite of the success of such approaches in the early 1980s, various criticisms have been made of them. Sidney Tarrow (1994) criticizes the use of economic language, the difficulty of differentiating social movement organizations and interest groups, and the way in which they have focused on professional organizations and ignored the grassroots organizations that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Anthony Oberschall is another famous theoretician of resource mobilization.


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He proposed an interesting classification of mobilization depending on the form of socialization in groups of belonging (1973). This approach is nevertheless difficult to apply in the Israeli context, since composite regimes mix various social and community groups as well as various relations with the state. We suggest articulating the different types of mobilization elaborated by Oberschall in a more fluid and porous dynamic. We also find value in the approach of Charles Tilly (1978 and 1986), who pays more attention to political factors. Using the concept of “repertoires of contention” he developed a structural and historical model linking forms of mobilization with the kinds of states and regimes. In his analysis of cycles of contention he studied the effects of spatial and temporal diffusion. Old repertoires never disappear when new ones appear. They can be articulated in time and by a single organization. He insists thus on sequences, mechanisms, processes, and events. He is one of the theoreticians using the models of “political process” that have been publicized by McAdam since Freedom Summer (1988). In the same trend, Sidney Tarrow has systematized the use of the concept of “political opportunity structures.” The state is central in such an approach, and mobilization is understood in its political, legal, as well as social environment. This concept includes the degree of openness of the central state, the stability of alignments between political forces, the possibility of alliances and coalitions in politics, and the intensity of conflicts among the elites. According to Tarrow, “people engage in contentious politics when patterns of political opportunities and constraints change, employing a repertoire of collective action, creating opportunities which are used by others in widening cycles of contention . . . these opportunities are not an invariant model inevitably producing social movements. They are clues in a chain of causation” (2006, 19). In spite of the undisputable utility of such studies, the concept of opportunities has started to stretch and to encompass an infinite list of dimensions. All these structural approaches are relevant for our own analysis of the Israeli context. They are useful for our analysis of the IsraeliPalestinian situation, in which the nature of the regimes, the historical events, the political opportunities, as well as the social network dynamics contribute to explain mobilization. This explains why “repertoires of contention,” “political opportunities,” as well as “social networks” are largely used in the different papers of this volume.

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Cu lture and Fr ami ng Another structural but more cultural approach is characterized by the Europe-based “new social movements” theory. Largely developed by Inglehart (1971) and used by Touraine (1973), this approach insists that postmaterialist values have emerged in postindustrial states and impulsed new forms of identity mobilization. Various studies have been developed on such things as feminist movements, gay mobilization, and environmental lobbies. This approach is interesting because it insists on the beneficiaries of action, the new forms of contention, and the importance of culture and identity. Nevertheless it tends to deny the socioeconomic dimension of such mobilizations, which were considered by Touraine as new movements that would unfortunately never equal the earlier class- and worker- based mobilizations. In spite of the success of such studies, many questions remained unanswered, particularly those related to the individual reasons for action and the way people perceive their involvement. Accordingly, culture made a successful comeback in the late 1970s. Firstly, the concept of identity politics as been used to study community-based organizations. A new wave of studies on nationalism used the idea of constructed and interactive identities. Benedict Anderson exemplifies this approach in Imagined Communities (1983), whereas Hobsbawm insisted on The Invention of Tradition (1983). These studies are very relevant in the Israeli-Palestinian context, in which identities as well as histories are subjective and submitted to strategic interpretations. Secondly, the importance of “culture” has been embodied in the framing theories. Several papers in this book use this approach, like that of Yuval Feinstein, who details the different frames of action of leftist and pacifist activists squeezed between radical and more consensual repertoires of contention. This approach was initiated in 1974 by Goffman with the concept of “framing,” later with Klandermans’ concept of “consensus mobilization” (1988) and Gamson’s idea of “ideological packages” (1988). Snow and Benford (1992) continued to use and adapt this concept with their “frame alignment,” which consists in the meeting of social movements’ grievances and the population’s cultural predispositions. Social movements construct meanings that resonate with people’s predispositions. They use also the concept of “master frame” as a dominant frame of meanings and values influencing mobilization. The “rights” master frame, developed in the United States during the 1960s civil rights movements, constitutes today the most powerful and widespread frame for action. Hélène Sallon studies this process in this book in her analysis of the judicialization of political


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claims among Arab citizens in Israel. The use of legal mechanisms and judicial institutions in order to promote human rights is a widespread repertoire of action. Framing is also important in the way people define and perceive their involvement, but it is also very interesting to observe external perceptions. Media framing is thus a very relevant issue in the Israeli-Palestinian context where national, regional, and international journalists cover the conflict. Wolfsfeld (2000a) has dedicated several articles on such topic, in particular on the relation between media framing and minorities. He thus conducted a study on the way Israeli media cover Arab demonstrations (2000b). In the same vein Ruthie Ginsburg provides in this book a study of an event at a checkpoint that was differently covered by its various Israeli and Palestinian observers.

I ndiv idual Tr ajec tor i es a nd Mi li tant C areer s More recently, many scholars have tried to combine different approaches and to analyze unquestioned realities. New attention has been paid to individual, structural, and ideas’ itineraries. On an individual scale many scholars focus on personal stories, biographies, and other trajectories to analyze “militant careers.” Based on Becker’s concept of a “career,” they insist on the individual mechanisms that influence mobilization and its evolution in time (see the special volume “Devenir militants,” RFSP, vol. 51, no. 1–2, February–April 2001). Several papers in this book deal with the careers and itineraries of leftist militants, feminist activists, and professional members, but also of immigrants. For instance, Wasfi Kailany’s article deals with Jewish American immigrants in Israel and their different trajectories of mobilization. He thus analyzes the way American immigrants convert and reproduce competencies and repertoires of action acquired in the American context. On a structural scale the concept of itinerary refers to the transformation of civil organizations and movements, the incorporation of additional repertoires of action, the professionalization of various activities and employees, the openness toward new publics. Tarrow (1994) identifies four main categories of change: the institutionalization of disruptive forms of contention (through negotiation and compromise), the innovation at the margins of inherited forms, tactical interaction with police and actors, and paradigmatic changes. In this book changes have been observed concerning women’s associations that oriented their activities toward international gender-based organizations (Marteu). This is echoed in the inner diversity of the

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settlers’ movement, which adopted a variety of repertoires of action, for both confrontation and negotiation, in order to influence the decision-making process (Khalfa). The same observation has been made about Arab organizations that lead protest actions but try at the same time to negotiate through legal means (Sallon). It is also possible to observe alternative phases of “politicization” and retreat into countercultural activity. According to Della Porta and Diani (1999), adaptation is only one evolutionary possibility among many. In the case of social movement organizations, very few get institutionalized and few of them survive; some dissolve because their aims have been achieved. The institutionalization of one organization can go along with the radicalization of another. Last on the scale of the ideas and the strategies, many studies have developed on the question of the impact of social movements and civil mobilizations. It is difficult to evaluate this impact, since it can correspond to different goals and objective consequences. A first area for measuring the effects produced by social movements is that of actual policy. Movements can adopt proactive or reactive strategies. In each case the impact is different.

Struc ture of the Book In order to give a large overview of Israeli civil mobilizations, this collective volume is divided in three thematic chapters dealing with the settlers’ movement, the peace movement, and Arab citizens’ organizations. The first part of the book comprises two chapters on the settler movement. Both intend to insist on the inner complexity and heterogeneous nature of the Israeli Jewish settlers, their backgrounds as well as their strategies. Chapter 1 (Khalfa) analyzes the political consequences of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal on both Israeli politics and national identity. Chapter 2 (Kailani) focuses more specifically on the American Orthodox immigrants’ mobilization and process of integration into Israeli society. The second part is dedicated to peace movements and initiatives in support of the Palestinians. The four chapters analyze the development and reconfiguration of the Israeli peace groups in the post Oslo period. Chapter 3 (Lamarche) and chapter 5 (Feinstein) concentrate on their identity, their sociology, and the different impact they expect between pragmatism and radicalism. Chapter 4 (Ginsburg) deals with the framing and misframing process of the human rights discourse in Israel. She shows how this narrative is reinterpreted and reshaped by the sovereignty discourse of the Israeli state and how it is finally perceived


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by the public. Chapter 6 (Schwartz) compares identity-based peace and conflict-resolution organizations in Israel, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. Chapter 7 (Renno) analyzes and compares two types of organizations that emerged in Israeli settlements in Galilee to support the Arab citizens of Israel. Finally, the third part gathers chapters on Palestinian Arab organizations in Israel and in Jerusalem. The first three chapters deal with new professional forms of civil mobilizations among Arab citizens in Israel and their articulation of protest actions and negotiation. Chapter 8 (Sallon) analyzes the judicialization of politics among Arab citizens. Chapter 9 (Marteu) describes the evolution of Arab women’s organizations and their relations with Palestinian political movements in Israel. Chapter 10 (Ratcliffe) focuses on Bedouin organizations and the rise of new modes of governance and new public interest in the Negev. The last chapter concentrates on the more specific Jerusalemite context of civil organizations and public policies (Chapter 11, Salenson). This study tries to highlight the complex relation between people’s demands and political answers as a process of territorial legitimization in East Jerusalem. The eleven chapters offer nonexhaustive but representative case studies and an actual reflection on Israeli civil mobilization. This large overview should suggest both new knowledge and interrogations on the evolution of Israeli society in the context of the long term IsraeliPalestinian conflict.

Referenc es Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined communities. London: Verso. Azmon, Yael, and Dafna Izraeli, eds. Women in Israel. Studies of Israeli Society, vol. 6 (1988). Ben Nefissa, Sarah, et al. 2004. ONG dans le monde arabe. Le Caire: CEDEJ. Bernstein, Deborah. 1992. Pioneers and homemakers: Jewish women in the prestate Israel. Albany: State University of New York Press. Cathala, David. 1990. The peace movement in Israel 1967–1987. Oxford: St Anthony’s College, MacMillan Series. Challand, Benoit. 2005. The power to promote and to exclude: External support for Palestinian civil society. PhD diss., European University Institute, Florence. Davies, James. 1969. The J-curve of rising and declining satisfactions as cause of some great revolutions and a contained rebellion. In Violence in America, ed. H. D. Graham and Ted Gurr, 690–730. New York: Praeger.

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Della, Porta, Donatella. 1998. Police knowledge and the public order in Italy. In Policing protest: The control of mass demonstrations in Western democracies, ed. Donatella Della Porta and Herbert Reiter, 1–32. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Della, Porta, Donatella, and Mario Diani. 1999. Social movements: An introduction. Oxford; Malden (Mass.) Blackwell Publishers Inc. Drezon-Tepler, Marcia. 1990. Interest groups and political change in Israel. SUNY Series in Israeli Studies, Albany: State University of New York Press. Doron, Gideon. 1996. Two civil societies and one State: Jews and Arabs in the State of Israel, In Civil society in the Middle East, ed. Richard Norton, 2:193–220. Leiden: E. J. Brill. el-Khawaga, Dina. 2003. La génération seventies en Égypte. La société civile comme répertoire d’action alternative. In Résistances et protestations dans les sociétés musulmanes, ed. Olivier Fillieule and Mounia Bennani-Chraibi, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Espanioly, Nabila. 1994. Palestinian women in Israel: Identity in light of the occupation. In Women and the Israeli occupation: The politics of change, ed. Tamar Mayer, 106–20. London, New York: Routledge. Fillieule, Olivier, and Mounia Bennani-Chraibi, dirs. 2003. Résistances et protestations dans les sociétés musulmanes. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Fillieule, Olivier, and Nonna Mayer, dirs. February-April 2001. Devenir militants. Special issue, RFSP 51, no. 1–2. Freedman, Marcia. 1990. Exile in the Promised Land: A memoir. Ithaca: Firebrand. Gamson, William. 1988. Political discourse and collective action. In From Structure to Action, ed. Bert Klandermans and Kriesi Hanspeter, 219–46. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Gidron, Benjamin. 1997. The evolution of Israel’s third sector: The role of predominant ideology. Voluntas 8, no. 1: 11–30. Gidron, Benjamin, and Yeheskel Hasenfed, September 2005. Understanding multi purpose hybrid voluntary organizations: The contributions of theories on civil society, social movements and non-profit organizations. Journal of Civil Society 1, no. 2: 97–112. Gidron, Benjamin, and Hagai Katz. 2001. Patterns of government funding to third sector organizations as reflecting a de facto policy and their implications on the structure of the third sector. International Journal of Public Administrations 24, no. 11: 1133–59. Gidron, Benjamin, Hagai Katz, Hadara Bar-Mor, Joseph Katan, Ilana Silber, and Telias Motti. 2003. Through a new lens: The third sector and Israeli society. Israel Studies 8, no. 1: 20–59. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Golan, Daphna. 1996. Jerusalem Link: Des femmes pour la paix. Femmes et Guerres. Special issue, Confluence Méditerranée 17: 121–27.


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Gurr, Ted. 1970. Why men rebel. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Haklai, Oded, Fall 2004. Palestinian NGOs in Israel: A campaign for civic equality or ethnic civil society? Israel Studies 9, no. 3: 157–68. Hammami, Reema. 1995. NGOs: The professionalization of politics. Race & Class 37: 51–63. Hazelton, Lesley. 1977. The reality behind the myths. New York: Simon and Schuster. Herzog, Hanna. 1999. Gendering politics: Women in Israel. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Hermann, Tamar. 2006. Civil society and NGOs building peace in Israel. In Bridging the divide: Peace building in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ed. Edy Kaufman, Walid Salem and Juliette Verhoeven, 64–96. Boulder, CO: Lynn Reinner. Hermann, Tamar, and David Newman. 1990. The dove and the skullcap: Secular and religious divergence in the Israeli peace camp. In Conflict and accommodation between Jews in Israel, ed. Charles Liebman, 151–72. New York: Avi Chai and Jerusalem: Keter. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The invention of tradition. Cambridge University Press. Inglehart, Ronald. 1971. The silent revolution in Europe: Intergenerational change in post industrial societies. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Kaminer, Reuven. 1996. The politics of protest: Peace movement and the Palestinian Intifada. Sussex Academic Press. Klandermans, Bert. 1988. The formation and mobilization of consensus. International Social Movement Research 1: 173–96. Lockman, Zachary, Beinin Joel. 1989. Intifada: The Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. MERIP Book. Cambridge: South End Press. McAdam, Doug. 1988. Freedom summer. New York: Oxford University Press. McCarthy, John D., and Mayer N. Zald. 1977. Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory. The American Journal of Sociology 82, no. 6: 1212–41. Migdal, Joel S. 2001. Through the lens of Israel: Explorations in state and society. Albany: State University of New York Press. Newman, David. 1985. The impact of Gush Emunim: Politics and settlement in the West Bank. New York: St Martin’s Press. Newman, David. 2005. From hitnachalut to hitnatkut: The impact of Gush Emunim and the settlement movement on Israeli politics and society. Israel Studies 10, no. 3: 192–224 Oberschall, Anthony. 1973. Social conflict and social movements. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Olson, Mancur. 1965. The logic of collective action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Payes, Shany. 2005. Palestinian NGOs in Israel: The politics of civil society. London: I. B. Tauris.

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Peled, Yoav. 1992. Ethnic democracy and the legal construction of citizenship: Arab citizens of the Jewish state. The American Political Science Review 86, no. 2: 432–43. Otayek, René, ed. 2002. Démocratie et société civile. Une vue du Sud. Special issue, Revue Internationale de Politique Comparée 9, no. 2. Palestine Israel Journal. 2005–2006. People to People: What went wrong and how to fix it. Palestine Israel Journal 12, no. 4 and 13, no. 1. Siméant, Johanna. 2003. Un humanitaire “a politique”? Démarcations, socialisations au politique et espaces de la réalisation de soi. In La politisation, ed. Jacques Lagroye, 163–96. Paris: Belin. Siméant, Johanna. February–April 2001. Entrer, rester en humanitaire. Special issue, Revue Française de Science Politique 51, no. 1–2: 47–72. Smooha, Samy. 1990. Minority status in an ethnic democracy: The status of the Arab minority in Israel. Ethnic and Racial Studies 13: 389–413. Snow, David A., Robert D. Benford. 1992. Master frames and cycles of protest. In Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon Morris, Carol M. Mueller, 135–55. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Swirski, Barbara, and Marilyn Safir. 1991. Calling the equality bluff: Women in Israel. New York: Pergamon Press. Swirsky, Gila. 2003. Local coalitions and global partners: The women’s peace movement in Israel and beyond. Signs—Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29, no. 2: 543–50. Tarrow, Sidney. 2006. Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarrow, Sidney. 1994. Power in movement: Social movements, collective action and politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tiger, Lionel, and Joseph Shepher. 1975. Women in the kibbutz. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Tilly, Charles. 1986. The contentious French. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tilly, Charles, and Sidney Tarrow. 2007. Contentious politics. Boulder: Paradigm. Touraine, Alain. 1973. Production de la société. Paris: Seuil. Wolfsfeld, Gadi. 1988. The politics of provocation: Participation and protest in Israel. SUNY Series in Israeli Studies, Albany: State University of New York Press. Wolfsfeld, Gadi, Eli Avraham, and Issam Aburaiya. 2000(a). Dynamics in the news coverage of minorities: The case of the Arab citizens of Israel. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 24:2, April, 117–33. Wolfsfeld, Gadi. 2000 (b). When prophecy always fails: Israeli press coverage of the Arab minority’s Land Day Protests. Political Communication 17: 115–31. Yishai, Yael. 1991. Land and paradoxes: Interest politics in Israel. SUNY Series in Israeli Studies, Albany: State University of New York Press.


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———. 1997. Between the flag and the banner: Women in Israeli politics. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 1998(a). Civil society in transition: Interest politics in Israel. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 555, no. 1: 147–62. ———. 1998(b). Land or peace: Whither Israel? Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

Notes 1. The four publications on the status of Arab citizens were The Ten Points (by Mossawa), The Future Vision (by the National Committee of Arab Mayors), The Democratic Constitution (by Adalah) and The Haifa Declaration (by the Haifa Group). 2. For the ICTR, nonprofit organizations are defined as: (1) formal, (2) nonprofit, (3) private, (4) independent, (5) voluntary. They do not consider the Jewish Agency or the political parties as nonprofit organizations (Gidron et al. 2003)


4 Pa rt I

Is ra eli S et tler M obiliz ations


4

Chapter 1

Aft er t he Gaz a Withdrawal Th e Set tl er s’ St ru ggle over t he Mea ni ng o f the Isr aeli Nati o na l I dent i t y

David Khalfa

Ever since the summer 2005 evacuation of all Israeli settlements in

the Gaza strip and four settlements in the northern West Bank, the settler movement has faced a deep identity and political crisis, both amongst its leadership and grassroots militants. As a social and political movement dedicated to the “Whole Land of Israel” ideology, the settlers failed to influence the Israeli decisionmaking process and shape the map of Israeli politics in accordance with their own particular interests. At a political level, the two major representatives of the settler movement—the National Religious Party (NRP) and the National Union (NU)—were excluded from the decision-making process and sent to the fringes of the Israeli political spectrum. This led the settler’s parties to an unprecedented leadership crisis that revealed their lack of common interests and values with the key policy-makers. At an ideological level, the settler movement has undergone a process of alienation and disenchantment. In fact, the disengagement is a major blow to the messianic worldview of its two main religious subcultures. These groups viewed the settlement project as the necessary condition for an early Coming of the Messiah and the renaissance of the Jewish people. This messianic outlook is now entirely questioned. Therefore, the settlers are currently reconsidering their relationships toward the secular national ethos of the Israeli state. They have been undertaking a deep reevaluation of their internal discourse and

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adopting a new relocated irredentism that stresses security concerns over messianic ones in order to preserve the “integrity” of the remaining “biblical territories.” This chapter will assess the impact of Gaza’s disengagement on the settler movement, focusing more specifically on its two main aspects, the political and the ideological. We will examine the scope of the crisis and its far-reaching repercussions for both the settler community and its leadership. The first part will present the historical-political background of the settler movement and the disengagement’s repercussions on its political branch, the National Religious Party (NRP) and the National Union (NU). The second part will focus on the ideological consequences of the disengagement. Finally, we will give a “snapshot” of the current situation and present, in a case study, the ideological and political developments in the two main religious settler communities. This chapter’s main objective is to discuss a common perception of the settler movement as a tremendously influential pressure group. It will attempt to give a global understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the settler movement. The failure to prevent the disengagement demonstrated that the current political opportunity structures and the ideological trends in Israeli mainstream society are no longer favorable to achieving the settlers’ goals.

Th eo retic al Bac kg round The unfolding study will rely on a synthesis of several theories, used here as complementary tools to overcome the difficulties that all researchers face when deciding to undertake an empirical analysis of a social movement’s success or failure. Firstly, we use the works of William Gamson on social movements. He defines three forms of social movement’s political influence: the participatory gains, the material gains, and the discursive gains (Gamson 1990). The participatory gains result in the elite’s acceptance of new actors, mainly the acceptance of a social movement into decisionmaking processes as legitimate representative of previously underrepresented group of people. Materials gains are the elite’s acceptance of a new policy. Indeed, a significant success of a social movement involves changes in policies. This change can be either proactive (implying the introduction of a new favorable policy) or reactive (implying prevention of an unfavorable one). Finally, the concept of discursive gains means the elite’s acceptance of new values and social meanings. Social movements are not just looking for increased participation in decision-making or

After the Gaza Withdrawal

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material gains. They are also expecting their own narratives and social orientations to be adopted by the collective consciousness and the dominant discourse. Secondly, we refer to Killian and Turner’s typology of social movements. This typology gives three main categories: value orientations, participation orientations, and power orientations (Killian and Turner 1993).1 Value orientations stand for the social movement’s capability to create and implement meaningful norms for the wider public. Participation orientations represent the degree to which the public supports the movement’s ideology and participates in its activities. The third concept is power orientations, namely the extent to which the movement is able to exert its power in the political field. In order to be able to influence the decision-making process, a social movement must combine those three orientations and meet two criteria: First, the social movement must share common interests and values with the policy makers. Second, it must convert this common basis into concrete participation and power. This means inculcating its values and ideology—and thus have them accepted by—both the decision makers and the public (Newman and Hermann 1992). It was in failing to meet these latter two goals that, despite its access to the Israeli state system and government, the settler movement failed to implement its policy. The sharp dissimilarity of interest and basic values between policy makers and the settler movement during the decision-making process led to the disengagement’s adoption and implementation. This alienated the settler movement from both Israeli mainstream society and the Israeli government’s political elites. The second theory that supports our study is the constructivist paradigm, applied to the specific context of the Israeli disengagement. The constructivist paradigm has the potential to explain the power of identity, ideas, ideologies, and interest and their impact on Israel’s politics and foreign policy (McSweeney 1999; Katzenstein 1996). We would like to emphasize the importance of identity politics and show, in the specific Israeli context, that different identities lead to different constructions of interests and that different constructions of interests result in the implementation of different policies (Kowert 2001; Barnett and Telhami 2002). By using the constructivist paradigm, we will show to what extent the “identity construct” of the settler movement is totally at odds with the new identity “construct” of the post-Oslo Israeli consensus. This explains why the settler movement failed to implement its Whole Land of Israel ideology and, more particularly, why this ideology failed to determine the late Sharon government foreign policy (2003).

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David Khalfa

The Set tler Movement on the Fr inges of th e Po l itic a l S pec trum: The H i s tor i cal Failure of the Set tler Movement Since its foundation, the settler movement has been trying to influence the decision-making process. Its main purpose was to put the entire Land of Israel ideology (Eretz Yisrael Hashlema in Hebrew) at the top of the Israeli political, social, and foreign policy agenda. From the birth of the Elon Moreh nucleus group (“Gariin Elon Moreh”) in 1968 to the nascence of the Gush Emunim (“Bloc of the Faithful”) in 1974, the settler movement has established political facts on the ground in order to create a new geopolitical reality and determine the final status of the newly conquered Territories (Don-Yehia 1987; Aran 1986). From the first phase of its existence to the launch of the Oslo process in 1993, the settler movement enjoyed great support from across the Israeli political spectrum and from a great share of Israeli society. This largely explains the success of its nonpartisan-style strategy, which managed to settle almost 260,000 Israelis throughout the West Bank and Gaza (prior to the disengagement). At a political level, the settler movement was backed by the Religious Zionist right (NRP) and the “national camp” (HaMachane Haleumi), which included the ultranationalist Right2 and the secular Likud (Sandler 1996; Sprinzak 1991; Reiser 1984). Indeed, the Likud’s rise to power in 1977 enabled the settler movement to institutionalize itself (Zertal and Eldar 2007). The foundation of the Yesha Council3 is the first step of this historical metamorphosis. Created in 1979, the Yesha Council is the institutional successor of the late Gush Emunim. It is mandated to provide security, deal with practical matters such as the utilization of land and water, and eventually act as a domestic pressure lobby on behalf of its residents in the Knesset and in the government (Dement 1988;Yishai 1991). It led the settlers’ struggle against the disengagement, thanks to public relation campaigns and grass roots peaceful protest such as the “human chain” that gathered more than 130,000 people from the south to the north of Israel in July 2005 (Arian and Roth 2005). The foundation of Amana (“Covenant”), the settlement-building arm of the late Gush Emunim, is the second step of the institutionalization process. Established in 1978, Amana’s main purpose is to establish new settlements or at least to consolidate the growth of the existing ones (Newman 1985). Despite its numerous and various political allies, the settler movement underwent many political crises, from the withdrawal from the


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Sinai in 1982 to the “final status negotiations” that took place at Camp David (July 2000) and Taba (January 2001). Following the1979 Israel-Egypt peace, Israel, under the leadership of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, agreed to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula. For over two decades, the Sinai Peninsula had been home to about seven thousand Israelis settlers. The settler movement was opposed to the very idea of “giving up” the Peninsula. In 1982, over three thousand settlers from the town of Yamit and, among them, a majority of Gush Emunim activists, opposed the withdrawal and were forcefully evacuated from their homes by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) under the supervision of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon (Kliot 2005). The Camp David and Taba peace summits held by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former President of the Palestinian National Authority Yasser Arafat were dedicated to negotiating and solving the IsraeliPalestinian conflict’s “core issues.” Discussions included the creation of a Palestinian state over 96 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza strip, the evacuation of most Israeli settlements, and a territorial division of Jerusalem. These two historical events shed light on the future of the settlement project as a whole. First, the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai demonstrated that settlements have not determined the outcome of Israeli foreign policy on peace and war. Second, the “final status negotiations”—though failed—pointed out that a rival value system favorable to “dividing the Land of Israel” into two nation-states (Shavit 2005) challenged the settler movement’s belief system and its very existence as the vanguard of a new Zionism. However, with the implementation of the disengagement plan, the new political crisis the settler movement has to confront is nothing but an upheaval (Newman 2005). The settlers have failed to prevent the adoption and the implementation of the disengagement. The failure is twofold. The settler movement lost the parliamentary battle, since the Knesset approved the plan on October 25, 2004. Besides, the Gaza withdrawal has been successfully implemented. In less than seven days, the Israeli government carried out the large-scale evacuation of all permanent Israeli civilian settlements in the Gaza strip, including the Gush Katif (“Harvest Belt”) settlements4 and four others in the Northern West Bank. It took fifty thousand soldiers and policemen to face the civil resistance of nearly fifteen thousand settlers (including infiltrated activists). On the whole, the opposition was relatively easy to manage, given that the settlers resisted evacuation in a mostly passive and peaceful way.

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Brok e n Al l ia nc e between S ec ul ar Hawks and the Set tler Movement? For the first time, Israeli settlements located in the “biblical land of Israel” (Eretz Yisrael) have been physically uprooted, not even within the framework of a comprehensive peace agreement. Moreover, this policy was decided on and implemented by a right-wing government under the Likud leadership of Ariel Sharon,5 one of the main architects of the settler movement (Dan 2006; Chanoff and Sharon 1989). Indeed, the decision to evacuate settlements was based on a broad Israeli public consensus transcending the traditional Right-Left continuum. The Israelis reached the conclusion that their country should unilaterally withdraw from most Territories, since “there is a lack of a Palestinian partner, both able and willing to implement a comprehensive diplomatic agreement.” The Gaza withdrawal was aimed at securing Israel’s dual identity as a Jewish and democratic state. It durably undermined the historical alliance between secular hawks and the settlers’ political branch. Indeed, the Likud national security doctrine considered settlements as critical to security within the Green Line (Schindler 2005; Kaplan 2005). This strategic and political-territorial vision permitted, encouraged, and financed the establishment of settlements throughout the West Bank from 1977 until 1992 (Peleg 2005). Settlements were regarded as security and strategic assets fitting military and existential imperatives, without which Israel could not survive in a Hobbesian, unstable, and chaotic Middle East. In the end, settlements defined the territorial limits of Israel’s sovereignty and its yearning for “secure” and “defensible borders.” The ideological heirs of this prosettlement vision, often called the “Princes of the Likud,” underwent a silent cognitive revolution that split the right-wing party between hardliners—faithful to Zeev Jabotinsky’s revisionist Zionism legacy—and pragmatists who no longer believe in the dream of Greater Israel (Naor 2001). The latter no longer view security, sovereignty, and settlements as inextricably linked, at least for settlements located alongside densely Arab Palestinians populated areas. These isolated and scattered settlements are now seen as a demographic burden, a threat to State of Israel identity, not as security and strategic assets anymore. More fundamentally, settlements throughout the Land of Israel are perceived not as an expression of the Zionism’s state-building vivacity and moral vision anymore but as a threat to its constituency. From the moment the right-wing has


33

splitted, the settler movement has been left without any political allies powerful enough to help it dictate the Israeli foreign policy agenda. The Settlers’ Parties’ Exclusion from the Decision-Making Process The Gaza withdrawal revealed that settlers did not share common interests and values with the key policymakers who made this historical decision. Consequently, they have been excluded from concrete and efficient participation to the decision-making process. The disengagement sent the settler movement’s two major political representatives (the NRP and the NU) to the fringe of the Israeli political spectrum. The pullout initiated a schism inside the NRP between the messianic ultranationalist faction and the more pragmatic faction, a schism that led to a leadership crisis. This antagonism stemmed from a disagreement on the political tactic to be adopted against the disengagement (Khalfa 2005). As a result, the messianic faction split from the NRP and joined a single-issue far right party dedicated to the Whole Land of Israel ideology: the National Union. For the NRP, this leadership crisis could have been an opportunity to moderate and broaden its political platform, rather than focusing only on an anti-disengagement agenda. Indeed, Zevulon Orlev, the leader of the NRP pragmatic faction, expressed some readiness for minimal territorial concessions on behalf of “real peace” and claimed to put “Judea and Samaria” (the West Bank) on a wider agenda integrating education, Jewish identity, and social equality. However, the NRP’s unwillingness to walk out of Sharon’s government following the first cabinet vote on disengagement cost the NRP many settlers’ votes. This electoral loss threatened the religious Zionist right and left it barely able to cross the election threshold required for entering the Knesset. This party, once a full partner of secular Zionism in the Israeli nation-building, had to limit its electoral platform to the protection of the religious settlers’ sectarian interest. For the first time in its its 50-year history, the main representative of the religious Zionist movement had to forge a new electoral alliance with the ultra-nationalist National Union party in order not to disappear from the political arena.

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The March 2006 Legisl ative Elections: Rei n f o rc eme nt of the S epar ati on L ogi c The large-scale goal of the National Union-NRP merger was to prevent Kadima,6 the ruling party of the current Center-left coalition, from being elected on its planned major unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank. Therefore, they tried to federate the “national camp” (Likud, Yisrael Beitenu, Shas) with the hope of forming a rightist “antiunilateralist” blocking majority—including both secular and religious hardliners—of sixty-one seats in the seventeenth Knesset (Sandler 2006). Although the Israeli legislative elections held on March 28, 2006, did not yield a clear-cut outcome, they still produced a reconfiguration of Israeli politics known as the “Big Bang,” Kadima being its obvious political expression (Arian and Shamir 2008). Created by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon after he formally left the right-wing Likud, Kadima became the largest party in Israel, with 29 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. This new centrist party attracted leaders from both Likud and Labor, transcending the old divide between left and right—which in Israel refer to “doves” and “hawks,” respectively— rather than socioeconomic positions. Kadima is in its essence a border party. The centerpiece of its pragmatic foreign policy agenda and its political raison d’être, was the “convergence plan,” which claimed to implement Sharon’s legacy, the separation strategy (hafrada in Hebrew).This new unilateral withdrawal plan was formulated by Ehud Olmert as part of his electoral campaign for the seventeenth Knesset. It intended to remove most of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and shape Israel’s “permanent borders” by 2010 (Makovsky 2006). The fact that the new Israeli Prime Minister and leader of the postrevisionist Kadima party, Ehud Olmert, was elected on this new diplomatic initiative represents a patent historical defeat for the settler movement. It epitomizes more fundamentally a shift in the way Israelis view settlements, territorial compromise, and final borders issues. Indeed, the majority in the new Knesset supported the “giving up” of additional territory in the West Bank—either unilaterally or in the context of bilateral peace negotiations. These electoral results prevented the settler movement’s political arm from creating a blocking majority in the new Knesset and demonstrated its failure to draw support from the Israeli public at large. The orange flag that the settler parties waved during the campaign and their strong commitment to the defense of “territorial integrity” failed to attract secular hawkish voters. The National Union and NRP remained narrow sectarian parties of


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the religious settler community. Moreover, Likud’s historical outright collapse (from forty seats in 2003 to twelve seats in 2006) brought the once-dominant nationalist right party to the fringes of the Israeli political landscape.7 All told, the March legislative elections showed that the votes expressing an ideological support for the settlement enterprise and the geotheological concept of the Whole Land of Israel represented less than 8 percent of the total Israeli population (Cohen A. 2007). However the settler movement might take advantage of two recent political opportunities to increase its influence within the Israeli political arena: First, after being stuck in the opposition for years, the right-wing Likud party is coming back to the political forefront, jumping from twelve to twenty-seven seats between the 2006 and 2009 national elections. Second, the religious Zionist right keeps trying to reunificate itself in order to form a single right-wing party defending more efficiently settlers’ interests. Yet, it is dubious that this will be translated into a revival of the historical alliance between secular hawks and settlers. The Likud’s increasing popularity represents actually less a plebiscit of the party’s leadership or foreign and defense policy than the result of Kadima’s failures to manage successfully the 2006 Lebanon war and the 2007 Hamas’ Gaza strip takeover, even though it sustained its strength in the 2009 elections. Furthermore, the Likud led by Binyamin Netanyahu, while hawkish, does not rule out territorial withdrawals, trying to position itself as a moderate center-right party dedicated to both peace and security. Furthermore, the new Obama administration might well talk him into pragmatism. Lastly, most Israelis keep supporting the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and expect Netanyahu to promote peace while safeguarding Israel national security interests. Even settlers seem skeptical about Netanyahu’s dedication to their cause, given both his lack of commitment to implement the Whole Land of Israel ideology and his agreement to “yield land” to Palestinians as he was Prime Minister (1996–1999), especially during the 1997 partial withdrawal from Hebron. Still, most of them prefer Netanyahu to Livni or Barak, as a consequence to three internal Likud dynamics. Indeed, the Likud is still dominated by secular hardliners known as the “rebels.” As supporters of the settlement entreprise, they led the campaign within the party against the 2005 disengagement from Gaza. Parallely, the “Jewish

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Leadership,” a far-right pro-settler faction infiltrated in the Likud institutions, has gained more influence. Its declared purpose is to enlist settlers from the West Bank so as to take over the party leadership and steer it in a far-right direction. Headed by Moshe Feiglin, a major religious settler activitst once arrested for organizing civil disobedience against the Oslo peace process, this faction will be represented for the first time in the next Knesset. Third, the settlers view Netanyahu’s “economic peace plan” as a way of postponing new territorial withdrawals from the West Bank. The rightist leader claims indeed that a political peace with the Palestinians would be “unrealistic” given the Palestinian leadership’s weakness in the West Bank and the Hamas control over the Gaza strip. A second major change might give a new political strengh to settlers. On November 3, 2008, the National Religious Party voted itself out of existence in order to merge with the National Union and form a single religious Zionist right-wing party called “The Jewish Home” (Habayit Hayehudi). This new party aspires to lead the struggle “for the spirit and soul of the Israeli state.” It emphasizes Jewish education and Jewish identity more than the Greater Israel ideology. It aims to unite all disparate camps and streams within religious Zionism and become the State of Israel’s third largest party. However its leaders were too polarized—over politics, theology and personality—to share the same political home. This explains why two of its main factions involved in the merger—Effi Eitam’s religious faction and Aryeh Eldad’s secular faction—left the party. The first joined the Likud, the second a new far right secular party called Hatikva. Over the February 2009 election campaign, the latter and Jewish Home accused each other of being sectarian. This split shed light on the newly prosettler party’s inability to broader its base beyond the core right-wing Orthodox religious Zionists. It epitomized the prosettler camp failure to unify itself under one single political shelter. Indeed, the new Jewish Home party obtained three seats, while National Union gathered four seats. In the end, the religious Zionist right block totaled in 2009 seven seats against nine in 2006.

The Set tler Movement between D is enc h antment and Ali enati on: A C l a s h of I dentity Pat ter ns The settler movement’s historical success was related to its ability to present the challenge of settling the entire land of Israel as an integral


37

part of the Israeli society’s national ethos. The ideological roots of that success can be traced back to the new conquest theology inspired by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook’s writings (1865–1935), as interpreted by his son Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook (1891–1982). The settlers’ highly charismatic spiritual leader viewed the State of Israel as a sacred and divine vehicle for fulfillment of the biblical prophecy. This messianic belief sees an absolute religious imperative of maintaining Jewish control over the wholeness of Eretz Yisrael. This credo is regarded as a divine plan, leading to the very essence of the Jewish people’s destiny: the “final redemption” by the reestablishment of Israel as a nation on its entire biblical homeland, the Promised Land (Ravitzky, Swirsky, and Chipman 1996). From Likud’s historical victory in 1977 to the emergence of the Oslo peace process, the settler movement benefited from the alliance with the neorevisionist right, which endorsed and heavily financed its project to settle on all parts of Eretz Yisrael. This open and selfdeclared prosettlement policy was opposed to the ambivalence of the Israeli left. From 1967 to 1977, the Israeli Labor Party’s territorial strategy was based on a combination of two guiding policies. On one side, it was grounded on an official policy of “deciding not to decide,” which was aimed at preserving the conquered Territories as a “bargaining chip” for any future negotiations with the Arabs. On the other, the left’s strategy was also guided by political and security thinking formulated in late 1967 in the so-called Alon Plan. Its settlement policy was to create a “security border” running up from the Jordan Valley to the eastern slopes of the West Bank hill ridge, to retain control of the Golan Heights, and to avoid establishing Israeli communities in heavily Palestinian-populated areas in the West Bank. These areas were supposed to be part of a Jordanian-Palestinian state (Gorenberg 2006). In contrast, the settlement policy of the neorevisionist right8 was primarily guided by an ethnonationalist tenet based on historical claims on Greater Israel (Eretz Yisrael Hashlema) and on security requirements for insuring its own future (Sandler 1993). While this ideological view was different from the settler movement’s neomessianic perspective, it ended up by implementing almost the same policy. Indeed, after the Sinai pullout (1982), the Begin government decided to intensify its efforts “to create facts on the ground” throughout the West Bank in order to bring about a demographic transformation of the “liberated territories.” The right’s approach to settlements was an extensive interpretation of the Alon Plan: it wanted to hold land that

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it considered essential for Israel’s security, even if it were alongside heavily Palestinian-populated areas (Gazit 2003). Likud embraced settlements as its raison d’être and as a key means toward its political renaissance. The creation of “communal settlements” (Newman 1985) throughout the West Bank was also viewed by the Israeli right as a means to create a political constituency just like Israel’s founding fathers, from the Labor movement, had done with the kibbutzim and moshavim. The settlement policy of the neorevisionist right claimed its lineage with the classic prestate Zionist ethos of hityashvut, meaning “settling” the Land of Israel (Khalfa 2009a; Naor 2005). In this regard, the disengagement reflects a major clash between the settler movement and the broader Israeli national ethos that led a right-wing Israeli government to withdraw from “biblical territories.” The disengagement is part of a new Israeli post-Oslo consensus, a “third way” (Shavit 2005; Khalfa 2004) that emerged after the collapse of the two paradigms dominating the Israeli foreign policy agenda since 1967: the leftist “territories for peace” and the rightist “Whole Land of Israel” (Sandler 2006). These two paradigms collapsed because they were unattainable, the first one as a result of the peace negotiations’ historical failure, the second as a consequence of the inherent contradiction between territorial maximalism and the perpetuation of Israel as a Jewish state (in demographic terms). In fact, the Gaza withdrawal is a major blow to the settler movement’s religious-ideological worldview, now entirely questioned. The disengagement’s implementation has demonstrated that while Israel had ruled the Gaza strip for thirty-eight years, the nature of its rule was temporary. More importantly, it showed that settlements—at least those located alongside densely Arab Palestinians populated areas—were an ephemeral and temporary phenomenon. The Gaza withdrawal shattered the myth that the settlement enterprise was irreversible. Moreover, it demonstrated the settlers’ lack of capability to implement their norms and ideology, which became increasingly meaningless for the wider Israeli public (Weissbrod 2003). For the settler movement, the disengagement is a new hurban,9 a historical and theological disaster, an abrupt reversal of the messianic process. It undercuts the necessary conditions for an early coming of the Messiah. It is an unthinkable reversal of the Jewish nation metahistorical destiny, a “betrayal” by its “evil” and “corrupted” elites. This pessimistic outlook explained why the settler movement is now reconsidering its relationship with the Israeli state, which voluntarily “gave up” parts of the “divinely” and “ancestrally granted homeland” by


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physically uprooting Jews from their homes. This lead to a deep reassessment of its internal discourse on the adoption of a new relocated irredentism, which stresses security concerns in order to preserve the integrity of the remaining “Biblical territories” (Ben-Meir 2005).

Rational Approach versus Messianic Vision The postrevisionist approach underlying the Gaza withdrawal is at odds with the territorial maximalism of the old Likud Greater Israel historic ideology. The new paradigm is antithetical to the settler movement’s theologicopolitical perspective. Supported by both Likud pragmatics and Israeli society, the disengagement envisions the territorial issue as primarily demographic, functional, and utilitarian. According to this realistic view, the delineation of Israel’s future borders depends on the lasting conservation of the state’s idiosyncratic national identity as a Jewish and democratic country. In this regard, the preservation of the dual national identity is the sine qua non of Israelis’ personal and collective security (Taub 2007). In this outlook, rational considerations such as demographic realities took precedence over territorial expansion based on national, historical, and religious rights. From the disengagement perspective, the State of Israel cannot reach a permanent agreement with the Palestinians now, mainly because they are not willing to give up their “right of return” into “historical Palestine” (including the modern State of Israel in its internationally recognized armistice lines). Moreover, Israel cannot afford to live with the current territorial status quo because of the strategic threat that it represents with regard to the current demographic trends between Arabs and Jews (Schiftan 1999; Sofer and Bistrow 2004). Consequently, Israel must relinquish unilaterally most of the Territories in order to sustain the compatibility between Zionism and liberal democracy and to foster the two-state solution: a democratic Jewish Israeli nation-state and a democratic Arab Palestinian nation-state living side-by-side (Khalfa 2009b; Rynhold 2004). The Socioideological Impact of the Disengagement on the Two Main Settlers’ Religious Subcultures For the disengagement’s sociological and ideological implications to be clear, a more precise definition of the settler population is required, and nuances that characterize the different subgroups within this population ought to be understood. The settler population is about three

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hundred thousand people (excluding East Jerusalem’s settlers). This group is neither sociologically nor ideologically homogenous. The type of settlement, its geographical location, and the nature of the settlers’ motivation are decisive parameters for assessing the outcomes of the Gaza pullout. Despite the many faces of the settlers’ subgroups, we can draw three major distinctions: first, a distinction between the religious population (including national-religious settlers and ultra-Orthodox settlers)10 and the nonreligious population (traditionalists and seculars);11 second, a distinction between urban settlers living in “town-like settlements” (Maale Adumim, Ariel, Beitar Illit) and communal settlers living in relatively small and ideologically homogenous cooperative communities; third, a distinction between ideological settlers fulfilling the ideal of “settling the Land of Israel” and “quality of life settlers,” who have crossed the Green Line primarily out of standard-of-living considerations and for opportunities for affordable housing. The third part of this chapter will now focus on the two main national-religious settlers’ subcultures. Although those two groups are a demographic minority among the West Bank settlers overall, they have been the main spearheads of the settlement enterprise and have stood at the forefront of the opposition to the Gaza withdrawal. Moreover, most Yesha Council leaders and influential spiritual religious Zionist leaders—former Chief Rabbis of Israel Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliyahu of the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva—are associated with the settlement ideological stream (Billig 2005; Don-Yehia 1994). The deep trauma that national-religious ideological settlers are now facing is materialized by their respective attitudes toward the State of Israel and its institutions (Khalfa 2009c; Weissbrod 2008).

The H ardali m The Hardalim (Hebrew acronym for Haredi Dati Leumi, meaning literally ultraorthodox national-religious) represent a new subculture within the national-religious settlers’ community. This new trend is part of a broad sociological process that took place in the late 1970s. The original Gush Emunim’s religious settlers identified by their “knitted skullcaps” began to adopt the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle and strict religious observance, while the ultra-Orthodox public became more nationalistic (Finkelman 2003; Cohen 2004). Indeed, the Hardalim combine ultraorthodoxy with ultranationalism, an antimodern orientation with a messianic radical strand (Ahitov 2005). Its sociological tendency toward self-isolation brings this new


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ideological trend closer to the ultraorthodox, insular way of life. Its ideological struggle for the preservation of the wholeness of Eretz Yisrael—the primary essence of its subculture—continues to connect Hardalim to the religious Zionist community’s right-wing weltanschauung (Pffefer 2007). A minority within a minority, the Hardalim are separated by a wide political and social chasm from Israeli society. Nevertheless, they are overrepresented in the highly ideologically motivated settlers who perceived themselves as the vanguard of the vocal and visible “orange” camp, the color of the Gaza’s withdrawal opponents. For the most radical Hardalim branch, the “battle for Eretz Yisrael” is part of a wider Kulturkampf, opposing State of Israel supporters to Land of Israel proponents, seculars to religious, and Israelis to Jews. The main purpose of these antiestablishment settlers is to lead the cultural struggle against the Israeli secular elite inspired by the “Hasmoneans versus Hellenizers” internecine Jewish historical conflict (175–34 BCE). The “new Hasmoneans” intend to keep on adhering to the Jewish religious laws and traditions against the “new Hellenizers’” assimilation to the secular Western foreign culture path (Yedidya and Sivan 2006; Ravitzky 2000). For radical Hardalim, secular Zionism has ended its mission because of its lack of Jewish values. Therefore, the settler movement has to end its historical partnership with secular Zionists and replace them by a “Jewish leadership,” a new self-perceived gentry dedicated to retaining the entire Land of Israel (Sandler 2005). These hardliners are rejecting the basic theological premises of mainstream religious Zionism, especially the principle of State of Israel supremacy, which was, until the disengagement, regarded as a divine vehicle for bringing the Jewish people redemption. For these settlers, the state is no longer an end but a means toward the goal of settling the Whole Land of Israel (Schwartz and Sagi 2003). Therefore, they vow to move toward a dialogue with the Haredi ultra-Orthodox community12 in order to create a new “Jewish values front” and an effective pressure group having a real effect on the government’s settlement policy. Keeping up Israeli control over the West Bank became the supreme value, an integral part of the cultural struggle for maintaining the essence of Israel as a genuine Jewish state (Liebman and Cohen 1997). Among these ideological settlers, the disengagement’s main sociopolitical outcome is a weakening faith in the state and its institutions concurrently to a growing feeling of alienation from the Israeli society. This sense of deprivation has increased their hostility toward police and army as symbols of the Israeli state. Often termed “anti-mamlachti”

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(antistatist), this distrust is particularly tangible amongst the radicalizing Hardalim youth. A small but vocal minority of them has even adopted a new kind of rightist post-Zionism entrenched in an antistate, anarchist outlook. The rightist “refuznikim” (draft dodgers) and the so-called Hilltop youth (“noar hagvaot”), disaffected and uncontrolled settlers, are radical but good examples of the lost trust in the Israeli state (Cohen S. 2007; 2006 Kaniel 2003). By this attitude, they fiercely criticize the first generation of settlers, labeled “bourgeois” and accused of compromise with the “Spartan pioneers’ ethos” of the settlement project’s founding fathers. It led the hard-core youth settlers to rebel against the Yesha council leadership and even against the rabbinical authorities. Both are accused of having been“excessively moderate” and thus accountable for the crushing political and spiritual failure the Gaza pullout represents. In opposition with the slogan “love will win out” adopted by the offical settler leadership against Gaza disengagement, these radical settlers promote violence as the only way to prevent further dismantlements. The February 2006 harsh confrontation at the Amona outpost (central West Bank’s southern Samaria region) symbolizes the new form of civil disobedience adopted by hardliners: active resistance to future evacuation through violent means (Sheleg 2007). The substantial increase in controntations following the December 2008 evacuation of a disputed Hebron house, is another step in the radicalization process. These radical settlers, about a few hundreds of people, launched a new tactic called euphemistically “price tag.” This policy is based on the idea that any withdrawal from the West Bank must bear a significant cost for Israeli decision makers. This retaliation combines heavy clashes as well as harassment of Israeli security forces and Palestinian civilians through violent riots across the West Bank. The declared strategic goal is to create a major conflagration and a national trauma by threatening the country of a civil war (Kaniel 2005) The ultra-Orthodox ultranationalist subculture has tried to drive the mainstream religious Zionist settlers to the right, to the acceptance of active resistance and massive insubordination in the army units as a legitimate means to oppose evacuation orders. So far, this attempt has been unsuccessful, given the high level of enlistement and casulties among young national-religious and settlers during the Second Lebanon war (Levy 2007, Peri, 2006).


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Th e Ma ins t ream Rel igi ous S et tlers The Mainstream Religious Settlers are the settler movement’s largest subculture. Placing itself between the ultraorthodox non-Zionist and the nonreligious Zionist, the mainstream religious settlers have been struggling over safeguarding the State of Israel’s Jewish character by maintaining the so-called “status quo” and Israeli control over “Judea and Samaria” (Don-Yehia 1996). This modern orthodox subculture refuses the isolationist stance, which could lead to the settlers’ being disconnected from the country’s institutions; it thus avoids adopting the modern orthodox subculture self-segregation attitude. This critical mass of religious settlers accepts modernity and aims at preserving their sectarian interests without social and cultural separation from Israeli society as a whole (Khalfa 2008; Sheleg 2004). From an ideological perspective, the mainstream religious settlers remained faithful to the historical philosophy of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who saw the loyalty to peoplehood, the sanctity of the State of Israel, as a central religious tenet. However, the disengagement led the mainstream religious settlers to draw a clear separation between the state, which retains its holiness as a means of ensuring the redemption path, and the government, which can be led by “faithless,” “corrupted,” and “immoral individuals.” This distinction puts Jewish unity and loyalty to the State of Israel above any other value, including settling the Land of Israel. This attitude of unconditional loyalty, often termed “mamlachtiut,” considers the State of Israel an inherently valuable entity that embodies “the beginning of the redemption” (Yonah and Goodman 2004). These “statist” settlers remained faithful to the historical mantra of the religious Zionist movement by trying to uphold the proper balance between their double fundamental commitments: Zionism, the State of Israel, and modernity on the one hand, and religious orthodoxy and the Land of Israel on the other hand (Schwartz 1999). That is why mainstream religious settlers intend to keep on acting as a political bridge between secular and religious, veterans and new immigrants, Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Their youngsters are continuing to demonstrate a willingness to undertake national missions when serving in elite army units or working in poor development towns, for instance. Nevertheless, the mainstream settlers’ ultimate goal is to take over the State of Israel leadership and integrate all the centers of influence in state systems (government, Knesset, IDF, media, bureaucracy, High Court, academia, economy) in order to turn the decision-making

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process to a prosettlement policy (Haklai 2007). This attitude is expressed by an attempt to correctly read the new political and ideological map. Indeed, the mainstream religious settlers understood the withdrawal from most of the Territories—with or without negotiations—as being part of a national consensus. The central tenet of this consensus is that control over settlements is no longer critical to security within the Green Line. Moreover, it endangers the very core of Israel’s national identity as both a Jewish and a democratic state. Consequently, the question facing the Israeli nation now is not whether to relinquish Territories but which land should be “given away.” Given that the mainstream religious settlers want to have a significant role in the process of shaping Israel’s eastern border, it aims at dealing and adjusting itself to the new political and ideological reality.

