New Book: Pardo, Normative Power Europe Meets Israel

Pardo, Sharon. Normative Power Europe Meets Israel: Perceptions and Realities. Lanham and Boulder: Lexington Books, 2015.

 

 

The book draws on some of the scholarship in perception studies and “Normative Power Europe” theory. The study of perceptions, although dating back to the mid-1970s, is gaining renewed currency in recent years both in international relations, in general, and in European Union studies, in particular. And yet, despite the significance of external perceptions of the European Union, there is still a lack of theoretical forays into this area as well as an absence of empirical investigations of actual external role conceptions. These lacunae in scholarly work are significant, since how the European Union is perceived outside its borders, and what factors shape these perceptions, are crucial for deepening the theory of “Normative Power Europe.” The book analyzes Israeli perceptions towards “Normative Power Europe,” the European Union, and NATO through five themes that, the book argues, underscore different dimensions of key Israeli conceptions of “Normative Power Europe” and NATO. The book seeks to contribute to the existing research on the European Union’s role as a “normative power,” the Union’s external representations, and on Israeli-European Union relations more broadly.

 

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Normative Power Europe Meets Israel
• Chapter 1: Normative Power Europe in Israeli Eyes
• Chapter 2: The Seventh Would-Be Member State of the European Economic Community
• Chapter 3: Normative Power Europe and Perceptions as Cultural Filters: Israeli Civic Studies as a Case-Study, with Natalia Chaban
• Chapter 4: When a Lioness Roars: The Union’s Guidelines Prohibiting the Allocation of Funds to Israeli Entities in the Occupied Territories
• Chapter 5: An Elusive Desire: Israeli Perceptions of NATO
• Conclusion: Normative Power Europe as Israel’s Negative “Other”

Sharon Pardo is Jean Monnet chair ad personam in European studies in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
 

New Article: Ziv, Shimon Peres and the Israeli Nuclear Program

Ziv, Guy. “The Triumph of Agency over Structure: Shimon Peres and the Israeli Nuclear Program.” International Negotiation 20.2 (2015): 218-41.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15718069-12341306

 

Abstract
This article advances the proposition that when the negotiator is empowered to reach an agreement on behalf of his or her government, agency has the potential to triumph over structure. The negotiator whose personal attributes include flexibility, sensitivity, inventiveness, tenacity and patience is more likely to meet this potential. Shimon Peres, the director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Defense in the mid-1950s, possessed many of these traits. He was also given virtually free rein by Prime Minister and Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion to pursue negotiations with France over the acquisition of a nuclear reactor. Despite significant structural hurdles – financial difficulties, domestic opposition, u.s. disapproval, and an unstable and divided French Fourth Republic – Peres’s unorthodox diplomacy allowed Israel to become a nuclear power. This case highlights the oft-overlooked role of agency in political science, in general, and in international negotiations, in particular.

 

 

 

New Book: Alpher, Periphery – Israel’s Search for Middle East Allies

Alpher, Yossi. Periphery. Israel’s Search for Middle East Allies. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

 

 

Since its establishment after World War II, the State of Israel has sought alliances with non-Arab and non-Muslim countries and minorities in the Middle East, as well as Arab states geographically distant from the Arab-Israel conflict. The text presents and explains this regional orientation and its continuing implications for war and peace. It examines Israel’s strategy of outflanking, both geographically and politically, the hostile Sunni Arab Middle East core that surrounded it in the early decades of its sovereign history, a strategy that became a pillar of the Israeli foreign and defense policy. This “periphery doctrine” was a grand strategy, meant to attain the major political-security goal of countering Arab hostility through relations with alternative regional powers and potential allies. It was quietly abandoned when the Sadat initiative and the emerging coexistence between Israel and Jordan reflected a readiness on the part of the Sunni Arab core to deal with Israel politically rather than militarily. For a brief interval following the 1991 Madrid conference and the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel seemed to be accepted by all its neighbors, prompting then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to muse that it could even consider joining the Arab League. Yet this periphery strategy had been internalized to some extent in Israel’s strategic thinking and it began to reappear after 2010, following a new era of Arab revolution. The rise of political Islam in Egypt, Turkey, Gaza, southern Lebanon and possibly Syria, coupled with the Islamic regime in Iran, has generated concern in Israel that it is again being surrounded by a ring of hostile states—in this case, Islamists rather than Arab nationalists.

