Download or read book Polarization and Consensus Building in Israel written by Elie Friedman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume examines the most pressing social and political issues confronting Israel from a multidisciplinary perspective, focusing on the breakdown of social solidarity and the inability to formulate consensus. The contributors – encompassing political scientists, historians, communication researchers, sociologists, economists, and educators – focus on specific topics that serve as exemplary cases of various trends of consensus and polarization. These trends are examined in the context of ideological, religious, economic, national, and ethnic cleavages. In addition, this volume analyzes how political actors’ preference for “non-decision” on various issues has resulted in the maintenance of a status quo, with cleavages or conflicts being neither mitigated nor polarized. Together, this collection of articles paints a picture of Israel as a state racked by increasing polarization along ideological and religious lines. It is argued that this difficulty in determining a consensual definition of the state threatens to destroy social solidarity in Israel altogether, a climate in which “the center cannot hold.” This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the major internal threats to Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish-democratic state and will also appeal to sociologists and political scientists interested in global polarization trends.
Download or read book American Public Opinion toward Israel written by Amnon Cavari and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines trends in American public opinion about Israel in over 75 years, from 1944 to 2019. Analyzing data from hundreds of surveys in jargon-free writing, the authors show that public support for Israel has seen a dramatic shift toward increased division between partisan and select demographic groups, elaborating on the implications that this important change may have for the countries’ special relationship. Scholars and students of American foreign policy, public opinion, Middle East politics and international relations, as well as policy analysts, policymakers, journalists and anyone interested in American policy toward Israel, will want to read this book. Special Features An Online Appendix including all surveys used throughout the book. A Roper Center-approved Data Tool that allows readers to create their own figures based on data used in the book: https://www.idc.ac.il/en/schools/government/research/apoi/pages/data-tool.aspx
Download or read book Overlapping Regional Orders in the Middle East and North Africa written by Jordi Quero and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-24 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focused on a set of overlapping international orders of regional scope present in the Middle East and North Africa, this book argues that rules and primary institutions have sanctioned the foreign behavior of the sub-system’s international actors since 1945. The author avoids recent IR trends focused on narrow case studies, instead providing a comprehensive overview of the MENA’s regional politics. The normative content and evolution of multiple international orders are examined, constituting the intra-Arab order, the Arab-Israeli order and the Arab-Iranian order, as well as the expression of the global order in regional interactions. Drawing on Area Studies and English School and constructivist IR theories, the author argues that a plurality of overlapping regional orders have coexisted since 1945, not just one as is commonly suggested in the literature. Each of these orders is integrated by different participants and has developed its own differentiated norms and institutions setting parameters on legitimate behavior. This analytical proposal helps make sense of foreign relations otherwise labeled as incoherent. The book has wide appeal, accessible both to students wishing to learn about the politics, history and sociology of the Middle East, as well as to specialists seeking original research on the functioning of the MENA’s regional orders.
Download or read book From the 1919 Revolution to the 2011 Arab Spring written by Uzi Rabi and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-05-08 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focused on three Egyptian revolutions—in 1919, 1952, and 2011—this edited book argues that each of these revolutions is a milestone which represents a meaningful turning point in modern Egyptian history. Revolutions are typically characterized by a fundamental change in political and social infrastructures as well as in the establishment of new values and norms. However, it should be noted that this may not be entirely applicable when examining the context of the three Egyptian revolutions: the 1919 revolution failed to liberate Egypt from British colonial hegemony; the 1952 revolution failed to rework the country’s social and economic systems and unify the Arab world; and the "Arab Spring" revolution of 2011 culminated in a chaotic economic and social catastrophe, thus failing to solve the young generation’s crisis. Nevertheless, by revisiting and re-defining these revolutions through diverse theoretical frameworks, the book proposes that each of them played a significant role in shaping Egypt’s political, social, and cultural identity. This book is specifically of interest for students, historians, and social scientists with a keen interest in Egyptian history and the Middle East, offering fresh perspectives and insights into these transformative moments in Egypt’s history.
Download or read book Iran and the West written by Andrew Thomas and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-04-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores non-Western approaches to foreign policy in the context of Iran in order to encourage wider consideration of non-Western scholarship in international relations. Throughout its existence IR has drawn primarily on Western thought and experience, leaving other perspectives on the periphery of discourse. As the field becomes more about contexts beyond the West, this has become a challenge for creating a truly ‘global’ field of study. Concepts like ‘national interest,’ ‘rationality’ and ‘pragmatism’ are often applied to Iran without considering what these concepts mean in the context of Iranian political identity. The aim of this book is to highlight the contemporary relevance of native Iranian and non-Western perspectives to IR analysis, returning complexity and critique to Iranian studies. To do this, the author examines four of Iran’s political encounters with the West, including its resistance to sanctions policy and negotiations surrounding its nuclear program. Ultimately, the book argues that ignoring Iranian motivations of identity has routinely resulted in missed opportunities, growing tensions and failed coercive policy. The book will prove valuable reading for students and researchers interested in international relations theory, Iranian history and Middle East studies.