C o nc lus ion The settler movement is driven by a small but highly motivated minority, well organized and focused on a single-purpose policy: the wholeness of the Eretz Yisrael dream. Throughout its history, this powerful sociopolitical movement has benefited from strong ties with the Israeli political and military elites, each one having reinforced its interests and aims by mutual instrumentalization. Thanks to its access to key decision makers, the settler movement was able to effectively, albeit indirectly, shape the delineation of the future Israeli eastern border. In this regard, the Gaza withdrawal represents a major failure for the settler movement, from both an ideological and a political perspective. Firstly, the sustained identification of a good share of Israelis with the political center and the settlers’ parties internal dissent has significantly weakened their influence in the Israeli political system. Secondly, the settlers’ “identity pattern,” based on a mixture of messianism and nationalism, is no longer viewed as an integral part of the Israeli national ethos. By adopting a single-issue value—settling the Whole Land of Israel—the settler movement alienated itself from both Israeli decision makers and the public at large, both of which are at odds with a rigid religious doctrine based on a meta-historical and absolutist worldview. Settlers have now to cope with a changing public opinion that views the settlement enterprise as jeopardizing the very identity of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. In this purpose, the settlers’ mainstream


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political and spiritual leadership has tried to soften its messianic doctrine by incorporating a securitization-defense rhetoric meant to retain remaining “biblical territories” (Weissbrod 1996). This new rhetoric seems to be relatively successful, given the worsening security conditions that followed the Second Lebanon War’s failures and the ongoing Palestinian missile attacks against the south of Israel. Indeed, these two events led Israelis to view unilateral withdrawals quite negatively. In the political sphere, it has reshuffled the cards again, although not dramatically. Indeed, the right-wing block, mainly composed of the Likud, Yisrael Beitenu, Shas, National Union, and Jewish Home, is the leading force of the new Knesset. Still, the increasing Israeli public support for a territorial compromise and the elites’ Copernican revolution in defining the creation of a Palestinian state as a vital Israeli national interest, have confirmed that the settlers’ values and ideology are no longer accepted by Israeli elites and citizens. Moreover, the resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian bilateral negotiations held on November 27, 2007 at the Annapolis international conference is another indication of diverging interests and values. Despite his uncertain fate, the international conference proposed for the first time a two-state solution articulated as a mutually agreed-upon outline for addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The settler movement is now facing one of the most critical periods in its history. In order to survive, it will have to adjust its doctrine and positioning in Israeli politics to the changing disenchanted reality.

Figure 1.1 Evacuation of a young woman by the Israel defense forces during the 2005 Gaza disengagement (Photo: Shay Shmueli, AFP, August 17, 2005)

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Figure 1.2 Settlers from the Gush Katif praying before the arrival of the Israeli soldiers (Photo: Shay Shmueli, AFP, August 03, 2005)

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Khalfa, David. January 2009b. Frontiers and borders in the Middle East, Powision, 6, Leipzig: Institute of Political Studies, Leipzig University Press. Khalfa, David. 2009c. Le mouvement des colons et l’armée israélienne: entre loyauté et dilemmes, Les Champs de Mars, Paris: Ministère de la Défense. Killian, Lewis and Ralph H. Turner. 1993. Collective behavior. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Kliot, Nurit. 2005. Decision-making on settlement evacuation compensation and resettlement in Israel: Sinai 1982, Gaza Region and North Samaria 2005. Jerusalem: The Floersheimer Institute of Political Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem [in Hebrew]. Kowert, Paul. 2001. Toward a constructivist theory of foreign policy. In Foreign policy in a constructed world, ed. Vendulka Kubalkova and Ralph Pettman. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 266–87. Levy, Yagil. July-September 2007, The embedded military. Why did the IDF perform effectively in executing the disengagement plan? Security Studies, 16, no. 3: 382–408 Liebman, Charles, and Asher Cohen. 1997. A case of fundamentalism in contemporary Israel. In Religion, democracy and Israeli society, ed. Charles S Liebman, 57–76. London: Harwood Academic Publishers. Makovsky, David. 2006. Olmert’s unilateral option: An early assessment. Policy Focus, 55: 2–29. McSweeney, Bill. 1999. Identity and interest: A sociology of international relations. New York: Cambridge University Press. Naor, Arye. 2001. Greater Israel: Theology and policy. Haifa: University of Haifa/Zmora-Bitan [in Hebrew]. Naor, Arye. 2005. Hawks’ Beaks’, Doves’ Feathers: Likud Prime Ministers between ideology and reality. Israel Studies, 10, no. 3: 154–91. Newman, David (ed.). 1985. The Impact of Gush Emunim. Politics and Settlement in the West Bank, London: Cromm Helm Newman, David. 2005. From “hitnachalut” to “hitnatkut”: The impact of Gush Emunim and the settlement movement on Israeli politics and society. Israel Studies, 10, no. 3: 192–224. Newman, David, and Tamar Hermann. July 1992. A comparative study of Gush Emunim and Peace Now. Middle Eastern Studies, 28, no. 3: 509–30. Peleg, Ilan. 2005. The Zionist right and constructivist realism: Ideological persistence and tactical readjustment. Israel Studies,10, no. 3: 127–53. Peri, Yoram. Winter 2006. Land versus state: Israel and its army after the disengagement. Dissent. Available on line at http://dissentmagazine.org/ article/?article=154 Pffefer, Anshel. 2007. The origins and future course of the National—Haredi public. Jerusalem: Floersheimer Institute [in Hebrew]. Ravitzky, Aviezer, Michael Swirsky, and Jonathan Chipman. 1996. Messianism, Zionism and Jewish religious radicalism. Chicago: Chicago University Press.


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Ravitzky, Aviezer. 2000. Religious and secular Jews in Israel: A Kulturkampf? Position Paper, Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute. Reiser, Stewart. 1984. The Politics of leverage: The National Religious Party of Israel and its influence on foreign policy. Center for Middle Eastern studies, Boston: Harvard University Press. Rynhold, Johnathan. June 2004. Deconstructing unilateral disengagement: Identity and security in Israel. Israel Studies Forum 19, no. 3: 1–14. Sandler, Shmuel. 1993. The State of Israel, the land of Israel: Statist and ethnonational dimensions of foreign policy. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Sandler, Shmuel. Summer 1996. Religious Zionism and the state: political accommodation and religious radicalism in Israel. Terrorism and Political Violence 8, no. 2:133 – 154 Sandler, Shmuel. October 2005. Religious Zionism revisits the State of Israel. Perspectives Papers on Current Affairs, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, no. 10: 1–11. Sandler, Shmuel. 2006. Centrism in Israeli politics and the Olmert government. BESA Perspectives, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, no. 17: 1–4. Shavit, Ari. 2005. Partition. Disengagement and beyond. Tel-Aviv: Keter (in Hebrew). Sheleg, Yair. 2000. The new religious Jews: Recent developments among observant Jews in Israel. Jerusalem: Keter [in Hebrew]. Sheleg, Yair. October-November 2004. The tragedy of the knitted skullcaps. Eretz Acheret, no. 24: 18–25 [in Hebrew]. Sheleg, Yair. 2007. The political and social ramifications of evacuating settlements in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip: Disengagement 2005 as a test case. Policy Paper no. 72, Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute [in Hebrew]. Schiftan, Dan, 1999. Disengagement: Israel and the Palestinian entity. TelAviv: Zmora Bitan [in Hebrew]. Schwartz, Dov. 1999. Religious Zionism between logic and messianism. Tel Aviv: Am Oved [in Hebrew]. Schwartz, Dov, and Avi Sagi. 2003. A hundred years of religious Zionism: Figures and thoughts. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press [in Hebrew]. Sofer, Arnon and Bistrow, Yevguenia, 2004. Israel demography 2004–2020 in the light of Disengagement, National Security Studies Center, Haifa: University of Haifa [in Hebrew] Sprinzak, Ehud,1991. The ascendance of Israel’s radical right. Oxford: Oxford University Press Taub, Gadi. 2007. The Settlers and the struggle over the meaning of Zionism Yedioth Ahronoth [in Hebrew]. Yedidya, Meir, and Rahav-Meir Sivan. 2006, Days of disengagement. Conversations about the Israeli evacuation from the Gaza Strip. Yedioth Aharonoth [in Hebrew].

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Yonah, Yossi, and Yehuda Goodman. 2004. Maelstrom of identities: A critical look at religion and secularity in Israel. Jerusalem: Van Leer Jerusalem Institute [in Hebrew]. Weissbrod, Lilly, 1996. Gush Emunim and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process: Modern religious fundamentalism in crisis. Israel Affairs, 3, no. 1: 86–103. Weissbrod, Lilly. 2003. Israeli identity: In search of a successor to the pioneer, tsabar and settler. London, Portland: Frank Cass. Weissbrod, Lilly. 2008. Coping with the failure of a Prophecy. The Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Journal of Religion and Society, 10: 1–21 Yishai, Yael. 1991. Land of paradoxes: Interest politics in Israel, Albany: State University of New York Press. Zertal, Idith, and Akiva Eldar. 2007. Lords of the land. The war over Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007. New York: Nation Books.

Notes 1. This typology was used in the comparative study of the Gush Emunim and Peace Now by David Newman and Tamar Hermann (1992). 2. The ultranationalist Right is represented by little political parties that compose the “orange camp,” dedicated to retaining all parts of the “remained Land of Israel” at any cost: Benny Elon’s HaIchud Haleumi, Baruch Marzel’s Jewish National Front, and Mikael Kleiner’s Herut party. 3. The Yesha Council (Moezet Yesha in Hebrew) is the extraparliamentary umbrella leadership of settlements located in Yesha, a Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip). It also means “Salvation.” It consists of twenty-five elected mayors and ten community leaders at the head of five councils in Israel proper, ten local councils, and five regional councils in the West Bank. 4. The Gush Katif (“Harvest Belt”) was a bloc of sixteen civilian settlements located in the southwest edge of the Gaza Strip. It had about 6800 residents, mainly of them religious modern orthodox Jews and a minority of secular Jews. See Gorenberg (2006). 5. Working closely with the Gush Emunim, Sharon applied to the West Bank the logic of his plan for “fingers” running through the Gaza Strip. Settlements would control the high ground, separate Palestinian towns, and splinter the Territories to prevent the creation of a Palestinian State. Sharon only accepted granting to the Palestinians limited self-rule autonomy enclaves left between his settlement fingers. See Chanoff and Sharon (1989). 6. The term Kadima (“forward,” “onward,” or, more precisely translated, “let’s go on with it”) was first used in 1883 by Nathan Birnbaum


7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

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(1864–1937), a Jewish Austrian journalist, who founded in 1883 the first Zionist student association in Vienna called Kadima. Birnbaum also coined the terms “Zionist” and “Zionism” in 1890. The Likud lost 75 percent of its votes by going from 40 to 12 seats, its worst electoral showing since 1951, when the Herut (Liberty) party, one of its original constituents, obtained 6.6 percent with 8 seats. The pro– status quo stance of its leader, Benyamin Netanyahu, with regard to the political future of the West Bank, excluded the Likud party from the new Israeli consensus. The concept of “neorevisionism” is described by Ilan Peled and Paul Schamas as a political outlook, including assertive nationalism, unilateralism, militarism, and “Hobbesian and social Darwinist attitude toward international relations.” On the concept of neorevisionism, see Peleg (2005). Hurban (“destruction”) evocates the saddest events in Jewish history, namely the destruction of the first (originally built by King Salomon and destroyed by Babylonians in 586 BCE) and the second (by the Roman Empire in 70 CE) Jewish temples, which scattered the Jewish people into exile. See Ben Meir (2005). The settler population is growing twice as fast as the rest of the country every year, and the ultra-Orthodox community is responsible for approximately half its annual growth. More than a quarter of West Bank settlers (72,000) are concentrated in urban ultra-orthodox settlements, mainly in Beitar Illit (35,000), Modi’in Ilit (40,000) and Kochav Yaakov (7,000). Beitar Illit and Modi’in Ilit are located in the “settlement blocs” earmarked to be annexed to Israel in a final peace agreement, according to Olmert’s government and the plans of previous ones. The secular settlers are living mainly in town-like settlements located in the “settlements blocs” and also in communal settlements across the Jordan Valley. The two main secular cities are Maale Aduminm (30,000 inhabitants) and Ariel (20,000 inhabitants). Haredi is derived from harada (fear, anxiety), which could be interpreted as “one who trembles in awe of God” (cf. Isaiah 66:2, 5). Haredi Judaism is the most theologically conservative form of Orthodox Judaism.


4

Chapter 2

Amer ican Orthodox I mmi grants’ Mobiliz ation and I ntegration in Israel Wasfi Kailani

I ntroduc ti on

The majority of American Orthodox Jews who immigrated in Israel

after 1967 chose to settle in the Jerusalem area and in the West Bank and Gaza settlements. In Israel, these immigrants’ social and political mobilization in settler movements is well known by its ability to influence public authorities, to raise funds, to cooperate in networks, and to be heard by the media. Contrary to Israeli common thought, the mobilization of American Orthodox Jews should be identified not merely by their radical political positions but also by the original methods they employed in their act of mobilization and their influence over Israeli politics. This chapter is intended to show how the American immigrants participate in Israeli settlements, how they make their extra parliamentary mobilization visible, and the integration process they undergo in their path of becoming Israelis. Mobilization and integration are discussed in order to highlight the plurality and complexity of American Orthodox activism in Israel. The intersection between Orthodox Judaism and Zionism has placed this community on the seam between Jewish Orthodoxy and Israeli secularism, as well as between Israeli settlement ideology— widely perceived as extremist—and mainstream Israeli political practices and attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. American immigrants are thus highly involved in settler movements, but at the

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same time they also make up most of the pacifist organization Rabbis for Human Rights. American Orthodox immigrants use different repertoires of action, partly inherited from their past U.S. experience, which illustrate their complex and plural position in Israel’s absorbing society and political organizations. But what makes their mobilization so original and distinctive is their impact on political authorities and their media coverage. This visibility needs to be detailed and understood in light of their singular position within the Israeli society. Taking into account their social, political, and religious characteristics, this chapter will analyze American Orthodox immigrants’ sociology, the reasons and mechanisms of their visible activism, and the plural nature of their involvement. In order to provide a better understanding of the American Jewish trajectory in Israel, this study is mainly based on my interviewees’ opinions of their political involvement in Israeli settlements and their struggle to integrate and mobilize within the Israeli system.1 I began to identify the emergence of American Jewish mobilization in Jerusalem at the beginning of 2001 upon my arrival in the Old City of Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter for my PhD studies in anthropology. My research interests were the boundaries between the holy and the mundane in religious and political discourse among the Quarter’s inhabitants. Upon entering the field of the Jewish Quarter, I found that since the Quarter had been developing into a mainly ReligiousZionist community of American Orthodox new immigrants, I was interviewing an Anglo-Saxon community. Later, I discovered that this demographic change had been rising since the beginning of the 1980s. Then I used this finding as a limiting research factor to focus on one Jewish group (American Jews) in the Jewish Quarter in order to deepen my understanding of religious nationalist boundaries by exploring American immigrants’ political and social mobilization in Jerusalem and the West Bank in particular and Israel in general. Thus, I carried out interviews, with questions focusing on their mobilization as American Jews in Israel, such as the level of their involvement in political activism, their relationship with other Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, and their influence in Israeli politics. Additional interviews with non-American Israelis and Arab Jerusalemites provided me with perceptions that contrasted with those of the American interviewees. In order to understand these American Orthodox immigrants’ mobilization and integration with other Israelis, Americans, Orthodox, Religious Zionists, and political activists, I interviewed individuals about their motivations for immigration and their social integration in Israel. At the beginning, I thought that I had discovered this

Mobilization and Integration in Israel

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group’s main social, religious, and political coherent identity. Most of the interviewees introduced themselves through their distinct Israeli Jewish identity. They identified themselves as Religious Zionists or religious nationalist Modern Orthodox Jews/Israelis. As I conducted more interviews, I found that the complex identity of these people was not easily understood, neither by me as an outsider nor by many Israelis in Jerusalem. Many interviewees stressed the importance of their difference from other Israeli orthodox Jews through their American ‘Modern Orthodox’ Judaism;2 these interviewees wanted to differentiate themselves from Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Israelis by claiming their own specific articulation of Zionism with “modernity,” an articulation that differentiates between public and private life. Only a few Israelis understand these characteristics, and so it is a selfdefinition of American Orthodox immigrants. An Israeli interviewee from the Jewish Quarter, a day before the Israeli Knesset elections in 2003, expressed a contradictory view of American immigrants in Israel: “Most American new immigrants are [on the political] extreme right, open minded, active in the settlements, but poorly effective in the Israeli political map. They need half a century until they learn well the rules of our parties’ political games. Israel is not the U.S., it is more complicated.” This Israeli interviewee meant that American immigrants’ intertwined account of cultural behavior or political activism is due to the fact that they come from a more pluralistic and so-called open society to a society with a more “traditional” style of political activism and a different party system from that in the U.S. An American responded to this Israeli interviewee’s perception: “Israelis do not know enough about our American Orthodox background and its complicated accommodation of religion and modernity in our social and political behavior.” Individual interviews, like different research projects, introduced various interpretations of the social and political mobilization of American immigrants in the Israeli political arena. This difference in views refers to the many contexts and backgrounds of their past U.S. social and political experience. Correspondingly, I refer to two important American theories for my discussion: The first is Steven Cohen’s “integrationist strategies” of American Jews in the U.S. and Israel (1983). By “integrationist,” Cohen means that American Jews learned how to be good American citizens and good Jews at the same time. This is at the core of their survivalist strategy in a non-Jewish larger society, and this strategy continues to function even in the “very Jewish” society of Israel. The second theory, posed by Charles

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Liebman (1973), is that of the American Jewish “ambivalent character,” referring to the combined identity of successful accommodation of religion, politics, and community life. Waxman and Appel (1986) and Avi Kay (1995) claim that American immigrants not only have the distinctive character of American Jews, but they also have brought with them a different kind of social and political behavior to Israel’s larger society. Kay stresses that American immigrants are more professional when obtaining the media’s attention than their Israeli counterparts. Many studies that provide literature on American Jews and their activism in Israel (S. Cohen 1983 a and b; Eizenstat 1989; Fine 1983; R. Cohen and Golub 1995; Waxman and Appel 1986) focus on the politics of their absorption and cultural integration. Most of the studies, especially Liebman and Cohen (1990) and Klein (1998) find that the American Orthodox Religious Zionist community provides a rich field for understanding the links between politics, religion, education, Zionism, and Judaism in Israel. Many of my Jewish Quarter interviewees agree with Kay’s claim (1995, 1–3) that American immigrants’ involvement in political activism is highly characterized by their ability to make themselves well heard through their involvement in social networks and extraparliamentary political organizations, e.g., Gush Emunim3 or Peace Now. I claim that this publicity and their professionalism in mobilization in social networks refer to American Orthodox Jews’ ability to combine religious Judaism (Judaism) and political repertoires of action; another important factor of this visibility is their role as a liaison between Israeli institutions and pro-Israel American Jews. Such characteristics, in addition to their English-speaking profile, enable American activists to fit into different social and political networks and to become an audible voice and visible entity. Nevertheless, the ability to integrate with a wide spectrum of social and political attitudes places American Jewish immigrants in Israel in a new position on the seam between different Israeli political streams. In order to analyze this central position, I will firstly study the American immigrants’ political sociology and mobilization, secondly the visibility of their political activism, and finally the way they integrate and are integrated into Israeli society and its extraparliamentary groups.


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Po l iti c al S oc i olog y and Extr a pa r li amentary M ob i li z ati on o f Ame r ic an Immi g r ants i n I s r a el i S e t tlements i n Jerus alem a nd the West Bank While surveys of the American immigrants’ political mobilization in Jerusalem and in Israel are still limited, there is a fair amount of literature available on the Gush Emunim settlement activists, among whom American immigrants are amply represented, especially in the Gush Etzion (Brownfeld 2000; O’Dea 1976; Rubinstein 1984; Liebman and Don-Yehiya 1983).4 Most of the studies have been written on the period between the end of the 1970s and the mid-1980s because the Gush Emunim (the settlement movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) was established after the October War of 1973 and its political influence has been on rise until today. As a consequence, American Religious Zionist immigrants started to move from the U.S. to Jerusalem, and many bought or rented houses in the Jewish Quarter. Since that same period, Israeli left-wing journalists and scholars have focused on the “image of the settler” in relation to the Gush Emunim activities, while shedding some light on American Orthodox newcomers as active participants in this movement.5 The results of a settlement poll conducted in 19996 shows that settlers from American and European origins form 31 percent of the whole settler population. Like the results among my sample of seventy interviewees (2001–2004) in the Jewish Quarter, most West Bank settlers are religious, with 37 percent considering themselves Orthodox and 16 percent ultra-Orthodox. Only 16 percent considered themselves traditional and 31 percent secular. Nevertheless, my American Orthodox interviewees showed a combination of varying religious denominations. Many respondents identified as religious and traditional, or as Orthodox and close to ultra-Orthodox. Like the majority of other settlers, my American Orthodox interviewees’ motivations to move to the West Bank varied, but if the 1999 poll showed that 46 percent of the settlers arrived for financial reasons, my sample shows a similar percentage settling in the Jewish Quarter and the Jerusalem suburbs, though for ideological and religious reasons. Thus, the majority of the settlers and my sample of U.S. Jews voted for religious and right-wing parties. For example, the 1999 poll has shown that the settlers’ general vote for Israeli parties (the 1999 elections) elected the Likud with 24 percent, followed by Echud Leumi (National Union) with 13 percent and the Mafdal (NRP or National Religious Party)

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with 12 percent. These results are actually very similar to their Jewish Quarter counterparts for the Knesset elections of 2003. The results of the seventeenth Knesset Elections, March 2006, have shown the Jewish Quarter demonstrating a higher percentage for the Mafdal and Echud Leumi and the National Front Party, Torah and Shabat Judaism, Yisrael Beitenu, and Shas. Comparatively, this result implies that the Jewish Quarter hosts a higher percentage of ultra-Orthodox and religious nationalist voters than secular nationalists, who have almost all left the Quarter. The above figures illustrate the Religious-Nationalist orientation of the contexts and spaces where American Orthodox immigrants have chosen to settle (e.g., the Jewish Quarter). In spite of their influential and visible political activism, people still talk about American political activism in terms of nongovernmental (extraparliamentary) activism. Extraparliamentary activism is often considered the civil sphere for civil liberties and human rights groups and environmental support or peace organizations using methods of protest and influence through legal and media systems (Laskier 2000). We know that this is not really the case and that civil mobilizations are much more complicated and antagonistic, than expected. The emergence of extraparliamentary activism in Israel started in the 1960s in a changing state-society pattern. Although very different in ideologies, Peace Now (extreme left) and Gush Emunim (extreme right), emerged at the same period and appeared as new successful movements of influence in the Israeli political system. It was the first time in Israeli political activism that the membership of thousands of citizens was organized outside the party system (Medding 2002). It is well known today that local mobilizations are influenced by foreign or international repertoires of contention, such as American immigrants in Israel are influenced by or even import American-based modes of contention. These modes of contention are not only the different ways of demonstrating, mobilization through networks, and using media, but also an experience of democracy different from the Israeli one. American immigrants brought with them to Israel political ideas and norms that are more familiar to the American democracy, such as civil mobilization and involvement. Articulating both formal politics, by participating in the elections, and informal politics, in organizations and movements, American immigrants export the importance of civil society and citizens’ involvement. If Israelis have a stronger political consciousness due to the long-term conflict situation in the Middle East, American immigrants are more active in civil political activism.


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It is also very important to highlight how much this so-called American style of political activism and mode of expression is seen as distinctively “American” in Israel. Furthermore, there are two general distinctive points showing how extraparliamentary activism in Israel has been transformed since the early 1970s. First, the use of passive demonstrations, symbolic T-shirts, and a network style of activism was adopted not only by the left but also by both the radical left Israeli peace movements and nonviolent civil disobedience and by the radical right settlement and extreme ideologies. Second, Israel imports not only American culture, thoughts, and models of activism but also actual North American immigrants with their physical presence and a process of integration into the Israeli society and politics.

Wh at M ak es Amer ic an Jewi s h Ac ti v is ts S o Vis i b le? Three major reasons were behind the attraction to American Jews and their mobilization in Israel. First, Israeli settlement receives the highest media coverage and attraction in the context of reporting on Israeli occupation and military actions in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The fact that some American Jewish settlers have helped establish and been the most active members of the Gush Emunim movement, particularly the Gush Etzion settlement, places them at the core of this media coverage. Second, these American settlers are most successful in making themselves visible among other settlers because of their political protest training in the U.S. Some surveys have shown that religious settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank show the highest rates of political activism (see statistics in the above section). Third, the involvement of some American Orthodox Jews in extreme rightist political activism has placed American Jewish settlers under the macro and micro eyes of journalists and researchers. For example, some extreme events, attributed to the Kach movement led by Meir Kahane,7 and the settlement activities of American Orthodox Jews in Israel have given American Jewish immigrants the reputation of being involved in religious nationalist extremism in Israel. The most extreme event was the massacre at al-Haram al-Ibrahimi (Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron in 1994, when Dr. Baruch Goldstein killed twenty-seven Muslims. At the time, journalists and politicians pointed with accusation at the followers of Meir Kahana and his roots within the American Jewish community in Brooklyn. One of the main reactions to this event was the consequential view of American settlerimmigrants as extreme opponents to the peace process.

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The Women in Green movement—a rightist women’s organization with a high percentage of American women members—as well as Rabbi Kahana’s Kach movement, Gush Emunim, and other Israeli political religious-nationalist organizations in which many American Jews are involved in Israel have raised many questions about American Orthodox immigrants. Many observers of American immigration, such as Yossi Klein HaLevi, one of my interviewees and author of Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist: An American Story (1995), note that the Brooklyn background of Kahana has left an image of extremism on Jewish immigrants from the U.S. The fact that many American right-wing nationalists live in Gush Etzion strengthens the strong relation between extremism, voluntary immigration, and the young age of the American immigrants in the Israeli settlements. Such sociological attributes of young age, advanced education, and affiliation to religious nationalism have pointed to the strong involvement in political activism of most American immigrants, particularly those who have chosen to settle in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Thus, many other researchers (Waxman 1999; Heilman and Cohen 1989) agree with Halevi (1995), and all see mobilized American Religious-Zionists as active individuals who are young, well educated, and affiliated to political movements or religious trends, as in the case of many of my Orthodox interviewees. These affiliations usually start in the U.S. and continue in Israel, even if they exist in different frameworks. Another reason for this political activism and its visibility is that the majority of the American Jewish Orthodox immigrants arrived in Israel for voluntary reasons or to participate in an overseas study program; very few emigrated from the United States out of economic or political necessity, as did Russian or Ethiopian immigrants. Most American Jews have chosen to immigrate to fulfill certain dreams and goals. These motivations make the American immigrant community a salient group that intentionally attracts reports on their political and settlement activism by the media or by the movement itself. Thus, most of these incidents and activities seemed to be oriented around a strategy of demonstrating and exerting influence through making themselves visible. Accordingly, the media covered American Jews not only for their involvement in extremism and settlement but because of other factors, like the style of networking entailed in their activism, the access to more than one language, and the connection to more than one community in Israel and the U.S. Their involvement in social movements, whether left or right, not only achieves certain instrumental goals and engages them in various face-to-face activities but also creates conditions for future collaboration or social


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capital, emphasizing both shared social ties and norms through religious, social, and political associations. Movements such as Kahana Hai (the continuation of Kach) and Women in Green, together with their mixed use of symbolism, norms, colorful signs (orange and black, green stickers, or T-shirts), and extreme actions in political activism have demonstrated the impact of American immigrants and their successful ability to create fast media propaganda. Yet these methods and media strategies have also been adapted by other American Israelis, such as liberal rabbis, to form small propeace groups. One of these American ideas that developed into a movement was the Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR), which struggles for ecumenical peace and dialogue and which partially gave a more positive image of the Jewish religion in the eyes of the international community.

D i f f erent I d eolog ies and One M ethod American immigrants have always had innovative ideas, such as creating new settlement points, establishing NGOs, or proposing and supporting many peacemaking and interfaith activities. This innovation is due to their focus on the function of the activity and the role of the movement rather than on political structures such as those of the political parties. Starting with the first Intifada (1987), American rabbis established a new movement that seemed strange within Israeli society and was especially foreign to the Jewish religious community, which was used to attaching the term “human rights” to “leftist” ideology. As Diana from RHR pointed out, “when it was established in 1988, most of the rabbis were from American origin, or at least have had long experience of life in the U.S., such as Rabbi David Forman, Rabbi Zvi Weinberg and the most active one, Rabbi Arik W. Ascherman, who was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard University in 1981. The movement was established with few rabbis, and today it has more than 114 rabbis” (Interview, September 2004). However, Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) is no longer the only religious group that calls for peace, interfaith dialogue, and tolerance between religions and nations based on shared religious and historical Islamic-Jewish coexistence and coinfluence. Throughout my stay in Jerusalem, I have participated in activities of more than ten Jewish-Arab interfaith groups, such as Bustan al-Salam (Garden of Peace), the Israel Jewish Council for Interreligious Relations, the Yakar Center for Torah (run by Rabbi Yaakov Rosen), Tradition and

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Creativity, and Ulpan Akiva (see ICCI: Guide to Interreligious and Intercultural Activities in Israel, American Jewish Committee). The method of individual activity and media publicity has given a public voice for many courageous or adventurous ideas to be implemented in the Israeli political arena. For example, American Jewish support of peace groups was able to build certain bridges between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem as well as in many other areas, such as the north of the country. On the other side of the political spectrum, American extreme right settlers have been able to build certain bridges between Israeli secular and religious streams in many settlement towns in the West Bank. Consequently, although American settlers are viewed as part of the extreme nationalist camp, many seem to be more tolerant toward Israeli Arabs than the Jewish population in Israel at large. The majority of American residents in the Jewish Quarter and my surveyed U.S. Jews in Jerusalem have expressed strong support for humanitarian and egalitarian solutions in spite of their involvement in Religious-Nationalist activism. At one point, I viewed this relationship as an example of a contradictory border-identity, while on several occasions I perceived this tolerant attitude a result of their American Jewish background and experiences with previous residents of an American multicultural society. In addition, one must remember that the involvement of these immigrants in the Israeli settlement movement does not require them to fully rethink their attitudes toward Arabs as ordinary people, since before their arrival in Israel Arabs (including Palestinians in the U.S.) were not perceived as a daily physical threat. Although American Jewish immigrants share many protest methods, their political-cultural mobilization is manifest in interrelated views of a complex Jewish entity in Israel. I also found that the plural Jewish American identity distinguishes both right- and left-wing social and political activists. Nevertheless, despite their move to a new Israeli sphere of social, religious, and political mobilization, their plural identity remained and partly explained their different repertoires of mobilization. Jewish immigrants, in general, with their different cultures and methods of activism, contribute to the Israeli composite nature and the heterogeneity of its society. For American immigrants, cultural confrontations in Israel and the distinctions between common and uncommon norms and values, as well as learning how to integrate within Israeli society or developing a social life, are very important when deciding where to live and with which Israeli different communities to mobilize.


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In this sense, American immigrants who are undergoing a process of integration or absorption in Israeli society present diverse views on integration and its meaning. Each person undergoes different levels of integration. Some views and levels, as discussed in the following section, are the result of dissimilarities between each one of the individuals and their chosen place of residence, friends, academic institutions, yeshivas, synagogues, work places, or extraparliamentary groups.

Becoming Israelis: Views and Levels o f Mo bil iz atio n and Integr ati on When I asked my American interviewees in Jerusalem about their mobilization and integration into the Israeli society, some responded that social and political mobilization in Israel was very different from social and political mobilization in the U.S., while others claimed that in principle, the differences are not so great. Most respondents were of the opinion that “social life/relationships” in Israel are dominantly “stronger” and mobilization (political or social) is much more complicated because of its strong combination with religion and social life. Those who affirmed that social relationships in Israel differ from their counterparts in the U.S. provided several examples. Generally, these responses can be categorized into three groups. • The first group viewed Israel as a place with “too much social interference with politics,” or “too many social and ethnic commitment.” • The second group focused on general differences between the two societies in the U.S. and Israel, such as the wider variety of cultures, ethnic origins, religions, and minorities in the U.S. Consequently, there is no specific requirement for the meaning of integration and political mobilization. However, interviewees varied widely in their understanding of acculturation within Israeli society and politics. Edan Cohen immigrated to Israel five years ago and was in 2004 still hesitant about whether to stay in Israel or return to the U.S.: “In order to acculturate into Israeli society and its political organizations, an American immigrant should have an active social life, e.g., commit to an ideology, know people, exchange visits, learn certain norms, speak Hebrew, participate in community activities or meetings; all these norms of behavior do not pass without confrontation between American norms and Israeli ones. I hate the U.S., but I do not find it easy to integrate in Israeli life, neither in its political system.” Edan claims that Religious Zionist immigrants succeed in

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becoming Israelis quicker because they are already mobilized with ideological commitments and thus the Israeli religious nationalist community welcomes them to get integrated in its wider society. • The third group narrated a series of observations about social and political mobilization and relationships in Israel. This was the largest group of American immigrants, who could not categorize or generalize the types of social relationships dominant in Jerusalem’s communities. Their observations included attitudes toward ethnic ties, mutual interests, ceremonial participations, intermarriage, family relations, community activities, and professional similarities. This third group stresses the importance of its American background and its love of friendship ties with other Americans in Israel. Thus they chose to live in neighborhoods, such as the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem or Gush Etzion, where they find many American immigrants of the same religious and ideological stream. Correspondingly, an American newcomer arrives in Israel and undergoes a complicated process that entails the transformation of values, first-time meetings, adapting to Israeli institutional bureaucracies, conducting business in Israel, and participating in political activism. The conflicting mentalities and problematic correlation between the personal and the institutional is considered, by American olim (Jewish immigrants to Israel), as one of the main difficulties of integration in Israeli society. Part of the socioeconomic difficulty is also related to the Israeli view of Americans in Israel. This view, which some new immigrants find disturbing in their sociopolitical integration in Israel, push some Americans toward mobilization with other Americans, close to their ideology. Israeli perceptions of North Americans are not always accurate, nor are they positive. Some Israelis think that North American immigrants belong to a high economical and social class; this is wrong. “Many Israelis think that we can serve as good connections in helping them travel to the U.S. or to raise funds for political, academic or social activities and organizations. This view of us by other Israelis complicates our ability to become regular Israelis” (Ruthie, a twentysix year-old yeshiva student from Canada, Spring 2003). A majority of interviewees would see two levels of social relationships: the individual level and the collective identity level. One of the teachers at an elementary school in the Jewish Quarter summarized these levels: “Within the social circles of good-bad relationships, your relationship to me will be enhanced if you believe in the same religious thoughts. If, in addition, you go to the same synagogue and you vote for the


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same party, then you are a true member of my community. If you belong to the same ethnic origin and preimmigration background, this can help in establishing better bilateral ties. Sometimes, if your sons attend the same school as my sons, this might make you and me closer to each other. Although in the U.S., your level of religious observation plays a role in your relationships, the society is more open and less judgmental than here.” While many American individuals are critical of the Israeli “lack of contract and competition” in business as well as extraparliamentary political activism, they praise their new host community in other aspects of social life and interaction under a particular image of society. It is a society where they believe they can attain or regain a measure of consensus, consonance, or complementarity. As they reject aspects of what they name “Israeli traditionalism,” they also reject certain qualities of what they call “American modernity” by embracing the Israeli constructed image of “tradition.” Thus, since most American immigrants in Jerusalem are Orthodox Jews, their rituals tend to follow a strong level of mobilization under the impact of previous religiosity and the process of absorption and acculturation within Jerusalem’s religious-nationalist society. But ethnically and economically, they also tend to add a new dimension to the model of ethnic pluralism within a multicultural society. Correspondingly, most of my American respondents do not object to identifying themselves nationally as “Israelis” and, religiously, as “Jews.” Although they accept the “traditionalist,” “Zionist,” and “Orthodox” identities, they show uncertainty toward “ethnic,” “secular,” “Ashkenazi,” or “Mediterranean” definitions. To this end, I would conclude that both processes of American Jewish mobilization and integration in Israel are still blurred. Nevertheless, American Orthodox Jews have shown some distinct features with regard to the visibility in practicing political activism and their “networking” relationships.

C o nc lus ions Although it is difficult to find systematic evidence for analyzing all the implications of American Orthodox political and social mobilization, which still lean strongly to the radical right, there are three main findings with regard to American immigrants’ involvement in rightist political activism in Israel. These findings also fit the analysis of other American Israeli protest movements. First, protest activism remains consistent and provides a classical dimension of political participation. Second, although American immigrants in Israel have brought with

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them different styles of protest politics through new social movements, these movements (in Israel) are still on the rise as channels of American political and social mobilization. To this day, and different from other immigrant ethnic groups (e.g., Moroccans, Russians, or Ethiopians), Americans have not supported a Knesset candidate to represent “the American community.” One possible reason for this could be that Americans feel active and influential in many extraparliamentary political movements or organizations and do not need nor ask for a constructed monolithic representation. Third, American immigrants are perceived as a visible social group with a different style of political activism simply because their protest politics are stronger among the educational and professional class of volunteering immigrants, who came to Israel to defend a certain ideology. American Jewish background, coupled by the developments in Israel during the 1970s and 1980s, has found in Israel a suitable environment to fulfill goals of political and social mobilization, such as forming part of their ideological society and activism while at the same time becoming more tolerant by showing acceptance of the multiculturalism, pluralism, and individuality in wider Israeli society. This can be explained by their minority situation and feeling in the U.S. and their familiarity with the separation between private and public sphere. American Jews continue their unique innovations and forms of activism, such as Rabbis for Human Rights. Once living in Jerusalem and in Israeli settlements, American Orthodox Jewish immigrants became conscious of the important role they play as inhabitants of a region lying on the border between two hostile worlds, Israeli and Palestinian. However, their political activism redefines their residential role in terms of sociopolitical networks; they become an ethno-religious bridge in the relationship between the Israeli secular state and its commitment to the Jewish religion. Therefore, their activism and salience in the media are outcomes of their power relations in their unique combination of religion and Zionism. Consequently, settlement political activism provides a societal framework or a meeting place that can bring together radicals (whether disaffected or nondisaffected), moderates, and extremists; the complex synthesis of the social and political mobilization and integration of American Orthodox (religious Zionist) settlers is the main reason behind my identification of the term “extremists on the border-line” (in Hebrew: kitzonim ‘al kav hatefer).


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Referenc es Aronoff, Myron. 1989. Israeli visions and divisions: Cultural change and political conflict. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publication. Bar Ilan Department of Strategic Analysis and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (CPRS). October, 1999. Settlers Poll (3): The Future of Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Brownfeld, Allan. December. 2000. Extremism in Israel is fueled by a growing ultra-Orthodox movement in the U.S. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs: 71–72. Cohen, Renae, and Jennifer Golub. 1995. The Israeli Peace Initiative and the Israel-PLO Accord: A survey of American Jewish opinion in 1994. New York: The American Jewish Committee. Cohen, Steven M. 1983a. American modernity and Jewish identity, New York: Tavistock Publications. Cohen, Steven M. 1983b. Attitudes of American Jews toward Israel and Israelis: 1983 national survey of American Jews and Jewish communal leaders, New York: Institute on American Jewish-Israeli Relations. Eizenstat, Stuart. E. 1989. American Jews and Israel in the Bush era. Public address at the Susan and David Wilstein Institute of Jewish Policy Studies, Los Angeles. Fine, Morris. 1983. Israeli Diaspora relations: A selected annotated bibliography, 1973–1983. New York: Institute on American Jewish-Israeli Relations, The American Jewish Committee. Halevi, Yossi Klein. 1995. Memoirs of a Jewish extremist: An American story. Boston: Little Brown. Heilman, Samuel. 1976. Synagogue life: A study in symbolic interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Heilman, Samuel, and Steven Cohen. 1989. Cosmopolitans & parochial: Modern Orthodox Jews in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel. 2001. Guide to interreligious and intercultural activities in Israel. Jerusalem: ICCI. Kay, Avi. 1995. Making themselves heard: The Impact of North American olim on Israeli politics. New York: American Jewish Committee. Klein, Menachem. 1998. Bar Ilan academics, religion and politics. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University [in Hebrew]. Laskier, Michael. 2000. Israeli activism American-style: Civil liberties, environmental, and peace organizations as pressure groups for social change, 1970s-1990s. Israel Studies 5, no. 1: 128–52. Liebman, Charles S., and Steven M. Cohen. 1990. Two worlds of Judaism: The Israeli and American experiences. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Liebman, Charles S., and Eliezer Don Yehi. 1983. Civil religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and political culture in the Jewish state. Berkeley: University of California Press. Medding, Peter. 2002. Jews and violence: Images, ideologies, realities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Prell, Riv-Ellen. 1989. Prayer and community: The Havurah in American Judaism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. O’Dea, Janet. Fall 1976. Gush Emunim: Roots and ambiguities. Forum, vol.25, 2: 38–50 Rubinstein, Amnon. 1984. The Zionist dream revisited. New York: Schocken. Shafir, Gershon. 1985. Institutional and spontaneous settlement drives: Did Gush Emunim make a difference? In The impact of Gush Emunim: Politics and settlement in the West Bank, ed. David Newman, 153–71. London: Croom Helm. Waxman, Chaim, and Michael Appel. 1986. To Israel and back: American Aliya and return migration. New York: American Jewish Committee, Institute of Human Relations. Waxman, Chaim. 1999. In the end is it ideology? Religio-cultural and structural factors in American Aliya. Contemporary Jewry 16: 50–67.

Notes 1. Data were collected for my anthropological PhD dissertation on identities of American modern Orthodox among the inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. This quarter is a rich field for the study of such American Jewish activism, since it is attractive for people with loyalties to the right wing of the Religious-Zionist movement who move to Jerusalem to fulfill their ideals and defend their cause. 2. Modern Orthodoxy is one of the three main streams of American Judaism: so-called Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodoxy. Scholars of American Judaism, such as Samuel Heilman (1976) and Steven Cohen (1983), date the recognizable beginnings of the so called Modern Orthodoxy to Central Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. At that time, many Jews chose to pursue a secular education and participate in the larger cultural and economic public system while retaining significant aspects of private life, such as dietary laws (kosher food) and Shabbat observance. Many of the rabbis and Jews I came across during my fieldwork explained ‘Modern’ Orthodoxy by expressing their lives in ruling principles, such as, “We live according to the Jewish law with worldly involvement. We immigrated to Israel to get rid of this involvement with ‘non-Halachic’ and ‘western’ values.” 3. Gush Emunim was a settler movement in the West Bank and Gaza established after the Yom Kippur War (1973) more specifically between 1974 and 1987. 4. Gush Etzion (“bloc of Etzion”) refers to the group of Israeli settlements established following the 1967 Six Day War in the south of Jerusalem and on the northern part of Mount Hebron in the West Bank. 5. See Aronoff (1989) and Shafir (1985) for emphasis on the self-image of American settlers in the West Bank and Gaza.


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6. Settlers Poll (3): The Future of Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. October, 1999. The Bar Ilan Department of Strategic Analysis and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (CPRS) conducted a public opinion poll among Israeli settlers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The sample size was 502 in 115 settlements. 7. Rabbi Meir David Kahane was known in the United States and in Israel for his promotion of a theocratic Greater Israel. He founded two controversial movements, the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in the USA and Kach, an Israeli political party. In 1986, Kach was declared a racist party by the Israeli government and banned from the Knesset, and, in 1994, following the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre by Baruch Goldstein, the movement was outlawed completely.


4 Pa rt I I

Israeli Peace Movements


4

Chapter 3

Poli t ical Activism and L egi t imacy in Israel Fo ur Gro u ps b etween Co o per ati o n and Tra nsgressi o n

Karine Lamarche

While the history of what is commonly called the “Israeli peace

camp” has been lengthy, an unprecedented transition in both the actions carried out by peace activists and in their claims recently took place during the Second Intifada, which started in late September 2000. Before, activists’ claims were already intended to express opposition in principle to the occupation (e.g., Peace Now, founded in 1978, during the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks, or Gush Shalom in 1993, during the Oslo agreements), and to war (Yesh Gvul, the Four Mothers, and so on during the Lebanon war in the early 1980s), as well as the will to intervene against specific injustices linked to the political situation (Rabbis for Human Rights, the Israeli Committee against House Demolition, and Physicians for Human Rights, during the first Intifada, started in 1987). However, during the Second Intifada, the identification of some Israeli activists with Palestinian struggle, as well as their opposition to their own army, has risen to a level never reached before. This new characteristic allows us to introduce a comparison between some of the strategies and approaches chosen by the actors, even thought this characteristic is not necessarily found in every movement formed at this specific period of time. This article deals with the collective mobilizations of Israelis against the occupation during and after the Second Intifada, and

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more specifically, with four groups that we have placed in two categories: Courage to Refuse and Machsom Watch, on the one hand, and Ta’ayush and Anarchists against the Wall (AATW) on the other. Although placing the last two organizations in the same category appears quite natural, grouping the first two organizations together requires immediate justification, since one group represents young men who refuse to serve in the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories1) and the other consists of women, for the most part mothers and grandmothers, who monitor checkpoints in the West Bank. Why, then, is such a parallel useful? Because I believe that, despite major differences in terms of generation and modes of expression, one aspect differentiates them from the two other groups. Ta’ayush and AATW indeed introduced a novelty to the preexisting activist diagram by refusing unilateralism and by advocating real cooperation with Palestinians. This first distinction brings about a second one, based on perceptions of these groups: while the first groups (Courage to Refuse and Machsom Watch), use interpretation frames and repertoires of collective actions2 that allow them to be heard by the media and to be taken into account in the politicomilitary sphere, the second groups (AATW and Ta’ayush), use discourses and actions that limit their influence on both the state authorities and the general Israeli public. We shall see how the stances and behaviors of the later cause the media, governmental institutions, and the public to characterize them as radicals. As a theoretical framework, I make use of social movement theories, including resource mobilization models, and more specifically, recent studies on the cultural dimension of the social movement organization (SMO). I am interested in the relationship between the degree of legitimacy of these organizations and their capacity to resonate within Israeli culture. My main hypothesis is that Machsom Watch and the refuzniks, by using interpretation frames that are “culturally resonant” and legalistic repertoires of action are able to remain within the “boundaries of the legitimate” (Williams 2004) and are therefore accepted by the general Israeli public. AATW and Ta’ayush, on the other hand, mobilize marginalized language and repertoires and thus become themselves culturally marginalized. This is why it seems that Machsom Watch and Courage to Refuse can be designated as “reform movements,”3 whereas the second type of groups corresponds to what Williams calls “radical movements.”4 In the first part of this article, I will present the symbolism, rhetoric, and interpretation frames used by each group after having presented them briefly. The second part will describe their repertoires of action

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and whether they lead the groups to cooperate with state institutions or not. This will allow me finally to analyze the “cultural resonance” of the movements’ messages among the general Israeli public, notably through these messages’ receptivity by the Israeli media.

To B e o r Not to Be Radi c al: A Ma jo r Ques tio n for Groups D ea l ing with Po li ti c al Issues Brief Presentation of the Four Groups The Second Intifada (or Intifada al-Aqsa), which erupted in September 2000, constituted a significant turning point both regarding the Palestinian resistance toward the occupation (Bucaille 2002) and the repertoires of action mobilized by Israelis engaged in pacifist groups. Although a part of the “peace camp” disintegrated following the Palestinian revolt and the violence it generated, new groups came into existence, including those we cited at the beginning of this article. Machsom Watch5 was formed in Jerusalem in January 2001, by the initiative of three women shocked by stories reported by the media of widespread abuses at checkpoints. From its formation, the group had a triple objective: to monitor the behavior of soldiers at the checkpoints, to intervene in and find alternatives to problematic situations, and to bring testimonies before the Israeli and international public. Exclusively composed of women (perceived as less threatening by both Palestinians and Israeli soldiers), this group today has about five hundred activists dispersed throughout the country’s four main cities. The choice to exclude men falls under an Israeli tradition of solely feminine movements that first appeared during the war against Lebanon (Women Against the Invasion of Lebanon, Mothers against Silence, and The Four Mothers) and during the first Intifada (Women in Black).6 The second group I deal with here is Courage to Refuse, which came into existence following the publication of a letter signed by fifty-two reservists refusing missions in the OPT (Ha’aretz January 25, 2002). Two other refusal movements joined this initiative, a group of pilots in September 2003 and the Sayeret Matkal commando unit7 in December of the same year. It was neither the first time that soldiers had expressed their opposition to the government through letter-writing8 nor the first time soldiers had stated their objection to service,9 but the tension brought on by the Second Intifada, as well as the group’s openly Zionist position, gave this initiative tremendous

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resonance. After a steady increase during the first few months of its existence, the number of signatures to the letter stabilized around six hundred,10 but the group has, today, almost disappeared from the Israeli activist scene. Ta’ayush (“coexistence” in arabic) was formed in 2000 by Israeli Jews and Arabs in order to fight against inequalities between the two peoples within Israel and against the injustice caused by the occupation of the Palestinian Territories. Ta’ayush does not have a proper ideology to which activists must agree; instead, it holds to the doctrine of ‘working modality’ and direct action: “We are a direct action group and everybody is invited to participate. Of course, all identify themselves as left, but Zionists and non-Zionists alike can go out and help Palestinian peasants pick their olives” (Halevi and Zackhem 2004). The very informal organization of the group, as well as the absence of a decision-making body, contributed to making it less active during the past two years than it had been at the beginning of the Second Intifada. Furthermore, it is also difficult to assess the past and present number of members, since there is no official system of adherence to the group—an aspect that sets it apart from the groups mentioned above and brings it closer to the next one. Nevertheless, we should mention here that the group’s manpower has considerably declined over the last few years. Today, only one or two dozen of activists are left in the Jerusalem area, although the movement’s name remains associated to many political actions. In April 2003, the village of Mash’a, in the West Bank, faced the gradual seizure of its lands because of the construction of the separation fence. Two tents were installed, and they became gathering places where, during four months, Palestinians, Israelis, and foreigners came to get information about the wall and to discuss what actions should be carried out. Certain people stayed there permanently in order to prevent the Israeli Army from destroying the tents. In July 2003, demonstrations began against the separation fence. Anarchists against the Wall (AATW)11 formed during this period in a relatively informal way. Today, it remains more a collection of individuals (between twenty and hundred) than a real organization, since there is neither hierarchy nor real adherence; those who wish to participate in an action must call ahead to find out the time and meeting place. A small circle of active participants has remained constant from the beginning, but the rest of the group is subject to high turnover. Indeed, although this group is one of the smallest Israeli activist groups, its members’ involvement is among the highest. Some spend several days a week in Palestinian villages, using their own money to pay the various expenses incurred


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(equipment, phone, gas, lawyers, and so on). I would explain this by the fact that AATW or Ta’ayush activists come from a social milieu with high “free time potential,” comparable to what MacCarthy and Zald described regarding the “professionals of contestation” (MacCarthy and Zald 1973). Moreover, some of them may become the subject of government inquiries or may not be able to leave the country without submitting themselves to endless questioning in the airport. Representations and Interpretation Frames This rapid presentation allows us to make a first observation: whereas Ta’ayush and AATW are open to all, the two “reformed groups” we are interested in are reserved for certain categories of citizens. “Courage to Refuse” is the most obvious example, since only reservists from fighting units could be part of it12 (in other words, it necessarily excluded women, Israeli Arabs, those who have not yet joined the army, and, initially, jobniks13). Machsom Watch is also restrictive, but to a lesser extent, since its only prerequisites for membership concern gender and citizenship (it is only open to women holding the Israeli citizenship). Secondly, the analysis in terms of frames as described by David Snow and his colleagues allows a strengthening in the differentiation between the two types of mobilizations. The researchers studied the interactive and communicative processes used by groups to modify the frame alignment, that is to say, the “linkage of individual and SMO interpretative orientations such that some set of individual interests, values and beliefs and SMO activities, and ideology are congruent and complementary” (Snow et al. 1986, 464). When the interpretation frames mobilized by the four organizations are observed, some of the processes described can be recognized, namely, in the case of “reformedgroups,” the “value amplification,”14 and in the case of “radicalgroups,” the “frame transformation.”15 Since their formation, Courage to Refuse and the two other refuzniks’ groups insisted on their deep Zionism, their dedication to the Israeli army, and their faith in the army’s morality, beliefs represented by the symbols these groups used to publicize their cause (e.g., Courage to Refuse’s logo has a blue and white David star reminiscent of the flag of Israel, and their TV commercials feature uniformed air force pilots; Figure 3.1). However, far from all the signatories held these positions, which is why one should not “overstate the extent to which individuals and groups identify with the substantive moral message that their discursive symbols evoke” (Williams 2004, 104). Both taking this pro-army position and recalling their glorious military past

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in front of the media came from the letter writers’ desire not to be seen as cowards or traitors. Their message was that the refuznik is not a leftist who neglects his army, but rather a patriot that is willing to give up his comrades and his unit to defend the moral values he believes in. This idealization process, which was originally used to incite refusal, became part of a strategy for acceptance by the Israeli public, who a priori is hostile to any act of civil disobedience linked to the army. In a comparable spirit, Machsom Watch did not hesitate to maintain the image of its members as mothers and grandmothers concerned about not only respect for human rights but also about the morality of their “symbolic sons,” the soldiers at checkpoints. Here, the example is less obvious than it was in the case of Courage to Refuse, which overtly mobilized the image of Zionist and militarist ideals. No one way of thinking is necessary to be part of Machsom Watch, and one finds women in many different ideological positions. However, the image they have as a group and the values they cite as motivation (humanism, respect for the individual, morality, and so on) bring

Figure 3.1 A demonstration of “Courage to Refuse.” On the pennant, one can read, “Israelis refuse to serve in the Territories,” and under the blue star, “Refusing for Israel.” (Photo: Karine Lamarche)


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them close to the “value amplification” described by Snow and partly explain their relative acceptance by the Israeli public. Ta’ayush and AATW locate themselves in a completely different sphere, where Jewish hegemonic values are less mobilized than universalistic and libertarian values. For example, these two groups defend the rights of West Bank inhabitants to fight the occupation (in certain cases using violence) and to choose a government, although it may be Hamas. Zionism is for them merely one colonialist ideology among others, and, most of the time, their Jewish descent does not concern them too much. Now, as pointed out by Fillieule and Péchu, “when the values and goals of a movement are antithetic with those defended by society, the movement is constrained to create or to spread new values” (1993, 167). This might explains why these activists emphasized more than others the need for cooperation between the two peoples, for equality (notably in decision making), for solidarity between members, and for freedom of thoughts and action. This last value comes at the cost of constant effort, since the inhabitants of Bil’in (and of other villages) rarely, in fact, correspond to their Israeli partners in terms of lifestyle and moral principles. Indeed, the Israelis’ feminist, antispecist,16 ecologist, and secular ideals often clash with some Palestinians’ practices of cattle breeding, with a patriarchal system that provides little place for women, with very weak interest in environmental issues, and with authoritarian religious observance. Finally, allow me to note a difference between these two types of groups in the way they condemn the occupation: in the first case, the groups emphasize the fact that the occupation poses a political and moral threat to Israel. Fighting it is thus presented as proof of patriotism. In the second case, the occupation is condemned in and of itself for what it does to the Palestinian people, and there is no attempt to convince the Israelis that they will live more safely should they leave the Territories. This probably explains the lesser deference of the latter groups toward a public they are not attempting to convince anyway, unlike the first two groups.