The book analyzes Israel’s strategic thinking about the Middle East region, evaluating its success or failure in maintaining both Israel’s security and the viability of Israeli-American strategic cooperation. It looks at the importance of the periphery strategy for Israeli, moderate Arab, and American, and European efforts to advance the Arab-Israel peace process, and its potential role as the Arab Spring brings about greater Islamization of the Arab Middle East. Already, Israeli strategic planners are talking of “spheres of containment” and “crescents” wherein countries like Cyprus, Greece, Azerbaijan, and Ethiopia constitute a kind of new periphery.

By looking at Israel’s search for Middle East allies then and now, the book explores a key component of Israel’s strategic behavior. Written in an accessible manner for all students, it provides a better understanding of Israel’s role in the Middle East region and its Middle East identity.

Table of Contents

For Whom it May Concern
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction

1. The Periphery Doctrine at Work

1. Evolution of a Grand Strategy
2. The Northern Triangle: Iran and Turkey
3. Morocco
4. The Southern Periphery
5. The Levant Minorities
6. The Kurds of Northern Iraq
7. The Jewish Dimension
8. The American Dimension
9. End of the First Periphery, 1973-1983

2. Ramifications

10. Iran: periphery nostalgia and its costs
11. Israeli skeptics
12. Between peripheries: peace, isolation and Islam
13. Is there a new periphery?
14. Arab reaction

3. Conclusion

15. Can Israel find a regional identity?

Heads of Mossad
Persons interviewed
Maps:

1. The original periphery concept
2. The expanded southern periphery
3. The ethnic periphery
4. A new periphery?

Index
About the Author

Yossi Alpher was an officer in Israeli military intelligence, followed by twelve years of service in the Mossad. Until 1995, he was director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. In July 2000, he served as Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Israel during the Camp David talks. From 2001 to 2012 he was coeditor of the bitterlemons.net family of internet publications.

ToC: Israel Studies 20.2 (2015); Special Section: Bodies In Question

Israel Studies 20.2 (2015) Table of Contents:

 

Special Section: Bodies In Question

Wars of the Wombs: Struggles Over Abortion Policies in Israel (pp. 1-26)

Rebecca Steinfeld

Halutzah or Beauty Queen? National Images of Women in Early Israeli Society (pp. 27-52)

Julie Grimmeisen

‘Re-orient-ation’: Sport and the Transformation of the Jewish Body and Identity (pp. 53-75)

Yotam Hotam

‘Uniting the Nation’s Various Limbs into a National Body’ the Jerusalem People’s House (pp. 76-109)

Esther Grabiner

 

Articles

The Test of Maritime Sovereignty: The Establishment of the Zim National Shipping Company and the Purchase of the Kedmah, 1945–1952 (pp. 110-134)

Kobi Cohen-Hattab

Budgeting for Ultra-Orthodox Education—The Failure of Ultra-Orthodox Politics, 1996–2006 (pp. 135-162)

Hadar Lipshits

The Mizrahi Sociolect in Israel: Origins and Development (pp. 163-182)

Yehudit Henshke

Review Essay: The Theoretical Normalization of Israel in International Relations(pp. 183-189)

[Reviews  of: The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Ministers: When Hard-Liners Opt for Peace, by Yael S. Aronoff; Why Hawks Become Doves: Shimon Peres and Foreign Policy Change in Israel by Guy Ziv]

Brent E. Sasley

 

Notes on Contributors (pp. 190-191)

Guidelines for Contributors (pp. 192-194)

Book Talk: Ziv, Why Hawks become Doves (AmericanU, Feb 5, 2015)

“Why Hawks become Doves” – Free book talk at American University

Thursday, February 5, 4:00-5:30PM

Free with RSVP: http://www.american.edu/cas/israelstudies/rsvp

 

The second talk in CIS Author’s New Book Discussion Series features Why Hawks become Doves: Shimon Peres and Foreign Policy Change in Israel by AU School of International Service  Professor Guy Ziv. Co-sponsored by the Center for Israel Studies and the School of International Service.  Location: Abramson Family Founders Room, SIS Building. Pre-paid parking is available in the School for International Service garage and Katzen Arts Center garage (campus map here).  For more information please contact Laura Cutler, cutler@american.edu  

New Book: Ziv, Why Hawks Become Doves

Ziv, Guy. Why Hawks Become Doves: Shimon Peres and Foreign Policy Change in Israel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014. 