Download or read book Reconstructing the Civic written by Amal Jamal and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-08-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstructing the Civic examines the civic activism of the homeland Palestinian minority in Israel. Employing a multi-methodological and empirically rich approach, Amal Jamal blends historical description with interviews of Palestinian elites drawn from a diverse range of civil society groups such as NGOs, youth movements, and religious organizations. He also critiques the failure of Western/liberal scholarship to account for the experience of minority civil society organizations in illiberal social and political contexts, largely because this literature assumes there is an inherent relationship between civil society and democracy. Jamal places an important spotlight on the complex interplay between liberal and illiberal trends in the emergence, organization, and transformation of Palestinian civil society in Israel as well as the need to introduce an alternative ethical model that aims to reconstruct ethnic states in universal civic terms.
Download or read book Wars Internal Conflicts and Political Order written by Gad Barzilai and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive research study to analyze and explain the influence the prolonged Arab-Israeli conflict has had on Israel. It focuses on the manner in which all of the Israeli-Arab wars since 1949, including the Intifada and the Gulf War, have affected state and society in Israel. In addition, it examines the influences of other, more limited Israeli military operations. These subjects are investigated within a broad theoretical framework based on a critical analysis of the literature. The author suggests an analytic qualitative model for understanding wars and internal political order and makes significant corrections to paradigms that deal with political order and wars, from the Marxist paradigm to the liberal paradigm.
Download or read book Building Democracy on Sand written by Arye Carmon and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than seven decades after the founding of Israel, the momentum to establish a Jewish state has led to remarkable achievements in the nation's “hardware”: stable structures in government, the military, and the economy. At the same time, the “operating system,” the guidelines that accommodate human diversity and enable coexistence, is still riddled with weaknesses. Arye Carmon diagnoses the critical vulnerabilities at the heart of Israeli democracy and the obstacles to forming a sustainable national consciousness. The author merges touching narratives about his own life in Israel with insightful ruminations on the Jewish diaspora and the arc of Israel's history, illuminating the conflicts between Jewish identities and between democratic values and the halacha—the collective body of Jewish religious laws.There is no consensus on the characteristics that define Israel as a state that is both Jewish and democratic. Rather, the struggle between a secular and a religious Jewish identity, amid voices promoting ethnocentric nationalism, threatens to sever the ties that strengthen democracy.This cultural fragility has far-reaching implications for Israeli institutions and deepens societal rifts. Israel lacks a constitution to bind its democracy and a bill of rights to safeguard the freedoms of its citizens, enable the inclusion of diverse outlooks and beliefs, and underpin the norms of its civil society.
Download or read book Keeping the Peace written by Daniel Byman and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2002-03-08 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What strategies can a government use to end violent ethnic conflicts in the long term? Under what conditions do these strategies work best? Daniel Byman examines how government policies can affect the recurrence of violent ethnic conflict.
Download or read book The Building of Consensus in Egypt s Transition Process written by Noha El-Mikawy and published by American Univ in Cairo Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this rich and thought-provoking study, Noha el-Mikawy explores the changes that have been occurring in Egypt's political system over the past thirty years--three very important decades in the country's transition from authoritarian rule to democracy. By focussing on consensus-building as analytically central to the transition process, el-Mikawy has picked up an original and very fruitful vein in the theoretical debate about the politics of transition and democracy. Her account of the inner workings and ideological divisions among the country's major political parties provides a wealth of detail for the 1980s and early 1990s nowhere else to be found. This book is likely to make a breakthrough in the conspiracy of silence hitherto affecting the inclusion of the Egyptian experience as an empirical reference point in the theoretical literature of transition.
Download or read book Memory Activism written by Yifat Gutman and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SAGE Memory Studies Journal & Memory Studies Association Outstanding First Book Award, Honorable Mention, 2019 Set in Israel in the first decade of the twenty-first century and based on long-term fieldwork, this rich ethnographic study offers an innovative analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It explores practices of "memory activism" by three groups of Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Palestinian citizens--Zochrot, Autobiography of a City, and Baladna--showing how they appropriated the global model of truth and reconciliation while utilizing local cultural practices such as tours and testimonies. These activist efforts gave visibility to a silenced Palestinian history in order to come to terms with the conflict's origins and envision a new resolution for the future. This unique focus on memory as a weapon of the weak reveals a surprising shift in awareness of Palestinian suffering among the Jewish majority of Israeli society in a decade of escalating violence and polarization--albeit not without a backlash. Contested memories saturate this society. The 1948 war is remembered as both Independence Day by Israelis and al-Nakba ("the catastrophe") by Palestinians. The walking tour and survivor testimonies originally deployed by the state for national Zionist education that marginalized Palestinian citizens are now being appropriated by activists for tours of pre-state Palestinian villages and testimonies by refugees.