Re perto ires o f Ac tio n and L eg ali ty : A Co m plex Rel ati ons hi p Which Repertoires of Action . . . The notion of “repertoire of collective action” (or “repertoire of contention”) elaborated by Charles Tilly refers to “what happens (in the ways that people act together in pursuit of shared interests)

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by identifying sets of routines that are learned, shared and acted out through a relatively deliberate process of choice” (Tilly 1995, 41–42). It gives an account about the fact that every social movement has a palette of protesting forms capable of many variations, in the same way that, in jazz, infinite improvisations can be done around standards. By using this well-known metaphor, my aim is to show here how groups play around legality through the ways they protest. Whereas the repertoire of action of Courage to Refuse was, at the peak of its activity, mostly restricted to demonstrations in Israel and to public declarations, that of Machsom Watch maintains direct contact with “fieldwork” (Figure 3.2). This practical emphasis appealed to many activists who wanted “to be able to see the situation with their own eyes.”17 Each team visits a number of checkpoints, remaining at each one as long as necessary to understand and report on what is happening. They usually stand in the middle of the checkpoint to track the way soldiers conduct themselves and Palestinians are treated. In cases of seemingly needless or unwarranted delays, and of rude and aggressive behavior toward those seeking to cross a checkpoint, they intervene either by direct approach to the soldiers, or by phoning the appropriate military or civilian authorities. Once back at home, one of the team members is in charge of writing a report that will be put online and eventually sent to the military authorities and to the media. Considering the fact that their presence at the checkpoints is legal and that they use a humanitarian discourse to justify their actions, it is difficult to oppose them face-to-face.18 Thus, although they may not win the support of the Israeli majority, they are not seen as “traitors” by general public opinion either. Ta’ayush and AATW, on the other hand, in keeping with their political marginality, have developed forms of protesting, or “nonconventional” mobilizations, based on direct action, that are potentially illegal and violent (Mayer and Perrineau 1992, 112). Their methods recall the bid for power register used by the “without” and other associations in France (Act Up, Confédération paysanne), which mobilized tactics such as illegal housing occupations, seizure of drugs in pharmaceutical laboratories, destruction of genetically modified organismcultural areas, and so on (Sommier 2003, 170–71). In a similar vein, demonstrations organized by the Bil’in village committee in which Israelis (mainly the AATW) and foreigners also participate have been taking place every week since the beginning of 2005.19 After the Friday prayer, the villagers and the activists gather in the main street and go down to the fence of separation chanting political slogans. Generally, the demonstration is given a theme and a symbol, making


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Figure 3.2 Woman from Machsom Watch in discussion with an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint in the West Bank (Photo: Dafna Banai)

the protests somewhat theatrical. When the demonstrators arrive at the barbed-wire fencing, they are met by soldiers and members of the border police (magav), who make known to them the ban on staying there because it is a “closed military zone.” Then the activists begin songs and dances, which are sometimes followed by provocations20 that the army responds to by different means: arrests, tear gas, sound grenades, rubber bullets, and indeed occasionally real bullets. These “incidents” widely contributed to making the fight of the “activists against the wall” unpopular with most Israelis, who perceive them as

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deliberately violent and ideologically extremist. To know that young Israelis stand on the side of Palestinians, face to face with their own country’s soldiers, who serve a role those young people would have served just a few years earlier, is just simply unacceptable to a large majority of Jewish citizens, even more so because the group openly expresses its identification with the Palestinians. For example, during a demonstration where the theme was the release of the Palestinian activist Ahmed Awad, the Israeli security forces arrested forty-one Israelis; not one of them had been carrying his identity card. When asked to give his name, each activist answered, “I am called Ahmed Awad” (Ha’aretz December 8, 2004). Ta’ayush has a wider repertory of actions, but theirs is hardly more appreciated by common Israelis: demonstrations within Israel and the OPT, renovation of Arab buildings; collections in favor of various causes; picking olives or harvesting fields; bringing essential necessities like food, water, or clothing to villages; vigils in houses to be demolished; and the reconstruction of demolished houses. In many occasions, the group is thus permitted to bring concrete solutions, though of short duration, to the problems that it fights. From this standpoint, it is possible to evoke, as Cécile Péchu does, the idea of “sectorial illegalism,” since these modes of action “constitute at the same time both a claim and a response to the request that it [the group] bears” (Péchu 2005, 3). . . . For Which Kind of Relation with Institutionalized Groups? Although political parties themselves remained cautious about the different peace groups, several important persons on the left supported the refuzniks when their letters were published, as well as Machsom Watch at its formation and later at selected occasions.21 Ta’ayush and AATW had and still have much less support in the political world; the support they receive is primarily limited to Arab parties and parties on the extreme left. Furthermore, there is a clear difference in the relation of the four groups to the state: some opt for cooperation, while others behave in a more infringing way. Courage to Refuse and Machsom Watch attempt to stay as close as possible to legality, even while criticizing the state and its decisions. For instance, the refuzniks claim that they are willing to serve outside the OPT to defend their fellow citizens, and they usually use legitimate ways to refuse: they respond to the convocations of the army and only announce their objection once in front of their commander. Machsom Watch adopts a critical but at the same time respectful position toward the army


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by trying to maintain good relations both with soldiers who directly affect the way Palestinians are treated at checkpoints and with the chief of staff, who would make decisions that could either facilitate or inhibit Machsom Watch’s functioning. Machsom Watch has maintained such a good relationship with the army that the army recently proposed that the group give “lectures to the soldiers in how to serve humanely at checkpoints.” Ta’ayush and AATW, on the other hand, put themselves in open opposition to the state and to its army by regularly breaking the law. Because they consider the government’s decisions to be illegal on the international level and therefore illegitimate, they do not hesitate to infringe on legality when their actions require it. In return, they receive very low levels of respect from the state authorities. Most of the complaints they lodge at the Supreme Court are rejected, a practice that only confirms their belief in the illegitimacy of Israeli justice. Nevertheless, AATW gained a small but remarkable victory in September 2007, when the Supreme Court gave a decision in favor of the petition to change the current route of the fence in Bil’in. They are now waiting for this decision to be implemented. The “radical groups” have also an unquestionable symbolic impact, considering the fact that the kind of cooperation they set up from both sides of the Green Line is new by many aspects. The links they established with the Palestinians and the form taken by their joint struggle confronted the army with configurations never met before. Indeed, soldiers who were used to fighting against a well-identified enemy found themselves faced with demonstrators from their own country. The fact that most of them were Jewish made the army’s position even more difficult.

R es onanc e and Impac t w ith in Is r aeli S oc i ety How can these movements’ impact on Israeli general public be analyzed? As far as we know, there is no large-scale survey on the Israeli (Jewish and Arab) population’s position regarding actions led against the occupation and the groups that have initiated them. This observation leads us instead to consider the significance of this phenomenon in the eyes of researchers, journalists, and the Israeli population itself. We can argue that the attention paid to the “reformed movements” is greater both because of identification with the causes and the actors by a majority of the population. Indeed, most Israelis have served in the army and therefore would feel personally concerned by mobilizations that affect this institution. In the case of Machsom Watch,

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although the contested matters pertain less directly to the general population, they do affect security issues, which are very sensitive topics in the country. In contrast, the struggle against an already constructed wall—not to mention the defense of the rights of a people who are as a whole relegated to the rank of enemy—are much more abstract. An example of the indifference regarding the demonstrations against the wall and the violence that accompanied them lies in the reactions following Gil Namati’s tragic injury in December 2003. This young Israeli was shot and seriously wounded while trying to cross the fence with other demonstrators. A poll taken by the Shvakim Panorama for Israel right after the incident found that, to the question “Was it legitimate for the soldiers to shoot at Gil Namati and at a group of demonstrators at the separation fence?” 41 percent out of the 504 persons (Jewish and Arab Israelis) answered no, 36.4 percent answered yes, and 22.6 percent—almost one quarter of the sample— declared that they had no opinion. No similar survey has been carried out concerning the dozen of Palestinians who have died during demonstrations against the wall in the last three years. One could also consider comparing articles and reports devoted to the different groups and to their actions during a certain period of time to see how media coverage has been organized, which events attracted more attention, and so on. Apart from a few journalists and academicians who write regularly about the occupation and its opponents (Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Lily Galily, Dany Rubinstein, Meron Benvenisti, and others), most reporters are generally sent exclusively to cover important incidents or exceptional events. Initiatives are sometimes taken with the sole intention of attracting the press, such as the group who invited journalists to film Israelis and Palestinians watching the final World Cup game together. This reminds us of Lilian Matthieu’s comment: “All are dependant on media reports and must consequentially adapt their public actions to the expectations of the media field or be in connivance with the journalists” (Matthieu 2005, 7). Another significant measure of groups’ impact stands in the phenomenon of countermovements. A few months after the publication of the Courage to Refuse letter, a group of solders turned up as volunteers to serve in the OPT by addressing a similar letter to the media. Before Gaza’s withdrawal, a group of “refuznik settlers” warned that they, also, would refuse to obey orders (in this case, orders to withdraw from settlements). Machsom Watch as well has provoked the formation of countermovements, such as Women in Green, which is composed of women settlers in favor of checkpoints, or Women in


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Blue and White, which brings Likud members to support the soldiers in their hard task. These two groups bring support messages, cakes, and beverages to the soldiers, without neglecting to anger Machsom Watchers in the process. On the other hand, neither the Anarchists nor Ta’ayush produced such “counter-offensives.” This can probably be explained not only by their limited number and low visibility, but also by the fact that their rhetoric has been, from the outset, far enough removed from the Israeli consciousness so as not to cause serious worry to their detractors. One of my postulate is that these groups form, along with others (e.g., Rabbis for Human Rights, Women in Black, Gush Shalom,22 and Yesh Gvul), a “family of movements” in the sense used by Della Porta and Rucht (1991), that is to say: “a set of coexisting movements that, in view of their specific goals, have similar fundamental values and organizational overlapping and that, sometimes, can even gather for joint campaigns.”23 Indeed, their opposition to the occupation and to the general politics of the government constitutes a common base strong enough to allow them to get along despite their ideological or pragmatic disagreements. This remark brings me to consider now a concrete example of what occurs when activists with profoundly different ideals and biographies meet on the same field to try to lead a joint action. In May 2006, a day of action was organized by Shovrim Shtika24 in South Hebron to which refuzniks from Courage to Refuse and from Yesh Gvul, Anarchists, Ta’ayush, and so on, participated. When the participants met together at the parking lot of a suburban Jerusalem supermarket in order to listen to customary advices, a man around fifty years old publicly expressed his discontent and his will to leave the group. This legendary pilot, who had signed the refuzniks’ letter four years before, was shocked to notice that there were anti-Zionist slogans written on some activists’ T-shirts (one T-shirt referred, for instance, to the Israeli flag as a “blue and white floor rag”). A compromise came about when these individuals agreed to the organizers’ request to turn their T-shirts inside out in order to hide the slogans. Refuzniks did not have to conceal the blue and white logos they wore. The relation to the media probably played a great role in this incident, as some participants did not want to be identified with the anti-Zionist activists, who would have discredited the entire action. The pilot’s sensibility, however, seemed to be at the root of the dispute. As soon as they arrived on the scene, the activists were stopped by the army and prevented from escorting Palestinian children to school in order to protect them from the settlers’ assaults. At that time, the

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different attitudes between refuzniks and others became very obvious. While the first advanced rather solemnly in the direction of the soldiers and, once within their reach, let themselves be controlled much more easily than their military experience would normally allow, the second group chose to make a diversion through the hills, running away from the soldiers. They did not hesitate to benefit, when they were stopped, from one moment of inattention to escape. The army’s attitude toward the activists was amazingly restrained compared with what had happened the day before in Bil’in. After having played cat and mouse without a single bullet (even rubber) being fired, the officer came to negotiate with the organizers and proposed to them that they go to another village, where the Palestinians use a well that is regularly attacked by Jewish settlers. This one was located several kilometers away from the Jewish dwellings; the army probably knew that settlers were not going to come there by foot on this scorching Shabbat, while they would not hesitate to visit the initial place of action, which adjoined the settlement. It was difficult to clearly discern who among the activists was in favor of this agreement with the army and who advocated disobedience, but the final decision was to get back into the minibus and to drive, under army escort, to the well in question. Only few minutes after they arrived there, most of the Anarchists left to return to Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, showing obvious contempt for this “authority-coordinated” presence. By mobilizing central symbols of Israeli culture (Zionist and militaristic imaginary for Courage to Refuse and references to Jewish values and to motherhood for Machsom Watch) and by putting their actions in a legal frame, “reform movements” have been able to remain relatively legitimate in the eyes of governmental institutions, the media, and the public. “Radical movements,” systematically juggling with the law if not breaking it and giving greater place to universalistic and libertarian values over Judaism and Zionism, have long crossed over the “boundary of the legitimate” that would have allowed them to be heard within their own society.

C o nc lus ion The month of July 2006 saw a new wave of violence break out in the Middle East, with a ceasefire after only a few weeks. Soon after the beginning of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, demonstrations were organized to denounce this war, which was supposed to target Hezbollah but in fact became the cause of more and more civilian casualties. At least during the first couple of weeks, protest participants (among


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them a large number of women) were badly insulted by angry passers-by, furious to see fellow citizens criticizing their country. As days passed, the situation changed, and protesting against the war became less and less radical. Groups gathered together, and, while it would be an exaggeration to claim that no friction disrupted their joint efforts, they continued protesting together despite their divisions.25 It should be noted that these protests, taking place within Israel itself, were brought on by an international conflict and for that reason, one of the fundamental differences between Israeli protest groups—their relationship to Palestinians—cannot be observed. As I pointed out earlier in this text, some groups choose denunciation as a protest method and have hardly any relation to Palestinians (i.e. the refuzniks of Courage to Refuse). Others put themselves in a position of assistance toward them and meet them for this reason, but without weaving real links with them (i.e. Machsom Watch). Others still have decided to resist on the side of the Palestinians, as partners in their struggle, and this leads them to develop strong ties, as in the case of the Anarchists and Ta’ayush. Of course, the forming of relationships between Israeli protesters and Palestinians does not happen easily. Israeli activists must always be convincing, even if that means showing more tolerance than they would probably show in their own society.26 As Courage to Refuse was progressively collapsing, ex-members decided to form a new group, “Combatants for Peace,” with Israelis and Palestinians “that have taken an active part in the cycle of violence: Israelis as soldiers of the IDF and Palestinians as actors in the violent struggle for Palestinian freedom.”27 Since its formation in 2006, the organization has been subject to problems linked to internal divisions, mostly among the Palestinians, but, above all else, it has symbolized the will of certain refuzniks from Courage to Refuse to transcend the tactics they followed that formerly separated them from their supposed partners. As for Machsom Watch, a new group also emerged in 2005 by the name of Yesh Din (“There is a Justice”), which attempted to carry out actions (women and men together this time) beyond the checkpoints. They realized that they had confined themselves to an extremely limited aspect of the daily problems met by Palestinians. By going into the villages, always accompanied by an Israeli Arab interpreter, they began to conceive of a new dimension of the relationship with those they intended to help. Despite the presence of these new initiatives, one can guess that activists in these two groups will remain legitimate in the eyes of their fellow citizens, who do not see them as endangering the state, unlike

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the actions carried out by Ta’ayush and the Anarchists. The latter are steadily moving further away from their own society by forming new allegiances, which are as strong as the enmity they provoke is high.

Referenc es Bucaille, Laetitia. 2002. Générations Intifada. Paris: Hachette Littérature. Fillieule, Olivier, and Cécile Péchu. 1993. Lutter ensemble. Les théories de l’action collective. Paris: L’Harmattan. Halevi, Yasmine, and Uri Zackhem. Ta’ayush, Arab-Jewish Partnership. http://taayush.tripod.com/new/2004-pn.jpg. MacCarthy, John, and Mayer Zald. 1973. The trend of social movements in America: Professionalization and resource mobilization. Morristown, NJ: General Learning. Matthieu, Lilian. 2005. L’espace des mouvements sociaux. Actes du 8ème congrès de Lyon de l’ AFSP, Paris: AFSP (Association française de science politique) Mayer, Nonna, and Pascal Perrineau. 1992. Les comportements politiques. Paris: Armand Collin. Neveu, Erik. 1996. Sociologie des mouvements sociaux. Paris: La Découverte. Pechu, Cécile. 2005. Entre résistance et contestation: La genèse du squat comme mode d’action. Actes du 8ème congrès de Lyon de l’ AFSP, Paris: AFSP (Association française de science politique). Sharoni, Simona. 1995. Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The politics of women’s resistance. New York: Syracuse University Press. Snow, David, et al. 1986. Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation. American Sociological Review, 51: 787–801. Sommier, Isabelle. 2003. Le renouveau des mouvements contestataires à l’heure de la mondialisation. Paris: Champs Flammarion. Stern, Yoav. 2004. “41 anti-fence demonstrators are arrested. Ha’aretz. Tilly, Charles. 1995. Popular contention in Great Britain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Williams, Rhys H. 1986. The cultural contexts of collective action: Constraints, opportunities, and the symbolic life of social movements. In The Blackwell companion to social movements, ed. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 91–115. Oxford: Blackwell. Wolfsfeld, Gadi. 1988. The politics of provocation: Participation and protest in Israel. New York: State University of New York Press.

Notes 1. In this article, I will use the official designation of “Occupied Palestinian Territories” and its abbreviation initials “OPT” to refer to the West Bank, Gaza (before the withdrawal), and East Jerusalem.


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2. These two expressions, “interpretation frames” and “repertoires of collective actions,” refer respectively to Snow’s and to Tilly’s concepts, which will be defined later on. 3. “So-called ‘reform’ movements usually do not ask the public for radical revisions of their conceptions of societal arrangements, or their visions of what constitutes the ‘good society’. They appeal to movement members and non-members in a readily acceptable, and hence broadly legitimate, language” (Williams 2004, 103). 4. Radical movements, “by definition, call into question more social arrangements and cultural meanings. But the very expanse of those challenges pushes movements claims closer to the boundaries of the legitimate, falling outside what many people are able to ‘hear’ as acceptable visions of society” (Ibid.). 5. From the Hebrew word machsom (checkpoint). 6. For more precision about these groups, see notably Simona Sharoni (1995) and Gadi Wolfsfeld (1988). 7. This unit is very prestigious in Israel and known for its members’ great loyalty to the army. 8. The first was a letter written by reservist officers in favor of a withdrawal from the territories conquered during the Six Day War. It gave rise to the organization Peace Now, which was formed in 1978. 9. The group Yesh Gvul defended soldiers who refused to fight in Lebanon in the 1980s. Moreover, for the past thirty years, several high school student groups wrote letters to governments declaring their objection to serve the three years’ compulsory military service in what they called an “army of occupation.” 10. Most of the letter’s signatories never participated in collective actions. Thus, “adherents” might be a more accurate way to define them than “activists.” 11. This designation was given by the media because of the group’s lack of hierarchy. They originally called themselves “Activists against the Wall” and were also sometimes called “Jews against the ghetto.” 12. Although after a few months of existence, the organization Courage to Refuse felt the need to extend its influence and so decided to accept nonfighting reservists as well. 13. This pejorative designation refers to soldiers who do not participate in combat. 14. “Values amplification refers to the identification, idealization, and elevation of one or more values presumed basic to prospective constituents but which have not inspired collective action for any number of reasons” (Snow et al. 1986, 469). 15. Frame transformation can refer to the transformation of a “Domainspecific Interpretative Frame” or a “Global Interpretative Frame,” as in the case of the type B groups (Snow et al. 1986, 473).

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16. Antispecism refers to the refusal to make a difference between human and animal species. 17. This motivation was common to many activists, if I am to believe the responses to a questionnaire I distributed through internet in 2005 in the framework of my M. A. thesis about Machsom Watch. 18. It should be noted that concrete and high-tech “terminals” have recently begun to operate under civilian management in Israel, where Machsom Watch’s teams are forbidden to proceed with their activities. 19. These demonstrations used to take place in other villages as well. They became exclusive to Bil’in for a while before new places like UmSalamuna, Beit-Ummar, or al-Khader, in the southern Bethlehem area, became concerned by the construction of the separation fence. 20. Provocations range from mild insults to stones thrown by children stationed farther up in the hills. It should be noted that many provocations are committed by the police, the army, and sometimes undercover agents known as mista’aravim (literally: “to become an Arab,” a unit that uses disguise to blend in and neutralize Palestinian activists) as well. 21. Some women in the group have deputies’ personal phone numbers; they can call them in case of important problems, and the deputies mobilize their network to help them. It is also known that several Machsom Watch members are married to high-ranking army officers or politicians. It is likely that family ties can also be found between some of the refuzniks and those two professional fields. 22. “The bloc for peace” is a group on the extreme left that favors the ideas of the right of the Palestinian people to establish an independent and sovereign State of Palestine in all the territories occupied in 1967, Jerusalem as the capital of the two states, and the recognition of the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. 23. Quoted by Sommier (2003, 115). 24. Breaking the Silence is a group of ex-soldiers who served in the OPT and denounce, without necessarily repudiating, the actions which they took part in or witnessed. 25. The period of the Second Lebanese War and the mobilizations to which it gave rise should, of course, be analyzed more deeply than they are here; we finished writing these lines in August 2006, only a few days after the end of the fighting. 26. Sometimes Palestinians try to oppose the participation of women in the actions. Some even desire to halt any cooperation with Israelis, and debates are taking place about the place of Israelis in the villages: should they be partners or only guests? 27. Internet website of the group http://www.combatantsforpeace.org/ aboutus.asp?lng=eng.

4

Chapter 4

Fra mi ng, M isframing, and R eframing The Fid d l er at B eit-I ba C heckpo i nt

Ruthie Ginsburg

I ntroduc ti on

The term “victim” is given to a person (or animal) who suffers

injury, pain, or loss because of circumstances or events such as a war or an accident or from someone else’s actions. What happens when a sovereignty, which is commonly described as the supreme authority within a territory (Philpott 2003), adopts a state of victimhood as its modus vivendi? The present essay addresses this question by analyzing a public debate that followed the publication of a human rights organization report from the Occupied West Bank. The report describes an event that was named The Fiddler at Beit-Iba Checkpoint. In order to reframe the scene with greater clarity and associate it to the special issue on social and political mobilization in the Israeli-Palestinian context, two terms are used: framing and misframing. Framing is a process of selection that defines or selects certain desirable interpretations and rules out others. It can be used by specific political or social

I am grateful to Dr. Ariella Azoulay and Prof. Ronen Shamir for their generous comments. Special thanks to the reviewer, Dr. Samy Cohen. Send comments to [email protected]

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movements or organizations in order to limit the possibilities of discourse by setting the vocabulary and metaphors by which an issue is discussed (Lakoff 2004, 4). Misframing is a concept used by Nancy Fraser that describes “not only ordinary-political misrepresentation, but also misframing and meta-political misrepresentation, it allows us to grasp the problem of frame as a matter of justice” (Fraser 2004, 19). In recent years, Israeli control in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is also implemented by restrictions on Palestinians’ movements. Israel has set dozens of checkpoints on roads and forbids the passage of Palestinians who do not have special permits. Under security concerns Israel authority supervises and rules the passages as a sovereign by means of soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) at the checkpoints where, as the representatives of the state, they decide who can pass and who cannot. On November 9, 2004, Wissam Tayem, a young Palestinian from Farrah’ refugee camp, was photographed by Horit Herman-Peled, an Israeli human rights activist, playing the violin in front of Israeli soldiers at Beit-Iba, IDF checkpoint (Figure 4.1). In addition to the “fiddler’s” photo, the Israeli NGO’s activist commented to a Ha’aretz newspaper journalist that she, as a daughter of Holocaust survivors, was disturbed by the order to the Palestinian to play in front of Jewish soldiers.1 Around the time of the publication other events perpetuated by Israeli soldiers in the Occupied Territories were revealed and labeled as immoral. The Fiddler at Beit-Iba Checkpoint was connected in the media to the confirmation of the killing of a Palestinian girl, Iman al-Hamas, next to the Girit outpost in the Gaza Strip, and to publication of photos of Israeli soldiers who photographed themselves with Palestinian corpses (Benziman 2004).2 By the presention or framing of these events together in the media it seems as if the differences between them were abolished. Consequently IDF spokesmen had to respond to accusations against the moral deterioration of Israeli soldiers as though these events were in the same category of evil.3 It seems that although no physical damage or loss had been done, the Fiddler at Beit-Iba Checkpoint was engraved in the collective consciousness of the Israeli society as a prominent event. The attention of the Israeli public that the activist’s photo of Machsom Watch (MW),4 an Israeli women’s human rights organization, gained from the publication was outstanding. Nevertheless, it is not the whole picture. This presentation indeed stirred a public debate, but not, I argue, only by framing the infringement of Palestinians human rights but also by framing it also as if victimhood were part of

Framing, Misframing, and Reframing

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Figure 4.1 Below, the “Fiddler at Beit-Iba,” photographed by Horit Heram-Peled, 2004 http://www.horit.com. Above, “Irritating tones,” photographed by Dana Yosef, 2004.

the logic of Israel’s sovereignty. In addition and in this context, the disputed incident displays a critical question as to whether these activists are able to struggle against violations of human rights autonomously under the constraints and norms of the social systems that take part within the sovereignty of the state.

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In order to track the interactive relationships that were revealed between the act of the MW social movement and the sovereignty of the state, I examine here the published reactions to this visual testimony. By reframing the scene at Beit-Iba checkpoint, I shall demonstrate how framing the event by the MW activist pointing out on a wrongdoing also generated a misframing due to the accrued discourse in the Israeli society. This essay belongs to a larger investigation of the ways by which Israeli human rights organizations try to frame (by means of taking pictures) the violations of Palestinian human rights under the Israeli occupation and how this framing is perceived in the Israeli public sphere.5 How does this framing by NGOs operate in regard to the misframing of Israeli sovereignty in the Occupied Territories? What does it tell about the relationship between framing and misframing as part of the production of visual images in a zone of violent conflict? What can be learned by close examination production of the image of the Fiddler at Beit-Iba Checkpoint and the responses to it about the affinities between what is being seen and the way it is being shown? Researches on by Israeli social movement organizations has focused on issues of identity, citizenship, hegemony, body, and space as part of the discussion on the relations between Israeli social movement organizations and the government (Helman 2003; Helman and Rapaport 1997; Hermann 1989; Sasson-Levy and Rapaport 2002; Reznik 2003; Sasson-Levy 1995; Zockerman-Barely and Benski 1989; Yishai 2003). Many of these studies relate their investigations to theories of resource mobilization and new social movements (Ben-Eliezer 1999). In a recent article Neve Gordon examines how the “social space” generates NGOs’ power as in the case of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (Gordon 2005). Gordon’s research looks at the success and failure of social movements from a new angle. The present work examines the unique phenomena of human rights organizations as part of the development of Israeli civic society and discerns the essential role that visual documentation and its contribution to the relations between the protagonists. Framing and Misframing: Sketching Outlines The concept of framing as used in the study of social movements, as defined by Benford and Snow, is derived primarily from the work of Goffman (1974). For Goffman, frames are “schemata of interpretation” that enable individuals “to locate, perceive, identify, and label occurences within their life space and the world at large. . . . Thus,


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collective action frames are action-oriented sets of beliefs and meanings that inspire and legitimate the activities and campaigns of social movement organizations.” Benford and Snow add that the frame is “a configuration of ideational elements and symbols [that] operates as a kind of grammar for articulation of more specific collective action framing processes with in social movements” (as quoted by Stenberg 1998, 846). Moreover, various types of actions that lead to the mobilization of public opinion by social movements can be analyzed as framing. Such analysis has lead to the development and articulation of “injustice frames,” which identify the “victims” of a given injustice and amplify their victimization (Benford and Snow 2000, 614–15). The conceptualization of the act of the MW activist as framing appears as if it corresponds to two components that integrate in the event of the Fiddler at Beit-Iba. The first is the usage of photography and the mechanism of the framing itself, and the second is the reaction of MW members to the misframing of Israel’s sovereignty discourse in the Occupied Territories. Undoubtedly, a photographed image is a result of the act of framing: it localizes the eyes of the observer on a selected item, while the margins of the photo, light and shadow, stains and lines, are elements that compose his view. Although this description meets Goffman’s definition of acts of framing by social movements—locating, perceiving, identifying, and labeling—I argue that the photograph is not a schema of interpretation but rather an unstable stage of contents and meaning that can be read and reread and therefore reinterpreted. Barthes in his short book Camera Lucida describes photographic character as having no principle of indication; photographs are signs that do not absorb meanings in themselves, but rather they boil over, “like milk,” toward the signified (Barthes 1980, 6). The unfixed relation between the signifier (the “fiddler” in the present case) and the signified (violation of human rights) that Barthes describes can be paralleled to Stenberg’s opposing remarks that can be assumed from Goffman’s frame model. Stenberg argues that the usage of the frame model in the study of social movements as such assumes that the language is a “neutral bearer of meanings” and “self-evident fixity” (Steinberg 1998, 850). Nevertheless, photographs can pave the way to an attitude and serve as “totems” for fundamental goals. According to Susan Sontag, sentiments tend to crystallize around a photograph rather than around verbal statements (Sontag 2003, 74). Photographs render an event or a person something that can be possessed. Hence, the double face of photography—indications and unstable marks—is more complex when

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we think of the act of “taking a picture” as a procedure of making objects of things. Thus, the process of framing—putting a frame to a picture—can be perceived as one of the signs that show its belonging to its beholder. Hilla Dayan’s research presentation “Principles of Control in Old and New Regimes of Separation” deals with misframing as a state apparatus of Israel’s sovereignty in the Occupied Territories. Dayan describes the separation regime of territories and populations in Palestine/Israel in the light of the apartheid control mechanism in South Africa. Nancy Fraser identifies the phenomenon of misframing as one consequence of globalization and of the post-Westphalian political dimension: “Frame-setting is among the most consequential of political decisions. Constituting both members and nonmembers in a single stroke, this decision effectively excludes the latter from the universe of those entitled to consideration within the community in matters of distribution, recognition, and ordinary-political representation. The result can be a serious injustice.”6 Dayan uses this definition for describing the apparatus of Israel’s sovereignty in the Occupied Territories. The fact that a state acts in a specific territory by means of framing those who are members, citizens who can enjoy their rights, and misframing those who are not members is a way of realizing the state’s sovereignty. Adding mis to framing, like misunderstanding or misidentifying, shows the lack and absence of the act of framing. The sovereign’s outlined borders between the interior and the exterior, between friend and foe, are not only signs of exclusion. This process underscores at the same time what could have been included. Hence, misframing depends on the framing itself. Therefore, what is at stake is the challenge of affixing the boundaries of the sovereignty of a particular state. This challenge emerges, according to Cynthia Weber, from a continuous political struggle over symbolic and real borders. Weber emphasizes that the conflict does not terminate in one event that stabilizes the meaning of the sovereignty, but rather it is like a constant “[re]writing of the State” in different places and at various times (Weber 1995, chap. 1). Thus, civic society and human rights social movements like MW as part of it not only challenge the sovereign framing and misframing by the state but also can be perceived as intertwining in the state matrix.7 In this context I examine the framing and misframing by the Israeli human rights social organization MW and the Israeli state sovereignty through critical reading of the published reactions in local newspapers to the report of the fiddler at Beit-Iba checkpoint. Consequently this essay concentrates on three elements: the image representation, the


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position of the activist as a witness to the event, and the response of the IDF spokesmen as the official representatives of the sovereignty. Victims of Victims Most MW reports do not draw the attention of the Israeli public. However, Horit Herman-Peled’s report on the Fiddler at Beit-Iba Checkpoint8 was exceptional. In her videotape, which was taken on November 9, 2004, was shown a young Palestinian playing the violin in front of Israeli soldiers. The ability to cross borders, to transform the identity of Tayem from the usual hegemonic view of him a Palestinian victimizer to that of a victim, was embodied in the musical instrument that he held that day. The identification of the violin as an attribute of the Jewish victim is based on witnesses of Jewish fiddlers in ghettos and WWII concentrations camps, and in other cultural representations.9 Not only that, the figure of a fiddler represents those who came from the West, from the European culture, and became sovereigns in the East, but at the same time also those who were distinguished, differentiated, and excluded in Europe.10 In contrast, in the hands of Tayem, the violin crystallizes in a nutshell11 one of the characteristics of Israeli Occupation: the Palestinians as “victims of victims” (Said 1992). Therefore, it can be understood why a month before this incident occurred, when Tayem was treated in the same way at the Beit-Iba checkpoint when he was asked to play the guitar he was carrying, this was not brought up as an evidence of abuse. Possibly no witnesses were present, but perhaps, in any case, it was not the right image to stir the Israeli public (Shaked 2004). The photograph that was taken at Beit-Iba checkpoint was disturbing because not only did it show a Palestinian playing the fiddle but also, I claim, its context was annoying. In an article that was written as part of an inquiry into the fiddler incident for Yediot Aharonoth, the newspaper’s photographer took a picture of Tayem at his home in the Farrah’ refugee camp (Shaked 2004) (Figure 4.1). Comparing the photograph that was taken at Beit-Iba checkpoint to this photograph, the unspoken message that arises from the first picture can be realized.12 The journalist’s picture was photographed from a higher angle, diminishing Tayem’s body; Tayem was seated on mattresses on the floor, surrounded by blankets and clothes in disarray; he was dressed in a cheap shirt, and his face was turned downwards. The violin, a relic from the event at Beit-Iba, looks as though it is unrelated to the scene. The space in the picture was limited by Tayem’s body; his elbows,

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framing the view of the observer, can be perceived as framing his playing as well. Tayem in this picture was removed from the public stage that he supposedly occupied at the checkpoint and reduced to his realistic dimensions: no more concerts in the public space, no more performing in front of a “barbarian force,” and no more pretending to be civilized. To the contrary, in the view of the observer of the photograph, these are merely fantastic hopes of a Palestinian refugee. Susan Sontag claims that even when the photographed image is a testimony, it cannot be simply perceived as a representative of an event that really happened (Sontag 2003, 43). The photograph is always an image selected by someone. It is always an interpretation that is realized by the inclusion and the exclusion done through the act of framing by the photographer. Therefore, modifying Tayem’s playing by taking a new picture of him with the violin in the refugee camp can be understood as trying to reestablish the harmony that had been disturbed by the dissonance that was aroused by the photograph from Beit-Iba. That way the playing on the fiddle was removed from being a symbol of victimhood when Tayem was not shown playing in front of IDF soldiers at the checkpoint. Mothers of Jewish Soldiers The comparison of the incident of the fiddler to crimes that were committed during the Holocaust placed Herman-Peled’s objection to the soldiers’ behavior in the Israel framework as a “state of victims.” She did this by producing the fiddler’s image and by identifying herself as a daughter of survivors, by recognizing the soldier as a Jew, and by comparing the injustice that was supposedly done to the Palestinian to crimes that were committed during the Holocaust. MW is a voluntary group of Israeli women that has conducted daily inspections at some of Israel’s military checkpoints in the occupied West Bank since the second Palestinian uprising (Intifada al-Aqsa). The group aims to monitor the observance by the IDF of the human rights of Palestinians who apply to pass through these checkpoints. The struggle of MW against the daily disruption of the life of Palestinians by the IDF is recorded by photographs and textual reports. As part of their confrontation with IDF checkpoint policies and practice, they also try to expose through their reports and photos the harassment of Palestinians by IDF soldiers to the Israeli public. When indicating that IDF actions are abusing Palestinians’ rights, most MW reports are based on an abstract and universal concept of what a human being is. Usually the activists’ view is seen in the


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reports as an additional view of the polarized oppressor-oppressed relationship (Braverman 2005). As a result of MW members’ gender identification,13 another perspective is relevant: Due to the fact that most of its activists are women of the age of the mothers or grandmothers of the soldiers at the checkpoints, their female and maternal presence, according to the activists, challenges the masculine, militaristic, and political view of the hegemonic discourse.14 Nevertheless, if we examine the justification of their different positioning as Israeli female citizens from the hegemonic discourse, we can see that it is in fact within the pattern of state sovereignty. Indeed, Israel’s identity as a Jewish sovereignty, though one with a large non-Jewish minority, imposes on Jewish women in Israel an important role. Jewish mothers are bearers of Judaism, since they pass on their Jewish identity to their children. As such they are responsible for the preservation of Israel’s Jewish majority. Therefore, it is evident how the social systems shape the belonging of Jewish women to the state as Israelis through their motherhood. Belonging to the state, as Nitza Berkovitch indicates, is a contribution to the maintenance of the Jewish majority, and at the same time it can be seen as protecting Israel’s democratic character (Berkovitch 2001). If the Jewish majority is maintained, then democratic elections can be held without threatening the Jewish sovereign character of the state. As a result, the monitoring of MW women volunteers at the IDF checkpoints is legitimate also in view of their contribution to the state through their motherhood. In order to protest against the Israeli soldiers’ behavior at the checkpoint Horit Herman-Peled, as an MW activist, brought attention to the poisoning of a daughter of Holocaust survivors and an Israeli mother. The outcome emphasized in her report her common ancestry with the soldiers as heirs of an ethical commitment that attests to their victimhood. Consequently, as a woman she strengthened her designated identity in safeguarding the Jewish majority in the state and also assisted in maintaining the collective consciousness of victimhood as part of the sovereignty. True (Truth) Sovereign The headlines of the MW report on the disputed incident led to a military investigation as instructed by IDF’s major-general Kaplinsky (Yehoshua and Shaked 2004; Benziman 2004). The high-ranking officer decided to single out the question of truth in the public debate: was it true that the Palestinian has been forced to play in

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front of the soldiers at the checkpoint? The army’s investigation confronted the three witnesses: Tayem, the soldiers, and the activist from MW. It seems as if the military specialists concentrated on the senses of seeing and listening and on the ability to speak. In that way they determined who can speak, what can be said, and who is listening and watching.15 After a few days, Colonel Yuval Bezek stated that the soldiers had asked Tayem to open his box for inspection to make sure that the violin case did not contain explosives or weapons, but had not ordered him to play the violin (Shaked 2004). The military investigators based their conclusions on statements made by the soldiers and by the MW activists, who declared that they did not hear what Wissam Tayem was asked at the checkpoint. The interpretation of the incident by the investigators of the IDF connected the soldiers to the human rights activists and distinguished them from the Palestinian. In that way they preserved the status of the speakers and prevented Tayem from playing an active role in the production of truth. Actually, only Tayem’s voice and music were put on judgment in this inquiry.16 In other words, removing the discourse from the question of the definition of sovereignty served the officers of IDF as official representatives of the state. The Foucauldian distinction between sovereign rule and the disciplinary rule can explain how by expelling the “Holocaust ghost” from the public debate through their search for truth and adhering to procedures, these agents of “truth” pictured the IDF control in the Occupied Territories as though it were based on discipline (Foucault 1979). Thus, not only did they reinforce the limits of the political struggle, but at the same time they, perhaps unconsciously, tried to get a consensus for the continuation of the occupation, including through the IDF checkpoint regime. Last Remarks The public response to the report on the fiddler at the checkpoint and its discourse revealed its representations as simulations.17 The “heroes” of the incident (Tayem, Herman-Peled, and the IDF soldiers) drifted in the flow of images and production of representation, reproduced by patterns and frames, which were supposedly waiting to be filled. Wissam Tayem, seeking passage to Nablus, disclosed his age that day to get permission to pass. The “concert” at Beit-Iba checkpoint gave him the title of a fiddler, although he had been studying the violin for only two months. In addition, it was revealed afterwards that Horit Herman-Peled, the activist from MW, had not compared the


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incident to similar ones in the Holocaust, but that saying she had was rather a mistake of the reporters.18 These simulations, together with those that have been described above, were false elements that stirred up a public debate. The activists of MW were disappointed that the public reacted to the fiddler’s photograph, while other pictures of children and women waiting in checkpoints and squashed in revolving gates do not achieve such public attention.19 This was caused by their misunderstanding of the media’s way of reasoning and by the logic of the state’s political self-image (“state of victims”). In her report on the fiddler at Beit-Iba, the MW activist tried to undermine the IDF checkpoint policy and practice. In addition, she has also highlighted a pattern of the Israeli sovereignty. This is an example of the gap between the original goal of the women’s struggle against the occupation and its practices, which demands the revealing of events to the “public eye.” The demand to reveal the events to the “public eye” reduces the control of women activists on the way the images are absorbed in the public sphere. In conclusion, this case, by reframing the scene at Beit-Iba through the image, the positioning of the activist, and the response of official representatives of the sovereignty, highlights the intricate relationships of framing and misframing in the human rights discourse in Israel and the sovereignty of the state.

Referenc es Azoulay, Ariella. 2006. Photography from a penal colony. Studio 163, 50–51 [in Hebrew]. Azoulay, Ariella. 2002. The citizen Carmella Buchbut. In Bad days: Between disaster and utopia, ed. Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ofir, 63–88. Tel Aviv: Resling [in Hebrew]. Barthes, Roland. 1980. Camera lucida: Reflections on photography. Trans. Howard Richard. New York: Hill and Wang. Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser: Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Benford, Robert D, and David Snow. 2000. Framing processes and social movements: An overview and Assessment. Annual Review of Sociology 26, no. 1: 611–39. Benziman, Uzi. 2004. Corridors of power: The scars and scratches of war. Ha’aretz. Berkovitch, Nitza. 2001. Citizens and mothers: The status of women in Israel. In Israel: From Mobilized to Civil Society? ed. Yoav Peled and Adi Ofir, 206–43. Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad [in Hebrew].

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Braverman, Irus. 2005. Checkpoints (2001). http://csml.calumet.yorku.ca :591/FMPro?-DB=CSMLActs.fp5&-Format=actdetaillist.html&Caption =Checkpoints (accessed September 26, 2005). Chorry, Jacky. 2004. From the checkpoint to the stage: The fiddler who was forced to play in front of IDF soldiers is participating in a workshop for violinists at Kibbutz Eylon. Ha’aretz [in Hebrew]. Dayan, Hilla. 2006. Principles of control in old and new regimes of separation. Presentation at the Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, April. Eldar, Akiva. 2004(a). Soldiers force Palestinian to play violin at West Bank checkpoint. Ha’aretz. Eldar, Akiva. 2004(b). First violin, second violin. Ha’aretz. Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Trans. Sheridan Alan. New York: Vintage Books. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper & Row. Gordon, Neve. 2005. Human rights and social space: The power of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Israeli Sociology 7, no. 1: 23–44 [in Hebrew]. Habermas, Jürgen. 1991. The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Trans. by Thomas Burger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Helman, Sara. 2003. Protest and signifying gender and ethno-class borders: How did the peace become a symbol of ethno-class identity? In In the name of security: Sociology of peace and war in Israel at diverse periods, ed. Majid El Haj and Uri Ben Eliezer, 557–75. Haifa: Haifa University publication [in Hebrew]. Helman, Sara, and Tamar Rapoport. 1997. “These are Ashkenazi women, alone, whores of Arafat, don’t believe in God, and don’t love Israel “Women in Black” and challenging the sociologyarrangement. Theory and Criticism 10, 195–75 [in Hebrew]. Hever, Hanan. 2004. Map of sand: From Hebrew literature to Israeli literature. In Colonialism and the post colonialism state, ed. Yehuda Shenhav, 414–37. Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad [in Hebrew]. Hermann, Tamar. 1989. From “peace treaty” to “Peace Now”: The pacifist pragmatism of the peace camp in Israel. PhD diss., Tel-Aviv University [in Hebrew]. Keshet, Yahudit Kimerling. 2006. Checkpoint watch: Testimonies from occupied Palestine. London: Zed Book Lakoff, George. 2004. Don’t think of an elephant: Know your value and frame the debate. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). 2005. www.human itarianinfo.org/opt/docs/UN/OCHA/BarrierProjections_Feb05_En.pdf


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Ophir, Adi. 2000. The order of evil: Chapters in the ontology of morals. TelAviv: Am-Oved, “Ofakim” Collection [in Hebrew]. Philpott, Daniel. 2003. “Sovereignty.” In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Stanford: Stanford University. Reznik, Shlomo. 2003. Taking the law to hand, from right to left: The Jewish underground organization and Yesh Gvul. In In the name of security: Sociology of peace and war in Israel at diverse periods, ed. Majid El Haj and Uri Ben Eliezer, 509–35. Haifa: Haifa University Press [in Hebrew]. Said, Edward W. 1992. The question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books. Sasson-Levy, Orna, and Tamar Rapoport. 2000. Gender, body and knowledge in protest movements. Gender & Society 17, no. 3: 379–403. Sasson-Levy, Orna. 1995. Radical rhetoric, conformist practices: Theory and practice in an Israeli protest movement. Shaine working papers number 1. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press [in Hebrew]. Shaked, Ronny. 2004. Irritating tones. Yedioth Aharonoth [in Hebrew]. Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the pain of others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Steinberg, Marc W. 1998. Tilting the frame: Considerations on collective action framing from a discursive turn. Theory and Society 27: 845–72. Weber, Cynthia. 1995. Simulating sovereignty: Intervention, the state and symbolic exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yehoshua, Yossi, and Ronny Shacked. 2004. IDF: The fiddler initiated fiddling. Yedioth Aharonoth [in Hebrew]. Yishai, Yael. 2003. Civil society in Israel. Between mobilization and conciliation. Jerusalem: Carmel [in Hebrew]. Zockerman-Barely, Chaya, and Tova Benski. 1989. “Parents and silence”: Process and terms which led to development of protest movements. Megamot 32: 27–44 [in Hebrew].

Notes 1. The photo was first published in Ha’aretz, November 9, 2004; Eldar (2004a). 2. Ariella Azoulay in her article “Photography from a Penal Colony” refers to a photo that shows Israeli soldiers photographing themselves with a dead Palestinian as part of the Israelis’ attitude to the Occupied Territories as a “Penal Colony” (Azoulay, 2006). That photo is not the one I refer to, but it indicates that these acts are not unique. 3. According to Adi Ophir, there are different categories of evils: disappearance, loss, damage, injustice, civil wrong, and bad deeds (Ophir 2000, 13). 4. Machsom is Hebrew for “checkpoint.” 5. The concept of “public sphere” describes a space where public opinion can be created by means of bringing things into the open (Habermas 1991, 1–5).

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6. Fraser, Nancy. Reframing Justice, Spinoza Lectures, May and December 2004, The Department of Philosophy of the University of Amsterdam, Koninklijke Van Gorcum, 2005, p. 46. Quoted by Dayan (2006). 7. This description is not far from the observations of Hardt and Negri on NGOs and their role in the work of empire where they coincide “beyond politics” by “meeting the needs of life itself” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 314). Distinct from the global empire, here it is viewed at a local level. 8. According to Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) (2005), Beit-Iba is one of 600 checkpoints which detain or prevent Palestinians from moving freely in the Occupied Territories. MW monitors regularly the conduct of Israeli soldiers at about thirty barriers in the West Bank—just fourteen of these checkpoints are located on the Green Line. Beit-Iba, one of the checkpoint they visit every day, is not one them. 9. The violin is mentioned several times in the Old Testament, mostly in connection with King David. King David’s fiddle does not identify him as a victim, but it is not definite that the violin that is known today is the same musical instrument that is mentioned in the Old Testament. 10. The ambivalent colonialist situation that is described through the fiddler figure is drawn from Shochat, Boyaran, and Hever’s inquires into similar expressions in Israeli literature and films (Hever 2004, 416). 11. I use the metaphor of the nutshell in order to create an analogy between the violin as an attribute of the Jewish victim and the rifle as an attribute of the Israel citizen. The rifle is recognized as the attribute of the Israeli citizenry by Azoulay. Through a critical analysis of the event of Carmella Buchbut, a woman who turned from a victim to a victimizer through using her soldier son’s rifle to kill her aggressive husband, Azoulay distinguishes the way Israelis enter into the society as citizens by means of being in the IDF (Azoulay, 2002). Buchbut was not recognized by the hegemonic discourse as a victimizer, as Tayem was not identified as a victim. 12. In Figure 4.1 we can see how the activist picture was shown with the new picture made by the Yedioth Aharonoth journalist: the second is on half of the page while the first is presented just as a reminder (Shacked 2004). In a following article the newly made image was left out and Horit Herman Peled’s picture is not shown at all (Yehoshua and Shacked 2004). 13. The identification of the social movement by their gender is part of the framing act of different organizations. Most of MW activists were and some are still active in other peace women’s organizations, such as Women in Black, Coalition of Women for Peace, and Women against the Wall. 14. Keshet, 2006: 34. 15. Inviting Tayem to take part in the workshop “Keshet Eilon,” an international music center for violin master classes (Chorry, 2004), demonstrates the same thing, but as the other side of coin. His voice and playing


16.

17.

18. 19.

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could be heard and manifested in a field that was framed by sovereign Jewish experts as it was misframed from representation by the Israeli military experts. My intention here is not to determine if Tayem was insulted by the incident. I do not know, and it was not written in the newspapers, whether his frustration was from the order to play the violin or maybe from the soldiers not listening to his playing. To the reporter from Yedioth Aharonoth it seems as if Tayem thought the soldiers were offending him because they did not move away from where he was standing when he was playing, so they did not think in the first place that the violin contained explosives (Shaked 2004). Simulations are described by Jean Baudrillard as more than representatives of the real. Baudrillard defines four phases of the image as simulation: it is the reflection of the basic reality, it masks and prevents a basic realty, it masks the absence of a basic reality, and it bears no relation to any reality whatsoever (it is his own pure simulacrum). In the event at Beit-Iba we can see how the images replaced the reality and a new one was created (Baudrillard 1994). Eldar (2004b). Ibid.


4

Chapter 5

Activists Squeezed between the “Apartheid Wall” and t he “Separation Fence” The Radicalism versus Pragmatism Dilemma of Social Movements: The C ase of the Is r aeli Sepa rati o n Ba rr i er

Yuval Feinstein

P rolog ue

For a year and a half, between 2004 and 2005, I have studied grass-

roots activities in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories that opposed the construction of a separation barrier (or the “Apartheid Wall,” as some of the groups named the barrier) between Israel and the West Bank (Feinstein 2006). One of the more prominent groups in demonstrations along the route of the barrier was Anarchists against the Wall (AATW).1 Having participated in some AATW activities, I could not overlook Jonathan Pollak, the AATW’s nonformal leader, and the fact that this twenty-three-year-old man was willing to put himself at risk time after time in physical confrontation with the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers. This man aroused my curiosity. On an evening in January 2006, I sat with Pollak for an interview in a coffee shop in the city of Jaffa. I met someone who, as far as I could tell from this one-hour chat, was a “real anarchist.” He was not the oddball described by some newspapers; instead, it became clear to me that his rejection of the separation barrier and his repeated confrontations with soldiers and policemen were actually based on a

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deep anarchistic objection to the dominance of the state. His activity was not the result of an immature or eccentric rebellious attitude but stemmed from a solid ideological basis that he had acquired at home and further developed by reading classical texts by writers such as Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin. While we chatted, I remembered that a petition submitted by Palestinian landowners from the village of Bil’in against the decision to construct the separation barrier on their lands was about to be discussed a few days later in the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ). Bil’in was the central site of the AATW activities at that time, and many residents maintained friendly relations with AATW activists; therefore I wondered how Pollak would respond to the possibility of helping his Palestinian partners in their appeal. “In principle I try to avoid this,” he responded decisively to my inquiry. “I do not consider the Israeli court as a legitimate entity, especially not in the [Occupied] Territories.” “I do not accept the High Court,” he added. “I don’t care what its verdict will be in the Bil’in case!”2 A few days later, I was surprised to meet Pollak at the entrance to the court, demonstrating silently with other Israeli and international activists. Later that day I was even more amazed to see them sitting in the courtroom, with Pollak serving as an informal adviser to the lawyer who represented the petitioners from Bil’in.