 

 

URL: http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5944-why-hawks-become-doves.aspx

 

Abstract

Why do hawkish leaders change course to pursue dovish policies? In Why Hawks Become Doves, Guy Ziv argues that conventional international relations theory is inadequate for explaining these momentous foreign policy shifts, because it underestimates the importance of leaders and their personalities. Applying insights from cognitive psychology, Ziv argues that decision-makers’ cognitive structure—specifically, their levels of cognitive openness and complexity—is a critical causal variable in determining their propensity to revise their beliefs and pursue new policies. To illustrate his point, he examines Israeli statesman Shimon Peres. Beginning his political career as a tough-minded security hawk, Peres emerged as one of the Middle East’s foremost champions of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. Drawing on a vast range of sources, including interviews with Peres and dozens of other political elites, archival research, biographies, and memoirs, Ziv finds that Peres’s highly open and complex cognitive structure facilitated a quicker and more profound dovish shift on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than his less cognitively open and complex rivals.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: An Individual Level Explanation of Foreign Policy Change

2. Assessing Cognitive Structure: A Comparison of Four Israeli Prime Ministers

3. Peres: The Hawkish Years (1953–1977)

4. Peres’s Dovish Turn, Phase I (1977–1987)

5. Pere’s Dovish Turn, Phase II (1987–1997)

6. Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

New Book: Rosman, France and Israel, 1947-1970

Rosman, Miriam. France and Israel, 1947-1970. From the Creation of the State of Israel to the Cherbourg Boats Affair. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2014 (in Hebrew).

 

 

URL: http://www.resling.co.il/book.asp?series_id=3&book_id=759&back=catalog

Hebrew translation from French original: La France et Israël, 1947-1970 : de la création de l’État d’Israël au départ des vedettes de Cherbourg (Paris : Champion, 2009).

 רוסמן, מרים. יחסי צרפת-ישראל. מקום המדינה עד לפרשיית ספינות שרבורג. תרגום: הילה קרס. תל אביב: רסלינג, 2014.

בשנים 1947-1970 בלטו יחסי ישראל-צרפת בשילוב שבין כובד משקלה של השואה, צילה של המדיניות הצרפתית ביחס לערבים והמקרה הייחודי של מדינה שאך נולדה והמשך קיומה בלתי ודאי. ספרה של מירי רוסמן מבקש לרדת לשורשם של היחסים בין שתי המדינות ולבחון את המטען המורכב שביסוד מדיניות החוץ שלהן. לפנינו מחקר חדשני המבוסס על עדויות חדשות וארכיונים שלא היו פתוחים בעבר. המחברת הצליחה להגיע למסמכים נדירים כמו אוספים של מדינאים צרפתים, מסמכים של האו”ם ושל משרד החוץ הצרפתי. לאלה הצטרפו הארכיונים של חיל האוויר וצבא היבשה הצרפתים שבוַונסֶן, ארכיוני צה”ל, ארכיוני המדינה והארכיונים הלאומיים. את המסמכים הכתובים משלים מספר רב של עדויות מפי אישים מהשורה הראשונה, למשל רנה בלוך, קוב דה מורוויל, מוקה לימון ושמעון פרס.

הספר פותח בניצחון בעלות הברית ובמלחמה הקרה: צרפת כבר איננה מעצמה, ובמקביל היא מתמודדת עם קשיים כלכליים ופוליטיים מפנים ומחוץ. היא מסייעת לפעילות הציונית אך גם מהססת ביחס לתוכנית החלוקה, כמו גם ביחס לעצם ההכרה במדינת ישראל. חלקו השני של הספר עוסק בשנים 1953-1962, והוא מתאר כיצד עברו יחסי צרפת וישראל מנורמליזציה ל”אידיליה” אשר בשיאה שיתוף הפעולה במבצע קדש. החלק השלישי והאחרון מתאר את מדיניות החוץ הצרפתית בעקבות עצמאות אלג’יריה בשנת 1962, בעיקר חידוש קשריה עם העולם הערבי. פרשת ספינות שרבורג בשנת 1969 בראשות מוקה לימון וגירושו מצרפת מגלמים את סופה של הקרבה הייחודית בין המדינות.