Israel, Strategic Culture and the Conflict with Hamas

Israel, Strategic Culture and the Conflict with Hamas PDF Author: Niccolò Petrelli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351709313
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive overview of the impact of ‘strategic culture’ on Israeli military operations against Hamas between 1987 and 2014. It has often been argued that Israeli policies and military operations against Hamas have proven tactically effective, but strategically disastrous, allowing the Islamic Resistance Movement to grow from a small spin-off of the Muslim Brotherhood into a powerful military and political actor in the Palestinian arena. This book argues, contrary to this opinion, that Israel was effective in its struggle against the Islamic Resistance Movement between 1987 and 2014, as the Jewish state ultimately managed to deny the majority of Hamas' strategic aims and to preserve a position of relative strength. By relying on a synthesis of primary sources, interviews, memoirs, scholarly and professional military studies and information gathered from the media, the study delivers a careful and comprehensive analysis of the conflict. It provides an historical outline of the development of the Israeli ‘strategic culture’ and analyzes its impact on the process of military adaptation during the First Intifada, the Oslo Peace Process, the al-Aqsa Intifada and the Gaza wars. Finally, the book illuminates how the Israeli strategic culture moulded a distinctive ‘way of war’ that, though marked by successes and failures, ultimately proved effective against Hamas. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, Middle Eastern politics, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and security studies in general.

Israel, Strategic Culture and the Conflict with Hamas

Israel, Strategic Culture and the Conflict with Hamas PDF Author: Niccolò Petrelli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351709313
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book

Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive overview of the impact of ‘strategic culture’ on Israeli military operations against Hamas between 1987 and 2014. It has often been argued that Israeli policies and military operations against Hamas have proven tactically effective, but strategically disastrous, allowing the Islamic Resistance Movement to grow from a small spin-off of the Muslim Brotherhood into a powerful military and political actor in the Palestinian arena. This book argues, contrary to this opinion, that Israel was effective in its struggle against the Islamic Resistance Movement between 1987 and 2014, as the Jewish state ultimately managed to deny the majority of Hamas' strategic aims and to preserve a position of relative strength. By relying on a synthesis of primary sources, interviews, memoirs, scholarly and professional military studies and information gathered from the media, the study delivers a careful and comprehensive analysis of the conflict. It provides an historical outline of the development of the Israeli ‘strategic culture’ and analyzes its impact on the process of military adaptation during the First Intifada, the Oslo Peace Process, the al-Aqsa Intifada and the Gaza wars. Finally, the book illuminates how the Israeli strategic culture moulded a distinctive ‘way of war’ that, though marked by successes and failures, ultimately proved effective against Hamas. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, Middle Eastern politics, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and security studies in general.

Hamas and Israel

Hamas and Israel PDF Author: Sherifa Zuhur
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis has heightened since 2001, even as any perceived threat to Israel from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, or even Syria, has declined. Israel, according to Chaim Herzog, Israel's sixth President, had been "born in battle" and would be "obliged to live by the sword." Yet, the Israeli government's conquest and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza brought about a very difficult challenge, although resistance on a mass basis was only taken upyears later in the First Intifadha. Israel could not tolerate Palestinian Arabs' resistance of their authority on the legal basis of denial of self-determination,2 and eventually preferred to grant some measures of self-determination while continuing to consolidate control of the Occupied Territories, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. However, a comprehensive peace, shimmering in the distance, has eluded all. Inter-Israeli and inter-Palestinian divisions deepenedas peace danced closer before retreating. Israel's stance towards the democratically elected Palestinian government headed by HAMAS in 2006, and towards Palestinian national coherence-legal, territorial, political, and economic-has been a major obstacle to substantive peacemaking. The reasons for recalcitrant Israeli and HAMAS stances illustrate both continuities and changes in the dynamics of conflict since the Oslo period (roughly 1994 to the al-Aqsa Intifadha of 2000). Now, more than ever, a long-term truce and negotiations are necessary. These could lead in stages to that mirage-like peace, and a new type of security regime. The rise in popularity and strength of the HAMAS (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, or Movement of the Islamic Resistance) Organization and its interaction with Israel is important to an understanding of Israel's "Arab" policies and its approach to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. The crisis brought about by the electoral success of HAMAS in 2006 also challenged Western powers' commitment to democratic change in the Middle East because Palestinians had supported the organization in the polls. Thus, the viability of a twostate solution rested on an Israeli acknowledgement of the Islamist movement, HAMAS, and on Fatah's ceding power to it. Shifts in Israel's stated national security objectives (and dissent over them) reveal HAMAS' placement at the nexus of Israel's domestic, Israeli-Palestinian, and regional objectives. Israel has treated certain enemies differently than others: Iran, Hizbullah, and Islamist Palestinians (whether HAMAS, supporters of Islamic Jihad, or the Islamic Movement inside Israel) all fall into a particular rubric in which Islamism-the most salient and enduring socio religious movement in the Middle East in the wake of Arab nationalism-is identified with terrorism and insurgency rather than with group politics and identity. The antipathy to religious fervor was somewhat ironic in light of Israel's own expanding "religious" (haredim) groups.