Radicalism versus Pragmatism The story above represents a dilemma that many activists in social movements face. More than once, the question is whether to prioritize so-called pragmatic considerations over radical ideology. The terms “radical” and “pragmatic” do not stand here for “violent” and “nonviolent” actions. Instead, the word “pragmatic” refers to calculated and practicable activities carried out in line with the established rules of the political game and the political culture of a given society. In democratic regimes, these may include, for instance, activities that are directed to influence public opinion, the agenda of parties, or the legal system, and indeed these may be achieved also by using violence.3 The term “radical” refers to the Latin word radix (“root”) and describes activities that are directed to the roots of the social order and are designed to promote new “rules of the game”; indeed, these may be carried out nonviolently. In other words, as Mira Ferree and Patricia Martin state in their book on feminist organizations (Ferree and Martin 1995, 8), activists can choose either to act in a society as “outsiders” and to adhere to an idealistic agenda that, at least in the

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short run, seems to have difficulties in generating vast changes in the social order or to act as “insiders” in ways that can lead to concrete gains but may expose the movement to the risk of cooptation. It is important to clarify that we do not deal here simply with two distinct alternatives for the politics of social movements, one “radical” and one “pragmatic.” Instead, as argued by Ferree and Martin (1995), it is actually an intrinsic tension. In other words, activists in social movements are often motivated by radical ideology but may set the agenda into action by compromising, temporarily, on practical politics. Such a decision is a result, as may be learned also, for example, from the rich history of labor movements (Bronner 1992), of the structural possibilities and constraints of the political field in a specific society and the historical context in which movements operate. Therefore, since the tension between radicalism and pragmatism is “always there,” resolving it becomes a political action in itself. The dilemma of radicalism versus pragmatism is an issue that goes beyond the practical tactical question of what kind of action has the better chance of succeeding, which is, in itself, one of the most discussed issues in the literature on social movements (Diani and Della Porta 1999, 229); it is also connected to some important theoretical debates. In fact, this dilemma functions as a pivot that connects theory with practice, and the debate regarding it was developed by scholars in academia and by activists in social movements, as well as by many who were both activists and intellectuals. Many texts deal, explicitly or implicitly, with the search for the “correct” way to realize the enlightenment values of freedom and equality in an institutional environment that does not necessarily toe this line. Philosophers who work on theories of democracy set “deconstruction” theories and “pragmatic” theories one against each other (Mouffe 1996); The “deconstruction” theorists wish the first wish to decipher the social grammar that holds the power structure of the society together and believe this to be the preferable way for achieving freedom and equality, while the pragmatic theorists believe the other believe that democratization may be achieved gradually by coping with the daily problems of real people. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the efforts made by scholars such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (2001) to find a third way, which can be both concrete and idealistic at once. Studies on the activities of social movements and written reflections of activists have raised various aspects and consequences of the radicalism versus pragmatism issue. Since the 1960s some of the debates have been conducted around the “new Left” and the “new social movements” phenomena, which represent, as many authors argue, political activity

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that is mainly cultural and may avoid power politics and reference to economic or political institutions (Kelly-Fikohazi 1997, 481; Bronner 1992, 10). Yet social movements, “old” and “new,” do get engaged in power politics; they often create tactical alliances that are based on shared interests and enable them to have enough power to negotiate with the state. This mode of action is controversial because it exposes movements to the risk of cooptation by the hegemonic power structure. For example, among people who study feminist movements or participate in their activities, some manifest much confidence in the ability of the movements to act instrumentally in order to change discriminatory policies without putting themselves at high risk (SpalterRoth and Schreiber 1995). Other writers are more ambivalent and refer to the negative consequences of pragmatic action, which can be the capture of human experience, and especially women’s experience, in hegemonic discourse (Patel 1997, 260) or simply the inability of struggles for cultural change to be maintained for a long time in a framework that is established on narrow interests (Arnold 1995). With this complexity in mind, it is not surprising that some writers often cannot overcome the gap between their wish to see social movements succeeding and the fear of negative consequences; more than once the solution is in the form of a “third way.” Jane Mansbridge (2003, 356), for example, advised feminist movements to make “wary usage” in the power of states. Studies of social movements that act in the face of war situations can make a significant contribution to the radicalism versus pragmatism debate. Charles Tilly (1975) pointed out the connection between wars and nation-states as two modern phenomena that feed each other. War is still a common phenomenon, yet most of the wars of our time do not appear as the “classic” modern wars, where nation-states’ mass armies fight each other face-to-face over a territory; instead, they usually evolve along ethnic lines (Mann 2005, 2) and are centered around questions of identity politics (Kaldor 1999). Facing any kind of war, peace activists and human rights advocates often try to present a cultural alternative to the cultural and institutional basis of wars, the dominance of states and ethno-national separatism. This kind of objection to war is, thus, radical by nature. However, the radical objection to wars does not make the dilemma of radicalism versus pragmatism easier; it actually exacerbates it: on one hand, as Ulrich Beck (2002) argues, national and ethnic conflicts are a bitter enemy of the ideal cosmopolitan society; they thus stimulate social movements and nongovernmental organization (NGOs), peace movements and, particularly, human rights organizations, to increase

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their radical activities that seeks to promote deep cultural change.4 But on the other hand, the escalation of the attacks on the well-being of so many people, which is typical of wars, makes it harder even for the most radical activists to refuse to participate in so-called pragmatic actions that have the potential to alleviate the suffering. Another important aspect of the radicalism versus pragmatism dilemma in situations of war is the nature of the political field that social movements have to deal with. Since, in war, the state usually regains some “lost” institutional power and people within it are remobilized around a collective identity and by mechanisms that delegitimize the other side (“the enemy”), state authorities, as well as the public, may react with intolerance toward radical actions against the praxis of war. War as a social institution has inspired numerous studies, including many on the role of social movements during wars. Yet, apparently, war almost did not have any part in the theoretical debate around the radicalism versus pragmatism question. This chapter, thus, is intended to delve further into some aspects of such an important issue. It therefore asks, what are the consequences of the decision to prefer either radical or pragmatic modes of action in order to challenge state policies in a context of war?

Two Mo des of Ob jec ti on to t h e I s r a e li S epar ati on Bar r i er The issue of radicalism versus pragmatism in grassroots activities in the context of war will be discussed by focusing on the dynamics of contention between the Israeli state and grassroots activists who acted against the decision to build a separation barrier on occupied Palestinian Territories in the West Bank. During the time frame of this study, Israeli citizens cooperated with Palestinian and international activists in a variety of activities against the separation barrier; these activities will be divided along two types. The first—protest activities—often escalated into violent clashes with the Israeli security forces and challenged the authority of the state to construct the barrier. The second mode of action—moderate means—included the legal path through the court system in order to make changes in specific sections of the barrier. Each mode of action is represented by a specific case study: the Friday demonstrations near the village of Bil’in represent the first, more radical, mode of action, while the joint struggle of Israeli citizens from the town of Mevasseret Zion (west of Jerusalem) and their neighbors from the Palestinian village of Beit Surik represents the second,

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more moderate, mode of action. In both cases, the story starts with a Palestinian village that is struggling to prevent the construction of sections of the barrier on its agricultural land in a way that will extensively damage olive and citrus trees and will also leave much land on the “Israeli side” of the barrier. The following pages shed light on the differences in the interpretive framework built by activists, who have played a significant role in determining the consequences of the two campaigns. First introduced by Erving Goffman, the analytical role of the concept of “framework” is to present the ways in which human interpretations of social situations are built (Goffman 1974, 10–11). This concept refers to two complementary meanings discussed by Rhys Williams and Robert Benford (2000). On the one hand, the term “frame,” as a noun, refers to a cultural “grammar” that determines a potential interpretation of reality. On the other hand, the verb “framing” implies the ability of collective activities to use frames as tools for creating shared meanings by selectively presenting and concealing parts of the reality. The concept of framework is very useful, then, for analyzing social movements. The two case studies will be analyzed here as two frames of collective action, starting with the demonstrations in Bil’in and then turning to the Beit Surik affair.

Th e D em ons tr ati ons i n Bi l’i n During the years 2004 and 2005, protest activities took place every week near the Palestinian village of Bil’in. These events were usually dramatic and more than once led to violent clashes between protesters and IDF soldiers and policemen. This is despite the fact that they were conducted on Fridays at noon, when there was no construction work being carried out in this era. The fieldwork in these demonstrations indicated a radical framework that challenged the sovereignty of the state and its authorization to construct the barrier.5 The construction of the separation barrier during the Second Intifada was part of the efforts made to reconstruct Israel’s sovereignty in times of crisis. This had at least three aspects. First, the decision to build the barrier, despite the ideological objection of the serving prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and many in his government (Drucker and Shelah 2005, 255–78) was, to a large extent, a result of the Palestinian suicide attacks that led to the death of hundreds of Israeli civilians and the injury of thousands, and of the creation of collective feelings of fear and insecurity. The construction of the barrier started only after prolonged and massive public pressure

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that demanded that the government fulfill its most basic obligation of providing security for its citizens.6 Secondly, during the Second Intifada, most Israelis believed that the Palestinian leadership did not want to make a peace agreement with Israel and held Chairman Yasser Arafat responsible for the outburst of the Intifada.7 Thus the barrier not only was considered as a means of providing security but also was expected to become, unilaterally, a border between two states, one Israeli and one Palestinian (when this state is established). And indeed, with this idea in mind, the Israeli authorities planned a route for the barrier, which, albeit justified in security terms, penetrated the West Bank extensively in order to annex many Jewish settlements to Israel and was twice the length of the Green Line (the pre-1967 border).8 Thirdly, during the Second Intifada, many of Israel’s methods of war, which had a “collective punishment” character and actually treated the whole Palestinian society as an “enemy,” helped Israel to create the cultural separation between “us” and “them” (BenEliezer, forthcoming). The separation barrier created the same effect of national sovereignty. Its construction resulted in a massive abuse of the human rights of the Palestinians.9 Moreover, the barrier symbolized Israel supremacy because of the nonsymmetrical policy of crossing it: Palestinians were either forbidden to cross the checkpoints in the barrier or experienced difficulties and humiliation, while for Israelis, including settlers, moving from the West Bank to Israel was carried out easily and smoothly. While the barrier was meant to strengthen Israel’s sovereignty by marking, physically and symbolically, the “us-them” division and by being depicted purely as a means for strengthening security, the AATW and other groups objected to this project by creating a radical counterframework for their demonstrations in Bil’in and along other sections of the barrier’s route: they treated the security argument cynically and made every effort to resist the separatism of the Israeli state policy and public opinion; most of all they made huge efforts to overcome the “us-them” division. During the demonstrations, interesting patterns of cooperation developed among three social categories of activists: Israelis, Palestinians, and international activists. This postnational version of cooperation interrupted, both by physical and symbolic means, the two division lines that established the sovereignty of the state: the national division of “us” and “them” and the geopolitical division between the “internal territory” and the “external world of states.”

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The activists tried to blur the borders between the Israeli activists and other activists by doing everything together, from marching dressed in symbolic costumes to wrestling with soldiers. This radical message of unity and egalitarianism among citizens of different states who are also members of different nations, in contrast to the separatism of the state, was also demonstrated symbolically when the activists marked the control of the state agents, soldiers, and policemen in the demonstration area as their collective target; often this resulted in violent clashes between the two sides. Furthermore, when international or Palestinian demonstrators were arrested, Israeli activists tried to be arrested also in order to make it harder for the Israeli authorities to carry out severe sanctions against the non-Israelis. “The importance of the demonstrations,” said Jonathan Pollak, “is in their contribution to the transformation of the occupation to be ungovernable.”10 The demonstrations in Bil’in broke the basic divisional lines of the hegemonic politics of the nation-state also by being referred to audiences that were not the “traditional” target audience of states, mainly its own citizens, other states, and international institutions. Activists in Bil’in used the media as well as the presence of international activists in order to catch the attention of different audiences around the world, which, in turn, organized their own protest events. They often framed their protest as part of a global movement of peace and human rights, for example, by carrying large pictures of Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr. The construction of a “global civil society” in political struggles, as Mary Kaldor has argued, amplifies the voices of local communities, which are usually unheard in conventional international relations (Kaldor 2000). By so doing, the civil society challenges the concept of the world as a “world of states”—according to this, states mutually safeguard the sovereignty of the other. The idea that the activists in Bil’in had built a radical frame that made it harder for the state to construct the separation barrier as an internal (sovereign) policy of separation was manifested clearly in many of the ways in which the state chose to react to these activities. First of all, vast efforts were made in order to locate and exile international activists.11 Second, more than once, senior IDF officers used the Israeli media to convey their frustration at the “operational difficulties” caused by the presence of Israeli citizens in the demonstrations along the path of the barrier and thus implied how difficult it was for an army that was used to acting in the Occupied Territories according to a sharp division between “friends” and “foes” to deal with the dissolving normative borders created by the activists.12 The resentment conveyed by state

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agents toward the demonstrators in Bil’in was supplemented by similar responses by the Israeli public, which considered itself to be a victim of the Palestinian terrorism and the barrier as a legitimate means of protection. A typical example of such a reaction can be found in an Israeli newspaper report on a demonstration in Bil’in: “It is time to state the plain fact,” the columnist wrote, “demonstrations against the separation fence are neo-terrorism.”13 The radical mode of action generated by the activists in Bil’in was met with a response of protest policing and with symbolic actions that depicted the demonstrations as a risk to Israel and labeled the Israeli activists as traitors. Therefore, it is still possible that such a radical action will have a long-term cultural effect that, at present it is unobservable. As for influence on state policy, it is quite clear that the demonstrations in Bil’in were not very successful, as construction of the separation barrier near Bil’in continued almost as planned during more than two and a half years of protest, slowed down only by temporary orders issued by the Israeli HCJ. Indeed, while the demonstrations in Bil’in may have had indirect effect on policy (especially by encouraging the local landowners to stand up for their rights), it was not this mode of activity that eventually forced the state to give the annexed lands back to their Palestinian owners. In this regard, the second and more moderate mode of collective action against the path of the separation barrier proved itself to be more efficient, starting with the Beit Surik Affair.

Th e Bei t S ur ik and Meva ss eret Zi on c ampai gn This section deals with the joint campaign of people from the Jewish Israeli town of Mevasseret Zion and their neighbors from the Palestinian village of Beit Surik. Interestingly enough, the people who started the mobilization of Israeli citizens from Mevasseret Zion for action were three residents in their early twenties who had already developed rich careers in resisting the occupation, including many demonstrations against the separation barrier near Bil’in and at other sections of the barrier. Even more interesting was their tactical decision to temporarily exclude their ideological opposition to the barrier from the framework in order to recruit as many other residents of Mevasseret Zion to an ad hoc campaign against the planned path of the barrier between the two localities.14 They therefore created a totally different framework from that used at Bil’in.

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While activists in Bil’in tried to blur the borders between collective identities, the “mission” of the activists in Mevasseret Zion was defined as “helping neighbors,” which, despite several meetings and joint actions, sustained the borderlines between the two communities. But even more important was the fact that the framework of the demonstrations in Bil’in was radical, because it denounced the barrier from a point of view that did not accept the authority of the state and the security justification for constructing the barrier. In contrast, the framework in the case of Mevasseret Zion and Beit Surik was built around two themes: one was that the path of the barrier between the localities caused an “avoidable harm” to the Palestinian residents, and the second was that such harm had the potential to develop “a security threat” to the Israeli citizens in Mevasseret Zion, as it would create frustration and fury in Beit Surik. This framework, therefore, was in accordance with the perception, shared by most Israeli citizens, according to which the barrier was a legitimate means of security and separation, and the activity was thus meant only for promoting the changing of the plans for the barrier in the area. The moderate framework was also realized in the decision of the activists from Mevasseret Zion to channel their activity along a legal path and to join with the appeal of the Palestinian residents of Beit Surik to the HCJ. Furthermore, conforming to the Israeli dominant militaristic perception of the barrier enabled the people of Mevasseret Zion to recruit personnel considered in Israel to be security experts. These people are members of the Peace and Security Council, an association of former senior members in Israeli security organizations.15 Eventually, the participation of these “security experts” and the fact that they presented in court an alternative path for a security barrier in the area of Mevassseret and Beit Surik convinced the judges, for the first time since the start of the barrier construction in late 2002, to accept an appeal against the path of the barrier and to rule against the state. On June 30, 2004, the Israeli court ruled that certain sections of the barrier in the area of Beit Surik, altogether more than thirty kilometers long, were illegal since they did not meet the principle of “proportionality.”16 In other words, the judges maintained that the extreme damage the planned route would cause to Palestinian residents was disproportionate to its expected security benefits.17 The achievement of the petitioners was even greater: because this verdict was announced as a legal precedent, it therefore made the state authorities change other sections of the barrier as well.18 The petitioners celebrated their win, and indeed, evidently, the calculated decision of a few activists, which can indeed be labeled as

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“pragmatic action,” to create a temporary moderate framework succeeded in improving the life conditions of many people from Beit Surik and other Palestinian localities. Moreover, the success in the Beit Surik appeal resulted in yet another significant effect: security arguments are usually prioritized by the Israeli Supreme Court over the human rights of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (Kretzmer 2002, 124; Barzilai 2004), yet the effective use of the “security voice” against the state in the Beit Surik appeal eroded the monopoly that the state had on this line of argumentation and its ability to use it as justification for constructing the barrier on Palestinian lands.19 However, from a radical point of view, the success of the Beit Surik appeal could be seen also as a Pyrrhic victory: the activists did manage to win the case in court, but at the cost of reproducing the donominant national-security discourse. The High Court judges dedicated a significant part of their verdict to confirming the Israeli official stance, according to which the barrier was a legitimate means of security in a situation of massive Palestinian terror attacks. In fact, it was the first time since the start of construction of the barrier that the highest Israeli legal institute gave its opinion on the whole project of the barrier; most importantly, the court altered its view of the legitimacy of building the wall extensively on Palestinian lands from de facto (the court had never before accepted any of the Palestinian appeals against the barrier) to legitimacy de jure. Furthermore, by using the legal principle of “proportionality,” the judges were able “to grab both edges of the stick”: On the one hand, by applying this principle they did interfere, despite certain complaints from people in the security establishment and in the government, in the planning of the separation barrier’s route in order to alleviate the abuses of the rights of Palestinian people. But, on the other hand, this was not done as a pure humanitarian act that treated the whole barrier project; it was only a limited action. In line with the Israeli dominant discourse, the verdict made it clear that the High Court would not accept arguments against the validity of the security purpose of the barrier, nor would it prefer human rights over security; instead, it would be willing to consider intervention in the process of the construction of the barrier in cases of extreme abuse of rights and, most importantly, only if the judges were convinced that this did not come at the expense of national security. Practically, the result of this was not only that the success of the Beit Surik case was not followed by many more but also that in many later appeals the experts of the Council for Peace and Security played again a central role,

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thus turning the hegemonic security voice into a shared platform for both the state and the petitioners. As if in order to avoid any misunderstanding concerning the meaning of its Beit Surik verdict, more than a year later, on September 15, 2005, the Israeli HCJ ruled once again in favor of Palestinian and Israeli petitioners against the route of the barrier, this time near the Palestinian city of Qalqillya in the so-called Alfei Menashe ruling.20 The judges unanimously expressed their conviction that erecting the barrier was a matter of security, namely, to prevent infiltration of terrorists into Israel and into Israeli communities in so-called Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). This verdict also served as a reply to the International High Court of Justice, which determined, on July 9, 2004, that building the separation barrier on occupied Palestinian lands is contrary to international law.21 The Israeli HCJ determined that constructing the barrier on the Green Line would leave the Israeli settlement of Alfei Menashe on the eastern side of the barrier, vulnerable to terrorist attacks, and that any route of the barrier must take into account the need to provide security to the Israeli citizens in the West Bank. However, the court ordered the state to reconsider the existing route and to examine the possibility of leaving all or some of the Palestinian villages on the “Palestinian” side of the barrier. As in the case of Beit Surik, the principle of proportionality was employed in order to alleviate some of the suffering caused by the construction of the separation barrier, while contributing greatly to the reconstruction of the hegemonic position of the security discourse in Israel. It took the HCJ an additional two years before it ruled again in favor of Palestinian petitioners against the path of the separation barrier on September 4, 2007. This time the petitioners were Palestinians from Bil’in.22 The Israeli and international activists celebrated with the eighteen hundred inhabitants of Bil’in. “Together we demonstrated the truth,” asserted the representative of the Popular Committee of Bil’in, Mr. Basel Mansour, “that Israelis can stand beside Palestinians and live with them in peace and security, and even struggle with them against injustice and occupation, on the fundamental basis that this occupation is an enemy of humanity.”23 Ironically, the inhabitants of Bil’in—the village that had become the center and symbol of radical opposition to the separation barrier and to the security nationalistic discourse—were able to regain their land only by acting through the Israeli legal system.

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C o nc lus ions The purpose of this chapter was not to resolve the radicalism versus pragmatism dilemma but to demonstrate the importance of locating this dilemma in war situations and to give some idea of its consequences in the actual politics of social movements. In both the case studies presented in this chapter, radical activists had to cope with the tension between their desire to promote cultural change in the name of cosmopolitan ideals and the urgency of offering real aid for a suffering population. And indeed, during the field work for this study, the radicalism versus pragmatism dilemma often came to the fore of discussions and controversies among activists. The two case studies demonstrate that there is neither a theoretical nor a practical clear-cut solution for the radicalism versus pragmatism dilemma, especially not in war situations. Indeed, as can be learned from the case of Beit Surik and Mevasseret Zion, choosing a pragmatic frame of action can be more effective in the short run but may also have a significant price tag, because playing by the state’s rules of the game reproduces the hegemonic system and its militaristic discourse. This is where more radical activities, illustrated by the demonstration in Bil’in, may be most significant. In this particular case, the efforts that the activists made to present a third voice, different from the two major particularistic voices in the national conflict—the Palestinian voice and the Israeli voice—though seeming to lack any significant influence on the immediate reality of the construction of the barrier, may have long-term consequences. Moreover, one of the more remarkable findings of the study is that the roots of the relatively successful Beit Surik and Mevasseret Zion campaign were actually interwoven in the activities of AATW and other radical groups: the radical activity created the political awareness and dedication of activists to act against the separation barrier and thus was a crucial step in the process that brought a few of them to initiate the temporary and relatively pragmatic Beit Surik and Mevasseret Zion campaign. Finally, despite the fact that the AATW activists usually adhered to their radicalism, and indeed the Beit Surik and Mevasseret Zion affair was quite exceptional, they could never totally avoid the opportunity (or “temptation,” as some may prefer to call it) to act within the system of the state. And indeed, this paper opened with a story that aimed to point to the tension inherent even to the politics of the most radical social movements; it showed how Jonathan Pollak and his partners in the AATW could be observed waving anarchist flags and wrestling with Israeli soldiers on a Friday demonstration in Bil’in

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Figure 5.1 Demonstration in Bil’in: Clash between protesters and soldiers (Photo: Yuval Feinstein)

but could also be located, only a few days later, standing quietly and peacefully in the check-in line to enter the hall of the Israeli Supreme Court.

Referenc es Arnold, Gretchen. 1995. Dilemmas of feminist coalitions: Collective identity and strategic effectiveness in the battered women’s movement. In Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women’s Movement, ed. Myra M. Ferree and Patricia Y. Martin, 276–90. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Barzilai, Gad. 2004. How far do justices go: The limits of judicial decisions. In Critical issues in Israeli studies, ed. Alan Dowty, 55–68. Westport: Praeger Publishers. Beck, Ulrich. 2002. The cosmopolitan society and its enemies. Theory, Culture & Society 19, no. 1–2: 17–44. Ben-eliezer, Uri, and Yuval Feinstein. 2007. “The Battle over our homes”: Reconstructing/deconstructing sovereign practices around Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank. Journal of Israel Studies 12, no. 1: 171–92. Ben-Eliezer, Uri. (forthcoming). Old conflict, new war: Struggle over Israel’s identity and sovereignty in the al-Aqsa Intifada movements. Annual Review of Sociology 26: 611–39.

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Biersteker, Thomas J., and Cynthia Weber, eds. 1996. State sovereignty as social construct. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Bronner, Stephen E. 1992. Moments of decision: Political history and the crisis of radicalism. London: Routledge. Diani, Mario, and Donatella Della Porta. 1999. Social movements: An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Doty, Roxanne L. 1996. Sovereignty and the nation: Constructing the boundaries of national identity. In State sovereignty as social construct, ed. Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, 121–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drucker, Raviv, and Ofer Shelah. 2005. Boomerang. Jerusalem: Keter [in Hebrew]. Ferree, Myra M., and Patricia Y. Martin, eds. 1995. Feminist organizations: Harvest of the new women’s movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Feinstein, Yuval. 2006. Between the “security fence” and the “Apartheid Wall”: Dynamics of contention between the state and social movements. Master’s thesis, University of Haifa [in Hebrew]. Goffman, Ervin. 1974. Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Gross, Eyal. 2006. The construction of a wall between The Hague and Jerusalem: The enforcement and limits of humanitarian law and the structure of occupation. Leiden Journal of International Law, no. 19: 1–48. Harel, Amos, and Avi Isacharoff. 2004. The seventh war. Yediot Achronot [in Hebrew]. High Court of Justice, 2056/04: Beit Sourik Village Council v. The Government of Israel. High Court of Justice, 7957/04. Mara’abe v. The Prime Minister of Israel. High Court of Justice, 8414/05. Ahmed Abdullah Yasin v. The Government of Israel. Human Rights Watch (HRW). February 2004. “Israel’s ‘Separation Barrier’ in the Occupied West Bank: Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Consequences.” International Court of Justice, July 9, 2004. Summary of the Advisory Opinion. http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/ipresscom/ipress2004 Kaldor, Mary. 1999. New and old wars: Organized violence in a global area. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kaldor, Mary. 2000. Civilizing globalization? The implications of the battle in Seattle. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29, no. 1: 105–14. Kelly-Fikohazi, Christine. 1997. No map, no compass, no dime. Peace Review 9, no. 4: 481–87. Kretzmer, David. 2002. The occupation of justice: HCJ Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied Territories. New York: State University of New York Press.

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Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 2001. Hegemony and social strategy: Toward a radical democratic politics. 2nd ed. London: Verso. Mann, Michael. 2005. The dark side of democracy: Explaining ethnic cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mansbridge, Jane. 2003. Anti-statism and difference: Feminism in international social movements. International Feminist Journal of Politics 5, no. 3: 355–60. McAdam, Doug. 1996. Movement strategy and dramaturgic framing in democratic states: The case of the American civil rights movement. Research in Democracy and Society 3: 155–76. Mansour Basel. September 11, 2007. “Thanks to the (Cowardly) High Court.” Ha’aretz. [in Hebrew]. Rappoport, Meron. June 9, 2005. “Without Shaheeds,” Ha’aretz. [in Hebrew]. Mouffe, Chantal, ed. 1996. Deconstruction and pragmatism. London: Routledge. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). February 2005. “Preliminary Analysis: The Humanitarian Implications of the February 2005 Projected West Bank Barrier route.” Patel, Pragna. 1997. Third wave feminism and black women’s activism. In Black British feminism, ed. Heidi S. Mirza, 255–68. London: Routledge. Sharon, Roy. July 17, 2005. “They are not anarchists.” Maariv. [in Hebrew]. Spalter-Roth, Roberta, and Ronnee Schreiber. 1995. Outsiders’ issues and insiders’ tactics: Strategic tensions in the women’s policy network during the 1980s. In Feminist organizations: Harvest of the new women’s movement, ed. Myra M. Ferree and Patricia Y. Martin, 105–27. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Tilly, Charles. 1975. Reflections on the history of European state-making. In The formation of national states in Western Europe, ed. Charles Tilly, 3–83. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Walker, Ralph B. J. 1993. Inside/outside: International relations in political theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Rhys H., and Robert D. Benford. 2000. Two faces of collective action frames: A theoretical consideration. Current Perspectives in Social Theory 20: 127–51.

Notes 1. Anarchists against the Wall (AATW) is a group of Israeli activists; it was founded in late 2002 in order to support the popular Palestinian resistance to the separation barrier. Activists in the AATW are involved in direct actions such as dismantling parts of the separation barrier; they also form the hard core of Israeli participants in Palestinian demonstrations against the barrier.

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2. Interview with Jonathan Pollak, January 29, 2006. 3. In democratic regimes, it is sometimes the ability of social movements to use “nondemocratic” means, such as civil disobedience and moderate violence, to increase the public awareness and support of the goals of the movement in question. In the case of the civil rights movement in the United States (McAdam 1996), for example, the movement utilized “nondemocratic” action to provoke the government, which responded by using means of violence in ways that were considered by the public as illegitimate, and thus increased the support for the struggle of the civil rights movement. Also, these confrontations attracted vast media coverage, which amplified the effect of the protest. 4. The term radical is used in this paper in order to describe certain political activities that stem from cosmopolitan ideologies and subvert the social order by objecting to the dominance of nation-states, to the patterns of separatism of nationalism and ethnicity, and to war as a legitimate social institution. Cosmopolitan values, however, are not epitomes of radicalism. In fact, some of the most radical political phenomena of our times are not motivated by cosmopolitan values at all but by particularistic ideology, religious fundamentalism being the most prominent example. I would like to thank Dani Filc for calling my attention to the problem of identifying radicalism with cosmopolitanism. 5. The term sovereignty here refers not only to the legal-positive Westphalian principle of international relations but also more broadly to the cultural basis of state dominance, which is unstable and dynamic by nature and depends on social maintenance work. This important aspect of sovereignty is discussed by social-constructivist approaches (Biersteker and Weber 1996). In brief, nation-states’ dominance over the population within “their” territory is achievable not only by the use or threat of violence but also because this dominance is considered legitimate. Such recognition, argue social constructivists, is a result of variety of practices, carried out by state agents, that are directed both toward the world outside, the “world of states,” and toward the people inside, who are expected to develop patriotic feelings toward the state. This is done to a significant extent, as discussed by Walker (1993), by creating a binary division between the “inside” and the “outside”: that is, a geopolitical division between the sovereign territory and “the rest of the world” and a cultural division between the national community and groups that are defined as “others” and even as “enemies.” Moreover, the ways in which sovereignty works are usually subtle and hence can be seen more clearly during times of sovereignty crisis, when perceptions of time, space, and national identity are blurred. When this happens, state authorities take actions that aim to create a “sovereignty effect” (Doty, 1996). 6. See also Ben-Eliezer and Feinstein (2007). 7. See Harel and Isacharoff (2004).

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8. According to the reports of the United Nations’ Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, the planned route was supposed to leave 14.5 percent of the West Bank on the Israeli side of the separation barrier (this account does not include the East Jerusalem area, which was also included in the Israeli side by the “Jerusalem wrap”) (United Nations, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory 2003). 9. See, for example, Human Rights Watch (2004); Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2005). 10. Interview with Jonathan Pollak, January 1, 2006. 11. According to the International Solidarity Movement’s (ISM) coordinator in the Occupied Territories, more than 100 international activists who took part, or intended to participate, in activities against the barrier or the occupation have been deported from Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories by the Israeli authorities in the three years following the beginning of the construction of the barrier (telephone interview with Netta Golan, July 14, 2005). Several testimonies of activists who were interrogated by the Israeli border control, a few of them even being deported, can be found at http://www.palsolidarity.org. 12. See, for example, Rappoport, Meron. June 9, 2005. [in Hebrew]. 13. Sharon, Roy. July 17, 2005. “They are not anarchists,” Maariv. [in Hebrew] 14. Interviews with Rotem Mor, March 31, 2005, and with Sarah Bartal, April 3, 2005. 15. The council’s Web site is found at http://www.Peace-security.org.il. 16. The proportionality principle is a legal tool intended to enable democratic-liberal regimes to determine whether an administrative action which results in abuse of rights of members of the society is legitimate. On this principle and on aspects of its use in the case of the Beit Surik appeal, see Gross (2006). 17. High Court of Justice, 2056/04. 18. As a result of the ruling in the Beit Surik appeal, a new route was designed for the separation barrier and was approved by the Government of Israel on February 20, 2005. This new route, albeit still penetrating deeply into the West Bank, annexes 89 percent of the West Bank, half of the original intent. Also, the number of Palestinian people on the “Israeli side” was reduced drastically (the “Jerusalem wrap” is an exception to this). See the separation barrier statistics in “Betselem”—the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories: http://www.btselem .org/English/Separation_Barrier/Statistics.asp. 19. After the verdict in the case of Beit Surik, Members of the “Council for Peace and Security” became regular actors in the legal appeals against the barrier. As a result, in many appeals the state’s security argumentation became debatable. However, the model of the activity of Beit Surik and Mevasseret Zion was implemented successfully in only one other case: in

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the village of Sheikh Saad (south-east of Jerusalem), action by a coalition of Palestinian residents, Israeli citizens, and members of the Council for Peace and Security led to significant changes in the route of the barrier near Sheikh Saad. For details, see Feinstein (2006). High Court of Justice, 7957/04. International Court of Justice, July 9, 2004. High Court of Justice, 8414/05. Mansour Basel. September 11, 2007.


4

Chapter 6

Doves of a Feather A Comparative Analysis of Identity-Based Peac e and Co nf lic t-R eso lu t i o n Org aniz ati o ns (P/ CROs) i n I sra el , N o rther n Irel a nd, and So u t h Af r i ca

Raviv Schwartz

I ntroduc ti on Peace and Conflict-Resolution Organizations

This study is an analysis of peace and conflict-resolution organiza-

tions (P/CROs) active in Israel, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. More specifically, it examines those I refer to as “identity-based,” composed of members or activists, all of whom share a common social identity, be it gender, religious orientation or denomination or professional background. Those not organized around a prescribed attribute of social identity are referred to as “generic.” The very existence of such identity-based organizations, which mobilize individuals sharing a particular social identity around an issue (in this case peace and reconciliation) ostensibly unrelated to that same identity, begs a number of questions: Is it this common identity that engenders peace activism, or would these same individuals be mobilized on behalf of peace independent of the existence of identity-based organizations? What is the significance of these subidentities for these identity-based P/CROs? Do identity-based P/CROs differ from generic ones? This chapter represents an attempt to utilize data from a recent study of P/CROs in Israel, Northern Ireland, and South Africa to provide answers to

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these and other questions by exploring an aspect of P/CRO life left heretofore uninvestigated. Despite the many examples of identity-specific mobilization around issues not directly related to that identity, very little academic attention has focused on the implications thereof. In fact, analyses of organizations embodying a shared identity that does not lie at the heart of the ostensible reason for mobilization are all but absent from the literature on collective action. This appears to parallel the rather limited treatment of peace movements and peace movement organizations (PMOs) within the more general literature on social movements (Jenkins and Klandermans 1995; McAdam et al. 1996). Part of the reason for the paucity of attention paid to identity-based organizations is that the phenomenon straddles two distinct (if not disparate) theoretical traditions. The voluminous literature on social movements treats the grievances and social or political objectives around which groups and constituents are mobilized, and more specifically the “collective identity” of those mobilized. This form of identity emerges during and after mobilization through the processes of interaction, negotiation, and conflict over the definition of a particular problem or situation (Johnston et al. 1994). On the other hand, the shared ascribed or adopted identity of constituents prior to mobilization that links them with others who belong to the same social category falls under the theoretical purview of social psychology and is referred to as “social identity.” I propose that P/CROs from each of the three conflict settings under consideration here may be understood as a conceptual intersection or confluence of “collective identity” and “social identity.” Consequently, they allow for an analysis that is both informed by theoretical traditions and amenable to cross-cultural comparison. Ideally, such an analysis will shed light on the connection between identity and participation in peace organizations and provide a more nuanced understanding of the significance of this identity for peace activism. Levels of Analysis The first level of comparative analysis featured here seeks to shed light on the differences and similarities among the three categories of identity-based P/CROs along four different forms of identity deployment exclusive to identity-based P/CROs. These modes of identity deployment were arrived at inductively while sifting through the comprehensive reports of each of the identity-based P/CROs. They include identity orientation, which can be either expressive or strategic; identity

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mobilization, the mobilization of members, resources and/or support along identity lines; identity reconciliation, the contact between conflicted parties based on a common identity marker; and identity essentialization, the imputing essential qualities, particularly with regard to the conflict, to their identity category at large. This type of inquiry draws attention to the varying and sophisticated uses of identity in the work of these organizations and takes into account the contextual factors that are brought to bear on them. Also examined at this first level of analysis are identity-based P/CROs within the same identity category and operating within the same conflict setting—one pair of P/CROs per identity category. The second level of analysis systematically compares identity-based and generic P/CROs along parameters that constitute the central “cognitive” and “behavioral” dimensions of P/CRO life, namely ideology, tactics, and certain key parameters of organizational behavior. The ideology of a social movement (SM) or its constituent unit, the social movement organization (SMO), has been described as developing through the construction of “collective action frames,” or cognitive structures that guide collective action (Hunt et al. 1994). Ideology has traditionally been viewed as consisting of the following three sets of collective action frames. The diagnosis identifies what is wrong with a given state of affairs and assigns blame (Wilson 1973). The second, the prognosis, refers to the movement’s goal(s) and utopian vision or blueprint for change. The third is the motivational component or rationale for collective action and represents the call to action to members and supporters (Lofland 1996; Snow and Benford 1988). An aspect of framing addressed in the literature with implications for P/CROs and identity-based P/CROs in particular is the third, motivational, component of ideology. Ideology, for the purposes of my analysis, is represented by both its substantive and structural dimensions and includes ideological orientation, view of conflict (as either subjective or objective), transformational frame, degree of clarity, range, frame bridging, motivation frame, and membership commitment. The classic distinction between SM tactical types is that between “conventional” or “institutionalized” and “unconventional “or “noninstitutionalized” (Lofland 1985). This distinction is exemplified by educational, electoral, and lobbying tactics on the one hand and direct action on the other (Marullo et al. 1991). Key differences between the two types center around the arena of engagement, the definition and breadth around which insurgents are being mobilized, and the timing and location of collective action. Peace movement organizations

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(PMOs), like many SMOs, tend to exhibit a wide array of tactics. The ideology of a PMO has important ramifications for the tactics undertaken. It has been shown for example that pacifist groups were more likely to engage in civil disobedience, participate in boycotts, and sponsor resistance training than were nonpacifist groups (Marullo et al. 1991), but they were just as likely to engage in more traditional activities such as electoral politics, lobbying, and demonstrating. In this respect, they appear to pursue a wider range of tactics (Colwell 1996). Identity also affects the tactics of PMOs. Religious-identity PMOs, for example, were more likely than secular PMOs to use unruly tactics but were just as likely to use more conventional tactics (Pagnucco 1996). The analysis of tactics engaged in by the P/CROs consists of three dimensions—tactical diversity, symbolic tactics, and contentious tactics—as well as a series of individual tactics (advocacy, protest, imprisonment, publications, training and empowerment, public education, service provision, and contact with the “other”). The third focus of the comparative analysis of identity-based and generic P/CROs is a series of organizational parameters that are regarded by the social movement literature as being linked with identity. The organizational parameters selected consist of the following: Membership Composition refers to P/CROs with membership and/ or staff drawn from “both sides of the conflict” or “exclusively from one side.” In Israel/Palestine these are sometimes referred to as bior uninational and in Northern Ireland as cross or single-community respectively. That this specific feature of P/CRO life has important implications for organizations in conflict settings is rather self-evident. Access to the polity denotes the relative access enjoyed by P/CRO leaders to the political, military, and social elites within the polity and is in part a reflection of the social location of the former. Networks refer to the myriad of formal and informal social networks (family, friends, and associates) from which constituents may be drawn that are crucial to the ability of SMOs and by extension P/CROs, to successfully mobilize. It has already been established that “the existence of activist and NGO networks was critical to the mobilization success and survival of these [P/CROs studied]” (Gidron et al. 1999). This particular dimension of mobilization would appear to be an especially appropriate parameter along which to compare identity-based and generic P/ CROs, since the networks from which the former draw constituents are, by definition, more formally and narrowly defined. The organizational structure of P/CROs will be classified as exhibiting either a flat, less complex and less differentiated organizational structure or a more institutionalized organizational structure. Organizational target refers

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to those targeted by P/CRO activity as either primarily decision makers and shapers or members of the elite or grassroots or rank and file members or constituents. Finally, organizational type denotes whether the P/CRO embodies the model of either a grassroots SMO with an active and less active membership, implying a bottom-up approach, or a paid staff-led social movement organization [PSMO], implying a top-down approach. (See Table 6.1 for an outline of the research strategy described above.)

M ethodo log y This article is a secondary analysis of data collected through the International Study of Peace/Conflict Resolution Organizations (ISPO), an international research project conducted between 1995 and 1998 that sought to understand the behavior and impact of P/CROs locally and cross-culturally. In the project’s final phase of data collection, a limited number of organizations from each region were studied: nine from Israel, eight from Northern Ireland, and ten from South Africa.1 The samples were constructed in a manner that both reflects key salient features of each local peace movement and also includes a few select common features that facilitate a cross-national comparison. For example, in South Africa, academic centers and institutes played a significant role in the struggle against apartheid, due at least in part to the relatively few constraints imposed upon their activity by the regime. Consequently, three of the ten South African P/CROs are academic in nature and engage largely in applied or academic research and dissemination (Centre for Conflict Resolution, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, and South African Institute of Race Relations). In Northern Ireland, organizations engaged in one form or another of “community development” are among the more prominent actors in the peace and reconciliation sector. Thus, of the ten P/CROs studied in Northern Ireland, four were explicitly community development organizations, and another devoted much of its activity to this same goal (Clougher Valley Rural Development Centre, Dove House Resource Center, Springfield Inter-Community Development Project and Ulster Community Action Network). In Israel, where protest is a very prominent feature of peace activism, four of the P/CROs included in this study may be considered classic protest groups (Peace Now, Women in Black, and Yesh Gvul), and at least three others have, at various times, engaged in protest activity. Comprehensive organizational reports for the twenty-nine P/ CROs (nine from Israel, ten from Northern Ireland, and ten from

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South Africa) were generated through a series of semistructured interviews. The analysis of these comprehensive organizational reports at both levels of my comparative analysis may be broken down into a number of interrelated steps. 1) Careful review of each report and selection of units of meaning within each 2) Coding units of meaning according to a set of deductively and inductively derived codes 3) Classification of all P/CROs as either identity-based or generic 4) Construction of summary table for systematic comparison of identity-based and generic P/CROs 5) Creation of file for each P/CRO and identification of emergent themes 6) Development of typologies along certain key thematic distinctions 7) Use of secondary sources for triangulation

Findi ngs Identity Deployment among Identity-Based P/CROs At the first level of inquiry, which incorporates only the identity-based P/CROs, four different forms of identity use or “deployment” were identified, and it is along these that they were compared. Identity orientation. I argue that the identity orientation of a P/CRO may be understood as a partial gauge of identity salience. Accordingly, identity-based P/CROs exhibiting an expressive identity orientation embody a higher degree of identity salience than those with a strategic orientation, for their identity appears to play a significantly more substantial role in the organizing of their experience of peace activism. Religious and women’s P/CROs are unmistakably expressive in their orientation, while professional P/CROs are exclusively strategic in theirs, suggesting a commitment among the latter to peace and conflict-resolution activism that is narrower in its focus. In the case of professional P/CROs, it was found that three of the four appear to facilitate the mobilization of a particular category of individuals who might not otherwise be predisposed to peace activism. Identity mobilization. Identity-based P/CROs, across all three categories of identity and all three regions, employed identity rather extensively in their mobilization efforts, targeting the following distinct publics: members or constituents, the public, the regime, and countermovements.

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Identity reconciliation. Women’s, and to a slightly lesser degree religious, P/CROs showed a greater propensity toward identity-infused reconciliation efforts, while professional P/CROs were markedly less inclined to do so. Identity essentialization. This form of identity deployment was particularly pronounced among women’s P/CROs, all four of which showed evidence thereof. Identity essentialization, which was not found to vary cross-culturally, may also involve the imputing of certain essential qualities to the identity category by those external to P/ CROs, such as the regime or oppositional elements. In some cases, this may serve (perhaps unwittingly) to shield identity-based P/CROs from forms of criticism and repression experienced by generic ones. In the comparison of identity-based P/CROs within the same identity category and within the same setting, noteworthy differences were uncovered. In comparing the two Israeli women’s groups, it was demonstrated that both Bat Shalom and Women in Black (WIB) featured a feminist identity that was manifest in both their view of the conflict and in their tactics. However, in the case of WIB, this feminist identity was also expressed at the level of organizational functioning and appeared to have addressed the affective needs of its participants much more than was the case with Bat Shalom. These two P/CROs also differed dramatically with respect to “voice,” a concept closely linked with identity salience that refers to a group’s ability to pull together and convey a unified sense of purpose, direction and unity (Gottfried 1996). A group that develops a unified voice to address external audiences is regarded as more salient to its members than a group whose members vie with one another over the formulation of its message. The notion of voice may be measured by “examining expressions of group unity in external message promotion (indicated by group’s ability to direct a unified message to the public) and perception of internal avenues for expression (indicated by lack of group dissension, conflict or fragmentation)” (Reger and Dugan 2000). Paradoxically, it seems that the “silent” Israeli women’s P/CRO allowed for a more multilayered expression of the shared identity of its members. The comparison of two Israeli professional P/CROs, Yesh Gvul (consisting of army reservists) and the Council for Peace and Security (composed of former senior military and security personnel) illustrated that despite the ostensibly common professional background, the two may be conceptually situated at the two extreme ends of a continuum representing the relationship or compatibility between soldiering and citizenship in the Israeli context. For Council members, their identity as military personnel may be understood as the supreme expression of their identity as Israeli

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citizens—or in other words, absolute complementarity between soldiering and citizenship. For Yesh Gvul members on the other hand, the affirmation of their civilian or civic identity clashed to some extent with their identity as reserve soldiers. When analyzing the differences between the two religious P/CROs in both the Israeli and South African settings, the following pattern emerges. In Israel, both Oz VeShalom and Rapprochement were animated by religious convictions that informed their view of the conflict and found expression in their tactics. I would argue that the critical difference between the two was from whence they derived the moral authority of their peace activism. While the former pursued what may be understood as the religious equivalent to a “top-down” approach, the latter was more analogous to a “bottom-up” approach. In South Africa, the comparison of Justice & Peace and Koinonia very much mirrors the distinction between the two Israeli religious P/CROs described previously, namely a clerical focus as opposed to a congregational or lay one. While the former was unmistakably clergy driven and focused, the latter emphasized shared meals among congregants of both races. Here too the agency of religiously inspired peace activism was vested more in the rank and file than in the clergy. Ideology of Identity-Based and Generic P/CROs The second level of comparative analysis addresses the overarching question, How do P/CROs organized around a particular (gender, religious, or professional) identity differ from those that do not (and from one another) along parameters common to all? The examination of differences in ideology according to structural and substantive components reveals an interesting pattern. The substantive aspects of ideology are indeed influenced by the contextual forces of each conflict setting, though not exclusively. For example, variation in ideological orientation is highly manifest when examined cross-culturally, as anticipated, as is the view of the conflict. When analyzed along its structural features however, ideology appears to be more correlated with identity. For example, frame-bridging was much more conspicuous among identity-based P/CROs, though not employed by each category of identity to the same degree. Significantly, motivation frames were discernable among all three categories of identity-based P/CROs (especially those of gender) to a greater extent than among generic ones. No less importantly, these same motivation frames are largely informed or fueled by that same identity, as the latter appears to constitute a significant factor in the mobilization of constituents.

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At the same time, no variation in motivation frame was manifest across countries. Tactics of Identity-Based and Generic P/CROs In the examination of how identity interacts with the tactics of P/ CROs, no significant difference in tactical diversity was found either across categories of identity or across the three regions. While no cross-cultural difference was uncovered when analyzing symbolic tactics, a very clear distinction along identity categories did emerge, with religious P/CROs displaying a very clear preference for symbolic tactics and professional P/CROs showing an equally pronounced disinclination. The relative tendency to employ contentious tactics appears very much shaped by the political opportunity structure in each conflict region. Identity does, however, appear to affect the relative tendency to engage in protest, as identity-based P/CROs were by and large more inclined than generic ones to engage in protest, with women’s groups displaying a clear preference for this form of activity. Certain individual tactics analyzed in the three regions also appear to be correlated with identity. For example, women’s P/CROs employ the tactic of training and empowerment much more widely than do religious or professional ones. The propensity of women’s P/ CROs to undertake this form of activity is understandable, stemming ostensibly from a dual concern for the distinctive effects of protracted conflict on women as well as the more universal hardships to which women are subject. Identity-Based and Generic P/CROs— Various Organizational Parameters Identity-based and generic P/CROs were compared along a number of organizational parameters. The two parameters of access to the polity and membership and staff composition were expected to be influenced by the contextual factors in each conflict region, and indeed these contextual factors were very much in evidence. In the case of membership and staff composition, the breakdown of mixed and homogeneous P/CROs across countries was closely correlated with the envisaged resolution of each conflict. A minority of Israeli P/ CROs is mixed, likely reflecting the envisaged resolution of that conflict, according to which Israelis and Palestinians will dwell separately in two separate independent states. Conversely, in both Northern Ireland and South Africa, where a significant majority of P/CROs in

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each is mixed, the proposed resolutions to the conflict all feature one form or another of power-sharing and coexistence within the same territorial unit. Contextual forces also impacted one of the parameters presumed to be more closely linked with identity, namely networks. A correlation was manifest between identity and organizational structure, and identity also appeared to explain variation in the type of organization, with generic P/CROs more inclined to be staff driven. For a summary of the findings presented here, see Table 6.2.

Th eo re tic al and Pr ac ti c al I mp l ic ati ons o f Fi ndi ngs While the contextual forces in each region, conceived of as the political opportunity structure, succeeded in explaining differences among the P/CROs studied, identity also accounted for some difference. This article, in its utilization of political opportunity structure as an explanatory factor, underscores the need to employ it judiciously and critically. This is clearly the case with respect to contentious tactics, the use of which is typically presumed to be a faithful reflection or barometer of the political opportunity structure. While contextual factors provide a partial explanation for the relative tendency to employ these tactics, it has been shown that identity is also a factor, specifically in its seeming ability to shield P/CRO members from the restrictions and risks emanating from the regime or oppositional elements. Identity in this case, then, may be understood as a buffer of sorts between regime and civil society, one that would appear to afford identity-based organizations greater operational maneuverability. The importance of this facet of peace activism should not be underestimated, particularly when looking at regimes unfavorably predisposed to the activity of citizens relating to matters of war and peace. A modest but noteworthy contribution was also made to our understanding of framing activity among movement activists. In the comparative analysis of P/CROs, it was patently clear that identity plays a very significant role in the varied work of framing, particularly with regard to the relative tendency of P/CROs to feature frame bridging, motivational frames, and transformational frames. This study demonstrates the need to expand our notion of framing beyond the mere definition and interpretation of a particular reality to include the organizational and personal characteristics of those engaging in it. The presence of a common social identity serves to equip social movement organizations operating in a substantive area not directly related to

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that identity, with an additional resource that may be drawn upon as they define a particular problem and formulate strategies and activities to resolve it. This interplay between identity and framing represents a dimension of peace activism and of social movement activism in general, which should be studied further. This study has expanded our understanding of theories of social movements and social psychology and no less importantly the complex interaction between the two. Specifically, it has drawn attention to social identity as a dimension of peace activism that is all too often overlooked. It sheds particular light on the notion of identity salience and its potential application to a form of social or political activism that does not directly implicate the identities in question. The findings of this research regarding identity-based P/CROs suggest that for those exhibiting an expressive orientation (i.e. women’s and religious), a collective identity—informed, of course, by social identity—is more pronounced or more salient, whereas for those with a strategic orientation, social identity supersedes collective identity in its prominence. However, it is important to note that the relatively nonsalient professional identity may in fact have served as a vehicle for mobilization much more than the other two identities considered. This raises the question posed earlier: Do identity-based P/CROs endeavor to make a distinctive contribution to the overall effort to resolve the conflict, or do they simply prefer to be among their own? The systematic comparative analysis underlying this study provides a tentative yes to both these questions. In other words, women’s and religious P/CROs sought to make a distinctive, i.e., identity-infused contribution to peace activism, whereas the identity of professional P/ CROs was expressed more in the preference of those members to be among their own in their pursuit of peace activism. The insights gleaned from this analysis may also be of assistance to those toiling in the practical arenas of social movements and human services. In both these settings, the phenomenon of identity-specific mobilization around issues not directly implicated by that identity might be manifest. As such, it would be helpful to gain a deeper understanding of the significance of this identity, both in its potential to serve as a lightning rod for mobilization and in its ability to shape the interpretive work of these organizations. Practically speaking, this study would suggest that for professionals to be enlisted in campaigns or movements seeking political or social change, it might be advisable to stimulate the creation of structures organized around their professional identities. The distinctive identity of professional P/CROs in this study may not have resonated in P/CRO

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framing activity, but it did facilitate the entry into the arena of conflict resolution those with useful expertise to contribute, e.g., legal and medical services. Creating the necessary bridge to activism for those with vital professional skills to offer but who might not otherwise be amenable to collective social action would be a beneficial contribution to any social setting. It has been demonstrated here that identity-based P/CROs were more inclined than generic ones to exhibit a motivation frame. This too may be of practical import, as it hints that the former may be more sustainable in the type of turbulent political and organizational environment so characteristic of protracted, violent conflicts. This would obviously require further testing, but it nevertheless represents a research direction that could be assumed by subsequent studies. Another finding with implications for third-sector organizations is that referred to here as identity essentialization. Identity-based P/ CROs showed a tendency to be shielded from restrictions imposed by the regime or by oppositional elements. In settings characterized by a repressive regime, those struggling to bring about some form of social or political change or provide a particular service may be well served by this feature of identity-based organizations. Accordingly, encouraging the creation of identity-based organizations may be a wise strategic decision in settings characterized by a repressive or suspicious regime. Finally, this study highlights the considerable diversity in the tactical repertoires and organizational features of the P/CROs studied, perhaps a lesson for all those organizations and institutions inhabiting the third sector. What it suggests is that, instead of seeking to determine which tactic or organizational feature is most desirable or effective in the pursuit of a particular social or political objective, the most judicious approach may very well be the embracing of this very diversity. Rather than favoring one tactic or organizational form over another, the organizational environment at large would likely be better served by the fostering of greater coordination and cooperation among the many constituent organizations across functional domains—consciousness raising, advocacy, service provision, or some combination thereof—and across problem areas.