Download or read book Zionist Israel and Apartheid South Africa written by Amneh Badran and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comparison of two ethnic-national "apartheid" states – South Africa and Israel – which have been in conflict, and how internal dissent has developed. In particular it examines the evolution of effective white protest in South Africa and explores the reasons why comparably powerful movements have not emerged in Israel. The book reveals patterns of behaviour shared by groups in both cases. It argues that although the role played by protest groups in peace-building may be limited, a tipping point, or ‘magic point’, can become as significant as other major factors. It highlights the role played by intermediate variables that affect the pathways of protest groups: such as changes in the international system; the visions and strategies of resistance movements and their degree of success; the economic relationship between the dominant and dominated side; and the legitimacy of the ideology in power (apartheid or Zionism). Although the politics and roles of protest groups in both cases share some similarities, differences remain. Whilst white protest groups moved towards an inclusive peace agenda that adopts the ANC vision of a united non-racial democratic South Africa, the Jewish Israeli protest groups are still, by majority, entrenched in their support for an exclusive Jewish state. And as such, they support separation between the two peoples and a limited division of mandatory Palestine / ‘Eretz Israel’. This timely book sheds light on a controversial and explosive political issue: Israel being compared to apartheid South Africa.
Download or read book The Dynamics of Israeli Palestinian Relations written by B. Soetendorp and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-04-02 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at Israeli-Palestinian relations through three different conceptual lenses: the individual decision-maker, domestic politics, and the international system. It examines key choices made by Israelis and Palestinians regarding three central issues: the 1947 UN Partition Plan, the Lebanon invasion in 1982, and the 1993 Oslo Agreements.
Download or read book Peacemaking in the Middle East written by Paul Marantz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-22 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, first published in 1985, examines the whole problem of peacemaking in the Arab-Israel conflict. It considers the different countries involved, the changing positions they have adopted over time and the range of opinion within each country. It looks at the role of the superpowers and shows how their vacillations and their viewing of the conflict in simple terms as part of the global superpower rivalry have been unfortunate. It examines how a typical uncommitted medium power – Canada – can contribute to peace in very many ways though it may not achieve a breakthrough.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Israeli Politics and Society written by Reuven Y. Hazan and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Few countries receive as much attention as Israel and are at the same time as misunderstood. The Oxford Handbook of Israeli Politics and Society brings together leading Israeli and international figures to offer the most wide-ranging treatment available of an intriguing country. It serves as a comprehensive reference for the growing field of Israel studies and is also a significant resource for students and scholars of comparative politics, recognizing that in many ways Israel is not unique, but rather a test case of democracy in deeply divided societies and states engaged in intense conflict. The handbook presents an overview of the historical development of Israeli democracy through chapters examining the country's history, contemporary society, political institutions, international relations, and most pressing political issues. It outlines the most relevant developments over time while not shying away from the strife both in and around Israel. It presents opposed narratives in full force, enabling readers to make their own judgments"--
Download or read book The Israeli Economy written by Joseph Zeira and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative economic history of Israel from its founding to the present In 1922, there were ninety thousand Jews in Palestine, a small country in a poor and volatile region. Today, Israel has a population of nine million and is one of the richest countries in the world. The Israeli Economy tells the story of this remarkable transformation, shedding critical new light on Israel's rapid economic growth. Joseph Zeira takes readers from those early days to today, describing how Israel's economic development occurred amid intense fighting with the Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries. He reveals how the new state's astonishing growth continued into the early 1970s, and traces this growth to public investment in education and to large foreign transfers. Zeira analyzes the costs of the Arab-Israeli conflict, demonstrating how economic output could be vastly greater with a comprehensive peace. He discusses how Israel went through intensive neoliberal economic policies in recent decades, and shows how these policies not only failed to enhance economic performance, but led to significant social inequality. Based on more than two decades of groundbreaking research, The Israeli Economy is an in-depth survey of a modern economy that has experienced rapid growth, wars, immigration waves, and other significant shocks. It thus offers important lessons for nations around the world.
Download or read book The Lingering Conflict written by Itamar Rabinovich and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011-11-11 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Lingering Conflict Itamar Rabinovich, a former chief negotiator for Israel, provides unique and authoritative insight into the prospects for genuine peace in the Middle East. His presentation includes a detailed insider account of the peace processes of 1992–96 and a frank dissection of the more dispiriting record since then. Rabinovich's firsthand experiences as a negotiator and as Israel's ambassador to the United States provide a valuable perspective from which to view the major players involved. Fresh analysis of ongoing situations in the region and the author's authoritative take on key figures such as Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu shed new light on the long and tumultuous history of Arab-Israeli relations. His book is a shrewd assessment of the past and current state of affairs in the Middle East, as well as a sober look at the prospects for a peaceful future. While Rabinovich explains the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians—a classic dispute between two national movements claiming the same land— The Lingering Conflict also considers the broader political, cultural, and increasingly religious conflict between the Jewish state and Arab nationalism. He approaches the troubled region in an international context, offering provocative analysis of America's evolving role and evaluation of its diplomatic performance. This book builds on the author's previous seminal work on geopolitics in the Middle East, particularly Waging Peace. As Rabinovich brings the Arab-Israeli conflict up to date, he widens the scope of his earlier insights into efforts to achieve normal, peaceful relations. And, of course, he takes full account of recent social and political tumult in the Middle East, discussing the Arab Spring uprisings—and the subsequent retaliation by dictators such as Syria's al-Asad and Libya's Qaddafi—in the context of Arab-Israeli relations.