Routledge Handbook of Strategic Culture

Routledge Handbook of Strategic Culture PDF Author: Kerry M. Kartchner
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000956350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
This handbook offers a collection of cutting-edge essays on all aspects of strategic culture by a mix of international scholars, consultants, military officers, and policymakers. The volume explicitly addresses the analytical conundrums faced by scholars who wish to employ or generate strategic cultural insights, with substantive commentary on defining and scoping strategic culture, analytic frameworks and approaches, levels of analysis, sources of strategic culture, and modalities of change in strategic culture. The chapters engage strategic culture at the civilizational, regional, supra-national, national, non-state actor, and organizational levels. The volume is divided into five thematic parts, which will appeal to both students who are new to the subject and scholars who wish to incorporate strategic culture into their toolbox of analytical techniques. Part I assesses the evolving theoretical strengths and weaknesses of the field. Part II lays out elements of the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field, including sources and components of strategic culture. Part III presents a number of national strategic cultural profiles, representing the state of contemporary strategic culture scholarship. Part IV addresses the utility of strategic culture for practitioners and scholars. Part V summarizes the key theoretical and practical insights offered by the volume’s contributors. This handbook will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, defense studies, security studies, and international relations in general, as well as to professional practitioners.

Triadic Coercion

Triadic Coercion PDF Author: Wendy Pearlman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231548540
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
In the post–Cold War era, states increasingly find themselves in conflicts with nonstate actors. Finding it difficult to fight these opponents directly, many governments instead target states that harbor or aid nonstate actors, using threats and punishment to coerce host states into stopping those groups. Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili investigate this strategy, which they term triadic coercion. They explain why states pursue triadic coercion, evaluate the conditions under which it succeeds, and demonstrate their arguments across seventy years of Israeli history. This rich analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict, supplemented with insights from India and Turkey, yields surprising findings. Traditional discussions of interstate conflict assume that the greater a state’s power compared to its opponent, the more successful its coercion. Turning that logic on its head, Pearlman and Atzili show that this strategy can be more effective against a strong host state than a weak one because host regimes need internal cohesion and institutional capacity to move against nonstate actors. If triadic coercion is thus likely to fail against weak regimes, why do states nevertheless employ it against them? Pearlman and Atzili’s investigation of Israeli decision-making points to the role of strategic culture. A state’s system of beliefs, values, and institutionalized practices can encourage coercion as a necessary response, even when that policy is prone to backfire. A significant contribution to scholarship on deterrence, asymmetric conflict, and strategic culture, Triadic Coercion illuminates an evolving feature of the international security landscape and interrogates assumptions that distort strategic thinking.

Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies

Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies PDF Author: Beatrice Heuser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107135044
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
A study of the evolving 'national styles' of conducting insurgencies and counter-insurgency, as influenced by transnational trends, ideas and practices.