C o nc lus ion As stated previously, one of the limitations of this study is the extremely fluid nature of both identity (in its social and collective forms) and the study’s unit of analysis, i.e., P/CROs. With this in mind, I employed

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original text from the comprehensive organizational reports as extensively as possible to support my inferences about the world of identitybased P/CROs. Given these limitations, I believe the analytical strategy of this research has yielded some valuable insights into the significance of identity for this particular variety of social movement organization and its interaction with other key organizational features. As noted in the introduction, interest in the significance of identity-based mobilization should not be limited to P/CROs or to social movements. Identity-based mobilization around issues not related directly to the identity in question also exists in the human services arena, as exemplified by the many “faith-based” organizations offering a wide array of services that parallel those provided by public- and private-sector counterparts. This would seem to represent exceptionally fertile ground for future research that would presumably appeal to a variety of academic disciplines, including social work, education and health. In conclusion, I maintain that the importance of identity in the mobilization of individuals around issues not directly implicated by that same identity is woefully understudied and underestimated in the pertinent areas of scholarly literature. This analysis, then, represents a first step toward expanding and deepening our understanding of the role of identity in mobilization and its complex interplay with other key dimensions of organizational functioning.

Referenc es Colwell, Mary Anna. 1996. Do peace movement groups condone violence in the pursuit of justice? Polity 28, no. 4: 541–57. Gidron, Benjamin, Stanley Katz, Megan Meyer, Yeheskel Hasenfeld, Raviv Schwartz, and Jonathan Crane. 1999. Peace and conflict resolution organizations in three protracted conflicts: Structures, resources and ideology. Voluntas 10, no. 4: 275–98. Gottfried, Heidi. 1996. Engaging women’s communities: Dilemmas and contradictions in feminist research. In Feminism and Social Change: Bridging Theory and Practice, ed. H. Gottfried, 1–22. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Hunt, Scott, Robert Benford, and David Snow. 1994. Identity fields: Framing processes and the social construction of movement identities. In New social movements: From ideology to identity, ed. E. Larana, H. Johnston, and J. Gusfield, 185–208. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Jenkins, Craig, Bert Klandermans, eds. 1995. The politics of social protest. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Table 6.1 Strategy for analysis of data P/CROs analyzed

Purpose of analysis

Variables examined

Level 1 14 Identity-based P/ CROs Across the 3 categories of identity Gender Relig. Prof. 4 6 4 Across conflict regions Israel NI SA 7 3 4 Same identity category within same region conflict region (9 P/ CROs) Israel Gender

2

Relig

2

Prof

2

Uncover similarities and differences across the three sub-groups of identitybased P/CROs within each region and within the same identity category cross-culturally.

Identity-orientation Identity-mobilization Identity-reconciliation Identity-essentialization

Uncover different ways in which same type of identity is deployed within the same region.

SA

3

Level 2 29 P/CROs 14—Identity-based AND 15—Generic

Analyze how P/CROs that prescribe a particular identity for membership differ from those that do not and how they differ from one another (across categories of identity).

Ideological parameters Clarity, range, frame bridging, motivation frame, Membership, commitment, ideological orientation, view of conflict, transformation frame Tactics Tactical diversity, symbolic tactics, specific tactics Organizational parameters Access to polity, membership composition, networks Organizational structure, organizational target, organizational type

Table 6.2 Summary of main findings P/CROs analyzed

Parameter analyzed

Main findings

Level 1 Analysis of 14 identity-based P/ CROs

Identity-orientation

Expressive P/CROs embody greater identity salience strategic ones Religious & women’s P/CROs are clearly expressive, while professional P/CROs are exclusively strategic.

Identityreconciliation

Women’s P/CROs more inclined toward identity-reconciliation, while professional P/CROs were markedly less so.

Identityessentialization

Identity-essentialization most prevalent among women’s P/ CROs.

Analysis of 9 P/CROs Women’s identity in within same identity 2 Israeli women’s P/ category and same CROs conflict region

While both featured a feminist identity, only in one was this also expressed at the level of organizational functioning.

Professional (military) identity in 2 Israeli professional P/CROs

One viewed their identity as military personnel may be understood as the supreme expression of their identity as Israeli citizens, while in the other, this identity clashed with their civilian/civic identity.

Religious identity in 2 religious P/CROs in both Israel and S. Africa

In both settings, one of the P/ CROs was clergy driven while the authority of the other was more vested in the rank and file.

Ideology

The substantive aspects of ideology tend to be influenced by contextual forces in each conflict setting, while structural aspects are more correlated with identity.

Tactics

Contentious tactics are shaped by political opportunity structure while the use of symbolic tactics is much more correlated with identity—very pronounced among religious P/ CROs and almost absent among professional P/CROs.

Organizational parameters

Access to the polity and membership/ staff composition are strongly correlated with political opportunity structure.

Level 2 Analysis of 29 P/ CROs: Identity-based (14) and Generic (15)

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Johnston, Hank, Enrique Larana, and Joseph Gusfield. 1994. Identities, grievances, and new social movements. In New social movements: From ideology to identity, ed. E. Larana, H. Johnston, J. Gusfield, 3–35. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Lofland, John. 1996. Social movement organizations: Guide to research on insurgent realities. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Lofland, John. 1985. Protest: Studies of collective behavior and social movements. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Marullo, Sam, Alexandra Chute, and Mary Anna Colwell. 1991. Pacifist and nonpacifist groups in the US peace movement of the 1980s. Peace and Change 16, no. 3: 235–59. McAdam, Doug, John McCarthy, and Mayer Zald. 1996. Comparative perspectives on social movements Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Pagnucco, Ron. 1996. A comparison of the political behavior of faith-based and secular peace groups. In Disruptive religion: The force of faith in socialmovement activism, ed. Christian Smith, 205–22. New York & London: Routledge. Reger, Jo, and Kimberly Dugan. 2000. Constructing a salient identity: Outcomes and continuity in two social movement contexts, paper presented to the Washington, D.C.: American Sociological Association, 95th Annual Meetings. Snow, David, and Robert Benford. 1988. Ideology, frame resonance, and participation mobilization. International Social Movement Research 1: 197–217. Wilson, John. 1973. Introduction to social movements. New York: Basic Books.

Note 1. The list of P/CROs included in analysis, with their country of origin, their name and their identity category: In Israel: Alternative Information Centre (AIC, generic), Bat Shalom (BS, gender-women), Council for Peace & Security (Council, professional), Oz VeShalom (Oz, religious), Peace Now (PN, generic), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR, professional), Rapprochement (Rapp, religious), Women In Black (WIB, gender-women), Yesh Gvul (YG, professional). In South Africa: Black Sash (Sash, gender-women), Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR, generic), Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR, generic), End Conscription Campaign (ECC, generic), Independent Mediation Service of South Africa (IMSSA, generic), Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA, generic), Justice & Peace Commission (J&P, religious), Koinonia (religious), Quaker

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Peace Centre (QPC, religious), South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR, generic). In Northern Ireland: Clougher Valley Rural Development Centre (CVR, generic), Committee for the Administration of Justice (CAJ, professional), Dove House Resource Center (generic), Families Against Intimidation and Terror (FAIT, generic), Peace Train (PT, generic), Quaker House (QH, religious), Springfield Inter-Community Development Project (SIDP, generic), Ulster Community Action Network (UCAN, generic), Ulster Peoples College (UPC, generic), Women Together (WT, gender-women).


4

Chapter 7

Looki ng Out for the Arabs M o bil iz at io n i n Favo r o f t he I sr ael i- A r ab Secto r i n t he Ga li l ea n M I T Z P I M Hi llto p Set t lements

Pierre Renno

Following the 1967 conflict and the occupation of the West Bank,

the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai, Israeli settlement policies tended to focus on those new areas. The Galilee, like the other frontiers of the green years,1 was consequently quite neglected. However, during the second half of the 1970s, several actors of the political field succeeded in putting back on the agenda the necessity of relaunching an ambitious settlement policy in this region, the main demographic center of the Israeli Arab2 population. Finally, under the first Likud government (1977–1981), the Jewish Agency planned and started to implement a vast program of rurban settlements called mif’al hamitzpim. The rhetoric at the time spoke of the “Judaization” of Galilee (Yihud HaGalil). Under that program, fifty-two mitzpim were settled on the Galilean hilltops. Most of them have turned into community villages (yishuv kehilati), residential settlements where, on average, a few hundred families live. More than half of them are today part of the Misgav Regional Council, a district covering some two hundred thousand dunams in Western Galilee. The Jewish population of the region, which the political leadership was prompt in presenting as pioneers en route to a demographic conquest of the Galilee, engendered after October 20003 some social

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movement organizations militating for equal rights between Arabs and Jews. Most of the analyses dealing with this new settlement program focus on the macro level. They have emphasized, usually taking quite a monolithic approach, the strategic basics underlying the Israeli geopolitical approach (Kipnis 1987; Sofer and Finkel 1988; Falah 1991; Yiftachel 1992; Dor 2004).4 Only a few authors have tried to switch to a micro scale and put forward the way those recently settled people interact with their surroundings on a daily basis (Rabinowitz 1997; Yiftachel and Carmon 1997). This study is aimed at bringing a modest updated contribution to this relatively neglected side of the Galilean Judaization policy by presenting a sociology of two social movement organizations that emerged in those new Galilean settlements after the October 2000 riots: Kol Aher baGalil (Another Voice in the Galilee) and Sikkuï baMisgav (Hope in Misgav). Both were created in the immediate aftermath of the riots. At first, their members were very active in publishing articles denouncing the management of the crisis by the authority in the local newspaper (Al HaGush). They also organized numerous public meetings that could gather more than a hundred people. Kol Aher baGalil, willing to integrate Jewish and Arab populations, later specialized in the desegregation of the Jewish community villages. In summer 2005, it created in Sakhnin, one of the neighboring Arab town, a center aimed at assisting (through practical and legal advice) Arab families trying to integrate Misgav (still segregated) villages. Since February 2008 the organization has also initiated the process of creation of a mixed village in Galilee. Sikkuï baMisgav, deemed more moderate, focused on the struggle against the discrimination from which Arab villages are suffering. While Kol Aher baGalil is not reluctant to position its claims on the field of justice and equity, Sikkuï baMisgav usually tries to base its claims on rational principles, arguing, for instance, that a public policy favoring the Arab sector would also benefit Jews, since appeasement is a regional necessity. Both function today with a limited number of active militants (in both cases, less than ten) and can mobilize between twenty and fifty people for exceptional actions. Though we are dealing with two especially small Social Movement Organizations, we will assume that they can be apprehended through approaches developed by the sociology of social movements. There is a dual purpose to this sociology of Kol Aher baGalil and Sikkuï baMisgav. First, in the framework of the sociology of social movements, it puts forward an approach to social movement

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organizations (SMOs) that can be sensitive not only to structures, resources, and socialization but also to calculations and perceptions, so as to go beyond the difficulties encountered by political opportunity structure (POS) theories. More incidentally, we hope it will provide some updated sociological and political data on the very specific pioneer5 population of the mitzpim and the way they reacted to the 2000 riots. The issues we try to tackle in this study deal not only with the structural context of the emergence of those two associations but also with the profiles and motivations of those who created them. In the first part, a social and political profile of the Jewish population of the Misgav area will be presented. Then, in order to achieve the fullest possible presentation of these SMOs (including the local and national context, sociological structures, and ideologies), the analysis developed encompasses a number of approaches. Several theories of the sociology of social movements will thus be mobilized and discussed: critical mass theory, structuralist approaches, and POS.

S o cia l a nd Po li tic al Profi le of the Jew is h Po p ul ati on in the M i s gav Area The Quest for a Noncollectivist Rural Life The Galilean mitzpim were created at a time when historic collective settlements (moshavim and kibbutzim) were no longer deemed appropriate by new pioneers. Their social organization was considered extremist or outdated. This new situation enabled the dissociation of two elements that had until then been strongly bound together: rural settlements and the collective way of life. This divorce was first initiated, on the other side of the Green Line, by national-religious settlers (Newman 1984, 143–45). In August 1978 this new type of rurban community was adopted by the Jewish Agency when it came up with the mif’al hamitzpim plan. More than twenty years since their creation, it is possible to distinguish three different groups linked to three different waves of migration those communities have been through: the founders, the former kibbutzniks (member of a kibbutz), and the urban newcomers. The founders are those who belonged to the core group of each settlement. These gar’inim were either self-created affinity groups that turned to the settlement institutions to obtain land to settle on or people put together by the Jewish Agency. In both cases, their members were usually united by experience of the hardships of the

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temporary camps: the crowded caravans, the muddy roads, and the geographic isolation. They thus lived for a few years in settlements that, though they were bound to break away from the canons of collectivism, were still very much communitarian. The first families who joined those founders, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, were mostly ozvei-kibbutz, i.e., families leaving a kibbutz. While, until then, ozvei-kibbutz were mostly young adults born in the kibbutz but willing to build their life outside that frame, the kibbutzim, from the mid-80s on, were faced with a new (and more worrying) kind of emigration of already-formed families. Some of them, unwilling to settle in an urban area, were seduced by the compromise offered by the new types of Galilean settlement: rural but not agricultural, communitarian but not collectivist. The community villages of Galilee later benefited from the strong trend of rurbanization the whole country went through in the 1990s.6 They succeeded in offering families from the coastline cities vast (and costly) houses that would fit their rurban aspirations. Unlike the former kibbutzniks, these urban middle-class migrants were looking for something both more communitarian and more rural. From a sociological point of view, the Misgav Regional Council population displays very strong homogeneity. Its inhabitants are well endowed economically and very well endowed culturally. This homogeneity stems from the selection practices in use in their villages. First, the type of housing proposed creates an economic filter. When they decide to expand, the villages mostly sell houses that are ready for immediate occupation and whose cost (between $150,000 and $250,000) automatically excludes low-income families and part of the middle class. In addition to the purchase price, there is an installation fee (a variable amount depending on the village, usually over ten thousand dollars, payable by every newcomer), high local taxes by Israeli standards, and transportation expenses related to the distance from the urban centers (Haifa is more than half an hour’s drive away, and almost no public transportation is available). This (quite standard) economic filter is, in the case of Misgav villages, accompanied by strict selection procedures. Since the demand for housing in these villages has been much higher than the supply, the local authorities have become accustomed to selecting the “best” families—a practice they could present as inherited from the historic collective settlements. In each village, integration committees (vaadat klita) thus examined paycheck stubs, interviewed candidates, and set various tests, which, depending on the village and the period, could involve a psychologist, a sociologist, and even a graphologist. In the


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end, those committees were free to judge the candidates’ “social compliance” (hataama hevratit). Such procedures enabled inhabitants to select people belonging to their own (or higher) social groups. Hence, as these community villages extended over the Galilean hills, they did not become more accessible; they retained, and even reinforced, their social specificity. More than the economic filter, it can be assumed that these village selection practices strengthen the social homogeneity of Misgav villages, both in terms of economic and cultural capital.7 Leftist Pioneers After the shock of the Kippur war, while part of the rightist fringe of the middle class embarked on the neo-Zionist adventure and colonization of the Occupied Territories, the secular and more leftist fringe of that same middle class also saw a similar pioneer surge combining social separatism and born-again Zionism. This surge found an appropriate area for its expression in Galilee. Though those leftists tended to feel uncomfortable with the Judaization rhetoric, this settlement program west of the Green Line was for them a real (secular) godsend. They thus decided to ignore the surrounding rightist rhetoric, convinced that their behavior would be enough to invalidate it, and to promote a reinterpretation of the program as a totally ordinary regional planning policy. In this normalizing paradigm, the Arabs of Galilee were perceived as full Israeli citizens, though kept at a distance (despite Supreme Court rulings, the Galilean community villages are today still strictly segregated; Kedar 2000). Neighborly relations, which were in fact very limited, were described as friendly and impervious to the vagaries of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This normalizing paradigm of the pioneer population can be detected not only in election results8 but also in policies implemented by the regional Jewish public authorities. During the 1990s, once the villages had shaken off Jewish Agency supervision, the pioneers implemented policies based on their own objectives—mostly related to quality of life—rather than the more nationalistic aims supported by the Jewish Agency. For example, the Galilean community villages sometimes took the liberty of reducing the pace of growth, regardless of the protests by the Jewish Agency. The Agency was in favor of fast growth that would successfully counter the natural growth of the Israeli Arab sector but found it more and more difficult to convince its pioneers, who tended to favor a slower and more selective absorption policy, in accordance with their attention to social homogeneity. Similarly, in 1991, when

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the Misgav Regional Council decided to freeze the creation of new settlements, its decision was sharply, but vainly, criticized in the name of Zionism by the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund.9 The October 2000 Riots and Their Consequences It was from this pioneer population that the SMOs this chapter plans to analyze emerged after October 2000. On October 1, 2000, a few days after the eruption of what was to be labeled the Second Intifada, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship organized massive demonstrations. Some of them turned into riots: thirteen Palestinians were shot with live ammunition. The most violent events occurred in the Galilee, in some cases resembling civil war: around Karmiel and Nazareth, Arab demonstrators and Jewish counterdemonstrators confronted each other. In the Misgav Regional Council area, Arab rioters erected roadblocks, most of the villages were cut off, cars were stoned, gasoline bombs thrown at a few houses, and so on. These traumatic events upset the stakes of the field and the positioning of the actors. The normalizing paradigm that had formerly been dominant among the pioneers could no longer be supported. The idea of a regional microclimate, in which the inhabitants of the villages wanted to believe, was now crushed. The Galilean pioneers discovered they were part of a conflict they had thought did not concern them. Suddenly, the rhetoric of the Jewish Agency calling for “occupation of the territory” or “control of the Arabs” became meaningful, and, for some of them, justified. From the ruins of the normalizing paradigm emerged a new landscape in which the pioneers had to choose between being involved in the regional front of a raging national struggle or working to close this newly opened front. The supporters of the second option were the first to achieve formal organization. Kol Aher baGalil (Another Voice in the Galilee), and then what was to become Sikkuï baMisgav (Hope in Misgav), emerged a few weeks after the riots. Those who, on the contrary, felt that they now had to play their role in the conflict, only later organized a shortlived counter movement called Misgav Shelanu (Misgav Is Ours).


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The Influence of the Perceived Su r ro u nding M ob il iz ati ons i n the Em erg enc e o f the Two Assoc i ati ons In his analysis of street demonstrations in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, Michel Dobry, while explaining how a collective mobilization can succeed on a micro scale, insists on the domino effect that can be created by the mobilization of surrounding “natural units” like a neighboring factory or university (Dobry 1995, 120). A natural unit is more likely to become mobilized when its members are convinced that surrounding natural units (like universities, factories, or cities) have already joined the movement. Such an approach can be useful for understanding the emergence of Kol Aher baGalil. However, the presence of such a mechanism is more doubtful in the case of Sikkuï baMisgav. Kol Aher baGalil and the Doves of the Second Intifada On September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount sparked off a revolt that had been brewing since the July failure of the Camp David negotiations. The first days of fighting were especially violent. Weakened by the Barak government’s claim that Arafat alone was responsible for the Camp David failure, the whole network of associations gravitating around Peace Now remained discreet. The doves of the Zionist left would not, in this Second Intifada, play the same role as in the first. They thus left the field wide open for a few more radical and less Zionist associations like Gush Shalom, Ta’ayush, or the AIC (Alternative Information Center), which suddenly gained unprecedented media coverage. When, after the Galilee riots, a few Misgav inhabitants with current or former links to the radical left created Kol Aher baGalil, they could consequently believe that they were joining a movement that was “catching on.” Sikkuï baMisgav’s Local Approach In the case of Sikkuï baMisgav, this type of domino effect is difficult to identify. After a short period of settling and decanting, during which the political identity of both associations slowly appeared, the moderates gathered within Sikkuï baMisgav. First hegemonic, Kol Aher baGalil suffered from “emigration” by its moderate militants. By a process of chain reactions so well described by Thomas Schelling,10 Kol Aher

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baGalil was, because of this emigration, perceived as more radical, a perception which in turn fueled new waves of emigration. After 2003, the association had lost the large pool of support it had capitalized on during its first months of existence. Less than a dozen Jewish militants (among them five active ones) remained. Sikkuï baMisgav members, more moderate, were ready to militate so as to (re)create sustainable cohabitation between Jews and Arabs in the Galilee but refused to adopt a more global stand regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict. Thus, while Kol Aher baGalil was denouncing the occupation, supporting the right of return for refugees, or debating whether to join a call to boycott Israeli products, Sikkuï took great care to keep a local approach, focusing only on the “discrimination against the Arab villages of Galilee.” This localism is also to be linked to a confident perception of the regional council’s specificity. Sikkuï members, like a great deal of the Misgav Regional Council inhabitants, have an extremely positive selfimage. They tend to perceive their group of villages as one the most enlightened in the country. In August 2006, at the end of the Lebanese war, I took part in a Jewish-Arab discussion organized by Sikkuï baMisgav in Sakhnin (a nearby Arab village). At the end of its introductory speech, one of the Jewish organizers concluded with a vibrant “if good relations can’t be established here, where could they ever be?” This assertion is based not only on political considerations (the left’s impressive election results) but also on the idea that the Misgav Regional Council contains the cream of society, the people that are the most likely to understand that it is in Israel’s interest to invest in the Israeli Arab sector. This localist bias, acknowledged, proclaimed and cultivated, probably kept Sikkuï baMisgav out of the domino effects that benefited Kol Aher baGalil. It is also interesting to note that unlike Kol Aher baGalil, which claims to be binational (and can pride itself on respecting some kind of parity in its governing bodies), Sikkuï baMisgav did not try to extend to the Arab sector. As explained in its motto, it chose “to work in favor of the Arabs, with the Jews.” In justification, the founders assess that this choice was made in the name of efficiency: it prevented Sikkuï from being perceived as a Palestinian instrument and hence enabled the association to maintain its credibility while negotiating with Israeli institutions. A more structuralist approach can refine this initial—and relatively rough—approach to the two associations’ militants.


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Who I s Mo bi li zed: A Struc turali s t Ana lys is o f S ik k uï b aM i sgav and Ko l Ah er b aGal il M i li tants Socioprofessional Categories: Sociocultural Specialists Because of its sociological features, the Misgav population—well endowed with economic capital and strongly endowed in cultural capital—made up an appropriate pool for the emerging of social movements. It is a well-known fact that moral militants with the resources to become social movement entrepreneurs are generally recruited from this “dominated fringe of the dominants” (better endowed culturally than economically) (Siméant 1998, 363). Looking at the socioprofessional categories of the active militants in the two associations this study deals with, the gap between cultural and economic capital is especially wide, and visibly so, in their population. Most of them belong to professions in which incomes do not match the cultural investment (mostly in term of university education). Eight out of ten11 can be linked to a broad “social-educational sector”: two university teachers (one a professor), two high school teachers, one young man with a degree in architecture but working as a youth leader, one specialist teacher trainer, one retired teacher for autistic children, and one conflict resolution specialist. Only two militants fall outside that frame because of their socioprofessional category: a physician and a man with a small business specializing in security doors. A Social Distinction: The Established Inhabitants and the Newcomers While social class and socioprofessional categories provide no clear distinction between Sikkuï baMisgav and Kol Aher baGalil militants, other biographical elements prove to be much more indicative. While Sikkuï baMisgav active militants were all tsabarim, born in Israel, three out of five in Kol Aher baGalil were olim, educated abroad and only migrated to Israel as adults. Moreover, a fourth Jewish militant of that association spent some fifteen years in Great Britain after graduating from an Israeli university. Kol Aher baGalil opponents are prompt to emphasize that Kol Aher militants “are mostly foreigners who hardly understand anything of what’s going on in the country.”12 I was even told once that “the most Israeli in the association are the Arab members.”

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In contrast, Sikkuï baMisgav active militants can pride themselves on being “pure Israelis.” Not only do they belong to the generation of the “first Israelis” (those born immediately after the creation of the state), but four of them also grew up in kibbutzim, i.e., in what was then described as the greenhouses of “Israeliness.” They integrated Misgav Regional Council villages in the late 1980s and early 1990s, at a time when the ozvei-kibbutz accounted for a great proportion of the newcomers. On that scale too, militants of Kol Aher baGalil can be perceived as newcomers, as their installation in the villages took place a little later.13 The dominated position of Kol Aher baGalil in the regional space of social movements is thus mirrored by its members’ individual dominated positions as newcomers in their village. Preexisting Networks: Sikkuï baMisgav and HaShomer HaTsaïr From Marx, who analyzed the lack of reactivity of the peons after the coup of 18 Brumaire as a consequence of their isolation, to Oberschall, whose study about the rise of Nazism showed the role played by preexisting networks (Oberschall 1973), structuralist analyses of social mobilization have also focused on the role of social insertion. In the case of Sikkuï baMisgav, shedding light on those networks proved to be extremely interesting. The interviews I conducted revealed that four of the five active Sikkuï militants were former members of kibbutzim attached to the Artzi federation.14 To account for such a strong trend, it is necessary to point to the ties existing between the Kibbutzim of the Artzi federation. Those ties mainly go through HaShomer HaTsaïr, a historic youth movement, still active today, especially in education and culture—areas most of the active militants of Sikkuï baMisgav are involved in. This may partly explain how easily those individuals “found” each other after the October 2000 riots. Let us consider three of them: Amir, Benjamin and Carl.15 Amir’s and Benjamin’s wives are from the same kibbutz (it is also worth noting that the wives of all three also happen to be from HaShomer HaTsaïr kibbutzim), Amir and Benjamin went to the same (HaShomer HaTsaïr kibbutzim) school in the Jordan Valley. Carl and Amir were both active in HaShomer HaTsaïr regional and national authorities. The creation of Sikkuï baMisgav obviously benefited from these preexisting connections. However, in this instance, HaShomer HaTsaïr has been more than a mere network connecting people. It also socialized those kibbutzniks, raising awareness of certain issues.16 Historically, the kibbutzim created


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by HaShomer HaTsaïr have been trying to be both the most Zionist and the most socialist. Today, although the terms of the dilemma have changed (it now concerns the necessity to create a state that could be both Jewish and democratic, while encompassing more than a million Israeli Arabs), the same tension between nationalism and universalism exists among these former kibbutz members. When I asked him about the role of his HaShomer HaTsaïr socialization, Benjamin told me he mostly learned from them how to doubt. “The right solved the problem by claiming that this country should be Jewish above all, that it’s allowed to compromise certain democratic principles. Some on the radical left think that democracy is more important than the survival of the nation. The shmutznikim [members of HaShomer HaTsaïr] have agreed to tackle the problem, although they know they have no good way to solve it.” Having faced in the past similar inner conflicts between their fidelity to the Zionist enterprise and their universalism, the former kibbutzim from HaShomer HaTsaïr were thus better equipped than most of their Jewish neighbors to engage with the dilemma facing Misgav “enlightened settlers” after the October 2000 riots.

Po l itic a l Co ntex t of Emergence of Si k k u ï ba Misg av and Kol Aher baGali l: O n th e S ub jec ti v ity of Poli ti cal O p p o rtunity Struc ture In order to understand the emergence of those two organizations, the political context also needs to be taken into account. In the frame of social movement sociology, since the mid-1970s, relations between social movements and political fields are generally examined through the Political Opportunity Structure (POS) theory. This notion is aimed at measuring the degree of openness and reactivity of a political system to social mobilizationsin relationship to openness of the political field or stability of political alliances (Neveu 2005, 85–88). This part will first describe the relations between the political field and the social movements in the Misgav Regional Council and then try to neutralize the objectivist bias of the POS in demonstrating that political opportunities are linked less to structures than to perceptions of opportunities.

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The Political Label in Misgav: “I’m Not a Politician, I’m a Manager” Erez Kreisler, head of the Misgav Regional Council, is fond of repeating his credo: “In the Misgav Regional Council, we’re not into politics, but into community management.” This claim, quite banal in itself (local elected authorities often try to distinguish themselves from easily stigmatized national politics), is to be linked in the case of the Misgav Regional Council to the legacy of some practices used in the historic collective rural settlements. Kibbutzim (and to a less extent moshavim), because of their drastic selection processes and intense socialization (Simons and Ingram1997, 786), were politically extremely homogeneous (it was by no means rare to see more than 90 percent of a kibbutz voting for one party). This, added to their limited size (a few hundred families), makes it easy to understand that posts manned through electoral processes usually fell to the sole volunteer. When there was more than one candidate, their opposing positions almost never hardened to the point that clear-cut camps would appear. The way those communities operated, based on the principles of direct democracy involving very frequent general votes, meant that alliances varied according to the issue and the members attending the General Meeting. Community villages in the Galilee are run with similar practices. People volunteering for a committee post are automatically elected (especially since the villages tend to suffer from a lack of volunteers), and when there happen to be real debates behind the election, no candidates would ever claim to be linked to a political party. What is more surprising is to see how this party-free system is reproduced at the upper level, that is, the regional council. No candidates running for the position of head of the regional council—a quite powerful local authority, directly elected by a twenty-thousand-inhabitant community—will publicize the support of a political party. They all want to appear as inhabitants volunteering for a management position in the community. Thus, in Misgav, politics claims to be nonpolitical and assigns the (very stigmatizing) political label to social movement organizations. Behind this indigenous categorization, it seems that, under cover of preserving Misgav villages from politics, those who dominate the regional council can quite efficiently prevent the emergence of certain topics dealing with Jewish-Arab relations. Such questions, which the regional council has succeeded in labeling “political,” are consequently only raised by social movements.


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Even on the (weak) right wing of the political spectrum, the Likud’s main (if not sole) regional figure chose to deal with those questions as the head of a social movement he created (Misgav Shelanu) rather than as member of the regional council parliament (where he sits as representative of his village). Similarly, when he ran for head of the regional council, he neglected to emphasize that he was linked to the Likud and played down the ethnic topics that might have been expected to be at the heart of his platform. On the (more powerful) left wing of the political spectrum, raising those “political” issues is also a stigmatized activity left entirely to the social movements. Thus, when Kol Aher baGalil started to invite Arab leaders to conferences held in the regional council vicinity, the council decided to ban all “political meetings” from taking place there. The target was not the political parties, whose activity in the area is practically nonexistent, but the social movements. This decision, popular enough in the villages, was challenged by the associations and finally overturned by the Supreme Court in 2005. Social movements, labeled as “political,” are thus blacklisted by a political field claiming to be nonpolitical. However, Kol Aher baGalil and Sikkuï baMisgav are not equally ostracized. While Sikkuï is mainstream enough to be tolerated by most of the population, Kol Aher baGalil is especially denigrated. The social costs related to active membership are way higher in this association: one of the founders had to face a petition demanding his exclusion from the village’s community organizations. Most of them have received threatening anonymous letters and are shunned by their neighbors. Sikkuï militants interviewed, in contrast, do not recollect facing any kind of social pressure. They tend to feel backed by most Misgav inhabitants. As a consequence of this perceived popularity, they thought for a while that their association could become a powerful lobby and dreamed of building a special relationship with the regional council authorities. A few of the founding members of this association were involved in the creation of a first (short-lived) group aimed at connecting Jewish and Arab local representatives of the area. Later, the young Sikkuï baMisgav also primarily targeted local authorities, investing a lot of its energy into acquiring expertise in the field of ethnic discriminations. Highly documented reports based on impressive field research were thus produced. In the meantime, Kol Aher baGalil was mostly targeting the public, trying to revolutionize their ethnic view of the world through conferences and regular discussion meetings

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in a neighboring Arab town. It never really tried to directly lobby the regional council. Sikkuï baMisgav: Lost Illusions What POS theories try to do is explain the emergence and form of social mobilization by the degree of openness and reactivity of a political system. As put forward by Michel Dobry, “those using this notion [the POS] tend to localize the action ‘opportunity’ primarily, if not exclusively, outside it, in the distant and stable environment of those who are acting.” He then highly recommends “renouncing this externalist postulate and devoting at least as much attention to the way the actors decipher what is possible and what is likely, what is risky and what is worth a try.” (Dobry 1995, 134) So as to correct this weakness in theory, a dimension of social perceptions should be integrated (Bourdieu 1984), since it is actors’ perceptions, right or wrong, of the likeliness of their success that determine their behavior and motivation. Thus, in the case of Sikkuï, it is less meaningful to define objectively the structure of the political opportunities open to this association than to define the “subjective structure,” the structure perceived by Sikkuï baMisgav members that contributed to shape their calculations. It is not as necessary to try to evaluate how much the associations were able to influence the regional council decisions as to evaluate how powerful they expected to be. When the association emerged, its militants’ expectations were very high; they thought they could find a lobbyist position in the local political field. They believed there was a need for such an influential lobby. Today, they are aware that this window of opportunity was a mere illusion and that their calculations were mistaken. They think that the regional council, even if it were willing to, is basically unable to go against the well-oiled national discriminative structure in which it is caught. This new approach has led them to turn away from the local authorities and to focus their actions on Misgav public opinion, struggling to heighten awareness of discrimination issues. Most probably, the POS has not fundamentally evolved, but their perception of it has. Misperceptions, leading to erroneous calculations, can thus very efficiently fuel a social mobilization.


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Referenc es Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Homo academicus. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Dauvin, Pascal, and Johanna Siméant. 2002. Le travail humanitaire—les acteurs des ONG, du siège au terrain. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Dobry, Michel. 1995. La causalité de l’improbable et du probable: Notes à propos des manifestations de 1989 en Europe centrale et orientale. Cultures et conflits, no. 17: 111–36. Dor, Abraham. 2004, The mitzpim program in Galilee, 20 years afterwards. Haifa: National Security Studies Center [in Hebrew]. Falah, Ghazi. 1991. Israeli “Judaization” policy in Galilee. Journal of Palestine Studies 20, no. 4: 69–85. Kedar, Alexandre. 2000. First step in a difficult and sensitive road: Preliminary observations on Qaadan vs Katzir. Israel Studies Bulletin 16, no. 1: 3–11. Kipnis, Barukh. 1987. Geopolitical ideologies and regional strategies in Israel. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geograie 78: 125–38. Kipnis, Barrukh. 1989. Untimely metropolitan-field “rurban” development: Urban renaissance as a geopolitical process in Israel. Geography Research Forum 9: 45–66. Law-Yone, Hubert, and Gabriel Lipshitz. 1991. Goal ambiguity and adhocism: The new settlement program in the Galilee. Report of the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies. Haifa: Technion. Maurin, Eric. 2004. Le ghetto français: Enquête sur le séparatisme social. Paris: Seuil. Neveu, Erik. 2005. Sociologie des mouvements sociaux. Collection Repères. Paris: La Découverte. Newman, David. 1984. The development of the Yichuv Kehilati in Judea and Samaria: Political process and settlement form. Tiidschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 75, no. 2: 140–50. Oberschall, Anthony. 1973. Social conflicts and social movement. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Rabinowitz, Dan. 1997, Overlooking Nazareth: The ethnography of exclusion in a mixed town in Galilee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schelling, Thomas. 1980. La tyrannie des petites decisions. Paris: PUF. Siméant, Johanna. 1998. La cause des sans-papiers. Paris: Presses de Science Po. Simons, Tal, and Paul Ingram. 1997. Organization and ideology: Kibbutzim and hired labor, 1951–1965. Administrative Science Quarterly 42: 784–813. Sofer, Arnon, and R. Finkel. 1988. The lookouts in the Galilee—First evaluations. In: D. Schwartz, R. Bar-El (Eds.), Problems in Regional Development, Rehovot: The Settlement Study Center, 63–88 [in Hebrew] Yiftachel, Oren. 1992. Planning a mixed region in Israel: The political geography of Arab-Jewish relations in the Galilee. Aldershot: Avebury.

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Yiftachel, Oren, and Naomi Carmon. 1997. Socio-spatial mix and inter-ethnic attitudes: Jewish newcomers and Arab-Jewish issues in the Galilee. European Planning Studies 5, no. 2: 215–37.

Notes 1. This expression mostly points to the Negev and the Galilee, i.e., the two main areas of settlement between 1948 and 1967; at the time the Green Line was the border of the State of Israel. 2. “Israeli Arabs” and “Israeli Palestinians” are two politically connoted terms used to designate the Palestinians citizens of Israel. They will be used interchangeably in this chapter. 3. In October 2000, a few days after the starting of the second Intifada, Palestinian citizens of Israel organized demonstrations in support of the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. The subsequent riots claimed the death of twelve Israeli Palestinians. 4. This monolithic bias of macroanalyses dealing with the mif’al hamitzpim is quite efficiently pointed to by Law-Yone and Lipshitz (1991). 5. The Hebrew term for pioneer, halutz, is no longer used by locals to designate individuals creating or joining a mitzpe in the Galilee. It rather points to founders of prestate collective settlements like moshavim and kibbutzim. In this chapter, regardless of the local categorization, “pioneer” and “settler” will be used to designate population newly settled in a frontier area. 6. Barukh Kipnis actually detected this as early as 1989, explaining that this global trend was about to save a relatively ill-planned mif’al hamitzpim (Kipnis, 1989). 7. In “Le ghetto français,” Eric Maurin shows how “the degree of concentration of the most educated people is higher than that of the most wealthy.” Although this study does not provide statistical data to prove it, it can be assumed that the process of selection in use in Misgav villages tends to amplify the prevalence of cultural capital over economic capital put forward by Maurin (2004, 14). 8. In most of the former mitzpim, at the time of the general elections, the left-wing parties achieve very good results. Labor party voters, particularly Meretz supporters, are greatly overrepresented in those villages. By contrast, the Likud tend to perform very poorly. 9. From an interview with Arik Raz, former head of Misgav Regional Council. Most of the data presented in this chapter has been collected during two field studies conducted in the Misgav area in summer 2005 and summer 2006. 10. On the “tipping” phenomenon in American residential areas (segregated white areas turning into black areas), Thomas Schelling explains that “each individual who decides to choose a new environment affects the


11.

12. 13.

14.

15. 16.

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environment of those he is leaving and the environment of those he is joining. There is a chain reaction” (Schelling 1980, 151). The study deals here with the active militants of each association; five people seem to fit this category in Sikkuï baMisgav. There appear to be eight such people in Kol Aher baGalil, but this part only focuses on the five Jews among them. Of those ten members, eight were interviewed, and biographical data were collected for the two others. However, it should be noted that among the less active militants, the majority are Jewish-Israeli born. For Sikkuï’s five active militants, the dates of integration into the villages are 1989, 1991, 1992, 1994, and 1994; for Kol Aher baGalil’s three active militants living in Misgav, 1995, 1997, and 2002. Each kibbutz is attached to a federation. Kibbutzim created by the HaShomer HaTsaïr movement are attached to the Artzi Federation. They account for less than a third of the Israeli kibbutzim. Historically, the HaShomer HaTsaïr was linked to the Mapam, a party more leftist than the Mapaï (ancestor of the Labor Party). Today, the HaShomer HaTsaïr is still on the extreme left of the Zionist political spectrum. Names have been changed to respect certain requests for anonymity. On this point, it is important to remember Dauvin and Siméant’s advice in Le travail Humanitaire: “One of the effects of many analyses of social factors of engagement . . . is that while basing work on an inductive approach inferring from the composition of a final population different social groups’ chances of reaching a political or militant position, they do not always emphasise the concrete mechanisms of overrepresentation of those categories.” (Dauvin and Siméant 2002, 84).


4 Pa rt I I I

Palest i ni an A rab Organiz ations i n I srael and Jeru salem


4

Chapter 8

Lawyer i ng f or th e C au se of the Ara b Minor ity in Israel Litigation as a Means for Collective Action

Hélène Sallon

S

ince the civil rights movement aimed to put an end to the segregation of black Americans in the United States in the 1960 and 1970s, the cause lawyer is considered an important actor in social and political mobilizations. Cause lawyering even became a privileged and widespread means of collective action for the last twenty years in the wake of the “judicialization of politics” (Tate and Vallinder 1995). The transfer of the treatment of political questions to courts has indeed turned legal skills into political capital and legal professionals into experts in cause building at the political level. From the defense of disadvantaged and minority groups to sectarian sociopolitical interests, cause lawyers are now believed to play a role in the democratic game and cause lawyering is no longer seen as a transgressive activity. This trend has been observed within Israeli society and politics with the growing influence of the Supreme Court on politics in the late 1980s and the “constitutional revolution” of 1992 (Barak 1995). With the development of Israeli civil society and the possibility for social actors to direct their claims to the court, many lawyers got involved in the promotion of human rights and social justice. In the mid-1990s, they started to put effort into the challenging cause of the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel. This cause had been previously defined, formulated, and publicly promoted in the sociopolitical arena by Arab political parties and emerging civil society. They have

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constantly called for the recognition of their national minority status and for an end to systematic discrimination by a state that favors the interest of the Jewish majority in its policies. The formulation of these claims in terms of rights and their promotion in the judicial setting by cause lawyers is a new phenomenon. Today, these activities play a great role in the promotion of the ArabPalestinian minority claims, so it is necessary to evaluate the contribution of these lawyers in cause building. By studying these actors, their orientation, and their strategies in selecting, framing, and promoting Arab sociopolitical claims, we intend to answer the following few questions: Is judicial activism effective in building the Arab-Palestinian minority cause and in advancing social and political change? How and to what extent does judicial activism affect collective action? And finally, what cause are these lawyers contributing to through their legal action? First, we will explore the development of cause lawyering as a tool for collective action in general and then in Israel in particular. International and national dynamics are both important to the understanding of who the lawyers of the Arab-Palestinian cause are and how they envision their work. Second, we will question the link between litigation and social change with regards to the limitations inherent to law in fostering social change and to its potential effects on the deployment of other means of collective action. Cause lawyers try to develop strategies that overcome these limitations and contribute to an overall building of the Arab-Palestinian cause. The way these legal strategies are implemented and affect the general building of the cause will be addressed.

The Development of C ause Lawyer i ng in Is r ael The term cause lawyering was developed as an analytical category and definition by Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold (Sarat and Scheingold, 1998, 2001). It refers to law professionals, innovating legal strategies, and activities that focus on the defense of a social movement or a political cause (Israël 2001, 793–96). As Sarat and Scheingold pointed out, cause lawyering has flourished in the United States since the 1960s and is now a widespread method of collective action at the international level. The introduction of cause lawyering in Israel relies to a great extent on the development of the civil society in the 1980s and the influence of American institutions and foundations. The judicialization of politics in Israel created a favorable environment

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for cause lawyers to develop an agenda of sociopolitical laws grounded on the principles of human rights and social justice (Ziv 2004, 1).

C aus e Law yer i ng: From the U .S. Ci vi l Rights Movement to Israel Civil Society The U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960–1970s is considered a starting point and a model in the practice of cause lawyering. The landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case (1954) indeed nurtured the development of this movement, whose achievements relied to a great extent on the use of legal skills, opportunities, and tools. Cause lawyers linked to this movement initiated a new form of legal practice in which lawyers use their legal skills to pursue political and moral objectives contrary to the rules of conventional lawyering. These practices were considered transgressive, as they aimed at changing the nature of state power by compelling the state to change policies that undermined marginalized social groups. However, due to the success of these practices, cause lawyering soon became used by lawyers engaged in the defense of a wide spectrum of social and political causes. It was eventually considered a tool for fostering democracy through the defense of the rule of law and the initiation of legislation based on human rights principles. The development of cause lawyering strategies at the international level and its introduction in local contexts such as in Israel largely relied on the development of civil society. As in the United States, cause lawyering has been introduced mainly from within or with the support of nongovernmental organizations. In Israel, the increased liberalization of society and politics and the progressive disengagement of the state from many sectors of public life in the 1980s (Galnoor 2003, 510) fostered the creation and the professionalization of nongovernmental and community-based organizations. These organizations were created by a new generation of social actors influenced by the agendas and strategies of social movements in the U.S. and in the world. The introduction of new methods of collective action such as cause lawyering and the American human rights model based on the liberal approach is to a great extent the result of the involvement of American institutions and foundations. As observed in the Latin American context by Bryant Garth and Yves Dezalay (Dezalay and Garth 2002), American foundations such as the Ford Foundation got engaged in the development of Israeli civil society through financial support, capacity building, and education of the new elite and of various social actors. Through this support, American foundations could

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promote their agendas and strategies and influence those of the local civil society. American and foreign funders in Israel put a special emphasis on the promotion of cause lawyering by financially supporting legal advocacy and litigation programs. In 1984, the New Israel Fund1 created the Israel-U.S. Civil Liberties Law Program for Israeli lawyers specializing in civil law. Up to now, forty-five fellows have participated in this program, which consists of one year of academic and professional training in the U.S. and one year of volunteer work in an Israeli NGO. This program was even recognized as one of the two ground-breaking decisions in public law that “changed the map of human rights in Israel”2—along with the jurisprudential recognition of the right to public standing. These lawyers were at the forefront of the development of cause lawyering. They achieved this by bringing new legal perspectives and strategies within human rights organizations. They were encouraged by new opportunities that were created with the judicialization of politics and society in Israel.

Th e Ju dici ali z ati on of Poli ti cs a nd S o c iety i n Is r ael The concept of the judicialization of politics has been developed by Tate and Vallinder to describe “the transfer of decision-making rights from the legislature, the cabinet, or the civil service to the courts” (Vallinder 1995, 13). This phenomenon is also found at the international level. In Israel, this development is the result of political and legal shifts that have been taking place since the 1980s. The first noticeable event in this process was the legislative elections of 1977 that led to the weakening of the traditional balance of power (Barzilai 1999, 15–33). It was characterized by a strong legislative power and a centralized executive. Indeed, these elections marked the end of the political monopoly of the Mapaï party and of the Laborites and highlighted the division in the political leadership. This division was beneficial to small political parties that, due to the fragmented nature of coalition politics in Israel, could negotiate their support against funding for their particular constituents. New opportunities as such were offered to small parties representing sectarian interests. For example, Arab political parties that started to appear in the 1980s in the wake of the communalization3 of the Arab-Palestinian minority (Louër 2003). While favoring their representation in the Knesset and their power of negotiation on the political scene, this new political setting led to a certain blockade of the decision-making power at the legislative and


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executive levels. Indeed, faced with a variety of irreconcilable interests, mainly along sectarian lines, these institutions found themselves incapacitated. This new political setting offered the Supreme Court the opportunity to increase its political role by stepping into the void left by representative institutions in the settlement of main social and political questions (Barzilai 1999, 15–33). New opportunities were created in the judicial arena for minority and disadvantaged groups with a greater receptivity of the Supreme Court to rights’ claims and the development of new legal tools and principles. In jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has indeed recognized some fundamental values, the principle of justiciability of legislative and administrative acts, and the right of public standing. Thanks to the right of public standing, many social actors could develop their legal activities and direct their claims toward the Supreme Court. After the passing of the Basic Laws of 1992,4 which conferred a formal legal status to several fundamental rights, the Supreme Court asserted their constitutional nature in jurisprudence in 1995, thus opening all existing laws to judicial review. As noticed by Shania Payes (Payes 2003, 86), the promulgation of these Basic Laws and the consequent new discourse of civil liberty increased the opportunities of the Arab citizens of Israel to fight for equal rights.

Th e L aw yer s o f the Ar ab-Palesti ni an C aus e Lawyering for the Arab-Palestinian cause has only appeared in the last ten years. Until the 1990s, lawyering for Arab-Palestinian minority rights was limited to the action of few Arab lawyers defending Arab political leaders under trial (Ziv 2001, 175–76). Although important, their action was marginal and never amounted to public interest lawyering but was limited to defense lawyering. Arab-Palestinian minority claims were then only promoted through traditional means of political action by Arab political parties, local committees and representative institutions such as the Follow-Up Committee for Arab Affairs, and later by the growing Arab NGO sector. Arab political parties and civil society have played a critical role in the crystallization of a Palestinian collective identity and the promotion of the minority’s sociopolitical claims into the Israeli public arena in the last twenty years. Cause lawyers at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel—ACRI,5 which was then the only organization providing professional and organizational support to the defense of a wide range of civil rights (Ziv 2001, 177)—were the first to invest in the Arab-Palestinian minority. The Qa’adan affair,6 initiated in 1995 by ACRI, was the

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first landmark judicial case addressing the right to equality of Arab citizens in the access to public resources. ACRI challenged a local community decision to deny the Qa’adan family the right to live in Qatzir, a village built by the Jewish Agency on public land, due to their ethnic origin. Despite the progressive nature of its initiative, ACRI has been strongly criticized within the Arab-Palestinian civil society for promoting its own liberal and individualist agenda and especially the Zionist approach to Arab-Palestinian minority rights (Ziv 2001, 177). However, ACRI and the legal program of the New Israel Fund were essential in the emergence of a new generation of Arab lawyers who developed a legal approach to articulating national discourse and collective rights. Hassan Jabareen, who was the first Arab recipient of the NIF legal program in 1990, created Adalah in 1996 on the model of ACRI. Adalah is now the biggest association for the defense of the rights of the Arab minority, with eight lawyers working on a wide range of rights. The lawyers at Adalah formed a strategy which utilizes

Table 8.1 The three main organizations lawyering for Arab-Palestinian minority rights in Israel Organization

Association for civil rights in Israel—ACRI

Legal clinic of TelAviv University

Adalah—Legal aid center for the defense of Arab minority rights in Israel

Year of creation

1972

1993

1996

Field of activities

Freedom of expression, information, religion, and privacy; criminal justice; human rights (Arab minority, occupied territories, women, foreign workers, and homosexuals); social and economic rights (education, health, and welfare).

Human rights (Arab minority, women, homosexuals); criminal justice; social and economic rights; refugees’ rights; environmental justice; microbusiness.

Arab minority rights: land; civil and political; cultural, social, and economic; religious; women; prisoners; occupied territories.

Total budget (2005)

$1,500,000

$550,000 ($140,000 for HR)

$1,000,000

Staff

40, with 13 lawyers

17, with 11 lawyers 140 students

19, with 8 lawyers 5 volunteers


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their judicial activism for the promotion of Arab collective rights on the political level. The success of Adalah’s strategy and its achievements in the Israeli court system strongly influenced the practice of lawyering for the ArabPalestinian minority cause and the strategies adopted by the two other big actors in the field, ACRI and the Legal Clinic of Tel-Aviv University.7 Thanks to its professionalism and growing reputation, Adalah has indeed succeeded in getting a collective rights’ argumentation being progressively accepted by the Supreme Court and other cause lawyers. Lawyering for the Arab-Palestinian minority cause has since become more strategically planned and unified due to increased professional exchanges between cause lawyers. Indeed, all these organizations now work on similar cases and often bring petitions in common. The similar profile of the new lawyers of the Arab-Palestinian cause and their evolution from one organization to another could explain this trend. A majority of these lawyers are part of a new generation of the Arab elite educated in Israeli and foreign universities. They demonstrate a high degree of professionalism combined with a strong commitment to their community. In order to benefit from their links with the ArabPalestinian community, and for that reason from greater legitimacy, mainly Jewish organizations have started to hire Arab lawyers to represent cases for the Arab-Palestinian minority. Litigation and Social Change The effectiveness of cause lawyering in fostering social change has always been questioned by legal professionals as well as social and political actors, though it is a more systematized recourse than to litigation as a means for political action. It has also been greatly debated within the academic literature, especially in the studies of Gerald Rosenberg (Rosenberg 2001) and the Critical Legal Studies movement. Indeed, the legal framework imposes many limitations and constraints that severely affect the scope of the effectiveness of judicial activism. As noted by Gad Barzilai, litigation and social change may be perceived as mutually exclusive (Barzilai 2005a, 1), the first being a court-centered tactic that deals with the resolution of limited and defined conflicts in their narrow legalistic sense, the latter being the result of large-scale political reforms in legislation and public policies. However, other researchers like McCann note that judicial activism can introduce significant sociopolitical changes in a limited and indirect way (McCann 1994). Litigation can modify concrete practices by raising awareness within a group and in society on related issues

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by establishing new norms, rules, and political agendas and especially by serving as an incentive for collective action. Aware of this dualistic nature of litigation, cause lawyers tried to build a strategy that would better sustain the overall promotion of the Arab-Palestinian cause. A Limited Framework of Action Recalling Gad Barzilai’s observation, litigation is a court-centered tactic that deals with resolution of limited and defined conflicts in their narrow legalistic sense. The scope of cause lawyering is restricted by a legal framework based on strict procedural rules, formal principles, legalistic language, and professional norms. Cause lawyers are required to remain within this accepted framework of action and translate their claims into acceptable legal matters. For that reason, petitions against the political orientation of state authorities’ decisions are not considered acceptable by the Supreme Court unless an evident and specific misuse of authority is proven. A petition brought by Adalah in 1998 concerning discrimination in the allocation for Muslim and Christian communities of the budgets of the Ministry of Religion8 was deemed too general by the court. Asked to limit their request to specific items with proven discrimination, they successfully brought a second petition9 pointing to discrimination in the allocation of budgets for cemeteries. The Court is generally cautious not to rule on cases that have high political implications and could fundamentally question the state’s authority. Being part of the state system and a fundamental actor in the preservation of its power, the judicial authority takes care not to encroach on the scope of authority of other state institutions. Litigation is an in-the-power process (Barzilai 2005a, 3) that cannot be used for questioning state power. Cases related to the Arab-Palestinian minority are considered highly political and sensitive. Foot-dragging by the Supreme Court in such cases has been thoroughly criticized. It is notably criticized for having developed an extensive rhetoric regarding equality without having granted the remedies that could guarantee its enforcement (Jabareen 2003, 249–66). The Court continues to employ a formal individualist interpretation of equality and of other basic rights, one that fits the liberal orientation of its jurisprudence and is considered by many cause lawyers as inadequate to defend the minority in its interaction with the state (Barzilai, 2005b). Indeed, the court still refuses to rule on petitions that would request important legal and material remedies, such as in cases questioning implications of past and general policies. This observation led lawyers at ACRI to limit their request for remedies in


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the Qa’adan case to this sole family and to future implications rather than contesting the state policy that led to the establishment of Jewsonly localities in Israel. In spite of this, the case was considered too sensitive by the president of Supreme Court Aharon Barak, who in vain tried to reach a compromise between the two parties in order not to rule on the case. In cases where the state invokes security arguments, the Supreme Court has demonstrated a certain restraint in intervening. In the wake of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, judges of the Supreme Court often considered that national security considerations take precedent over fundamental rights, such as in the case of the state’s decision not to allow reunification in Israel of families composed of citizens belonging to the Palestinian Authority.10 In fact, out-of-court settlements are often favored by the court so as to avoid decisions that would act as precedent but also by cause lawyers that do not want to jeopardize their client’s chance for satisfying remedies. Attacking discriminatory actions by the state is made difficult due to the fact that the burden of the proof lies with the petitioners, who can seldom gain access to the necessary information. Furthermore, even in case of favorable judgment, some of the legal and material remedies granted by the court are not enforced, due in part to the absence of appropriate mechanisms to ensure the implementation of the court’s decisions on state authorities. Having finally ruled in favor of the Qa’adan family after five years of legal proceedings, the Supreme Court could not monitor its true implementation. Two years after the ruling, lawyers at ACRI had to bring a second petition requesting the Supreme Court to compel the defendants to implement the court’s decision. For this reason, cause lawyers are generally pessimistic about the effectiveness of victories obtained before the Supreme Court. Litigation versus Collective Action? Due to these limitations, cause lawyers and social actors constantly question the effectiveness of these practices for the promotion of the Arab-Palestinian minority cause. As pointed out by Gad Barzilai, social change is always the result of large-scale political reforms in legislation and public policies (Barzilai 2005a, 1–5). Many actors believe that litigation should only be used along with other means of collective action. However, the relation between litigation and collective action, at times, is perceived as a negative one, for that litigation can lead to the depoliticization of social movements. Many lawyers are aware of this side effect of litigation and insist on turning to litigation only as

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a last resort so as not to prevent the use of means of action that could be more successful or supportive to the cause building. Notably, this has occurred in conflict over land and was reported by one of Adalah’s staff members (Esmeir 2000). Adalah once refused to represent some inhabitants of an Arab town whose lands were to be partly expropriated by the state in order to build a field for military training. Due to the invocation of security arguments by the state, Adalah refused to defend the case and advised the inhabitants to resort to political protest. Aware of the low probability of victory in the court, lawyers at Adalah feared that their action would prevent the display of a mass protest that eventually happened to solve the conflict. An overview of the activities of cause lawyers of all three big organizations shows that litigation is far from being their main activity. They indeed use their legal skills for different purposes, such as monitoring state authorities’ policies, giving legal assistance, and lobbying before national and international bodies. For most of the organizations, with regard to their overall strategy, these activities are on a par with regards to their importance. Indeed, only a few numbers of cases—twenty to thirty a year in each big organization in average— are brought to court. This is notably due to the fact that litigation is a costly method of sociopolitical struggle, demanding a high investment in staff over a long period of time. As a result, cause lawyers favor cases with high potential of victory that would act as precedent for the whole community. Victory in court is also important in creating a feeling of empowerment among the community. Moreover, it breeds confidence in a tool that by nature remains only in the hands of the elite of legal professionals. In order to integrate further litigation toward the building of the overall cause, lawyers work closely with actors of the Arab-Palestinian civil society whose political and social claims they relay through petitions. Indeed, the majority of petitions brought forth are in the name of the NGO that acts as sole petitioner or copetitioner in the case. There also exists a more or less formal coordination between the activities of legal aid organizations and Arab-Palestinian social and political actors. This ensures cause lawyers certain legitimacy within the community. This is deemed necessary by organizations like ACRI and the Legal Clinic of Tel-Aviv University whose agenda is not limited to Arab-Palestinian minority cases. However, cause lawyers also have their own agenda thanks to the freedom gained from exclusively external funding. This allows them to favor cases that fit best their agenda and even initiate cases of their own according to their agenda.


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In that, cause lawyers are often criticized for refusing clients whose cases do not fit their ideological orientation. The Positive and Indirect Effects of Litigation on Social Change Cause lawyers themselves are aware of these limitations. However, they are still convinced that their aggregated victories, over time, will result in significant changes and therefore continue to put a lot of effort in these practices. Inevitably, their belief in cause lawyering is a result of their legal education and of the personal benefits they gain from their professional practice. As a consequence of their legal education, cause lawyers have developed a strong belief in the rule of law and in its role in the preservation of democratic rules and the defense of fundamental rights. For these actors, legal skills constitute social and political capital that is inaccessible to a majority of social actors. As a result, they are less keen than other social and political actors of the Arab-Palestinian minority are to question a systematic recourse to in-the-power practices and their potential effect of legitimization on state system. However, the personal beliefs and interests of cause lawyers do not solely explain why cause lawyering is now one of the most privileged and less controversial means of action within the Arab-Palestinian community. Adalah is the biggest organization of the ArabPalestinian civil society in terms of budget and achievements. Like all organizations of legal defense in Israel, it benefits from support of foreign funders and international nongovernmental organizations, as well as from an aura of respect and professionalism in the Israeli civil society and in the media. The scope of media coverage of cases that are brought before the court by cause lawyers has played a major role in their growing influence on the building of the Arab-Palestinian cause. Indeed, legal cases brought before the Supreme Court benefit from high media coverage in Israel due to the increased influence of the court on key social and political issues. Thanks to this media coverage, litigation contributes more than any other means of action to publicize and put on the national agenda the social and political claims of the Arab-Palestinian minority. Moreover, unlike other forms of protest used by this minority, cause lawyering and cause lawyers benefit from positive coverage in the media. This is linked to the positive aura of the Supreme Court within Israeli society. An Adalah Public Opinion Survey of 200411 found that the Supreme Court is considered one of the most truthful state institutions—far beyond the government, the parliament, and political parties—by two-thirds of Arab interviewees. This reflects a

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widespread opinion in Israel from both Arab and Jewish sectors. The power and importance of media coverage in their activities is greatly comprehended by legal defense organizations. Hence they invest a lot of effort in media coordination at the national and international levels. Finally, cause lawyers also contribute to safeguarding the space of political representation and participation of Arab leaders and community members by ensuring their legal defense. For instance, Adalah represented Member of Parliament Azmi Bishara in two cases12 related to speeches he made in Syria and for which he was accused of support for terrorism. If successful, this legal action would have had considerable effects on the scope of freedom of speech for Arab politicians. Currently, Adalah is coordinating cases related to the October 2000 events, where police suppression of demonstrations in Arab towns and villages, in support of the Intifada of fellow Palestinians, led to the death of thirteen Arab citizens. These legal defense cases allow the Arab-Palestinian minority to maintain its sphere of expression and to exercise other means of collective action for the promotion of its cause. Building Up the Arab-Palestinian Minority Cause through Litigation Over the years, the lawyers of the Arab-Palestinian cause have defined and implemented a successful strategy for the promotion of the sociopolitical claims of the Arab-Palestinian minority in the judicial setting. They seek to translate these claims into legal rights by initiating cases that could serve the interests of the community as a whole. They try to bring the court to go beyond its individualist approach of fundamental rights and to acknowledge Arab collective rights as well as an extended and substantive approach to equality. To this end, they systematically highlight the Arab-Palestinian narrative of history in their petitions. The conflict between this narrative and the Zionist and Jewish narrative of the state is at the roots of many of the Arab-Palestinian minority claims.

From Individual to Collective Rights During the initial years of judicial activism in defense of the ArabPalestinian minority, two approaches have characterized the methods and strategies used by Adalah and ACRI in the selection and building of cases. These approaches were opposed in the Qa’adan case defended by ACRI. ACRI attacked the state for discriminating in the allocation


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of public resources through a third party, basing its argument on the right to equality and integration. However, by limiting its petition to the sole case of this family, it deliberately avoided the issue of past and present state policies with regard to land and public resource allocation. Adalah expressed strong criticism on the choice of ACRI to defend this individual case13 and to adopt a restrictive individualist approach to equality in its argumentation. Since its creation, Adalah envisioned a strategy in which it would bring the court to acknowledge and enforce collective rights for the minority. Adalah lawyers and the majority of Arab-Palestinian political leadership share a common view on the necessity to get the state to recognize the Arab-Palestinian minority as a national minority and to grant it collective rights in the fields of culture, education, political, and public representation or local administration. According to Neta Ziv, the lawyer of the Qa’adan family and today director of the Legal Clinic of Tel-Aviv University, in ten years of cause lawyering, Adalah has succeeded in getting this discourse of collective rights accepted among judges of the Supreme Court and cause lawyers (Ziv 2001, 202–6). The first attempt by Adalah to get collective rights acknowledged by the Supreme Court was in cases related to the use of Arabic on mixed-town and national road signs.14 Basing their argument on the official status of Arabic in Israel, they petitioned the court to order the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and the ministry of transportation to add Arabic language to their signs. The petition was accepted by the court even though the ruling reiterated the superior status of Hebrew in the State of Israel. This collective approach of Arab minority rights is evident in the selection of cases for litigation. Adalah lawyers always bring cases that would have a political impact on the community as a whole. For that, it has directed a major part of its action against discrimination in the allocation of governmental budgets in areas such as religion, education, health or local authorities’ development. For instance, Adalah brought a petition against the Ministry of Housing and Building and the Prime Minister requesting equal access for Arab neighborhoods and towns to the Urban Renewal Program.15 This program is aimed at reducing societal inequities in Israel and did not include most Arab towns and neighborhoods, which are among the poorest in the country. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that the allocation of the Urban Renewal Program’s budget in the social-educational field should be equal to and not less than those communities’ percentage of the population, which is up to 20 percent. Other actors in the field, such as ACRI and the Legal Clinic of TelAviv University, have progressively adopted this approach of collective

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rights. Based on the judicially extended principle of adequate representation for a disadvantaged group that was recognized by the court in the case of representation of women in public bodies (Jabareen 2003, 232), ACRI petitioned the court to order the government to grant adequate representation for the Arab-Palestinian minority in the Israel Land Representation Council in 1998.16 In the course of the legal proceedings, the Knesset passed new amendments to the law in order to ensure adequate representation of the Arab population on the boards of directors of governmental companies and civil service. This approach has been emphasized through the years with the hiring of Arab trainees and lawyers in these organizations. However, lawyers of these two organizations have never gone as far as Adalah in this approach and continue to accept cases from clients with specific individual problems. This is the case of the Legal Clinic of TelAviv University, which defends cases of Muslim or Christian women facing problems in their divorces before religious courts or cases of conflict between individuals and Arab local councils. For refraining from defending these kinds of cases that are considered against the collective interests of the Arab-Palestinian minority, Adalah has been criticized by many lawyers and community members.

An Extended and Substantive Ap proac h to E quali ty The collective approach to Arab minority rights goes together with a substantive approach to equality and the rights that are derived from it. In response to petitions demanding an equal allocation of government budgets for the Arab-Palestinian minority, the Supreme Court has tended to acknowledge a restrictive formal approach to equality (Jabareen 2003, 155–59). As in the case of the Urban Renewal Program, this approach consists in ordering the state to apply a perpercentage-of- population criterion in budget allocation. Although far from being implemented, this approach to equality is considered inadequate for many cause lawyers. In a petition asking for equal distribution of balance grants between Arab and Jewish localities17 and where the government argued for the application of a percentage-of-population criterion, Adalah considered that this criterion was not a relevant consideration in this instance and that distributions should be based on economic needs. This argument meets widespread claim among the Arab-Palestinian community that decades of socioeconomic negligence by the state in the Arab sector has created a gap that can only be reversed through affirmative action.


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Following this approach to equality, as based on the according-toneeds criterion, lawyers of the Arab-Palestinian cause seek the cancellation of special benefits programs and policies that favor certain sectors of the population and exclude Arab sectors. In 1998, Adalah brought a petition against the National Priority Areas,18 a governmental decision granting substantial social and economic benefits, notably in the field of education, to residential communities categorized as National Priority Areas. The majority of Arab towns and villages were excluded from these lists in spite of their severe socioeconomic conditions. In February 2006, the Supreme Court accepted the argument according to which the decision lacks proper grounding and is discriminatory in its effect, thus asking the government to cancel it. In another instance, Adalah, together with other organizations, challenged the “Wine Path Plan,”19 a regional master plan intended to establish and retroactively legalize thirty expansive ranches or “individual settlements” in the Negev area. The petitioners argued that the substantial allocation of land to Jewish citizens would deepen the gap between both populations and prevent the use and development of the land by Arab citizens of Israel. Considering the conflict over lands that is still unresolved between the state and Bedouin citizens in this area, the petitioners argued that this decision amounts to a violation of the right to equality and of the principle of distributive justice. Cause lawyers expanded their fight for equality to indirect discrimination through application of inadequate criterion in government budget allocation or public policies. The military criterion has been for many years the focus of this fight. Indeed, the Arab-Palestinian population was collectively exempted from military service obligations at the creation of the state. Over normal retributions granted after three-year service in the army, the military criterion has been used in many instances to exclude the Arab population from special benefits and budgets allocation. In 2002, ACRI and Adalah filed petitions asking the court to declare unconstitutional an amendment to the National Insurance Law (1995) that mandates a 4-percent cut in child allowances for all citizens of Israel and an additional 20-percent cut for families in which neither parent served in the army.20 The Court did not have to rule on the case as the relevant provision of the law was cancelled by the Knesset’s passage of the 2003 economic plan. Recently, in another instance where the military criterion was applied for determining the allocation of student housing at the University of Haifa,21 the Haifa District Court issued a precedent-setting judgment forbidding the inclusion of military service as a criterion for evaluating eligibility.

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The Arab-Palestinian Narrative of History Since its creation, an important goal in the work of Adalah has consisted in bringing to the court and the public the Arab-Palestinian narrative of history. The aim of Adalah lawyers, and of those who share their view in other organizations, is to confront the Zionist and Jewish definition of the state and the priority that is given to these values in defining public policies. Acknowledgment of the Arab-Palestinian narrative is seen as a prerequisite to the recognition of collective rights and to the implementation of full and substantial equality for the Arab minority. In every petition brought to the court, the factual section is used to recall the Arab version of the conflict and its historical and political roots. Recalling the Arab narrative of history and national experience as Palestinians is important in conflicts over land or culture, whose roots are to be found in the irreconcilable opposition between state and Arab-Palestinian narratives. The desire to bring forth this narrative was a critical element in the decision of Adalah, almost ten years after Qa’adan, to bring, along with ACRI and the Legal Clinic of Tel-Aviv University, a petition in the Carmiel case, a case similar to Qa’adan. In the Carmiel case,22 all three organizations demanded the cancellation of an Israel Lands Administration policy that permitted the marketing and allocation of Jewish National Fund lands through bids open only to Jews. Their attack against state policies in land allocation led the general attorney, Menachem Mazuz, to publicly acknowledge that in light of law these policies could not be pursued in the future. One of the main domains in which these two narratives have been in conflict and have become a main focus of the work of cause lawyers is the case of unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev. At the time of the passing of the National Master Plan Law of 1966, tens of Bedouin villages in the Negev were not acknowledged, and their lands were reclassified as agricultural lands that could not be settled or developed. Only half of the Bedouin population accepted relocation to seven townships that the state had created for them. Seventy thousand Bedouin inhabitants chose to remain on their original lands, living in illegal settlements deprived of any access to public services. The fight of local organizations for the recognition of these villages by the state has been addressed by lawyers of the three big organizations of legal defense. They were confronted in that by direct limitations inherent to cause lawyering. Indeed, it is impossible for lawyers to directly ask the court for the recognition of these villages due to the political nature of such a decision. They have therefore aimed


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to circumvent these limitations by limiting their petitions to specific demands, thus creating de facto recognition, such as requesting the allocation of water, health, or education infrastructures that are considered by the court as part of the basic rights that the state must guarantee every citizen. However, these cases do not request radical remedies to the wider problem and are often solved through out-ofcourt settlements between the state and the petitioners. In 2001, Adalah petitioned the Supreme Court demanding that state authorities be ordered to ensure access, for six unrecognized villages, to water.23 In spite of the claimed illegality of these villages, the pressure of legal proceedings compelled state authorities to answer the request before final judgment by the court. These cases, although bringing insufficient remedies to Bedouin inhabitants, led to de facto recognition of some villages and, together with political lobbying, succeeded in getting the state to formally recognize a few Bedouin villages.

Co nc lus ion Lawyering for the Arab-Palestinian cause is a relatively new form of collective action in Israel whose efficiency, although greatly debated, is still difficult to evaluate in terms of the advancement of the overall Arab-Palestinian cause. Aware of its limitations as well as of its potential for change, cause lawyers have designed a strategy aimed at gaining precedent-setting decisions in the court system that support the promotion of the cause in the political setting. Indeed, they believe that small victories gained in the judicial setting contribute to the prevention of the adoption of discriminating state policies and lead the state to question the foundations of its existing policies. They are engaged in a long-term process aimed at extending, through jurisprudence, the scope of understanding and interpretation of the Arab-Palestinian minority rights in Israel. This process, for being an in-the-power one, requires them to constantly remain within the accepted framework of legal action and profession. As part of the minority and its leadership, the lawyers of the ArabPalestinian cause put effort into relaying its social and political claims. However, they conceive of their action as a tool that supports the deployment of a wider social and political movement among the Arab community like that of the civil rights movement in the United States. Currently, increased representation of Arab leaders in the public and political setting and the unprecedented development of the Arab civil society have yet to lead to the setting up of a wide and united Arab social movement that could create a critical change in the advancement

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of the Arab-Palestinian cause in Israel. Some observers point out the incapacity of the Arab civil society to give rise to this movement (Payes 2003), while others question the loss of power of Arab politicians in front of civil society actors.24 Many in academic (Barzilai, 2005b) and state circles agree on the necessity of improving the status and the living conditions of the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel before a widespread upsurge of violence would become the last efficient resort for the Arab-Palestinian minority’s claim to be acknowledged. In its report on the October 2000 violent demonstrations in Arab city and towns, the Or State Commission of Inquiry stated, thatGovernment handling of the Arab sector has been primarily neglectful and discriminatory. The establishment did not show sufficient sensitivity to the needs of the Arab population, and did not take enough action in order to allocate state resources in an equal manner. The state did not do enough or try hard enough to create equality for its Arab citizens or to uproot discriminatory or unjust phenomenon. Meanwhile, not enough was done to enforce the law in the Arab sector, and the illegal and undesirable phenomena that took root there. As a result of this and other processes, serious distress prevailed in the Arab sector in various areas. Evidence of the distress included poverty, unemployment, a shortage of land, serious problems in the education system and substantially defective infrastructure. These all contributed to ongoing ferment that increased leading up to October 2000 and constituted a fundamental contribution to the outbreak of the events. 25

Referenc es Barak, Aharon. 1995. La révolution constitutionnelle: La protection des droits fondamentaux. Pouvoirs 72: 16–30. Barzilai, Gad. 1999. Courts as hegemonic institutions: The Israeli Supreme Court in a comparative perspective. In Israel: The dynamics of change and continuity, ed. David Levi-Faur, Gabriel Scheffer, and David Vogel, 15–33. London: Frank Cass. Barzilai, Gad. 2005(a). The evasive facets of law: Litigation as collective action. Adalah’s Newsletter 10: 1–5. Barzilai, Gad. 2005(b). Communities and law: Politics and cultures of legal identities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Dezalay, Yves, and Garth Bryant, 2002. The internationalization of palace wars: Lawyers, economists and the contest to transform Latin American states. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Esmeir, Samera. 2000. Resisting litigation in Umm el-Fahem. Human Rights Dialogue 2, no. 2: 15–33.


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Galnoor, Itzhak. 2003. The judicialization of the public sphere in Israel. Israel Law Review 37: 500–42. Israel, Liora. 2001. Usages militants du droit dans l’arène judiciaire: le cause lawyering. Droit et Société 49: 793–824. Jabareen, Yussef. 2003. Constitutional protection of minorities in comparative perspective: Palestinians in Israel and African-Americans in the United States, PhD diss., Georgetown University Law Center. Louer, Laurence. 2003. Les citoyens arabes d’Israël. Paris: Balland. McCann, Michael. 1994. Rights at work: Pay equity reform and the politics of legal mobilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Payes, Shany. 2003. Palestinian NGOs in Israel: A campaign for civic equality in a non-civic state. Israel Studies 8: 60–90. Rosenberg, Gerald. 2001. The hollow hope: Can courts bring about social change? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sarat, Austin, and Stuart Scheingold, eds. 1998. Cause lawyering: Political commitments and professional responsibilities. New York: Oxford University Press. Sarat, Austin, and Stuart Scheingold, eds. 2001. Cause lawyering and the state in a global era. New York: Oxford University Press. Tate, C. Neal, and T. Vallinder. 1995. The global expansion of judicial power: The judicialization of politics. New York: New York University Press. Vallinder, T. 1995. When the courts go marching in. In The global expansion of judicial power: The judicialization of politics, ed. C. Neal Tate and T. Vallinder. New York: New York University Press, 13–26. Ziv, Neta. 2001. Human rights law and public interest lawyering: A study on the independence of jurisprudence and the legal profession in Israel, PhD diss, Stanford University. Ziv, Neta. 2004. Hanging by the cloak—Advocates for Social Change in Israel: Between the legal and the political. Adalah’s Newsletter 2: 1–3.

Cases: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). H.C., 6698/95, Qa’adan v. Administration of Israel Lands et al. H.C., 240/98, Adalah et al. v. Minister of Religious Affairs, et al., P.D. 52 (2), 167. H.C., 1113/99, Adalah et al. v. Minister of Religious Affairs, et al., P.D. 54 (2), 164. H.C., 7052/03, Adalah et al., v. Ministry of Interior, et al. H.C., 11225/03, MK Azmi Bishara et al. v. The Attorney General, et al. H.C., 4438/97, Adalah et al. v. The Ministry of Transportation et al., Takdim Elyon, 1998 (1). H.C., 4112/99, Adalah et al. v. The Municipalities of Tel Aviv-Yafo, et al. H.C., 727/00, The National Committee of Arab Mayors et al. v. The Minister of Housing and Building et al.

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H.C., 6924/98, ACRI v. The Government et al. H.C., 6099/00, The National Committee of Arab Mayors v. Ministry of the Interior et al. H.C., 2773/98 and H.C. 11163/03, The High Follow-Up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel et al. v. The Prime Minister of Israel. H.C., 2817/06, Adalah et al. v. The National Council for Planning and Building et al. H.C., 4953/02, ACRI et al. v. Avraham Burg, Chair of the Knesset et al. H.C., 4822/02, The National Committee of Arab Mayors and Adalah v. Avraham Burg, Chair of the Knesset, et al. Lawsuit, 217/05, Haneen Na’amneh et al. v. Haifa University. H.C., 9205/04, Adalah v. The Israel Lands Administration, et al. H.C., 2282/04, ACRI et al. v. Israel Lands Administration et al. H.C., 3586/01, The Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages in the Naqab et al. v. The Minister of National Infrastructure et al.

Notes 1. The New Israel Fund has been created in 1979 by Israelis, Americans, Canadians, and Europeans to advance civil rights and social justice. Headquartered in Washington, DC, it was the first provider of financial funds and technical assistance for Israeli civil society. 2. Yoav Yuval, “The Quiet Revolution,” Ha’aretz, 29 August 2006. 3. Laurence Louër refers to the communalization of Arab citizens of Israel as the expression of a public and organized expression of a collective identity grounded in a sense of belonging to the Palestinian people and on a common feeling of social and economic deprivation. 4. The Basic Law on Freedom of Occupation and the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom. 5. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel was founded in 1972 by a group of law professors and journalists. They aimed at creating the first nonpartisan organization for the defense of civil and human rights in Israel on the model of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). From a volunteer-based organization, ACRI turned to be a professional organization in the mid-1980s and eventually the biggest human rights organization in Israel. 6. H.C. 6698/95, Qa’adan v. Administration of Israel Lands et al. 7. The Legal Clinic of Tel-Aviv University was created in 1993 by a New Israel Fund recipient on the model of American universities’ legal clinics. During the year, students in law practice litigation on real judicial cases with lawyers at the clinic. 8. H.C. 240/98, Adalah, et al. v. Minister of Religious Affairs, et al. 9. H.C. 1113/99, Adalah, et al. v. Minister of Religious Affairs, et al. 10. H.C. 7052/03, Adalah et al., v. Ministry of Interior et al. 11. Adalah Public Opinion Survey, Adalah’s Newsletter, December 8, 2004.


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12. H.C. 11225/03, MK Azmi Bishara et al. v. The Attorney General, et al. 13. Requests from Arab-Palestinian citizens to integrate Jewish localities are indeed the exception. A majority of the Arab population still lives in mainly Arab localities and considers their development as a priority. 14. H.C. 4438/97, Adalah, et al. v. The Ministry of Transportation, et al., Takdim Elyon, 1998 (1), 11; H.C. 4112/99, Adalah, et al. v. The Municipalities of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, et al. 15. H.C. 727/00, The National Committee of Arab Mayors, et al. v. The Minister of Housing and Building, et al. 16. H.C. 6924/98, ACRI v. The Government, et al. 17. H.C. 6099/00, The National Committee of Arab Mayors v. Ministry of the Interior, et al. 18. H.C. 2773/98 and H.C. 11163/03, The High Follow-Up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel, et al. v. The Prime Minister of Israel. 19. H.C. 2817/06, Adalah et al. v. The National Council for Planning and Building et al. 20. H.C. 4953/02, ACRI et al. v. Avraham Burg, Chair of the Knesset, et al.; H.C. 4822/02, The National Committee of Arab Mayors and Adalah v. Avraham Burg, Chair of the Knesset, et al. 21. Lawsuit 217/05, Haneen Na’amneh, et al. v. Haifa University. 22. H.C. 9205/04, Adalah v. The Israel Lands Administration, et al.; H.C. 2282/04, ACRI et al. v. Israel Lands Administration, et al. 23. H.C. 3586/01, The Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages in the Naqab, et al. v. The Minister of National Infrastructure, et al. 24. Yussef Jabareen, presentation at the Conference on Arab Politics in Israel and the 17th Knesset Elections, Konrad Adenauer Program for JewishArab Cooperation, Tel-Aviv University, December 14–15, 2005. 25. “The Official Summation of the Or Commission Report,” Ha’aretz, September 2, 2003.


4

Chapter 9

Arab Palestinian Women’s O rga niz ations in Israel Civil O rga niz at io ns wi t ho u t National Movement?

Elisabeth Marteu

Transformation in Palestinian Arab women’s organizations in Israel,

which has occurred over the last fifteen years, must be understood in light of the evolution of the social and political mobilization of Arab citizens as a whole.1 The history of women’s structures among the Palestinian minority in Israel is interconnected with the process of identity affirmation and the improvement of political participation in the Israeli system that has characterized Arab citizens since the mid1970s (Louër 2003). This chapter will address the very nature of Arab women’s organizations as an original component of Arab civil society in Israel; organizations that embody today both new forms of activism and historical tensions between gendered and national struggles. The objective is thus to evaluate the recent transformations of the Israeli Arab civil sphere in Israel, the process of professionalization of some women’s organizations, and more generally the relations between social action and political struggle.2 During the British Mandate in Palestine (1920–48), several Arab women’s organizations developed in the region mostly to express women’s support for the Palestinian national struggle against the British authorities and Jewish settlement policy (Peteet 1991, 38–58). From the early 1930s until 1948 an active female urban elite, mostly originating from high-class politicized families, initiated the formation

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of an extended women’s movement (Fleischmann 2003). Women’s organizations were established not only in Jerusalem, Nablus, and Jaffa, but also in Acre, Haifa, and later Nazareth. More than simple social providers of services and charity, they worked as political committees for active nationalist women in organizing demonstrations and petitions in the main Palestinian cities. Even if those structures were neither especially well connected nor effective in building a fully feminist agenda, they still represented new structures of public expression for privileged women. Their existence attests also to the presence of channels of mobilization among the Palestinian people before 1948 and more specifically among educated women. After the creation of the Israeli state in 1948 and the fragmentation of the Palestinian people, the previously existing women’s social and political structures largely collapsed. While structures were maintained among Palestinians in the diaspora, their links with the new Arab citizens of Israel mostly stopped. The only association partially inherited from that period was a remaining Arab women’s organization called Nahda.3 This organization, linked to the Israeli Communist Party, was composed of educated Galilean Christian women who have continued until today to articulate a nationalist struggle and so-called old-fashioned feminism—with regards to new forms of professional action. This organization merged with a Jewish feminist organization in the early 1950s. The new structure was renamed TANDI; although composed of Jewish and Arab members, it has mainly been oriented toward supporting the Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line. The limited development of social and political Arab structures until the mid-1970s can mainly be explained by the military rule imposed on the Arab population, which consisted, as Lustick has analyzed it (1980), of three facets: cooptation of Arab elites, internal fragmentation, and economic dependence. One had to wait until the 1970s, and most famously until Land Day of 1976, to observe a public politicization of the Arab citizens who seized the opportunity to express their frustration in strikes and demonstrations.4 The increase of Arab political protest and mobilization in the 1980s is linked to various factors, including the rise of an organized Palestinian nationalism in the diaspora, the renewal of contact between Palestinians in Israel and in the 1967 Occupied Territories, and to some internal events such as the breakup of a one-party state5—and thus the creation of small political parties representing marginal voices such as the Arabs—and the context of large-scale confiscations of Arab land. Within this political climate Gideon Doron has also identified four specific reasons for

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the development of an Arab civil society in Israel: (1) the emergence of a new, educated Arab generation, (2) the influence of international sources of funding, (3) the stimulation of a powerful civil society in the West Bank and Gaza, (4) the 1981 Law of Association, which organized and normalized NGO registrations and funding (Doron 1996, 218). The development of Arab nongovernmental organizations in Israel has mainly been studied in three specific periods: 1976 to 1982 can be considered as a period of establishment, 1983 to 1993 as a phase of expansion and consolidation, and from 1993 to 2000 as a stage of both success and communalization (Zeidan and Ghanem 2000, 11–17). Particular attention should also be paid to the post-2000 situation. The outbreak of the Second Intifada redefined Arab civil actions in Israel, such as marches, petitions, or demonstrations, which are obviously linked to the situation in the Palestinian Occupied Territories (Figure 9.1). Thus, the small amount of research that has been engaged in up to today into Israeli Arab organizations addressed mainly the issue of identity roots and politicization (Doron 1996; Zeidan and Ghanem 2000; Haklai 2004; Payes 2005). Civil organizations have thus been studied as active parts of a growing visible communalization. I propose to focus on Arab women’s organizations as an original social phenomenon that highlights both specific characteristics and general trends in civil mobilization. The development of Arab women’s organizations should be put in the perspective of a state-society framework and of the transformation of Palestinian national movement in the Israeli context. This work will thus reveal the autonomization process of Arab women’s organizations from both political parties and Jewish feminist groups, the development of civil organizations out of any social and political movement, and thus the new relations between formal and informal politics. The first part of this chapter will be dedicated to the analysis of Arab women’s organizations in Israel, their history and diversity; the second part will focus on explaining the new constraints and opportunities they face in a context of both globalized relationships and the affirmation of national belonging.

Process of Development of Multiple Fo r ms o f Pales tini an Women’s O rg a niz atio ns in Is r ael Between 1981 and 2001, 1,613 Arab nonprofit organizations, were registered in Israel (76 percent since 1967 and 30 percent between the

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two Intifadas). In 2001, they constituted less than five percent of the total of Israeli nonprofit organizations (Gidron et al 2003, 30–39). Arab women’s organizations do not count for more than five percent of these Arab organizations.6 Considering that not all of the registered organizations still function today, we can consider the women’s organizations to number not more than fifty. Furthermore, only a dozen of these organizations are well connected to the international arena through funding, lobbying, advocacy, or exchanges of professional skills. Women’s organizations are mostly based in the north (Galilee and Haifa), with only a few developing in the Negev and in the Central Triangle over the past ten years. Those organizations had been defined as an “ethnically based civil society” (Haklai 2004) with different—changing and sometimes interconnected—interests in women’s issues: welfare services, development projects, awareness and empowerment, and finally lobbying and advocacy for institutional reforms.

H is to ry o f Ar ab Women’s O rg ani z ati ons i n Isr ael The establishment of the first Arab women’s organization dates from the 1950s, with the Nazareth-based Nahda organization and later with TANDI. Yet it was not until the 1980s that other women’s associations and networks began to emerge in the Galilee and the 1990s that they mushroomed throughout the country. Public and Organized Politicization of Arab Citizens As stated previously, the politicization of Arab citizens should be linked to increased levels of education within society and the subsequent emergence of a new generation of male and female educated activists, the institutionalization of the Palestinian struggle in the 1970s and 1980s throughout the diaspora, and the increasing public and organized dissatisfaction with their second-class status in the Israeli state. This period led to the establishment of both independent Arab political parties and Arab nongovernmental organizations. Furthermore, this educated elite had been socialized and politicized for a long time within the Communist Party, taking a clear role in supporting extraparliamentary mobilization. The Israeli Communist Party—which until the 1980s was the only representative elected Arab movement7— encouraged women’s activism and subsequently produced generations of militants who constituted a wide and strong network of militancy.


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Several current women’s leaders of organizations in Nazareth, Haifa, and Acre come from this network and continue to be involved in the Jabha and the Communist Party. The Arab branch of TANDI (Harakat An-Nisa Ad-Dimukratiyyat, or Movement of Democratic Women) established the first women’s groups in Nazareth, which led in the early 1990s to the creation of the two biggest Arab women’s organizations in the country: al-Tufula (headed by Nabila Espanioly) and Women Against Violence (headed by Aida Tuma Suleiman). International Interest in Women’s Rights Contemporaneous to the Arab politicization in the 1980s was an extraordinary international interest in gender issues. Indeed, the practical necessity for young and educated women to get involved and active in their community found an echo with the preoccupation of the United Nations toward women’s rights and socioeconomic development. Since the UN Decade for Women (1975–1985) and various international conferences (recently Beijing 1995, Beijing + 5 and Beijing +10), gender issues have been integrated into development. The rise of human rights as an international concern, the triumph of the liberal model of nation-states, and the priorities of development in the South led women’s issues to be integrated into a wide range of global activities (Berkovitch 1999). Platforms for action, plans of action, and other global agenda have thus been set up to promote women’s rights as a key component for social change and democracy. This new ideal is now essential in the so-called democratization of the Arab world. By the 1990s almost all countries party to the CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women), including Israel, reported the creation of national women-oriented agencies, while at the same time women’s NGOs flourished everywhere. It is thus not a surprise that the phenomenon occurred among the Arab community in Israel and that tens of women’s organizations developed in the 1990s. Arab women’s organizations in Israel have benefited over the last fifteen years from various national and international changes, forming a wide and flexible structure of political opportunities, which has allowed them to develop and focus on their own independent priorities. Furthermore, the increasing diversity of sources of funding dedicated to “gender and development” played a significant role in the multiplication of Arab women’s organizations. Various international organizations or foundations have thus funded Arab civil initiatives in Israel since the early 1990s, and the process largely increased since the

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early 2000s. The New Israel Fund (NIF) is one of the leading funders of Arab organizations in Israel. Established in 1979 in the USA, the organization focuses mainly on women’s rights, Jewish-Arab coexistence, human rights, and environmental issues. The objective is to promote the emergence of a strong Israeli civil society acting for social change and democracy. Its daughter organization, Shatil, was created in 1982 by the NIF as a social change organization for minority rights and a capacity-building center for civil society organizations. Since 1989, Shatil has helped the establishment and running of several Arab organizations in Israel including most of Bedouin associations. OXFAM is one of the first foreign organizations to fund Israeli Bedouin associations, having done so since the mid-1980s. Focusing on areas of extreme poverty, Oxfam decided to help Bedouin initiatives, including women’s projects, which held a central place in its agenda. Other main funders are the Moriah Fund (since the early 2000s), the Ford Foundation, the Open Society, the Abraham Fund, the European Union (which has funded development programs since the 1990s and human rights and empowerment since the 2000s), various foreign organizations and embassies. Most Arab women’s organizations are today dependant on external aid, which does not follow a linear increase but rather a fluctuant politics toward Palestinian organizations in a changing political context. In recent years there has been increasing pressure on civil society organizations to denounce what are described internationally as methods of “terror,” and abide by Western-defined democratic values. Constraints are put on civil organizations to follow funders’ liberal views and to avoid official links with radical nationalist movements. Nevertheless local organizations are mostly independent and decide what programs must be carried out without external censorship.

M u ltip l e For ms o f Organi z ati on for Co mp l ex Fo r ms of Ac ti v i s m Three types of Arab women’s organizations can be identified in Israel: those that provide local welfare and social services to needy people (with or without religious basis), those that coordinate activities for women’s development and empowerment programs, and those that focus on advocacy and lobbying for social and political change.8 These three main types of action can be combined even though they often correspond to different stages of development. That does not mean that there is a linear evolution of organizations’ forms of action, though usually women’s professional NGOs start as grassroots activities. The


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process of changing forms of action depends on external opportunities as well as internal capacities and desires for change. There are not necessarily close relationships between those organizations that respond also to different ideologies and political affiliations. Local groups of women who collect money and clothes for the Palestinian needy in Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza, correspond to the first type of organization. They are often constituted of nonworking middle-aged or older women, traditional or religious, who meet each other to socialize and provide aid to various socially marginalized groups, orphans, prisoners, and victims of the Israeli military occupation. Women who lead the meetings and activities have generally an educated background and political affinities if not affiliations. They organize a few meetings a month and contribute with their private donations to the running of the organization. These organizations can be themselves divided into two categories: (a) Firstly, women’s groups linked to political movements such as the Communist party and the Islamic movement: • Close to the Communist party, TANDI, and more precisely its Nazarene branch, is composed of Christian and Muslim women speaking weekly about women’s rights, political questions, and various other daily issues. Leaders of TANDI participate in demonstrations for peace but also for women’s rights, as on International Women’s Day (March 8). In those organizations women’s—more than feminist—issues are always connected, if not overrun, by national priorities. They correspond in fact to the so-called old fashioned feminism that used to function before 1948 and which had the same roots as “welfare feminism.” • Directly incorporated within the Islamic movement, several women’s organizations provide social services, religious education in mosques, and spaces for women’s dialogue and activities. The northern or radical branch of the Islamic movement, based in Umm el Fahm in the Triangle and directed by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, gathers seven specialized women’s groups, including a newspaper called Ishraqa. Islamic women’s activities are widespread throughout the country: in the Triangle but also in the Negev, where they constitute legitimate and respectable charitable and cultural structures for Islamic women. Nevertheless, they do not constitute an Islamic feminist movement, since they do not identify themselves with such a designation. They are very few to promote women’s rights and there is no female charismatic leader on a national level. These groups, which are mostly welfare and religious organizations, constitute strong

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spaces for women’s mobilization during political events such as electoral campaigns and the recent political demonstrations—e.g., after the death of Sheikh Yassin (March 2004, Figure 9.2), the vote of the French law on religious signs at school (mid-2004,) and during the Danish cartoons affair (January 2006). (b) Secondly, charitable women’s organization are also composed by independent and nonpolitical associations such al-Wafa wa alAmal, founded by Roqaya Bayadse in Baqa al-Gharbiyya (in in the Triangle) in the 1980s. Dedicated to social assistance for poor families and women, this organization has never been affiliated to any political parties and only functions with volunteers and individual donations. Activities are organized for women such as cultural events, lectures, and alphabetization courses. This association is a charitable structure that works locally but has developed connections with organizations in the West Bank, like in Tulkarem and Nablus, where they send money, clothes, and other aids for Palestinians. The second type of organization encompasses small and medium women’s structures that organize activities and programs specifically for women. Leaders are mostly urban and educated women, aged between thirty-five and forty-five; they employ less than ten salaried staff and some young and educated female volunteers. Nisa al-Laqiyya is one such organization. It is a Bedouin women’s organization created in the early 1990s that gathers more than 150 women from around the Negev village of Laqiya to produce Bedouin embroidery products. Each month, when Bedouin women come to the association to receive their wages, they attend lectures on social or medical issues. The objective is to empower women, through paid activities, to take part in their own economic and social development. The association, officially registered as an amuta (association), also runs a mobile library, a kindergarten, and literacy courses in Hebrew and Arabic. Women involved in this organization never talk about feminist values when they work together, although their leaders like to introduce feminist arguments in front of tourists and other visitors of the association. Feminism is not an issue for debate in this family-based organization, which focuses on social work and struggles to find ideological coherence to its work. In fact, activities are neither well connected to future provisions nor linked to an effective working agenda. Today the association faces problems of management and structural organization, which weaken its hand in the competition over external funding. At present, development-oriented organizations are directly


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dependant on external funding, since they have not reached the stage of creating sufficient self-generated income. Furthermore, in contrast to the situation in the Galilee—specifically Nazareth—Bedouin women’s organizations are not based on political affiliation. Due to the history of lack of development of such partisan structures in the Negev, isolation from political centers in Galilee, and their long-term tradition of dependence on and cooptation by the Jewish establishment (Parizot 2001, 94–144), political parties never became deeply rooted in the Negev. It is thus not a surprise that until recently young Bedouin women leaders did not articulate their work from a nationalist cause and did not engage in discussion of sensitive political issues. They recognized the discrimination they faced as part of their marginalized status as Bedouin, but they did not show a collective political consciousness and did not link their struggle as women to the Palestinian national struggle. The situation is nevertheless changing quite visibly now in the Negev, where the young generation claims its Palestinian identity and solidarity with the Occupied Territories. The umbrella organization Ma’an, which gathers a dozen of Bedouin women’s associations, illustrates this changing pattern of mobilization and does not hesitate to articulate women’s rights with national politics such as the issue of Bedouin unrecognized villages in the Negev. Finally, the third type of organization is composed of women’s groups who use lobbying and international advocacy. Those organizations, some of which started in the late 1980s by providing local activities for women, developed their forms of action and correspond today to professionalized proactive structures.9 Those organizations are mainly based in Nazareth and Haifa and are led by urban educated and politicized women between thirty and forty-five years old actively involved in feminist and nationalist initiatives. Women Against Violence (WAV, Nisa did al-’Unf) is a Nazareth-based organization established in the early 1990s as a feminist center for battered Arab women. It provided the first shelter and telephone hotline in Arabic for Arab woman victims of domestic violence. Today it runs tens of projects oriented to women’s awareness and empowerment, women’s rights, and leadership training. The organization is part of the Working Group on the Status of Palestinian Women in Israel, which every four years submits a shadow report to the CEDAW committee— alongside the official governmental report—describing Arab women’s status and situation in Israel. This coalition of Arab women’s organizations also includes al-Tufula, a Nazareth based organization initially formed to provide a kindergarten but today oriented to the

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defense of women and children’s rights. These organizations lead dozens of projects funded by external donors and employ more than ten employees and various volunteers such as foreign English speakers working on fundraising. The heads of those Arab women’s organizations started their social and political involvement nearly twenty years ago in TANDI and in the Communist Party, as well as in feminist Jewish organizations such as Isha la Isha in Haifa. Those “careers” attest to the effectiveness of the Communist movement’s network among urban, educated Arab women in Galilee and the channels of militancy between political parties and civil organizations, as well as the experiences and skills acquired in feminist national structures. Leaders and young professionals of these organizations have also developed strategies of lobbying in the Knesset and more precisely within the Committee on the Status of Women, where they present their demands and try to influence public policies. A good example can be given with the action of the Working Group for Equality in Personal Status Issues created in 1995, which gathers various Arab women’s organizations—including WAV and al-Tufula—and lawyers from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Shdulat Hanashim (the Israel Women’s Network). After several years of active lobbying and pressure in the Knesset a law was passed in 2001 reforming the divorce procedure and allowing women to use civil courts in questions of custody and alimony. The working group achieved the support of women Members of the Knesset (MKs) from Zionist parties—including the Labor Party, Meretz, and Shinui—but neither that of the Tajammu’ leader Azmi Bishara nor that of the Arab United List MKs (a coalition of the Islamic Movement and the Arab Democratic Party).

Co ns tr a i nts and Opportuni ti es f o r Ar ab Women’s NGOs The transformation of Arab organizations in Israel corresponds to an evolutionary process in Israeli civil society as a whole. During the 1980s and 1990s, Arab organizations followed a process of professionalization and articulation within international patterns of political and civil society. Nevertheless, they constitute an ethnic civil sphere that asks for Israeli citizens’ rights and claims its Palestinian identity. It is thus important to contextualize these few organizations in a complex frame of power relationships articulating national identity affirmation and insertion in globalized networks. Multiple scales of work and protest in local, national, and international spheres affect the ways


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they act and are perceived. Arab women’s organizations are located in this game of constraints and opportunities that bring into conflict feminism and nationalism, professional accountability and grassroots’ legitimacy, identity solidarity and pragmatic needs, and resistance and protest.

Ge nder a nd Wo men’s Org ani z ati ons : Po l itic izi ng the C aus e whi le D e p o l itic i zing o r Denati onali zi ng t he Struc ture? Politicization of Women’s Issues New forms of action among proactive feminist groups correspond to political actions that aim to politicize and publicize women’s issues. Politicization should be understood as a process of confrontation and negotiation with state authorities (Tilly 1976) as well as a process of conflictualization and public highlighting of social questions (Duchesne and Haegel 2004). Finally, Lagroye specified rightly that politicization is mainly the result of problems’ redefinition in political terms (2003, 359–72). The contribution of women’s organizations to the global interest in gendered issues has allowed these questions to be driven out of the private sphere and to acquire a real potency of debate and conflict in the public sphere. Moreover, the implementation of public policies favorable to women’s issues as answers to these demands contributes to the politicization of women’s issues. As the top-down logic of the development industry encourages organizations’ professionalization and technicization, many young women with an academic background have decided to work in nonprofit organizations, where they can find both material and symbolic retribution. Thus they have found a new sphere of social involvement as well as new job opportunities. They coordinate programs, organize training courses, write reports and participate in advocacy campaigns. These new skills are partly criticized for their elitist orientation and technocratization of longstanding grassroots associations. A Threat to the National Struggle? Professionalization and donors’ technical political agenda are the main reasons for the marginalization of older charitable societies and the increasing gap between small women’s groups and feminist organizations. This observation has been made of Palestinian civil organizations in

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the West Bank and Gaza (Hanafi and Tabar 2005, 91–119, 202–54). Highly critical assessments of this development have emerged from many academic and activist circles within Palestinian society, accusing contemporary women’s organizations of distorting the original agenda of older popular committees established during the first Intifada and the traditional charitable societies. The Gender Studies Department of Birzeit University (Ramallah) has published various criticisms of the evolution of the new women’s organizations. In her article “Palestinian NGOs since Oslo: From NGO Politics to Social Movements” (2000), Rema Hammami describes the transformation of the Palestinian civil sphere in the mid-1990s and its process of independence from political parties and movements. This process led to the emergence of two distinct, yet at the same time interconnected, spheres of political involvement. The pressure and authoritarianism of the Palestinian Authority and the influence of foreign funding contributed to the autonomization and professionalization of Palestinian organizations, including women’s structures. Rita Giacaman and Eileen Kuttab (1995) and Islah Jad (2003) have also accused the development industry of depoliticizing Palestinian associations by focusing on development projects and technical and professional work following a Westernized liberal socioeconomic point of view. Thus women’s organizations are no longer the nationalist supporters and activists that they were considered pre-1990 (Hilterman 1991; Curmi 2002, 105–6). The concept of “depoliticization” is thus flexible and quite vague, since women’s issues have been pushed to the public agenda at the same time as the structures in charge of their support have lost the nationalist and political role they held before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. This vigorous debate, which brings into conflict various forces in the Palestinian Territories, cannot be directly imported into the Israeli state even though it concerns its Palestinian minority. Since Israel functions as an established state with elected political representatives and claims to offer social and economic services for all its citizens, the civil sphere is yet a limited alternative to absent or inefficient public policies. In spite of all the different discrimination that Arab citizens face today in the Israeli state their civic involvement is not a form of alternative administration. Indeed the current social and economic situation in Israel cannot be compared to that of the Occupied Territories, in which several funders’ programs have been transformed into emergency and humanitarian projects since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000. Furthermore, the current Israeli political system is based on minorities’ expression and proportional


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political representation. While the ethnically based Israeli system does not promote the full democratic expression and recognition of the Palestinian minority, within it popular expression and lobbying are widely organized and permitted. Through these channels of mobilization, civil organizations have found opportunities to express their needs and protests. In contrast to the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian women’s organizations inside Israel constitute a relatively new phenomenon. They developed twenty years ago as independent structures not related to political parties. The connection between civil and political organizations among the Arab citizens does not correspond to the fratricidal struggles that occurred in the Palestinian Territories. In Israel, civil organizations did not replace political movements, since Arab have difficulty emotionally and organically mobilizing all Arab citizens. Palestinian women’s organizations in Israel do not have the nationalist history and experiences of those in the Occupied Territories that existed before the Palestinian state building. Arab political parties do not function as a nationalist movement within Israel. In Israel there exist Palestinian organizations but not a Palestinian movement. All the different social and political structures are unable or unwilling to constitute a collective political movement. Civil Involvement versus Politics? This title is not to say that hermetic borders exist between organizations and political parties. On the contrary, it is very difficult to separate between distinct social and political spheres of mobilization. This analysis can be compared to that of Siméant’s study on humanitarian organizations and the debate around their political or apolitical character (Siméant 2003). The idea of a conversion of leaders from political activism to social action based on universal human rights’ values is not evident, since they politicize gender issues (lobbying through partisan channels) and even continue to be involved in political events and sometimes political parties. Nevertheless, it is evident that these feminists run their organizations independently without any political subordination and pressure. It is interesting to note that while many Jabha activists work in civil organizations, we can observe only sympathizers and voters for the Tajammu’. Nevertheless, the Communist Party and its wider structure, the Jabha, no longer play a central role in young women’s politicization and mobilization. Young volunteers and workers are not necessarily involved in political parties. But even if they do not express

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any political affiliation—or are even reluctant to be involved at all in parties—they usually express a strong interest in political issues. Most of them vote for the Jabha and the Tajammu’. Furthermore, civil organizations are not (yet?) a bridge to administrative functions nor political representation. Thus we should consider the causes, the structures, and the staffs of various organizations individually in order to highlight the complexity of nongovernmental involvement. The task is not to know whether the Palestinian civil sphere in Israel is political in the broadest sense of the word but to analyze a process and to understand how and through which structures and narratives it takes place.

M y th s a nd R ea li ty o f Pales ti ni an Women’s Ac tiv is m ac ro ss the Green L i ne Connected Leadership in Two Different Contexts There is a strong difference between social and political involvement in Israel and in the Occupied Territories. Salim Tamari (1999) explains this statement in three points: First, the degree of political coercion among Arab citizens in the West Bank and Gaza is wider, and military and colonial in nature. Second, the internal social composition of the two populations is different. The collapse of an agrarian social structure due to land expropriation and economic tertiarization has led to the reform of the social hierarchies among Arab citizens in Israel, which has happened later in the Occupied Territories. Third, the absence or lack of state structures in the Occupied Territories gave extensive powers to the civil sphere that provided basic services, health, preschool programs, microcredit, etc. Indeed concrete differences exist today within the Palestinian people whatever its common national consciousness. There is a symbolic cohesion but not an organic coherence. Thus connections between civil organizations are limited, and these relationships have been even more complicated since the outbreak of the Second Intifada and the variable closure of the Occupied Territories. Nevertheless, many Arab women’s organizations in Israel have individual and sometimes professional contacts with their colleagues in Ramallah, Jerusalem, or Nablus. The members of the Working Group on the Status of Palestinian Women in Israel are thus connected to the director level of the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) based in Jerusalem, which provides legal support and advice for Palestinian women in the West Bank. Like the Working


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Group, WCLAC regularly writes reports to the UN CEDAW Committee detailing the situation of Palestinian women in light of the Israeli occupation. All these women are educated and nationalist, mostly politically involved in national and international events. They participate in advocacy campaigns and various groups of dialogue on war and peace in the Middle East that offer opportunities to exchange skills and experiences as well as new structures of meeting for female directors and activists. Even small women’s groups can point to their links with women’s organizations in the Occupied Territories. These do not involve wide projects or joint programs but mostly joint actions (conferences, demonstrations, petitions, etc.), reciprocal visiting and social and humanitarian assistance through collections of money, clothes, and food. Peace and Anti-Occupation Joint Actions Donors do not fund joint programs across the Green Line except those concerning peace and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. Strong limitations on international grant making are established by “antiterrorism” measures in U.S. and EU politics that encourage local NGOs to attest to the absence of any links to so-called “terrorist” organizations. The Israeli government too has put up obstacles to cooperation and transfer of funds into the Palestinian Authority, including from Palestinians in Israel. Nevertheless, women manage to preserve relationships in gender and feminist issues that are often supported (if not funded) by foreign organizations. They are thus invited abroad to explain their situation and talk about women’s rights in the Middle East. They participate together in peace groups like the International Women’s Commission for a Just and Sustainable Israeli-Palestinian Peace. The commission was created in 2005 by UNIFEM (UN Fund for Women) on the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which called for women’s participation in the peace process and conflict resolution. Israeli—both Jewish and Arab—Palestinian and foreign women composed this commission, which organizes conferences and promotes dialogue in the Middle East. In July 2006, they published a joint call for the end of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon, negotiation between Hezbollah and the Israeli government, and the exchange of prisoners. Contacts can also be made through the active channels of various forums and networks, such as the Mediterranean Social Forum, EuroMed Network for Human Rights, and Euro-Med Civil Forum, which function today as new spheres of involvement for antiglobalization

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activists. The Palestinian cause resonates within such structures that permit Palestinian activists to meet each other in extraterritorial spaces. It is interesting to note how the structures of international advocacy themselves structure the kinds of connections that exist between NGOs, largely at executive or director level, and largely because they meet to lobby together in the international arena. Nevertheless, it is too early to talk about transnational movements, since there is a transnational symbolic cause but neither transnational structures nor coordinated programs of action.