The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction

The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Martin Bunton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199603936
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
"The conflict between Palestine and Israel is one of the most highly publicized and bitter struggles of modern times, a dangerous tinderbox always poised to set the Middle East aflame, and to draw the United States into the fire. In this volume the author illuminates the history of the problem, reducing it to its very essence. He explores the Palestinian-Israeli dispute in twenty-year segments, to highlight the historical complexity of the conflict throughout successive decades. Each chapter starts with an examination of the relationships among people and events that marked particular years as historical stepping stones in the evolution of the conflict, including the 1897 Basel Congress, the 1917 Balfour Declaration and British occupation of Palestine, and the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan and the war for Palestine. Providing an exploration of the main issues, the author explores not only the historical basis of the conflict, but also looks at how and why partition has been so difficult and how efforts to restore peace continue today"--OCLC

War and Strategy in the Modern World

War and Strategy in the Modern World PDF Author: Azar Gat
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351802798
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
This volume brings together some of Professor Azar Gat's most significant articles on the evolution of strategic doctrines and the transformation of war during the 20th and early 21st centuries. It sheds new light on the rise of the German Panzer arm and the doctrine of Blitzkrieg between the two world wars; explores the factors behind the formation of strategic policy and military doctrine in the world war era and during the cold war; and explains why counterinsurgency has become such a problem. The book concludes with the spread of peace in the developed world, challenged as it is by the rise of the authoritarian-capitalist great powers – China and Russia – and by the chilling prospect of unconventional terrorism. This last essay summarizes the author's latest research and has not previously been published in article form. This collection will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, military history, and international relations.

Culture & Conflict Resolution

Culture & Conflict Resolution PDF Author: Kevin Avruch
Publisher: US Institute of Peace Press
ISBN: 9781878379825
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
After years of relative neglect, culture is finally receiving due recognition as a key factor in the evolution and resolution of conflicts. Unfortunately, however, when theorists and practitioners of conflict resolution speak of culture, they often understand and use it in a bewildering and unhelpful variety of ways. With sophistication and lucidity, "Culture and Conflict Resolution" exposes these shortcomings and proposes an alternative conception in which culture is seen as dynamic and derivative of individual experience. The book explores divergent theories of social conflict and differing strategies that shape the conduct of diplomacy, and examines the role that culture has (and has not) played in conflict resolution. The author is as forceful in critiquing those who would dismiss or diminish culture s relevance as he is trenchant in advocating conflict resolution approaches that make the most productive use of a coherent concept of culture. In a lively style, Avruch challenges both scholars and practitioners not only to develop a clearer understanding of what culture is, but also to take that understanding and incorporate it into more effective conflict resolution processes."

Gaza Conflict 2021

Gaza Conflict 2021 PDF Author: Jonathan Schanzer
Publisher: Foundation for Defense of Democracies
ISBN: 9781956450019
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The May 2021 conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas generated headlines around the world. However, much of the reporting ignored the history, funding, political dynamics, and other key components of the story. Hamas initiates conflict every few years. But the reporting rarely improves. Social media has only further clouded the picture. Hamas is rarely held responsible for its use of "human shields," blindly firing rockets at civilian areas in Israel, or diverting aid that should benefit the people of Gaza. The Islamic Republic of Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism, has been the primary patron of Hamas since the group's inception in the late 1980s. Hamas has received additional assistance over the years from Qatar, Turkey and Malaysia. These countries are fomenting conflict, while others, such as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, have tried to minimize it. Gaza is therefore ground zero in a struggle for the future stability of the Middle East. The Biden administration has important choices to make. Its intent to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal could have significant consequences, given that sanctions relief to Iran will likely yield a financial boon for Hamas, along with other Iranian proxies. The Biden administration must also come to terms with "The Squad," a small but loud faction of the Democratic Party that seeks to undermine the US-Israel relationship.

Military Strategy of Small States

Military Strategy of Small States PDF Author: Håkan Edström
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351054325
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
The book explores how small states adjust their military strategies in response to external shocks. Using primary sources from four Nordic countries, (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden), this volume explores how small states have adjusted their military strategies in response to external shocks of the 21st century. The 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Russian interventions in Georgia and Ukraine, and the rise of the Islamic State have all forced the Nordic states to adopt new strategies. While the responses have not been uniform, their differing relations to the EU and NATO have not prevented these countries from behaving similarly in military affairs. Limitations in military capacity has led all four countries to pursue strategies that include cooperation with more resourceful partners. It is necessary for them to cooperate with others to protect and promote their national interests. Moreover, the Nordic cosmopolitan outlook expresses milieu-shaping ambitions that we generally would not expect small states to pursue against a potential great power aggressor. This book will be of much interest to students of military strategy, defense studies, security studies, and international relations.