C h a l l eng es fo r M ulti c ultural P eac e Femi nis m i n Is r ael Failure of the Peace Movement It seems that there are many links between Arab women’s organizations and left-oriented Jewish groups that struggle for peace and women’s rights, like Bat Shalom, Isha la Isha, Shdulat Hanashim, Women in Black, and the Coalition for a Just Peace. All these groups, which have developed since the late 1980s and gained recognition during the Oslo process, continue to maintain relations with Arab women. It is nevertheless certain that the post-Oslo period weakened the interconnections and heightened awareness of communal identities and differences. After the failure of the Oslo decade and the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000, most PalestinianJewish groups reduced their activities and reoriented their priorities. Connections with Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza largely collapsed, whereas some groups decided to maintain and radicalize their actions across the border. But once again, except for specific active and radical groups or for some special occasions—like demonstrations for peace and against the Israeli occupation—joint working groups collapsed. The continuation of the settlement process, the failure of the various meetings for peace, and finally the outbreak of the Second Intifada led to a more visible and expressed communalization of Israeli civil sphere. Communal Empowerment in Civil Organizations Many Arab women’s activists who used to work in the early 1990s in Jewish-Arab organizations decided to create their own structures. The process of separation was mainly based on a desire and a need for Arab women to lead and to manage their own organizations.10 This managerial


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autonomization was embedded after October 2000 (in which violent repression of Arab demonstrations organized in Galilee in support of the Palestinian uprising led to the death of thirteen Palestinians— twelve Arab citizens and one Palestinian from Gaza) in a more politicized and visible claim for minority rights and recognition. Kayan was created as an amuta (association) in 1999 by “Palestinian women living in Israel to promote feminist thinking and values in Arab society and to work toward gender equality” (Kayan 2005). Before 1999, the Arab women who created Kayan used to work in Isha la Isha, in Haifa. The process of gradual separation started with specific programs for Arab women and led to the creation of the independent Kayan in the late 1990s. The phenomenon occurred in a more radical and nationalist manner within the Haifa Rape Crisis Center with the departure of Arab women, who created as-Siwar, an independent organization for battered Arab women. This separation reflects the perceived necessity for feminist Arab women to create their own structures with their own objectives and priorities. The development of external funding as well as the more public and visible communalization of the Arab population led to the creation of independent Arab organizations. The Second Intifada highlighted an impression of exacerbated clash between the communities. Even if cooperation programs remain today, the first decade of the twenty-first century has been characterized by a strong and public communal division between Arab and Jewish initiatives. It should be noted, however, that at present there is a very different situation existing in the Negev, where Bedouin organizations, including women’s groups and coexistence programs, achieve increasing support from the Israeli authorities as well as American Jewish donors. They have become a prioritized concern for development funding, perceived by external international bodies as central to an internal social peace in the Negev. This politics intensified after October 2000 when the Israeli authorities, as well as international donors, took into account Arab citizens’ specific interests. The objective is clearly to contain social protest and to reinforce stability of the Israeli society. The Bedouin organizations’ nonpolitical orientation as well as their mainstream repertoire of action allowed them to coordinate development and coexistence programs largely supported by external donors.

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Ar a b Wo m en’s NG Os’ C apac i ty for R ep res entatio n and M ob i li z ati on Arab women’s organizations in Israel offer various repertoires of action and are embedded in several civil and political networks within the national and transnational contexts. Yet they are not structures for collective political, social, or nationalist mobilization. Even though some feminists are still active today in the Communist Party or close to the Tajammu’, women’s organizations confirm the sectorial specialization of civil structures that are neither integrated alongside political parties in a representative and active Palestinian national movement nor in a popular and proactive social movement within the Israeli state. Furthermore, the current success of the Islamic movement among Palestinians can be seen as a one of the results of the perceived failure of the secular national movement to address the deterioration in the socioeconomic and political situation in the Occupied Territories. This Islamized view of Palestine exists among Arabs in Israel as well, where the movement articulates charitable and political forms of action. This Islamonationalist conciliation of both pragmatic and ideological assistance is based on a wide range of civil organizations, including women’s groups. These women’s groups mobilize women, collect funds, and develop transnational relationships. Officially registered or not, they constitute a considerable part of the Arab women’s civil organizations. Research must be initiated and developed to improve our knowledge of these organizations, which constitute noble and legitimate structures for women’s mobilization as well as an extended political network. It could be very interesting to put in historical perspective the Communist Party and the Islamic Movement as charitable and political structures and agents of socialization—politicization for women activists and sympathizers. Finally, these various forms of women’s activism raise the question of popular representation and success, between different social phenomena that similarly are critical of a universalistic order, discuss the separation between private and public, call for women’s participation, and claim transnationalism in their attempt to reach the Palestinian people beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. They characterize the increasingly competitive structures and ideologies that have an impact today on the Palestinian national movement, which is highly visible in the very process of fragmentation of women’s initiatives.

Figure 9.1 Palestinian flag in a demonstration organized by the Arab Communist Party in Nazareth, May 1, 2008 (Photo: Elisabeth Marteu)

Figure 9.2 Demonstration of Islamic women after the death of Sheikh Yassin, Nazareth, March 2004 (Photo: Charlotte Shama)

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Referenc es Berkovitch, Nitza. 1999. From motherhood to citizenship: Women’s rights and international organizations. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Curmi, Brigitte. 2002. Les enjeux de l’après-Oslo: Le mouvement associatif dans les Territoires palestiniens. In Pouvoir et associations dans le monde arabe ed. Sarah Ben Nefissa, 95–123. Paris: CNRS Editions Doron, Gideon. 1996. Two civil societies and one state: Jews and Arabs in the State of Israel. In Civil Society in the Middle East, ed. Norton Richard, 2:193–220. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Duchesne, Sophie, and Florence Haegel. 2004. La politisation des discussions au croisement des logiques de spécialisation et de conflictualisation. Revue Française de Science Politique 54, no. 6: 877–909. Espanioly, Nabila. 1994. Palestinian women in Israel: Identity in light of the occupation. In Women and the Israeli occupation: the politics of change, ed. Tamar Mayer, 106–20. London & New York: Routledge. Fleischmann, Ellen. 2003. The nation and its new women: The Palestinian women’s movement, 1920–1948. Berkeley: University of California Press. Giacaman, Rita. 1995. Commentary: International aid, women’s interests and the depoliticization of women. Gender and Society. Working Paper n°3 in series Gender and Development, Women’s Studies Programme, Birzeit University, 53–59. Gidron, Benjamin et al. March 2003. Database report of the third sector in Israel, Beersheva, Israeli Center for Third Sector Research. Haklai, Oded. 2004. Palestinian NGOs in Israel: A campaign for civic equality or ethnic civil society? Israel Studies 9, no. 3: 157–68. Hammami, Reema. 2000. Palestinian NGOs since Oslo: From NGO politics to social movements? Middle East Report 214: 16–19. Hanafi, Sari, and Lisa Tabar. 2005. The emergence of a Palestinian elite: Donors, international organization and local NGOs. Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies and Muwatin Hilterman, Joost. 1991. Behind the Intifada: Labor and women’s movements in the Occupied Territories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jad, Islah. 2003. The NGO-isation of Arab women’s movements. Al Raida 20, no. 100: 37–47. Kuttab, Eileen. 1995. Fixed paradigms, changing realities: Gender and development in Palestine. Gender and Society. Working Paper n°3 in series Gender and Development, Women’s Studies Programme, Birzeit University, 47–52. Lagroye, Jacques, ed. 2003. La politisation. Paris: Belin. Louer, Laurence. 2003. Les citoyens arabes d’Israël. Paris: Voix et Regards, Balland. Lustick, Ian. 1980. Arabs in the Jewish state: Israel’s control of a national minority. Austin: University of Texas Press.


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Parizot, Cédric. 2001. Le mois de la bienvenu. PhD diss., EHESS Paris (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales). Payes, Shany. 2005. Palestinian NGOs in Israel: The politics of civil society. London: I. B. Tauris. Peteet, Julie. 1991. Gender in crisis: Women and the Palestinian resistance movement. New York: Columbia University Press. Siméant, Johanna. 2003. Un humanitaire “apolitique”? Démarcations, socialisations au politique et espaces de la réalisation de soi. In La politisation, ed. Jacques Lagroye, 163–96. Paris: Belin. Tamari, Salim, 1999. Palestinian social transformations: The emergence of civil society. Civil Society: Democratization in the Arab World 8, no. 86: 14–17. Tilly, Charles. 1976. From mobilization to revolution. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley. Zeidan, Elias, and As’ad Ghanem. 2000. Patterns of giving and volunteering of the Palestinian Arab population in Israel, Beer Sheva: Israeli Center of Third Sector Research, Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

Notes 1. The terms Arab and Palestinian are used interchangeably in this chapter, as both are in common use in the population under discussion. But I prefer to specify that theses terms are not synonyms and mean different things to different people. Civil organizations use differently these identity ascriptions following changing dynamics of identity definition and sociopolitical action. 2. This problem has been studied in the frame of a doctorate in political science (IEP, Paris–BGU, Israel); the fieldwork was performed in the Negev (Laqiyya) and in Nazareth beginning in January 2004. This experience led to formal interviews and participant observation with various Arab women’s organizations and feminist activists. I am grateful to Dr. Hagai Katz (Ben Gurion University), Prof. Johanna Siméant (Paris 1–Sorbonne), Richard Ratcliffe (Oxford University), and Isabelle Humphries (University of Surrey) for their useful comments and corrections on this chapter. 3. The existence of Nahda as the oldest Arab women’s organization in Israel and the only one working during the period of military government is quoted in Espanioly (1994, 111) and attested by several interviews with Samira Khoury, director of the Democratic Women’s Movement–Nazareth. 4. In response to the governmental politics of expropriation of the Arab lands in Galilee, strikes and demonstrations were organized in March 1976 and were strongly repressed by the police, leading to the death of Arab demonstrators. Since then, the event and its martyrs are commemorated yearly on March 30.

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5. The election of the right-wing party Likud in 1977 broke up the hegemony of Labor (ex-Mapaï) and led to the emergence of a two-party and subsequently multiparty system. 6. In 1997, 70 percent of Arab organizations provided services (Payes 2005, 80), 25 percent were religious organizations (mostly Islamic), and 10 percent dealt with advocacy (Zeidan and Ghanem 2000, 17–18). 7. Until the creation of independent Arab parties in the 1980s and 1990s, the Communist Party (included in the Jabha since 1975) was the only representative Arab party, since other Arab lists were created in the months before elections and were affiliated to Zionist parties, particularly the Labor Party. 8. This classification is based on personal observation of the activities, objectives, and political identification of the various Arab women’s organizations studied in Israel. The typology aims to highlight broad tendencies from the variety of women’s organizations. 9. 1 By “professional” we mean run by salaried staff with technical and adapted skills and competencies, with organizational practices of reporting, monitoring, and evaluating work; their activities operate within a project framework and are inserted within aid channels. 10. This chapter is based on several interviews with members of Kayan and as-Siwar in Haifa in 2006.

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Chapter 10

The Bat t le for R ecognition Civ i l So c iety, C it izenshi p, a nd t he Po l i t i ca l Ris e of the Negev B edo u i n

Richard Ratcliffe

I ntroduc ti on

S

ince 1993 the post-Oslo era has witnessed a complex and changing formal politics in Israel/Palestine, with contradictory dynamics across inconsistent political moments of cycles of conflict and political processes, and contested interpretations. Simultaneously, throughout Israel/Palestine the past generation has also witnessed the growth of new political agents, with the proliferation of NGOs and civil society, new discourses on citizenship and rights, and the elaboration of new forms of nonformal politics such as the advocacy and activism of the settler movement, the peace movement, and Palestinian human rights groups and nationalist organizations, as discussed by the contributors to this volume. Their research shows how the mobilization of nonformal political groups around the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is having a marked impact on them and on wider state-society relations. In this article, however, I wish to argue that this instability of formal politics and extension of nonformal politics in Israel/Palestine is more properly understood if it is seen primarily as symptomatic of an evolving new mode of international governance appropriate to late capitalism. This governance is restructuring political space and with it the articulation of key concerns of Israeli-Palestinian politics; its

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reshaping of state-society relations can be seen most clearly in the political issues that are most heavily contested, such as land. I suggest that this new governance has had profound implications for the position of formerly marginal groups in Israeli-Palestinian space, such as the Negev Bedouin, where it has led to both an increased external prominence and internal “democratization.” Negev Bedouin politics have been recently subject to a new wave of scholarship (Parizot, 2001 and 2005; Marteu 2005; Meir 2005; Greenspan 2005). I suggest their changing politics and political fortunes are symbiotic with the shifting patterns of governance in Israel/Palestine. I wish to illustrate these arguments by looking at the growth of a new discourse of Bedouin land claims and collective aspirations, that of the “unrecognized villages.” This struggle involved three key innovations: the development of new community organizations, a new body of knowledge, and new political strategies; all three had a profound impact on Bedouin political claims. Aside from its material achievements, I argue this political struggle for recognition is illustrative of the dynamics of activism within this new governance, both the new networks through which it operated and the kind of commodified politics it gave rise to, which are coming to encapsulate many other dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

S hi fti ng Po li ti c s Formal Politics Among the Palestinian minority, the post-Oslo era has witnessed the growth of an assertive new citizenship movement that has called for civil equality in access to a variety of public resources and articulated a communitarian self-conception as a distinct “national minority” within Israel over the melting-pot idea of the “Israeli Arab” (Rabinowitz and Abu-Bakr 2005). Paradoxically, this has marked a shift in Palestinian nationalism (Zreik 2003) away from claims of historic injustice as a people to a Palestinian “infra-nationalism” (Hobsbawm 1990) based on equal citizenship and rights within Israel. This new assertion has been interpreted within Jewish Israel in a variety of ways: Political discourses on the Palestinian minority in Israel have been marked by a concern over an increasing “radicalization” of the minority (Or 2003; Rabinowitz and Abu-Bakr 2005) There have been attempts to delegitimize Arab citizenship within Israel (Yiftachel 2002), highlighting rather the Arab minority’s territorial, demographic, and security threat to Israel (Benn 2003), connected in the wake of

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October 2000 to the security threats of their Palestinian brethren. This new social segregation has been effected by a prominent rule of law discourse that conceptualizes a criminalization of many Arab informal socioeconomic practices (Ibrahim 2004) and attempts to coerce and police Arab political leadership (Cook and Key 2002). By contrast, post-Second Intifada there has been a sense among the Israeli left of the need to integrate Palestinians into the civic structures of mainstream Israel (Or 2003). In their identification as a visible external community, Cook (2006) observes a parallel shift in state strategies, a new era of “Othering,” from de-Palestinianization to re-Palestinianization. Nonformal Activism By contrast, the recent era has also been marked more by a coherent growth in importance of nonformal politics and civil society throughout Israel/Palestine. Among the Palestinian minority, this nonformal politics has been marked by a focus on civil rights, facilitating a simultaneous politicization of the law and legalization of politics (Chapter 8 Sallon, this volume), and other forms of advocacy, reporting, and petitioning. This advocacy has developed international links with foreign media, governmental and nongovernmental bodies, and funding from Palestinian and increasingly Jewish and international sources, mobilized in the demand for public services. This advocacy has instituted a kind of politics that might be termed “technopolitics.” As Payes (2005) notes, NGOs are defined as neutral organizations concerned with technical rather than political concerns, a requirement that has been criticized for its seeming role in depoliticizing controversial issues (Ferguson 1994), channeling political struggles away from popular protest (Payes 2005), and encouraging a new political managerialism (Mosse 2005). In fact, NGOs mark a shifting character of politics: “technopolitics” is the politics that forms around and through technical issues of public policy such as state discrimination in planning or the use of technical fields as a vehicle for unspoken political claims, such as using education provision to consolidate land claims. In technopolitics, the political challenge stays within the normative premises of technical policy but strives to challenge provision within these terms, creating new political fields, agents and mechanisms, and political aspirations conceptualized around an expanding discourse of rights. Discursively, NGO politics of rights is increasingly the key engine for visible contemporary political change for the Palestinian minority.

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It has led to new forms of political mobilization by the Israeli peace movement, Palestinian nationalism within Israel, and neo-Zionism, almost all of which have simultaneously come to revolve around issues of citizenship, rights, and discrimination and to find new ways to conduct struggles over territory. The struggle for Palestinian housing rights has been more successful than have political demands for expropriated lands. Structurally, political parties are shifting now to set up NGOs, take over NGOs, and even repackage themselves as NGOs.1 NGOs are a growing force for promoting marginal minorities within them, most notably Bedouin and Palestinian women’s NGOs (Payes 2005). Accordingly, nonformal politics is celebrated for the profound effect its initiatives are having on “democratization.”

Shifting Gover nance Potentially nonformal politics can be seen as harbinger of an evolving new mode of governance in Israel/Palestine that is developing under the dynamics of late capitalism. The incoherence of contemporary politics is both a consequence of this shift in governance and of this governance’s discontinuous nature. This governance has opened up a new sociopolitical space filled by the growth of both new political institutions, and a new political leadership. There has been a worldwide “associational revolution” (Payes 2005) of NGOs as political representatives of the local “community” who are coming to supplant in prominence political parties and national bureaucracies. The institutional proliferation of NGOs throughout the Arab minority in Israel has prompted observers to talk about the evolution of a new sector of administration termed the “third sector.” In Palestine, this sector has created new hierarchies that helped form a new local elite (Hanafi and Tabar 2005). While this elite is institutionally fragmented and tends to be housed in individual organizations rather than a coherent movement, broadly it gives a new prominence to participation among marginal groups, particularly women’s groups (Marteu 2005) and Bedouin groups (Greenspan 2005). It is also marked by the internationalization of its membership, which is linked to international partners and increasingly trained in advocating to broad international audiences, with English-language, financial, and technical skills (Payes 2005). These institutions are bound by a new way of doing politics. The focus on the technical concerns of technopolitics is organized through single-stranded coalitions mobilized around specific rights, what Riles


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(2001) terms “networked politics.” These new institutions are egalitarian nodes, each participating in a variety of chains that are held together by the circulation of a new body of imagery and knowledge, by solidarity visits and international gatherings (Riles 2001), and by coconstructing a kind of para-academia, often termed mode II knowledge (Gibbons et al 1994), of reports and research defining the problematic of a particular policy concern. These circuits belong to the contemporary “cultural economy” (Du Gay 1997), where products, including policies, are sold and consumed in terms of clusters of meaning. These networks link together groups in ways that cut across former state-society divisions. They are not stable alliances, but loose affiliations coming together fluidly for specific concerns, as coalitions of the willing. Simultaneously, this culturalized new governance is characterized by an explicit new political morality. The various coalitions operate at a pitch of consistent moral urgency, continually creating new politicomoral concerns, such as the environment and gender. This new morality is implicitly universal and unipolar, merging, e.g., development and security (Duffield 2001), striving for consensus politics (Mosse 2005), and aiming to include the voices of all marginal communities in the realization of global standards. This universality is deceptive, since it conceptualizes a series of rights claims and concerns that are discontinuous. Moral causes, such as poverty, gender, the environment, and security, do not connect with each other; groups can participate in a number of distinct causes without inherent mutual implications. While the actual morality of contemporary international relations is debatable, the interesting point in this international morality is that the image of it underpins a variety of state-society transformations, largely away from the nation-state. In particular, it mediates a new internationalization of social policy (Duffield 2001), and the internationalization of many local concerns. Local NGOs speak to international fora, media, and networks of solidarity. They are sustained by international funders and staff, creating a number of tiers of suppliers, but most notably producing a new class of internationalized local activists who associate political demands with wider meanings, who are increasingly adept as cultural intermediaries, at being locals for an international audience. Local NGOs are becoming increasingly powerful vis-à-vis national authorities and increasingly dependent on international ones, a shift that is controversial from the reference point of nation-state politics and sovereignty (Hardt and Negri 2000) in in Israel/Palestine (Haklai 2004; Samara 2001).

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This governance also produces a new identity of activism. NGOs derive their moral force from being not the government: they are perceived the voice of the “local” versus the national government; they represent “communities.” In this representation, they encourage a new visibility to the external world and a new strategy of “selflegibilization” within a variety of networks, learning how to market themselves to an external audience and using a language of universal terms to apply political pressure at the national level, and learning to make delinked claims defined as apolitical, as merely correcting an aberration to a universal order, and to operate modular projects. This new structure of governance creates different political spaces, through, which for instance, land politics can be contested, but more than that, it also creates new political subjectivities of positions within a network of imagery. The practical implications of this space and subjectivity are worth exploring.

Gover ning the Negev Bedouin The Negev Bedouin currently constitute nearly 160,000 Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel (HRW 2008). The majority of them live today in the metropolitan Beer Sheva area, northern Negev. Historically, they have been administratively segregated from the rest of the Arab population in Israel (Marx 1967; Parizot 2001). Until recently, they were a peripheral minority within the Israeli and Palestinian political landscapes and were romantically thought of as socially distinctive. Throughout the Middle East, the Bedouin have been regarded as culturally distinctive, with patterns of nomadic or segmentary political behavior (Evans Pritchard 1987) that have been observed to be resilient in postnomadic contexts (Kressel 1996). This behavior has included a tendency to maintain an autonomy from state interference, what Meir (1997) terms the “centrifugal” tendencies of nomadic politics. With the establishment of Israel in 1948, Negev Bedouin autonomy was reconfigured, as those tribesmen remaining were placed under military law between 1948 and 1966 and segregated in an enclosure zone (Marx 1967). The tribal system of governance was maintained and reorganized into administrative tribes around nineteen appointed sheikhs, who became de jure intermediaries between the Bedouin and the military authorities in return for a range of local privileges (Marx 1967; Parizot 2001). Though isolated, this tribal mechanism was similar to the system of control operating on Palestinian villagers (Lustick 1980).


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As elsewhere in the Middle East (Bocco 2000), this system was revisited with a new policy to “sedentarize” the Bedouin in the name of national development, though also comprehensible in terms of the modern state making its citizens more “legible” (Scott 1998; Foucault 1976). Over the last thirty years the Negev Bedouin have been subject to a process of state-planned urbanization, which has primarily involved geographic concentration of the scattered pizurah into seven2 urban localities from 1968 onwards (Falah 1985), somewhat unhistorically conceived as marking the “end of nomadism” (Meir 1997). This process has involved concerted attempts at the decimation of the pastoral economy, expropriation of Bedouin lands (Falah 1985), and the establishment of a dualistic economy subordinating Arabs, described by Roy (1995) as a process of “de-development.” With “sedentarization” a system of special transitional governance was set up specifically for the Bedouin, with the provision of local councils initially run by Jewish appointees in planned localities and the establishment of a number of sectoral institutions for those outside, including the Bedouin Development Authority and the Bedouin Education Authority, to facilitate the provision of transitional services during the urbanization process, and a number of institutions, such as the Green Patrol, were specially initiated for the Bedouin (Maddrell 1990). End to Segregated Governance This administrative segregation came to an end in the late 1990s, as the Negev Bedouin were suddenly integrated into the mainstream structures of Israeli local government. Throughout the 1990s, there was an indigenization of local authorities, with Bedouin mayors elected in the majority of Bedouin localities for the first time (Parizot 2001), thus making local politics a professional field for some. The Bedouin Development Authority was replaced by a regional council, Abu Basma. This elected Bedouin local leadership has been subsequently integrated into Palestinian minority structures of governance, such as the Higher Follow-Up Committee on Arab Affairs. Since 1996 there has been a simultaneous growth in votes for anti-Zionist Arab parties in Knesset elections in the Negev (Parizot 2005). I would suggest that the engine for this transformation seems to have come not from formal political activism but from an NGO system that has proliferated in the Negev since the mid-1990s, gradually indigenized, and fostered the growth of a new generation of activists. From four Bedouin NGOs in 1994 there are over eighty registered

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to date. They have led the struggle with new coalitions, organizing demonstrations and lobbying for collective budgets, campaigns, and group claims at court. These NGOs are often perceived as provoking an internal democratization (Payes 2005), since they are especially prominent in representing marginal communities, such as women and black neighborhoods. There is, however, a more complex arrangement of hierarchies in these representations and a complex interaction with preexisting patterns of political patronage. Though they can have a limited political legitimacy locally, a number of NGO activists are becoming prominent political professionals nationally and internationally, and they are extensively linked to Palestinian, Jewish, and international groups. Symbolic Rise of the Negev Bedouin Yet even this change is less significant than their symbolic transformation. Over the past decade, the Negev Bedouin have gone from being peripheral in Israeli political space to increasingly significant to nonformal activism, as well as to the wider politics and symbolism simultaneously of the new post-Oslo (1993) nationalism of the “Palestinian national minority in Israel,” the Israeli peace movement, and even revisionist Zionist concerns over the internal Arab threat. For Palestinian nationalists in Israel, Bedouin issues, particularly land rights, home demolitions, and discrimination in service provision, have been given greater weight in Palestinian minority politics. The Negev Bedouin have come to embody the notion of discrimination against Arab citizens, where the Negev has increasingly been rendered in advocacy usage as “al-Naqab,” a region emblematic of Israeli state discrimination, its renewed usage marking a nationalist reclaiming. Almost all Palestinian advocacy groups have devoted disproportionate efforts on reports and legal cases on Bedouin issues, and some have even opened Naqab offices. The Bedouin have also become increasingly prominent for revisionist Zionism. They have been identified as a strategic concern of the National Security Council and the Negev seen as a key priority area for national planning (Swirski 2007). In place of the old romanticism they have come to symbolize the internal Arab threat. The “radicalization” of the Bedouin, formerly archetypal loyal Israeli Arabs but now depicted at angry demonstrations at the Second Intifada or 1976 Land Day, is iconic of this dramatic shift. They are often portrayed as a “ticking bomb” of demographic expansion, land invasion, and criminal activity, with predictions of a Bedouin Intifada along with


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the threat of Bedouin terror (O’Sullivan 2004; Barzilai, 2004). These threats were identified as a special priority concern by the Sharon government,3 with the establishment of a special Ministerial Committee headed by then Deputy PM Olmert, and has been accompanied by urgent new policies to settle the Negev with a “strong population” by 2015 (Swirski 2007). The demands of both these perspectives have made the Bedouin more prominent for the Israeli left. Post-October 2000, a number of Israeli peace and coexistence groups have come to work with the Bedouin in attempts to create a more inclusive civic Israel. There has been a proliferation of social research and para-academic reports (Swirski and Hasson 2006) attempting to promote regional development, to solve various Bedouin problems of “transitional” social adjustment, and to mediate the land dispute, and cases of Bedouin civil rights have been taken up by key Israeli equality and civil rights groups. This new centrality has resulted in a huge increase in political and material investment in the Negev Bedouin. The 2003 Sharon Plan, discussed below, has been accompanied by an expansion of police services, the development of a new police unit for Bedouin crime, and increased court prosecutions. There has also been a subcontracting relationship with private law firms that has prosecuted Bedouin “trespassing” on public lands on the state’s behalf (RCUV 2003). Meanwhile there has also been a significant expansion in the funding for Bedouin civil society and subcontracting of development and for Jewish-Arab activities from extragovernmental Zionist networks, the Joint Distribution Committee, the National Insurance Institute, and new state funding provisions within the Sharon Plan for Bedouin development, NGOs, and the Abu Basma Project. New Jewish-Arab organizations and single-issue coalitions with a complex array of partners have been set up to work on educational development and rights (Ratcliffe 2007). Various initiatives have been funded to mediate the land dispute, such as the 2006 Goldberg Committee. All mark a broad consensus around the need for Bedouin development.

Th e R is e o f th e “U nrec ogni zed Vi ll ages” Some of the reasons behind these shifts in structure and symbolism can be exemplified by the rise of the “unrecognized villages” as a problem to be solved and of a new discourse that effectively opposed the “sedentarization” plan and mediated the new understandings of the Negev Bedouin and a marked recalibration of the Bedouin land struggle.

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The term “unrecognized villages” to replace the Hebrew pizurah developed in the late 1980s in the wake of the implementation of new planning policies and was brought to the Negev in the mid-1990s. The political birth of the term coincides with the establishment of the Association of Forty in Haifa in the wake of the 1987 Markovitz Commission investigation into unlicensed building in the Arab sector. The term was made popular in the Negev by the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev (RCUV), which was founded in 1997. The term refers to half the Bedouin population not relocated into the planned settlements established under the sedentarization program and to their struggle for their own localities’ “recognition” and legalization in situ. According to planning regulations derived from the 1965 Planning and Construction Law, the “unrecognized villages” were forbidden from building permanent housing and thus lived in corrugated iron shacks and tents. They were left off official maps and were prohibited all forms of public service provision in order to encourage them to move to the planned settlements. In response to this planning policy context a nonformal struggle evolved that was to have three significant dimensions, developing new organizations, new knowledge and new politics. New Organizations Firstly, a “grassroots” representative group was set up on behalf of the Bedouin villagers in the form of modern, democratic institutions. This new representative organization claimed to constitute a new collective leadership representing the Negev Bedouin community outside the seven official settlements. The Regional Council for the Unrecognised Villages (RCUV), was established, with local committees set up in each of the villages. Their elected chairmen collectively constituted the RCUV and in turn elected every five years a Chairperson for the RCUV as a whole. Though a NGO, the RCUV modeled itself on the form of an Israeli municipal authority, with education planning and legal departments employing professional staff. This representative form presented by the RCUV, presenting themselves as a precise hierarchy of local committees whose membership was decided by elections, was crucial for both visibility and legitimacy in the external world. The form attracted the instinctive approval of external parties, though few followed up on the substance of where the committees came from or the nuanced interaction between old and new forms of representative leadership. Though the ideology of NGOs is that they should have neither political nor familial affiliations,


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inevitably since the villages were also tribal settlements, the RCUV was organized around tribal blocs, with larger families dominant in internal elections. To external visitors it was explained that the local committees often elected the old sheikh, though traditional patterns of authority tended to be glossed over when the sheikh’s son was appointed to take over from his father. Though not immediately accepted as legitimate representatives by the institutions governing the Bedouin, due to their technopolitical strategies discussed below, various ministries were required to engage with them as the villages’ representatives (al-Huzayal 2003). There was, however, a local contestation of the RCUV’s leadership. RCUV elections were approached keenly, as are local elections in the recognized localities, as an agonistic competition between families and rivals (Parizot 2001). They attracted political intervention as formal political parties attempted to claim the RCUV for their own stable of institutions; reciprocally though, RCUV leadership was not a springboard for formal political power, as one of the Mayoral candidates found in the 2003 Rahat local elections. To date, there have been three elections, each resulting in a new leadership. Each losing leadership has abdicated its membership from the RCUV and formed its own alternative council, modeled on the same format, often engaging in strident criticism of the new incumbents to an outside audience while it has lasted and generating broad perceptions of incompetent inactivity and corruption. As the struggle has progressed, the local committees have often attempted to negotiate on their own behalf. New Knowledge Secondly, the struggle constructed a new knowledge about the unrecognized villages and ultimately the Negev Bedouin, that was central to the strategy of self-legibilization. It started with the production of a number of maps locating the unrecognized villages, and asserting their historicity as “traditional” villages. Reversing the 1947 Zionist map (Benvenisti 2000) and the sedentarization policy that regarded Bedouin settlements as temporary anachronisms, the RCUV made a new map that not only situated the villages and referred to them by their historic names but included themselves within a virtual order. To date, the RCUV has produced three main maps, in 1997, in 2002, and in 2006. The maps were also manifested materially, as the RCUV went around attempting to put up the new road signs that marked the villages and their revived

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historic place names. They also detailed in Arabic an accompanying narrative the history of the Bedouin land struggle. The new knowledge also involved producing quantitative statistical data on the villages and the disparity between their development needs and village conditions. A number of reports were produced detailing the difficult socioeconomic situation of the unrecognized villages that provided useful briefing packs for visiting journalists, aid agencies, funders, solidarity groups, and governmental officials (RCUV 2003; HRW 2008), though locally this information was guarded jealously. Through an interaction with the media and photographers, there was also a proliferation of visual knowledge. The unrecognized villages were translated into a repeating series of iconic images: a child collecting water, shacks with electric cables passing overhead, and shacks fenced out from the Jewish villas next door. The images were emblematic of discrimination and the land struggle, though they could be reinscribed with different meanings. They were accompanied by similarly iconic quotations that appeared in a variety of advocacy reports. The most famous of these was a quotation by Moshe Dayan, then Minister of Agriculture: “We must turn the Bedouin into urban laborers . . . not by coercion, but with direction by the state. This reality that is known as the Bedouin will disappear.”4 These advocacy reports gained their status among an external audience in three key ways: Firstly, they were locally produced and were treated as the authentic voice of the unrecognized villages, even though paradoxically much was actually produced in coalition with other advocacy groups. For instance, the map was produced with the Jewish-Arab Committee for Economic Development, many of the statistics were jointly collected with Adalah in preparation for court cases, and there were reports that were jointly written with the Arab Association for Human Rights (RCUV 2003) and Physicians for Human Rights (Almi 2003). Secondly, this knowledge took a para-academic scientific form. Reports reproduced a rational image of the unrecognized villages through maps, statistics, cited references, and illustrative case studies. Yet these reports were rarely validated by rational means, and the image took hold primarily due to its iconic symbolism. Thirdly, the knowledge was accredited with a political status due to its deployment in the various forms of technopolitics discussed below. It was submitted to the Supreme Court and to various UN Committees and governmental agencies and international embassies. Accordingly, its facts were reproduced by various bodies that were gradually


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more authoritative. This dynamic gave the knowledge a “citational,” even collectively self-referential, quality. New Politics Finally, the struggle was facilitated by the various new ways in which the villages were represented. The RCUV aimed to coordinate a collective struggle as the Bedouin “community,” rather than as individual tribes conducting bilateral negotiations with the authorities, and to do so by pursuing largely extrapolitical strategies outside of conventional political fields and their structures of segregated control and patronage. The starting point for these strategies was a form of technopolitics focused on solving the technical problem of “recognition” by state institutions in planning and services. The RCUV challenged the planning process within its technical criteria, proposing alternative plans for the villages and Negev. The villages themselves were even constituted in light of planning regulations. Thus the RCUV’s new map organized the Bedouin according to the parameters of planning regulations. Since, according to the regulations, a place inhabited by more than five hundred persons has to be classed as an independent locality, the map was marked with Bedouin communities that had been arranged into those of five hundred persons or more as villages. The villages petitioned the Supreme Court with their alternative plan and gained a temporary injunction preventing the implementation of regional plans until an agreement had been reached with them.5 The legal status afforded by this injunction was essential in giving the RCUV a foothold from which to negotiate with the authorities. This was also crucially different from earlier efforts to contest regional development plans. Previously, other groups, such as the Association of Forty and the Association for the Defense of Bedouin Rights, had proposed alternative planning approaches for the Bedouin community and had undertaken some alternative planning activities. Yet their alternative plans had been dismissed as unworkable. However, because the RCUV had made their alternative plan legally significant, they compelled the Southern District planning authorities to negotiate with them. Effectively, getting accepted within the virtual order of the court provided the platform for changing the material order of the villages. Overtly, they delinked their demands for “temporary” service provision from the land dispute, and yet covertly demands were made consistently with the primary aim of securing land tenure. There were

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a number of court cases for water provision, schools, health services, and humanitarian concerns such as winter support. The pitch of these concerns was one of moral urgency: of the suffering of the unrecognized villages and ending Israeli state discrimination, of Bedouin alienation, and even of the threat of Bedouin lawlessness. Coalitions of groups were assembled for each of these demands, operationalized by a mixture of campaigning and legal strategies, and delinked from each other as single concerns for such things as health rights and educational rights. Invariably in these cases, the court did not pass judgment but operated as an intermediary between Bedouin claims and state authorities. In much of this strategy external groups were very prominent. The unrecognized villages came to be the key focus of much of the Israeli-Palestinian human rights industry. Beyond these technical strategies, the RCUV also hosted a broad array of visits to the unrecognized villages from solidarity groups making visible the villagers’ story. The groups included visits from Israeli and Palestinian solidarity groups in the North, ministry delegations, and foreign officials. Other groups, such as the Islamic Movement also took up this strategy at the national level. Internationally, they formed part of an “audit tourism” characteristic of the advocacy industry elsewhere in Israel/Palestine (Jean-Klein 2002). Given the array of groups interested in the Bedouin, the RCUV learned to operate as “cultural intermediaries” (Du Gay 1997), mediating their narrative with meanings appropriate for their different audiences. Similarly, the RCUV leadership presented their new knowledge at various fora including the UN and international human rights conferences such as the 2001 Durban Conference against Racism, often as part of coalitions of Palestinian nationalist advocacy groups. Post-2000, the inconsistency of their positions was to cause some controversy, particularly the strategy of presenting at the UN as “Palestinian Bedouin.” From 2002 onwards, this new politics was counteracted by the government as it attempted to fix Bedouin space once and for all. The Sharon government announced a unilateral scheme to solve the problem of the unrecognized villages; it came to be known as the Sharon Plan, a modular five-year plan to develop the Negev. This plan had two dimensions: the recognition of seven more localities, administered by a new parallel regional council, Abu Basma; and a new prosecution of illegal land usage and expanded legal powers for enforcement. It was accompanied by a revival of house demolitions and crop spraying practices and an increase in placed articles regarding the Bedouin as the site of the next Intifada (O’Sullivan 2004; Barzlial 2004).


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In response, a broad coalition was set up to support the unrecognized villages: Forum Beyahad, the Together Forum for Growth and Equality in the Negev, an umbrella forum of all advocacy and Bedouin community groups to coordinate their strategies and confront the plan together. This forum marked a shifted structure for the unrecognized villages’ struggle. It was so comprehensive that at points it threatened to replace the RCUV’s role as representative of the struggle of the unrecognized villages and subsume its funding. The Forum also marked a shifted strategy, since it concentrated primarily on communicating with a Jewish audience and affirming Jewish-Arab partnership. The discourse of the unrecognized villages became a discourse for “recognition,” a claim to inclusive citizenship. The RCUV replaced their nationalist-oriented international advocacy department in 2003 for one better connected to the Israeli left. They organized a substantial PR campaign, with posters and advertisements in national Hebrew-language newspapers, hiring a Jewish public relations company to orchestrate it, and a series of activity days, such as “Human Rights Day” and “Recognition Day.” Internal divisions fragmented a significant part of its collective coordination as local committees negotiated independently. Yet despite these strategic and operational changes, this politics continued to sustain the ontology that the Bedouin are a problem that needs solving.

Impac ts Through its activism the RCUV realized land gains for a number of tribes, as villages were “recognized” and their lands secured. Not only did people in existing illegal settlements begin to build, but also a number of tribes returned to their lands confiscated in 1948. Strategically, they were able to break the relocation–service provision paradigm to argue effectively for “temporary” service provision and make unsustainable the policy of deliberate denial of services. This led to increased material funding for Bedouin development and social services. In the wake of their efforts services to the Bedouin in health, education, and welfare increased hugely: new schools, clinics, and kindergartens were built, and the Bedouin received many more development allocations: five more elementary schools were built, thirty-nine kindergartens were promised, and six health clinics were opened, as were six mother and child clinics. At the political level, it also led to a transformation in the administrative structure governing the Negev Bedouin, and the end of their special treatment, as the segregated institutions of service provision

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such as the Bedouin Development Authority were disbanded. The Bedouin are being integrated into national structures of governance. Even the Sharon Plan adopted a strategy that aped the RCUV model. They set up an official regional council for those villages it planned on recognizing, the Abu Basma Regional Council, and promoted a plan that also attempted to delineate Bedouin space and inspired other initiatives such as the Goldberg Committee. I wish to focus at a more symbolic level. The struggle of the unrecognized villages had a significant impact on Bedouin visibility, since it made them an icon and allowed them to be taken up as a cause within different chains, as marked by the various terminologies focused on “the unrecognized villages,” “recognition,” and Bedouin illegality. In this, the struggle is illustrative of two distinct changes relevant to civil society throughout Israel/Palestine: the internationalized political space that it fosters and a kind of commodified politics that operates in contemporary governance. International Networks Though the RCUV was sincerely ideologically self-conceived as a “grassroots” organization, the level of foreign interest and funding in it was highly significant, to the extent that the “unrecognized villages” were in ways a product of the international advocacy industry. The leverage of these international linkages held national authorities accountable and effectively challenged Israeli policies, marking the rise of communities at the expense of the nation-state. They were also integral to the construction of the Bedouin as “locals” for an international audience. Yet paradoxically, their international legitimacy came from them aping modern structures of governance, and their consequence has provoked their integration into national forms. This international concern also marks a new political imaginary. Whereas previously social policy for the Bedouin was a moral process of “modernization,” with the unrecognized villages, the community shifted from being “peripheral” to being “marginal,” where they became a problem to be solved (or contained), an aberration in an otherwise universal order. Almost all of the villages’ claims, even the existence of the villages on the map, were made in terms of universalist norms of democratic form and universal rights. Within this space, the villages illustrate the construction of a new kind of political leadership. The RCUV occupied a certain representative space, though not inevitably, as a key node within lots of chains of single-stranded politics. This representativeness within


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advocacy networks facilitated the political strategies that required it to be treated as a representative organization by national bodies. Within this representative space the Bedouin went from being Bedouin tribes to being a Bedouin community, represented neither by tribal sheikhs nor by political parties. The new political class of NGO activists are not professional politicians related to a national bureaucracy but internationalized professional promoters of a cause, whether it be the unrecognized villages, community development, women’s rights, or something else. The recognition struggle was also illustrative of a new kind of political activity, a shifted strategy of marketing oneself to an external audience. The RCUV’s accountability and funding came from vertical recognition. Moreover, their agenda was focused on gaining “recognition” from the state. Unlike the panoptic legibility of Foucauldian surveillance, the process was one of “self-legibilizaton,” with the RCUV acting as a mediator between the community and an international audience’s framework of norms. This shifted agency is key to the transformations of governance; the politics tended toward entrepreneurial self-management. While the success of this strategy did not immediately change Bedouin political culture, it did change the context in which it operates. The unrecognized villages discourse shows how civil society is reshaping Bedouin land politics, but also the way Bedouin politics operates. While the success of this strategy does not efface older political practices—image management is an observed “cultural” trait of Bedouin political behavior (Kressel 1996), and the NGO system could also be an occasion for tribal competition (see Parizot 2005)—nor did it create the activists, who were often the sons or daughters of the leading tribes or grounded in party politics (Marteu and al-Sane 2005), but it does change the context in which they operate and make less relevant “cultural” notions that purport to explain Bedouin politics, from Evans Pritchard’s segmentation to Meir’s centrifugalism. Commodified Politics Secondly, the villages marked the emergence of a new shape to politics in this new form of governance, a kind of commodified politics. This commodification is reflected by a newly reified political activism, often termed the “NGOization” of politics, where local activism is increasingly broken into discontinuous units, involves constructing technical problems and solutions, and gives rise to a managerial political class of professional experts in these problems.

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Commodification is also marked by the recognition struggle’s new emphasis on a marketable form. The RCUV’s legitimacy as a representative group was marketed around a democratic form. Similarly, it adopted the form of modern knowledge offering detailed reports, replete with statistics, maps, and tables. While this form was deceptively rational, the struggle for recognition was marketed and apprehended in a manner similar to advertising. Beyond this aestheticization, the struggle involved the creation of a new virtual object, the “unrecognized villages,” a new political commodity. The “unrecognized villages” rendered Bedouin claims in the form of what Fredric Jameson (2002) terms an “asyntactic narrative,” a story instantly told. It is a story that means something to a political constituency, simultaneously positing a problem and a solution, where the call for action is implicit in the object conceptualized. Commodified politics is the construction and marketing of virtual objects to articulate specific claims and connected to the world of conventional political economy through the new fields of technopolitics. The resonance of the unrecognized villages as a commodity was what allowed the Bedouin, both their demands and their policing, to be marketed so well. Moreover, this commodification also promoted a kind of discontinuous politics, where the villages had very different meanings when marketed to different audiences. It was less that the unrecognized villages told a story and more that a story was told around them, in some ways a metaphor for the experience of Israel/Palestine as a whole in the contemporary era. The villages could signify poor discriminated Bedouin, with pictures of villages with cables overhead and children collecting water, lawless Bedouin, living in informal settlements from a shadow economy, and alienated Bedouin, segregated from the Israeli mainstream. This polyvalence of meaning allowed for strange coalitions of interest. It allowed the RCUV’s leadership to fit into different networks, presenting to different audiences, according to political circumstance.

Co nc lus ions The commodified and networked politics of the unrecognized villages’ nonformal struggle has marked a pronounced reframing of Bedouin land claims. It also illustrates aspects of the relevance of this new governance for politics throughout Israel/Palestine. Not only has civil society advocacy put an end to the moral linkages underpinning the ideas of “modernization” and sedentarization of the


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Bedouin, but it also disembeds other linkages, such as the “Jewish and democratic” state. Increasingly it is bringing the dualistic structure of Israel into challenge from a universal-unipolar order. It will require the Jewish state to be held together by new unipolar means, and a new moral conceptualization to underpin the maintenance of Jewish sovereignty. Moreover, the new governance suggests a reconfiguring of nationalism within Israel/Palestine. The vertical networks of Palestinian advocacy organizations that propagated the unrecognized villages’ struggle illustrate the articulation of a kind of vertical “infranationalism” rather than a mass horizontal solidarity. Though self-conceived as national, the vertical circuits and semiotic affiliations of nationalist groups—that is, the broader strategy of self-legibilization for an amorphous international audience articulated in terms of global standards of collective rights and identities—more properly mark a communitarian agenda constitutive to the fragmentation of melting pot nationalism. The unrecognized villages’ struggle illustrates the construction of the Bedouin as a political “community.” As Marteu (Chapter 9) observes in this volume, in conventional political terms, this nonformal politics creates nationalist organizations but not a nationalist movement. Finally, while the expansion of civil society is rightly celebrated as democratization for its increasing representation of marginal voices and for the material changes this brings, for instance, to the Negev Bedouin or women’s rights, it is a challenge to state sovereignty that regularly provokes controversy. Yet this new governance seems not to be incompatible with a new kind of communitarian segregation marketed in urgent unipolar terms, as different aspects of defending a way of life from the threat of civic collapse. The reinterpretation of the unrecognized villages as signifying the Bedouin threat to lawabiding Israel illustrates the fact that the growth of new structures of governance marked by civil society should be seen as not simply the dawn of democracy but rather a new way in which political struggles are fought and a reconfiguring of structures of power.

Referenc es al-Huzayal, Amr. 2003. The threat of governmental plans to destroy and uproot unrecognized villages in the Negev. Paper presented to the Third Annual Land and Housing Conference, ACAP, Nazareth, March 26, 2003. Almi, Orly. 2003. No man’s land: Health in the unrecognized villages of the Negev. Tel Aviv: Physicians for Human Rights.

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Barzlial, Amnon. 2004. The Bedouin Intifada: It’s not if, but when. Ha’aretz. Benn, Aluf. 2003. Netanyahu: Israel’s Arabs are the real demographic threat. Ha’aretz. Benvenisti, Meron. 2000. Sacred landscape: The buried history of the Holy Land since 1948. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bocco, Riccardo. 2000. International organisations and the settlement of nomads in the Arab Middle East, 1950–1990. In The transformation of nomadic society in the Arab East, ed. Martha Mundy, and Bassim Musallam, 197–234. Cambridge: CUP. Cook, Jonathan. 2006. Blood and religion: The unmasking of the Jewish and democratic state. London: Pluto Press. Cook, Jonathan, and Alexander Key. 2002. Silencing dissent: A report on the violation of political rights of the Arab parties in Israel. Nazareth: HRA. Duffield, Mark. 2001. Global governance and the new wars: The merging of development and security. London: Zed Books. Du Gay, Paul, ed. 1997. Production of culture / cultures of production. London: Open University. Edward Evans-Pritchard1987. The Nuer: A description of the modes of livelihood and political institutions of a Nilotic people. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Falah, Ghazi. 1985. How Israel controls the Bedouin in Israel. Journal of Palestine Studies 14, no. 2: 35–51. Ferguson, James. 1994. The anti-politics machine: Development, depoliticisation and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, Michel. 1976. Discipline and punish. London: Penguin Books. Greenspan, Itay. 2005. Mediating Bedouin futures: The roles of advocacy NGOs in land and planning conflicts between the State of Israel and the Negev Bedouins. Master’s thesis, York University, Toronto. Gibbons, Michael, Camille Limoges, Helga Nowotny, Simon Schwartzman, Peter Scott, and Martin Trow. 1994. The new production of knowledge: The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood. London: Sage. Haklai, Oded. 2004. Palestinian NGOs in Israel: A campaign for civic equality or “ethnic civil society”? Israel Studies 9, no. 3: 157–68. Hanafi, Sari, and Linda Tabar. 2005. The emergence of a Palestinian globalised elite: Donors, international organisations and local NGOs. Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1990. Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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Human Rights Watch. 2008. Off the map: Land and housing rights violations in Israel’s unrecognized Bedouin villages. Human Rights Watch 20, no. 5. Ibrahim, Tarek. 2004. By all means possible: Destruction by the state of crops of Bedouin citizens in the Naqab by aerial spraying with chemicals. Nazareth: HRA. Jameson, Fredric. 2002. The political unconsciousness. London: Routledge. Jean-Klein, Iris. 2002. Alternative modernities or accountable modernities? The Palestinian movement(s) an political (audit) tourism during the first Intifada. Journal of Mediterranean Studies 12, no. 1: 43–80. Kressel, Gideon. 1996. Ascendancy through aggression: The anatomy of a blood feud among urbanized Bedouins. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Lustick, Ian. 1980. Arabs in the Jewish state. Austin: University of Texas Press. Maddrell, Penny. 1990. The Bedouin in the Negev. London: Minority Rights Group. Marteu, Elisabeth, and Amal al-Sane. 2005. Participation in politics and public life. In The Arab woman in the Negev: Realities and challenges, 69–84. Beer Sheva: Maan. Marteu, Elisabeth. 2005. Éléments de réflexion sur le rapport des Bédouines du Néguev au politique. Bulletin du CRFJ, 16: 148–76. Marx, Emanuel. 1967. The Bedouin of the Negev. Manchester University Press. Meir, Avinoam. 2005. Bedouin, the Israeli state and insurgent planning: Globalization, localization or glocalization? Cities 22, no. 3: 201–15. Meir, Avinoam. 1997. As nomadism ends: The Israeli Bedouin of the Negev. Boulder CO: Westview. Mosse, David. 2005. Cultivating development: An ethnography of aid policy and practice. London: Pluto Press. Or, Theodore. 2003. The Or Commission Report. Jerusalem. O’Sullivan, Arieh. 2004. Where Israel ends. Jerusalem Post. Parizot, Cedric. 2005. Counting votes that do not count: Negev Bedouin and the Knesset elections of May 17, 1999, Rahat, Israel. In Nomadic societies in the Middle East and North Africa: Entering the 21st century, ed. Down Chatty, 176–203. Oxford: Brill. Parizot, Cedric. 2001. Le mois de la bienvenue: Reappropriations des mecanismes electoraux et reajustements de rapports de pouvoir chez les Bedouins du Neguev, Israel, PhD diss., Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Payes, Shany. 2005. Palestinian NGOs in Israel: The politics of civil society. London: Tauris Academic Studies. Rabinowitz, Dani, and Khawla Abu-Bakr. 2005. Coffins on our shoulders: The experience of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ratcliffe, Richard. 2007. The moment of education: The politics of education among the Negev Bedouin, Israel. In Aspects of education in the Middle

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East and North Africa, ed. C. Brock, and L. Levers, 163–84. Oxford: Symposium Books. RCUV. 2003. The unrecognised villages in the Negev, update: 2003. Submission to the UN CESCR, May 2003. Nazareth: RCUV and HRA. Riles, Annelise. 2001. The network inside out. University of Michigan Press. Roy, Sara. 1995. The Gaza Strip: The political economy of de-development. Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies. Samara, Adel. 2001. Epidemic of globalisation: Ventures in world order, Arab nation and Zionism. Glendale, CA: Palestine Research and Publishing Foundation. Scott, James. 1998. Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Swirski, Shlomo, and Yael Hasson. 2006. Invisible citizens: Israel government policy toward the Negev Bedouin. Tel Aviv: Adva Center. Swirski, Shlomo. 2007. Current plans for developing the Negev: A critical perspective. Tel Aviv: Adva Center. Yiftachel, Oren. 2002. The shrinking space of citizenship: Ethnocratic politics in Israel. Middle East Report, no. 223, available at http://www.merip .org/mer/mer223/mer223.html Zreik, Raef. 2003. The Palestinian question: Themes of justice and power. Part II: The Palestinians in Israel. Journal of Palestine Studies 33, no. 1: 42–54.

Notes 1. For instance, the Democratic Arab Party in the Negev has both attempted to set up a number of NGOs, if with limited success, and to gain political control of existing Bedouin NGOs. In the Galilee, most NGOs can be divided as informally affiliated between the communist Jabha or the nationalist Balad/Tajammu, though a few are also affiliated to different branches of the Islamic movement. 2. In the wake of the struggle of the unrecognized villages discussed below, a further seven localities are set to be established and are at various stages of planning at present. 3. Sharon himself succinctly linked the concerns of land, demography, and security: “In the Negev, we face a serious problem: About 900,000 dunams of government land are not in our hands, but in the hands of the Bedouin population. I, as a resident of the Negev, see this problem every day. It is, essentially, a demographic phenomenon . . . Out of weakness, perhaps also lack of awareness about the issue, we, as a country, are doing nothing to confront this situation . . . The Bedouin are grabbing new territory. They are gnawing away at the country’s land reserves, and


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no one is doing anything significant about it.” Ariel Sharon, December 2000 (cited in HRW 2008, 11). 4. “M. Dayan on Land Policy and the Problem of the Bedouins in Israel.” Ha’aretz, July 31, 1963. 5. HC 1991/00 Abu-Hamad et al. vs. the National Planning Council et al.


4

Chapter 11

Inhabi ta nts’ Mobiliz ation for C ity Pl anning in E ast Jerusalem Irene Salenson

In East Jerusalem, since 1967 and the Israeli occupation, there is no 1

Palestinian public authority and no Palestinian elected body—neither at the neighborhood level nor at the city level. The emergent Palestinian state has not been able yet to extend its territorial sovereignty over the Holy City.2 Planning decisions are thus taken by the Israeli municipality and government, which control the whole city’s territory, including West and East Jerusalem (Salenson 2006). Theoretically, Israeli planning institutions could involve representatives of the Arab population, but, as a matter of fact, they do not. Indeed, Palestinian inhabitants, who are given voting rights at the municipal level, do not use them, owing to political grounds. Indeed, in a great majority, Palestinian inhabitants do not recognize Israeli sovereignty over “annexed” or “occupied” East Jerusalem and thus do not take part in municipal elections. Yet the local planning and construction committee is composed of the whole municipal council. The main ideological attitude since 1967 has been to refuse institutional cooperation and to favor actions within civil society. Sometimes, even cooperation through civil society is rejected. In the Palestinian society, micro or local bodies often set as a running rule that they will not make any contact with the Israeli authorities. But they are sometimes—unofficially—linked to the Palestinian Authority. This inflexibility has been slowly relaxed, and new associations arose whose first aim is to defend their “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968). They found indirect ways to reach municipal approval for construction and planning without building formal connections so far.

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They take various forms, such as village councils, residents’ associations led by professionals, or associations linked to local or foreign NGOs. Recently, a new form appeared, neighborhood committees under the supervision of the Israeli municipality. Indeed, nowadays, the Israeli municipality, following a global trend in planning (Blondiaux and Sintomer 2002), tries to promote inhabitants’ participation in the planning process in East Jerusalem as well as in West Jerusalem. Whatever their ideological stand toward the Hebrew state is, Palestinian local associations cannot afford, in the planning area, to continually bypass the authorities’ approval, be those authorities Israeli or Palestinian. The urban fabric is certainly produced by citizens just as much as by institutions, as researchers working on the urban field worldwide emphasize more and more (Crépin 2004; Signoles, el-Kadi, and Boumedine 1999; Deboulet and Berry-Chikhaoui 2002; Legros 2003). However, authorities maintain control over legality, above all on infrastructures and the distribution of public services, and, widely, on operating budgets. A symbolic struggle is occurring between the legality discourse and the legitimacy discourse. This reveals that social movements and public authorities cannot be constantly thought as adversaries: their interplay varies from confrontation to dialogue, but civil society cannot ignore those interactions. This study is based on field surveys among inhabitants’ associations dealing with planning in East Jerusalem. While the state’s sovereignty over the city is a sensitive matter, exploring the planning field, a highly controversial one, helps to understand the legitimization and mobilization rationale. The question of connections between local organizations, Israeli authorities and Palestinian representative, and thus the strategic issue of collective action and political legitimacy is the framework of this chapter. Indeed the analysis of inhabitants’ participation in city planning raises the questions of civil society’s repertoires of action, the legitimacy of institutions taking part to the negotiation, and thus finally inhabitants’ strategies toward public policy. To what extent is the population taking part in local organizations’ activities? What are the relationships between local organizations, the Israeli government, and the Palestinian Authority? To what extent are local associations representative of the whole neighborhoods’ population? This last question is not specific to Jerusalem. In other countries, most of the time, neighborhood organizations do not proceed from formal democratic elections. Henri Rey writes about participation forms in Europe: “Moreover, experiences of participative democracy appeared very recently, their implementation proceeds from the top, they are granted and not gained, and their legal status is low defined” (2005:

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217). In Jerusalem, old and new forms of collective structures compete to take over the position of inhabitants’ spokesperson, but old forms seem to encounter an increasing contestation. In order to give a general and comprehensive overview of the current complex situation of inhabitants’ participation in East Jerusalem planning, this chapter will be divided in two parts: first, I will describe the different types of inhabitants’ associations in East Jerusalem and the way they invest the planning field. Then, in order to estimate how effective their mobilization is and to evaluate if planning is a field that stirs inhabitants into collective action, I will analyze how those local organizations interact with Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

G row ing C o ntestati on of th e N onel ec ted L eader s hi p Most of Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods were still rural villages until the 1967 Israeli annexation. The Palestinian social organization is, among others, based on the hamula, the extended family clan, whose identity was originally connected to land ownership, except for part of the Bedouin hamulas. The most powerful hamulas were generally the ones who held the biggest land properties. The inhabitants who were not landowners were politically weak. Indeed, in mental representations, land ownership constitutes a guarantee of temporal stability, opposed to the unsteadiness of newcomers who could easily leave the village. The heads of the largest hamulas usually composed the village council. They were responsible for both planning and land matters, such as supervising land sales or ordering collective utilities and infrastructures. These councils still exist in most of Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods, but social transformation and urbanization of the society has restrained their power. Nuclear families tend to be more individualistic and less subject to the hamula’s authority. Furthermore, Palestinian political parties compete with previous forms of power (Picaudou 2003; Signoles 2004). The villages’ demographic landscape has also gone through changes since 1948. During the first war, they sheltered refugees from western neighborhoods such as Lifta, Ba’qa, and Talbiyeh and then, until today, migrants from the West Bank, especially from Hebron. After the 1967 annexation, the Israeli authorities considered those refugees and migrants as Jerusalemites, if they were living in Jerusalem. They were given Israeli identity documents.3 But according to Israeli regulations, the West Bank newcomers who arrived in Jerusalem after

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1967 could no longer get an Israeli ID except through marriage to a Jerusalemite or through a “family reunification” process. Among all those migrants, some had land properties in the eastern villages; others bought land pieces or houses. But since the largest part could not afford to buy land, they became tenants. These socalled “newcomers,” some of whom have been living in Jerusalem for fifty years, are generally still not allowed to take part to the village councils because they are not landowners or members of the original hamulas.4 There is no official data about their numbers within the whole Jerusalem population, but estimates range from 10 percent to 30 percent of the whole Palestinian population (unofficial Israeli and Palestinian sources). Other demographic changes affected the Palestinian society and reduced the council representativeness. The demographic natural growth rate is high, and consequently the proportion of the population that is young is very large.5 In 2003, more than 40 percent of the Jerusalem Palestinians were under the age of fifteen years old.6 But young people, and women at large, cannot be members of the village council. Actually, even the active male population cannot take part in the council, which is totally reserved to the ancients. According to the Palestinian customary law, as Nadha Shehada emphasizes, “the mukhtar and the most authoritative figures in the community (who are normally the elderly) have the last word” in the decision-making process (Shehada 2004, 105). As life expectancy has increased, the council members’ average age averages nowadays around sixty-five. The gap between the population’s average age and the village council’s average age is growing. The hamula’s average size has also grown. The hamula’s head could easily express the group’s claims when it was composed of less than ten nuclear families. Nowadays, since each hamula includes hundreds of persons who have divergent interests, conflicts grow among them. In Isawiya, for instance, there are six to eight recognized hamulas for a total population of eleven thousand inhabitants.7 These various evolutions, and the influence of new forms of government and governance, generated contestation of the hamulas’ hegemony, which is reinforced by criticism of the mukhtar, village leaders since the British Mandate (Louër 2001). While the Hebrew state recognized mukhtars as collective representatives of the Palestinian population and they had regular contacts with the Israeli authorities, some of the inhabitants considered them traitors. As a matter of fact, some were really collaborationists and gave information to the intelligence services—sometimes under Israeli pressure. Consequently, in


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some cases, a few of them were evicted from village councils; in other cases, new village councils were created with non-mukhtar leaders at the head. Despite this evolution and growing contestation, when village councils deal with spatial planning, they still defend the biggest hamulas’ interests to the detriment of small hamulas and tenants, who often find themselves in insecure situations, suffering from a lack of services and needing investments in planning matters. Big hamulas try to take advantage of public utilities. For example, they try to get the best road access and to locate commercial areas on their property. It seems that organizations like village councils have a serious interest in maintaining practices that do not include formal and elected forms of political representation. In the planning area, that means that they modernize neither the planning process nor the community management system. Nevertheless, during the last decades other forms of local organizations have appeared in East Jerusalem, such as civil organizations, which intend to play a role in planning such things as housing and infrastructures.

N ew Types o f NGOs Fi ll th e Pol iti c al Vac uum Civil society and nongovernmental organizations are widely developed in Palestine. In Jerusalem, the political vacuum tends to strengthen this trend. Besides the resident associations, since 1967, numerous Palestinian as well as foreign NGOs appeared, and some of them, among other tasks, deal with spatial planning. Generally, a community association starts to get interested in planning because of the destruction of private houses. Inhabitants threatened by destruction orders gather their means to hire a lawyer, who is supposed to prevent the order’s application. Sometimes this new organization decides to keep on existing, in order to launch a collective project, like the development of public utilities or a sometimes even a neighborhood planning scheme. In those cases we can note a shift from resistance practices against Israeli planning decisions to constructive actions and projects. In other countries, the planning process is usually run by urban planners, whereas in the Palestinian society, the role of lawyers in planning is particularly significant (either inside Israel or in the West Bank and Jerusalem).8 Indeed, a larger number of planning decisions occur through legal proceedings than through regular meeting among institutions. One might identify an increasing judicialization of collective

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claims and actions, as Hélène Sallon has pointed out (Sallon 2005). These inhabitants’ organizations have also experienced an increasing professionalization. In Jebel Mukaber, for example, a civil engineer, who also lives in that neighborhood, leads the resident association. He let his community benefit from his knowledge and experience of the planning system.9 Both these trends evidence a search for technical skills within the new collective structures. This evolution, even if caused by other factors, has been observed in other countries. Firstly, in developing countries, numerous NGOs provide services to the population when public authorities fail in the social sector. They are carrying out almost the same functions as public departments do (Ben Nefissa 2004). In Egypt, in the 1980s and 1990s, Sarah Ben Nefissa and Galila el-Kadi noted that “most of the time, neighborhood associations are created by professional elites interested in city planning (architects, planners, landscape planners, agricultural engineers) who were joined by retired notables” (1999, 321). According to them, this is due to the local elected bodies’ incapacity in the planning area, which is connected to the state’s withdrawal, itself related to the World Bank “structural adjustment policies.” Sari Hanafi has observed similar practices within the Palestinian Territories after the first Intifada (1987–1993) “in a context that municipalities and private sector were paralysed—only partially—for the latest Palestinian NGOs’ activies have been reinforced and diversified; they took under their supervision social management and part of economic management in the Palestinian society” (Hanafi and Tabar 2002, 125). In East Jerusalem, regarding local powers, social repercussions of the First Intifada in the early 1990s were lower than in the Palestinian Territories: the Israeli municipalities were not paralyzed, and the unofficial Palestinian municipality was functioning until 2000. However, since the Second Intifada in September 2000, the Palestinian political vacuum and the Israeli low investment in developing Arab neighborhoods has engendered a growing investment of inhabitants’ associations in that field. Whatever the historical and political context is, NGOs and associations seem to fill the vacancy left by the authorities, especially in sectors such as services supply and urban management, at the local and micro-local levels. Others factors have been identified by Johanna Siméant that led to the increase of professional skills within civil society: a decrease of militancy: “This way of action, which focus on expertise, has been separated from a political militancy considered as ‘too ideological’” (Siméant 2004, 22), and a pragmatic search for technical knowledge. Nowadays, NGOs focus on professional competence rather than on


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militancy or political actions in order to improve their efficiency during negotiations with public experts and authorities: “There is no reason to be surprised that organizations dealing with complex fields entered the expertise field, since expertise is sometimes the only way to gain access to negotiation rounds composed of people who themselves possess a high level of professional competence” (Siméant 2004, 27).10 In East Jerusalem, as we noted earlier, the inhabitants’ organizations often oppose Israeli planning policies, for example while condemning demolitions of houses, or, more generally, while protesting against discrimination toward Palestinian neighborhoods in the area of planning and infrastructures. Their will to contest Israeli authorities leads them to employ experts, be they lawyers, architects, planners, or international experts. This call to technicians and professional representatives generates increasing network activities amongst local, national, and international NGOs. Network Dynamics in the NGOs Sphere The discrimination against Palestinian neighborhoods is not only active, for example with demolitions of houses, it is also passive, consisting of very limited financial investments from the Israeli public authorities. That is the reason why these associations try to gather a larger amount of technical and financial resources than either the Israeli or the Palestinian authorities grant. They get connected with bigger NGOs, which are foreign or Palestinian,11 like for instance the Welfare Association. This structure is not a neighborhood organization but an international one. It is funded by the Palestinian diaspora and is independent from the Palestinian Authority (Nakhleh 2003). However, this NGO uses community associations to implement its development operations through micro-local plans.12 Officially, it brings its financial and technical support to bottom-up projects. But in fact, the central NGO defines strategic programs and priorities. Finally, its operations seem to proceed rather from a “top down” than a “bottom up” process. The association must adapt to the funder’s agenda and framework. The same situation was observed in other countries: “USAID delegates its funding operations to large NGOs that ensure its distribution throughout the NGO sector. Therefore, contrary to what many development experts claim, the process of NGO development is largely top-down rather than bottom-up.” (Pétric 2005, 326). This brings into question the professional competence of the community associations. Is the process top down because of the technical

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weakness of the community association or because of the funder’s hegemony? When in October 2004 the Israeli municipality published a new planning scheme for Jerusalem, rivalries between various Palestinian NGOs broke out. An Israeli Palestinian planner13 tried in vain to federate the Palestinian associations dealing with planning issues in order to build an opposition bloc against the municipality policy. He is himself a professional in the field, a planner, and has the experience of managing NGOs, since he sat several years on the steering committee of Adalah, the Arab Israeli association dedicated to the defense of the Arab minority’s rights. For this project—the creation of an opposition bloc against the new planning scheme—he was designated by the Jerusalem Legal Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian NGO funded mainly by international funding organizations. In that enterprise, he encountered three kinds of difficulties. First, most of the Palestinian associations in Jerusalem opposed any form of negotiation with Israeli authorities, even at a local level, because negotiating would mean recognizing Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem. They refused any discussion concerning the new Israeli planning scheme. Second, due to the lack of official political leadership in Jerusalem, Palestinian organizations are subject to high competition. It was impossible to federate them or even to organize meetings. Last but not least, this planner is not a Jerusalemite; he may have suffered from lack of support within the Jerusalemite population as well as within local associations.14 These new local collective forms try to mobilize external support on one hand, but on the other hand, they sometimes adopt resistant attitudes against what they consider external interference, especially in the planning field, which is connected to sensitive issues such as land ownership and the destruction of houses. Indeed, houses are sometimes seen as the symbol of a basic human right, the right to live in a chosen place. And land ownership is connected to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict: it is considered by both sides as a main element that legitimate sovereignty claims (Dieckhoff 1989; Destremau 1995; Laurens 1998). The abundance of NGOs, the lack of official hierarchy between them, and the lack of political leadership causes confusion in the local society’s organization. This confusion also affects relationships between Palestinian local associations and Israeli and Palestinian authorities. Indeed, those relations are often informal or even hidden, be they with Israeli or Palestinian authorities, while the latter sometimes try to establish formal links and sometimes accommodate or even take advantage of the lack of transparency.


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The S ec re t Rel atio nshi p b etween I nh a bitants’ As so c iati ons and Pa l es tini an Author i ty First, it is important to stress that relations between local Palestinian organizations and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are necessarily hidden. East Jerusalem is under Israeli political control. Formally, there is no PA representative in Jerusalem,15 although the Palestinian government possesses a Ministry in charge of Jerusalem Affairs. There was an unofficial Palestinian municipality in Jerusalem, the Orient House,16 that was the de facto representative for the PLO17 in Jerusalem. The Orient House held a planning department. But in 2000, Israeli authorities imposed closure on institutions of political nature, and the Orient House was the first of close. Every entity that was funded by the PA was considered political (al-Jubeh 2003). This also affected NGOs dealing with planning, like the Palestinian Housing Rights Movement. Still, some neighborhoods’ associations benefit from the PA’s direct or indirect support. In a southern village— or neighborhood18—of Jerusalem, the land ownership survey officially launched by the inhabitants’ association is actually carried out by the Arab Study Society, which was part of the Orient House until its closure. After the closure, this branch was converted into an NGO composed of former planners of the Orient House’s planning department;19 it obviously keeps on running with PA funds, probably mixed with other funds. A second important NGO, the Palestinian Housing Council, also wants to contribute to the elaboration of a planning scheme in that southern neighborhood. This institution was created in 1991 by the PLO, but the Jerusalem branch separated itself from the West Bank branch, which is now part of the PA administration.20 The Jerusalem branch is officially an NGO, funded by the Islamic Development Bank, but it probably still depends on the PA. This NGO usually takes care of housing issues on an individual basis, granting loans to needy families. In some cases it may work with inhabitants’ associations as well, or with another NGO such as the Welfare Association in Jerusalem’s old city. However, the PA is not the only entity that acts upon local structures. In Kufr Aqab, one of the biggest neighborhood organizations, led by the Hamas movement, started to get interested in the planning matter. Palestinian political parties seem to compete through the inhabitants’ associations and planning issues.

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Although many analyses asserted that the PA politically abandoned East Jerusalem, one might also saythat the PA and Palestinians’ political parties have an indirect influence, through NGO and eventually through neighborhood structures. This strategy makes their action less visible, from an external point of view, but inhabitants identify very easily the political orientation of each local organization. In an interview, G. Ghrayeb, an inhabitant from Isawiya neighborhood explained, “X,21 who is the head of one of the major associations in the village, was the candidate for the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine [for the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006]. But he didn’t get much support from the population. Maybe ten percent. The majority of the people here are affiliated with Fatah. But they didn’t vote for Fatah. They voted mainly for Hamas because they were disappointed by Fatah’s senior members.”22 While official data on the election’s results in East Jerusalem is lacking, this example shows that the Palestinians population is aware of the political affiliation of local leaders, and, moreover, about political opinions among their neighbors.

To B oyc ot t o r Not to Boyc ot t? Rel at io ns w it h the I sr aeli M uni ci pali ty As much as they can, Palestinian inhabitants avoid having any contact with the Israeli municipal authorities because these contacts would mean that they would have to recognize Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem. This position is even stronger in the case of collective organizations. Indeed, individuals have to be pragmatic and need to be in contact with the municipality for several basic services, such as water supply or rubbish collection. But collective organizations perceive themselves as local society leaders. For their political image, they cannot afford to have official contacts with the enemy’s authority. Therefore, the Israeli municipality has created—with great difficulty— neighborhood committees and neighborhood centers led by Palestinians who have agreed to collaborate. Those committees are funded by grants from the Jerusalem Community Centers Society (JCCS), an Israeli NGO itself funded by municipal grants and other public and private funds.23 As we have noticed when analyzing relations between local associations and national or foreign NGOs, the municipal neighborhood committees proceed from a top-down rather than a bottom-up process. However, the JCCS expects these neighborhood centers someday to become community councils elected by inhabitants.24In 2006, there were twenty four neighborhood centers


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in the whole municipal area,25 among which six were for Palestinian neighborhoods.26 Other Palestinian neighborhoods refused to create committees linked to Israeli authorities.27 Palestinian inhabitants widely claim that they boycott these committees for political reasons. This has great consequences for planning decisions. In Isawiya, for instance, the inhabitants’ association, generated from a grassroots level, refused to collaborate with the municipality-funded committee on the elaboration of a new planning scheme. The association preferred not to have direct contact with the municipal authorities and chose to collaborate with Bimkom, a planning NGO that became the actual mediator between the municipality and the inhabitants, instead of the municipality-funded center. The latest was not used at all by the inhabitants and became irrelevant. However, the situation is usually more complex. In at-Tur, inhabitants also pretended to boycott the municipality-funded center. But we noticed on the field that they do appeal to it, especially for social services. In a subtle way they distinguish fields they consider “nonpolitical” (social and health services, education, sports, youth activities) from fields they consider “political” (land policies, spatial planning, construction, housing) because the latter are connected to territorial sovereignty (Salenson 2004); whereas the neighborhood center officially deals with both fields. This pragmatic attitude expresses an attempt for efficiency in the decision-making process, i.e., a will to benefit from public policies, as Yuval Feinstein has noticed among activists against the separation wall (see Chapter 5, Feinstein). It shows a de facto recognition of the neighborhood center’s authority, but still, there is no collective mobilization, since the population does not grant the center any political value. The at-Tur neighborhood center is an interesting example. It is sort of an inheritance from the previous village council. Its president—an honorary post—is the former head of the village council. The previous mukhtar sit on the steering committee. The manager can deliver, to external observers as well as to the local population, a glorifying narrative about the historical roots of the present neighborhood committee, in order to provide it with legitimacy.28 His behavior is constantly swinging between open negotiations with municipal workers and protest against municipal policies. His choice to forge bonds with Israeli authorities is based on the opinion that there is a clear distinction between local citizenship and national legitimacy. On a national level, he contests the Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem, while he thinks that Palestinian inhabitants have

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the right to benefit from local services: “They pay the local taxes, so they should get something back! In the new Planning Scheme, we obtained the right to build up to four to six floors when we previously had only right to two floors. But we didn’t obtain the right to build in some so-called green areas, so we’re thinking now to go to the High Court of Justice.”29 Realpolitik is a crucial issue in spatial planning, not specific to Jerusalem. Daniel Cefaï and Claudette Lafaye (2001) have outlined similar attitudes in France. While analyzing actions and strategies of a Parisian inhabitants’ association, La Bellevilleuse, they noticed that “from the very beginning, the association’s steering committee chose not to accuse constantly the public authorities, which could endanger opportunities for cooperation” (Cefaï and Lafaye 2001, 218). Indeed, inhabitants’ associations need public grants from the very same authority that they strongly contest. This leads to hesitation and fluctuation between resistance and negotiation. Another interesting process occurred in 2005 within this neighborhood committee. Its members decided to defend the Khalet Alein inhabitants’ interests as regards planning. Khalet Alein is part of atTur neighborhood but located outside the present planning scheme, meaning that most of the houses were built without building permits and were therefore illegal from the Israeli point of view. Nevertheless, the Israeli municipality agreed to negotiate with the inhabitants because the regularization plan was carried out by the official neighborhood committee.30 The municipality is thus going to recognize and regularize illegal situations, when its goal was exactly the opposite (Abdelrazek and Tufakji 2004)—even if that point could be discussed. Finally, this case study shows that the local committee’s position, between cooperation and contestation, is complex. Moreover, their political capacities are sometimes wider than it first appears. In other contexts, Jean-François Bayart has shown that some local leaders took political advantage from cooperation with the colonial power (Bayart 1996, 19). This does not mean that cooperation always brings benefits to the local population. Rather, it means that local leaders sometimes manage to enhance their political influence through negotiation.

C o nc lu s io n: Is P l anni ng a Fi eld th at Mo bi li zes Inhab i tants ? In East Jerusalem, planning issues do not seem to stir inhabitants into collective action, at least not as much as issues peripheral to planning


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itself, such as the demolition of houses. Indeed, these demolitions easily rally inhabitants’ support, since they embody violence and brutality emanating from the occupying power and cause a feeling of injustice among the population, as well as among external observers. For the same reasons, they are given great media coverage, which reinforces collective interest. Isolated events such as the demolition of houses can give birth to a neighborhood’s collective structure: inhabitants gather their financial means to hire a lawyer who will try to postpone the destruction order or an architect who will work on a building permit. Here collective action remains very basic: it consists of finding an emergent and isolated solution (i.e., to hire a lawyer) to an individual and isolated question—“individual,” even if several families are concerned. Indeed, it is still individual, since no collective project, covering the whole neighborhood, is produced. But difficulties arise when even a qualified architect cannot get a building permit for threatened houses; first, a planning scheme on the neighborhood scale is needed. This, then requires a genuine collective action. Two major reasons make the preparation of a planning scheme by a neighborhood organization difficult: first, it is costly; then, it requires the association to establish contacts with the Israeli municipal authorities, contact to which associations are usually opposed. Therefore, collective organizations that recommend strictly political actions (resistance, demonstrations, calls for foreign embassy support) may mobilize more than associations that deal with spatial planning. For instance, in May 2005, the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem issued an order to demolish dozens of houses in the al-Bustan neighborhood, arguing that they were built in an open-space area containing archeological remains that needed to be preserved and designated by the Israeli authorities31 to be a national park. Inhabitants appealed to numerous NGOs. The most active was the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD), which decided to launch a wide political and media campaign. ICAHD organized tours for foreign diplomats and journalists.32 The media coverage was broad: reports were published in major newspapers like the Israeli Ha’aretz, the Egyptian Al-Ahram, the American Los Angeles Times, and the French Le Monde and Liberation. It helped inhabitants in their struggle, since the municipality was forced eventually to postpone the demolitions orders. But, owing the lack of a planning scheme, this political, not planning, action did not help the inhabitants to get retroactive building permits, and their houses are still threatened by demolitions.

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What kind of strategy is the most efficient for local development? Petitions against destruction of houses have a short-term efficiency; they only help to postpone the destruction orders for some months, but they cannot stall them indefinitely. The planning process is a midterm strategy, which allows inhabitants to build legally. Political activism orientated toward resistance is considered by its supporters as a long-term strategy: the struggle aims for political independence as a prerequisite for any other actions. However, the efficacy of these various strategies on the neighborhood’s sustainable development cannot be evaluated easily. Whether one favors political or to technical action mostly depends on one’s ideological stance. But these ideological stances arise rarely from individual choices and more often from courses of action and behavior imposed by collective social structures, be they village councils or political parties. In East Jerusalem, where social and urban chaos prevails from the outset, analyzing the common practices of the inhabitants’ associations leads to the conclusion that a lack of political autonomy and of metropolitan management does not necessarily generate bottom-up initiatives, nor does it help civil society to be more independent. Social control is as strong, if not stronger, in a context of social chaos than in a context of state regulation and democracy. In Jerusalem, the coexistence of numerous social and political frameworks engenders plural forms of mobilization.

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Cefaï, Daniel, and Claudette Lafaye. 2001. Lieux et moments d’une mobilisation collective. In Les formes de l’action collective, ed. Daniel Cefaï, 195– 228. Paris: Editions de l’EHESS. Crepin, Xavier. 2004. Programme de recherche urbaine pour le développement. Gouverner les villes du Sud? Villes en développement, 63–64: 1–28. Deboulet, Agnès, and Isabelle Berry-Chikhaoui. 2002. Les compétences des citadins: enjeux et illustrations à propos du monde arabe. L’Homme et la Société, no. 143–44: 65–85. Dieckhoff, Alain. 1989. Les espaces d’Israël, Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques. Destremau, Blandine. 1995. L’espace en miettes ou l’appropriation identitaire du territoire. Maghreb-Machreck, 150: 5–18. el-Kadi, Galila, and Sarah Ben Nefissa. 1999. Les associations: nouveaux acteurs de l’aménagement et de la gestion de l’urbain en Egypte. In L’urbain dans le monde arabe: Politiques, instruments et acteurs ed. Pierre Signoles, Galila el-Kadi, and Rachid Sidi Boumedine, 319–38. Paris: CNRS Editions. Hanafi, Sari, and Linda Tabar. October 2002. NGOs, Elite formation and the Second Intifada. Between the Line, 2–18. Laurens, Henry. 1998. Le retour des exiles: la lutte pour la Palestine de 1869 à 1997. Paris: Robert Laffont. Lefebvre, Henri. 1968. Le Droit à la ville. Paris: Anthropos. Legros, Olivier. 2003. Le gouvernement des quartiers populaires: production de l’espace et régulation politique dans les quartiers non réglementaires de Dakar et de Tunis. PhD diss., Université de Tours. Louer, Laurence. 2001. Les citoyens arabes d’Israël, analyse d’une communautarisation. PhD diss., Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. Nakhleh, Khalil. 2003. The myth of Palestinian development: Political aid and sustainable deceit. Jérusalem: PASSIA. Nasrallah, Rami. 2005. Transformations in Jerusalem: Where are we heading? In Divided cities in transition: Challenges facing Jerusalem and Berlin, ed. Michèle Auga, Shlomo Hasson, Rami Nasrallah, and Stephan Stetter, 205–25. Jérusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. Offerlé, Michel. 1998. Sociologie des groupes d’intérêt. Paris: Montchrestien (2nd édition). Petric, Boris-Mathieu, 2005. Post-soviet Kyrgyzstan or the birth of a globalized protectorate. Central Asian Survey 24, no. 3: 319–32. Picaudou, Nadine. 2003. Les Palestiniens: un siècle d’histoire. Bruxelles: Editions Complexes. Rey, Henri. 2005. Participation électorale et démocratie participative. In Gestion de proximité et démocratie participative: une perspective comparative, ed. Marie-Hélène Bacque, Henri Rey, and Yves Sintomer, 213–29. Paris: La Découverte. Salenson, Irène. 2004. L’évolution des frontières de Jérusalem dans l’histoire. Géographes associés, 28: 87–100.

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———. 2006. Jerusalem’s borders: Evolutive aspects. Estudios Fronterizos 6, no. 11: 39–55. ———. 2007, Aménager la ville imaginée: politiques et stratégies urbaines à Jérusalem. PhD diss., Sorbonne University. Sallon, Helène. 2005. La judiciarisation du politique en Israël: la promotion des revendications collectives arabes dans l’arène judiciaire. Bulletin du CRFJ, 16: 166–80 Signoles, Aude. 2004. Municipalités et pouvoir local dans les Territoires palestiniens: Entre domination israélienne et Etat en formation (1993–2004). PhD diss., Université de Paris 1-Sorbonne. Signoles, Pierre, Galila el-Kadi, and Rachid Sidi Boumedine, eds. 1999. L´urbain dans le monde arabe: politique, instruments et acteurs. Paris: Editions du CNRS. Shehada, Nadha Y., March 2004. Uncodified justice: Women negotiating family law and customary practice in Palestine. Development 47, no. 1: 103–08. Siméant, Johanna. 2004. ONG et humanitaire. In: ONG et humanitaire, ed. Pascal Dauvin, and Johanna Siméant, 9–33. Paris: L’Harmattan. Welfare Association. 2004. Jerusalem, heritage and life: The Old City Revitalisation Plan. Jerusalem: Welfare Association.

Notes 1. The terms West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem designate two areas that lie on the Western and Eastern side of the Green Line (1949). East Jerusalem has been considered by Israel since 1967 as “annexed,” while it is considered by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) an “occupied” territory. Both Israeli and Palestinian officials refer to East Jerusalem as the annexed or occupied space (70 km2) that is included within the Israeli municipal territory defined in 1967. Palestinian officials also use the term al-Quds to refer to Arab Jerusalem, whose boundaries are not officially delimitated (see Salenson 2007). This chapter deals with the inhabitants’ mobilization forms in a context of “annexation” or “occupation.” That is the reason why the term East Jerusalem is used to refer to the “annexed” or “occupied” part of Jerusalem. 2. The 1993 Oslo Agreements stated that there would not be any official representation for the Palestinian Authority in the city until the final peace agreements (cf. Nasrallah Rami 2005). 3. This ID is a “residency card” of Jerusalem; it does not indicate full Israeli national citizenship. 4. Source: interview with Palestinian Jerusalemites, mainly in Isawiya, Sur Baher, Um Tuba, Sawahre. 5. The demographic growth among Jerusalem’s Palestinians between 1967 and 2002 was 223 percent and 132 percent among Jerusalem’s Israelis (Jews). Sources: Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem Jerusalem Institute


6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

249

for Israel Studies, 2003); and (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2003). Of Jerusalem Palestinians, 41.7 percent were under the age of 15 years old, while 31.2 percent of the Jerusalem Israelis (Jews) were under the same age. Source: Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem. Ibid. (More recent data has not been published yet.) Indeed, legal proceedings to the Israeli High Court of Justice often concern West Bank affairs (especially in areas B and C designated by the Oslo Agreements). Interview with Yasser Abed Rabo, civil engineer in Jebel Mukaber, May 2005. The use of expertise as a political tool has been also analyzed by Michel Offerlé (1998). They get financial support from the European Commission, from USAID, etc. Interview with Muhammad Halaika, the Welfare Association, Jerusalem, February 21, 2005. This can also refer to a Palestinian Israeli, or Arab citizen of Israel, i.e., who is a member of the Palestinian people but living in Israeli territory and granted Israeli national citizenship. Source: participative observation in the framework of this project. According to the Oslo Agreement, the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority are the Gaza strip and the main West Bank cities. The Orient House was built in 1897.The building served for diplomatic functions until the creation in 1983 of the Arab Studies Society. During the first Intifada, the Orient House gained more a political dimension and started to represent Palestinian interests in Jerusalem. The Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Yasser Arafat, who was designated as the political leader of the Palestinian nation for the Oslo Agreements. Some Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem are called “villages” by their inhabitants. They were rural villages before being included the Israeli municipal territory in 1967. Interview with a member of the Arab Studies Society, Jerusalem, February 17, 2005. Interview with Omar Hanoon, Palestinian Housing Council, Jerusalem, February 15, 2005. We prefer not to mention his name, since Palestinian political activities are mainly hidden in Jerusalem. This interview was done with the help of the anthropologist Wasfi Kailani (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), and was translated by him from Arabic to English (May 2006). The main private funder is the Dutch Bernard Van Leer Foundation, http://www.bernardvanleer.org.

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24. Sixty percent of the members would be elected inhabitants, including the council’s president; 40 percent would to be public servants, employed by the council. Interview with Yaira Wiesenthal, in charge of spatial planning in the Jerusalem Community Councils and Committees Society, Jerusalem, November 6, 2003. 25. That is, West and East Jerusalem. 26. Bet Hanina, Isawiya, at-Tur, Wadi Joz, Sur Baher, and Bet Safafa. 27. Kufr Aqab, Shu’fat, Sheikh Jarrah, Ras al-Amud, Silwan, Wadi Kadum, Abu Tor, As-Sawakha, and Um Tuba. 28. Interview with the manager, Nazi Ansari, Jerusalem, February 29, 2005. 29. Ibid. 30. Participant observation and several interviews with the neighborhood center’s planner, Muhammad Qaimari, and municipal planners, 2005. 31. The Park and Gardens Authority, the Antiquities Authority, and the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem. 32. Participant observation, May to July 2005.

4

Conclu sion

Eight years after the outbreak of the Second Intifada and the visible

failure of the Oslo peace process, Israeli democracy appears extremely polarized, and civil mobilizations illustrate these tensions. These eleven chapters addressed the question of the transformations of the Israeli associative sphere and thus the reconfiguration of Israeli society and democracy. The development of civil organizations since the early decade corresponds to new modes of governance competing with the state and formal political parties. Each group and community creates its own structure to develop its own political view and interests. This increasing communalization, which generates physical as well as mental boundaries, leads to the radicalization of Israeli social movements. The apparent “rightward move” of Israeli politics and society over the last decade is partly illustrated by the success of nationalist and “protectionist” ideologies, the failure of Zionist left-wing parties, and the continuation of the Israeli settlement process in the Occupied Territories. This phenomenon goes alongside the current weakness of the mainstream peace movement and the communalization of the Arab minority’s organizations who claim their Palestinian identity and simultaneously negotiate within the state as full Israeli citizens. This collective volume has addressed processes of new power relations between political forces and the radicalization of communal belongings but also the growing apathy of Israeli society after the Second Intifada: • The mushrooming of civil organizations was fostered by the emergence of new modes of governance in Israeli and Palestinian societies in the 1990s; these organizations were largely supported by external funders to supersede and to compete with institutional politics. Formal politics is thus challenged by the so-called nonformal political arenas that criticize the state and the existing parties and that propose alternative modes of expression. This privatization of politics corresponds also to a trust crisis in the parliamentary

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system, which is perceived as ineffective in solving the conflict, to secure the borders, and to reduce internal socioeconomic inequalities. This political reconfiguration led to the emergence of a new mode of political governance that encompasses political militants, disappointed activists, and a new nationalist generation that refuses partisan politics. We thus observe in Israel a global process that has led to the reformulation of politics today as no longer an institutional representatives’ monopoly but broadly invested in and manipulated by civil organizations. • The radicalization of civil mobilization corresponds to the extreme polarization of Israeli society and the increasing influence of a “center-right” that strengthens communal belongings. Communalization is not new but today totally assumed and claimed in consensual terms. Each community gathers around strong and exclusive identities. The general trend in Israeli society goes beyond the limits of the politics of civil society, as partly illustrated by the construction of the separation wall, the consequence of which will be the isolation of the Palestinians. Each side would build its independent reality without any contact with or influence from the other. Inside the Israeli society the same phenomenon is growing between Jews and Arabs. Communal organizations reveal this separation. The settlers who dream of a Greater Israel and the Arab citizens who claim a “state of all its citizens” characterize the opposing ends of the Israeli political spectrum. This radicalization is not exclusive to Israel; nevertheless, the opposition between different conceptions of the Israeli state’s characteristics and future is quite unique. Israel is thus located at the crossroad of its history; tensions and fragmentation are culminating and endangering its stability. • New forms of mobilization, more radical but at the same time articulated to negotiation and the use of institutional mechanisms of action, have been developed. The use of judicial actions (Sallon), lobbying and advocacy or the creation of formal NGOs collaborating with public authorities (Ratcliffe) show to what extent communal organizations impact formal politics. They also show to what degree the state and external donors select and support some civil organizations as agents for social change and pacification. In the post–September 11, 2001, course for democracy in the Middle East, “civil society,” especially women’s organizations, are optimistically perceived as democratic and reformist interlocutors. Thus, if some organizations radicalize, they also know more than ever how to get support from within the decision-making process and how to influence public opinion. This combination is not unique and has

Conclusion

253

been observed in other countries (Tilly and Tarrow 2007), but it is quite original in the post-Oslo period with the growing recourse to financial subsides and the competition to influence public awareness and state answers. • The articulation of “radicalism” and “pragmatism” is also a question of strategy and perception. As Lamarche, Feinstein, and Renno have pointed out, peace organizations address the issue of the Israeli occupation in different terms. Schwartz has highlighted this diversity, partly linked to the militants’ identity, in even more comparative terms, showing that it concerns also Northern Ireland and South Africa. Some organizations opt for radical actions on the border, other prefer mainstream criticism or a distant support. Their “radicalism” depends on their position toward the constructed and moving consensus. Ginsburg has demonstrated how the human rights discourse of peace organizations can be reshaped and reframed by the state discourse on sovereignty. Then their public image and perception condition their impact and resonance on public authorities and public opinion. Anarchists are thus marginalized because they are perceived as radical and less influential in parliamentary politics than the consensual moderates. They stand out of the consensus and cannot influence an Israeli public that feels that Palestinian society is a threat. On the other side, settlers too are perceived as radical because they defend the Greater Israel, a less and less consensual concept in a context where Israelis dream increasingly of borders. But contrary to the radical antioccupation militants, the settler movement is well organized and influential in parliamentary politics (Khalfa and Kailani). Thus they have adopted a politics of both protest and influence within the state structure. Largely supported by the extreme right and Jewish religious parties, the settlement policy is continuing. • The issue of the content and borders of Israeli democracy raises the question of the variable legitimacy of civil organization to protest and the relative legitimacy of the state to answer. This complexity has been analyzed by Salenson, who has illustrated the specific status and hybrid position of East Jerusalem inhabitants. She has shown how their actions for city planning can lead to the legitimization of the Israeli state’s presence in this territory still claimed by the Palestinian Authority as its capital. Borders of the Israeli state are disputed, and the precarious rights of Jerusalem residents blur the frontiers of Israeli democracy. The question of relations between mobilization and the legitimacy of public policies is not new, but it is exacerbated in the Israeli-Palestinian context and by

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the existence of multistatused spaces and peoples. Thus, the widespread encroachment and control of Israeli public policies in East Jerusalem reduces Palestinian presence. This illustrates the administrative force of occupation and the political legitimization process of social negotiation. Furthermore, this book has led to new correlated reflections and hypotheses on the openness to transborder networks and the demobilization process. These two processes are linked, if not articulated, to the mobilization process we largely have explored in this book. Indeed, openness to transnational networks is a new resource largely adopted by civil organizations and movements around the world. The most prominent ones involve organizations around the antiglobalization movement that meet regularly in international forums. Some Israeli and Palestinian human rights’ organizations participate to these meetings, which spread expertise, repertoires of action, strategies, and shared experiences. These forms of transnational mobilization do not refer to an idealistic “global civil society” but rather to punctual shared beliefs and struggles. Another dimension of these transnational relations is characterized by Israeli-Palestinian joint activities. Several studies have developed over the last ten years to question the reality and efficiency of shared agendas encouraged by the Oslo peace process (see the Israeli-Palestine Journal 2005–2006; Salem 2007). It seems today that Arab-Jewish initiatives have collapsed or reconfigured in more radical terms. Many activists reduced their involvement, focused on their own interests, while others radicalize their action in more violent demonstrations. Another point on transborder mobilization concerns Jewish immigrants in Israel, especially American and European immigrants, the way they import their own repertoires of action and the way they stay connected to their previous homeland. In addition, a few studies have analyzed the relations within the Palestinian people between Israeli Arabs, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. This is an interesting approach to diasporic mobilizations, since the conflict can bring nearer the various Palestinian mobilizations but at the same time embody them in their territorial realities. Finally, since we have largely focused on the mobilization process throughout this book, nobody can deny the increasing opposite or maybe correlative phenomenon, that of people’s demobilization. This phenomenon involves both ex-militants’ disengagement (see Fillieule 2005) and demobilization as a strategy of passivity and renouncement. According to Hirschman, people face three options: exit, voice,

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or loyalty (1970). We have already described the articulation of voice (mobilization, protest, and violence) and loyalty (institutionalization and support). But we did not develop the third reality, that of “exit.” When we talk with people in Israel and Palestine, we find, alongside those movements that gather very different ideologies and militants, also apathy and renunciation. Tilly and Tarrow conclude their book with the observation that the apathy sentiment (2007, 199) leads people to stay at home and recenter on what Hirschman calls “private interest” (1982). This explains why many students of Israeli and Palestinian societies question the growing passivity of the young generation of Israelis, the renunciation by Palestinians of collective interests, and the attitude of accommodation that lead young Israeli-Arab couples to live in settlements in the Jerusalem periphery. All these interrogations constitute the reverse side of the mobilization process that is found so often in the media, particularly when mobilization involves contention and violence. All these interrogations constitute the natural coextension of a long-term conflict that mobilizes as well as demobilizes.

Referenc es Fillieule, Olivier, ed. 2005. Le désengagement militant. Paris: Belin. Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, voice and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations and states. Harvard University Press. ———. 1982. Shifting involvements: Private interest and public action. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Palestine Israel Journal. 2005–2006. People to People: What went wrong and how to fix it. Palestine Israel Journal vol. 12, no. 4 and vol. 13, no. 1. Salem, Walid. 2007. Joint activism in Jerusalem: Is a joint community based agenda possible? Palestine Israel Journal 14, no. 1. Tilly, Charles, and Sidney Tarrow. 2007. Contentious Politics. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.


4 Index

Abbas, Mahmoud, 2 Abraham Fund, 192 Abu Basma Council, 215, 217, 222, 224 Adalah, 23, 170–72, 174–80, 182–85, 220, 240 advocacy, 4, 11–12, 130, 138, 168, 190, 192, 195, 197, 201–2, 208–9, 211, 216, 220, 222–27, 252 Alternative Information Center, 151 American immigrants, 17, 18, 53–65 Anarchists against the Wall (AATW), 10, 74, 76–77, 79, 80, 82–83, 85–87, 107–8, 113, 119, 122 Arafat, Yasser, 2, 31, 113, 151, 249 As-Siwar, 203, 208 Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), 169–70, 147, 172–74, 176–80, 184–85, 196 Association of Forty, 218, 221 Baqa al-Gharbiya, 194 Barak, Ehud, 31, 35, 151 barrier of security/separation fence/ wall, 2, 5, 8, 12, 29, 76, 80, 83–84, 90, 93, 95, 107–8, 111–19, 124–26, 140–41 Bat Shalom, 133, 142, 202 Bedouin, 13, 19, 179–81, 192, 194–95, 203, 209–10, 212, 214–30, 235

Begin, Menahem, 31 Beit Surik, 111–12, 115–19, 124 Bil’in, 12, 79–80, 83, 86, 90, 108, 111–16, 118–20 Bimkom, 243 Bustan al-Salam, 61 Camp David, negotiations, 31, 151 Communist party, 188, 190–91, 193, 196, 199, 204–5, 208, 230 Courage to Refuse, 74–75, 77–78, 80, 82, 84–87 Dai La’Kibush, 4, 10 democracy, 5, 8–9, 11–12, 22, 39, 48, 58, 109, 122, 155–56, 167, 191–92, 227, 234, 246, 251–3 depolitization, 173, 198, 211 Derech Anitzot, 10 Durban conference, 222 East-Jerusalem, 11, 19, 39, 59, 88, 124, 233–35, 237–44, 246, 248, 250, 253 feminist organizations, 9–10, 16–17, 79, 108, 110, 120, 133, 139, 141, 188–89, 193–97, 201, 203 Follow-Up Committee for Arab Affairs, 169, 215 Ford Foundation, 167, 192

258

Index

Four Mothers, 73, 75 Galilee, 19, 145–46, 149–52, 156, 159–60, 190, 195, 196, 203, 207, 230 Gaza withdrawal/disengagement, 2, 4, 5, 13, 18, 27–33, 35, 38–46, 48, 50, 254 governance, 9, 13, 19, 209–10, 212–15, 224–27, 236, 251, 252 Gush Emunim, 30–31, 40, 46, 48–50, 56–60, 58 Gush Etzion, 59–60, 64, 68 Gush Katif, 31, 45, 50 Gush Shalom, 73, 85, 851 Haifa, 23, 48–49, 102–3, 121, 148, 159, 179, 184–85, 188, 190–91, 195–96, 203, 208, 218 Hamas, 2, 35–36, 79, 241–2 HaShomer HaTsaïr, 154–55, 161 High Court of Justice, 108, 115–18, 121 Hebron, 4, 42, 59, 68, 85, 235 Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD), 245 Intifada First Intifada, 10, 61, 73, 75, 198, 238, 249 Second Intifada or Intifada al-Aqsa, 2–4, 6, 10, 14, 73, 75–76, 97, 112–13, 150–51, 160, 176, 189, 198, 200, 202–3, 211, 216, 238, 249, 251 Isha la Isha, 196, 202, 203 Islamic movement, 6, 13, 193, 196, 204, 222, 230 Israeli Jewish Council for Interreligious Relations, 61 Israeli Committee, 73, 245

Jerusalem Community Centers Society (JJCS), 242 Jerusalem Link, 10, 20 Jewish Agency, 23, 145, 147, 149–50, 170 Jewish Home Party, 36 Judaization of Galilee, 145–46, 149 judicialization, 16, 19, 165–66, 168, 183, 237 Kach movement, 59, 60, 69 Kadima, 6, 34–35, 50–51 Kayan, 203, 208 Knesset, 30–31, 33–34, 43, 66, 69, 168, 179, 196 Knesset elections, 6, 34–36, 44, 51, 55, 57–58, 149, 168, 208, 215 Kol Aher baGalil, 146, 150–55, 157, 161 Labor Party, 6, 10, 34, 37, 160–61, 196, 208 Land Day, 5,188, 216 lawyering, 165–72, 175, 177, 180–81 Lebanon, 2–3, 10, 35, 42, 44, 73, 75, 86, 89, 201 Legal Clinic of Tel-Aviv University, 171, 174, 177–78, 180, 184 Likud, 6, 30, 32, 34–37, 39, 45, 48, 50–51, 57, 84, 145, 157, 160, 208 Livni, Tzipi, 35 Ma’an, 195 Machsom Watch, 10, 74–75, 77–78, 80, 82–84, 86–87, 90, 92, 104 Mafdal, 57–58 Mapaï, 161, 168, 208 Matzpen, 10 Meretz, 10, 160, 196 Mevasseret Zion, 111, 115–16, 119, 124 Mitzpim, 14, 145, 147,160

Index Moriah Fund, 192 Mossawa, 23 Mothers against Silence, 75 National Religious Party, 27–28, 30, 33–34, 36, 48, 57 National Union, 27, 28, 33, 34, 36, 57 Nazareth, 150,188, 190–91, 195, 205, 207 Netanyahu, Benyamin, 35–36, 45, 50 New Israel Fund, 168, 170, 184, 192 new social movements, 9, 16, 93, 109, 142 Northern Ireland, 12, 19, 127, 130–31, 135, 143, 253 October 2000, events, 5, 145–46, 150, 154–55, 160, 176, 182, 203, 211, 217 Olmert, Ehud, 2, 34, 51, 217 open society, 192 Or Commission, 182, 185 Orient House, 241, 249 Oslo peace process, 1–4, 6, 18, 29, 30, 36–38, 73, 198, 202, 209–10, 216, 248–49, 251, 253–4 Oxfam, 192 Palestinian Authority, 173, 198, 201, 233–34, 239, 241, 248–49, 253 Palestinian Housing Council, 241, 249 Peace Now, 10, 50, 56, 58, 73, 89, 131, 142, 151 Physicians for Human Rights, 73, 142, 220 politicization, 6, 18, 188–91,197, 199, 204, 212 professionalization, 12–14, 17, 167, 187, 196–98, 238

259

Qa’adan Affair, 169, 170, 173, 176–77, 180, 183–4 Rabbis for Human Rights, 10, 54, 61, 66, 73, 85 radicalization, 6, 18, 42, 210, 216, 251–2 Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages (RCUV), 217–26, 230 settler movement, 2–6, 9–11, 13, 18, 27–47, 51, 53, 57, 59, 62, 66, 68, 84–86, 113, 147, 209, 252–3 Sharon, Ariel, 2, 6, 29, 31–34, 50, 112, 151, 217, 222, 224, 230–1 Shas, 34, 58 Shatil, 192 Shdulat Hanashim, 196, 202 Sikkuï baMisgav, 146, 150–55, 157, 158, 161 Sinai, 31, 37, 145 South Africa, 12, 19, 95, 127, 131–32, 134–35, 142, 253 sovereignty, 11, 18, 32, 91, 93–96, 98–100, 112–14, 123, 213, 227, 233–34, 240, 242–43, 253 Supreme Court, 83, 117, 120, 149, 157, 165, 169, 171–73, 175, 177–79, 181, 220–1 Ta’ayush, 74, 76–77, 79–80, 82–83, 85, 87, 151 Taba, negotiations, 2, 31 Tajammu’, 196, 199–200, 204, 230 TANDI, 188, 190–91, 193, 196 Tufula, 191, 195–6 Ulpan Akiva, 62 United Unions, 2, 191, 201, 220, 222, 230

260 USAID, 239, 249 Welfare Association, 239, 241, 249 Women Against the Invasion of Lebanon, 75 Women against Violence, 191, 195 Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling, 200–201 Women for Women Political Prisoners, 10

Index Women in Black, 4, 10, 75, 85, 105, 131, 133, 142, 202 Women in Green, 60–61, 84 Yakar Center for Torah, 61 Yesh Din, 87 Yesh Gvul, 4, 73, 85, 89, 131,133–34, 142 Yesha Council, 30, 40, 42, 50 Yisrael Beitenu, 6, 34, 51, 58

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