Policy Sciences (2005) 38: 177–194 C© Springer 2005

Political culture, alternative politics and foreign policy:The case of Israel

GUY BEN-PORAT & SHLOMO MIZRAHIBen-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Abstract. This article analyzes how sociopolitical dynamics within a state can help explaining foreignpolicy. We show that under certain conditions, the public can be involved in ways that extend beyond ex-pressing opinions that act as constraints on policy makers, and also takes active initiatives that eventuallyshape foreign policies. The article explains how sociopolitical processes in Israeli society, which trans-formed the nature of citizen–politician relations from a top-down to a bottom-up orientation, graduallyled to shifts in foreign policy regarding the conflict with the Palestinians. The Israeli public has adoptedan approach to solving social problems by unilateral initiatives, as part of its attempts to shape foreignpolicy from the bottom up, due to continuous government failure to provide public services, combined withblocked influence channels. As long as Israeli politicians ignored these changes, they failed to mobilizesupport for policies imposed from the top down and lost their positions of power.

Introduction

The relationships between social and political processes in a given society and theformation of foreign policy have been studied by scholars in the field of internationalrelations using the concept of two-level analysis (Putnam, 1988; Iida, 1993; Evanset al., 1993; Schneider and Cederman, 1994; Mo, 1995; Schultz, 1998). The two-levelgame literature has established solid micro foundations for the theory of internationalbargaining. Most importantly, this research tradition has shown that the amount ofuncertainty in the international system is not a given, but can be manipulated forbetter or worse. This ambiguous potential is the essence of a two-level dilemma inworld politics, in which domestic politics affect international behavior both positivelyand negatively and vice versa – Clearly, international conditions also affect domesticpolitics, which again affect foreign policy.

In this article, we address the impact of social and cultural processes on the relationsbetween citizens and politicians and the side-effect of these relations on foreign policy.We attempt to demonstrate that, under certain conditions, the public can be involved inways that extend beyond expressing opinions that act as constraints on policy makers.The public, or sections of the public, also take initiatives that eventually shape foreignpolicies. These initiatives can be legal and include new ideas that attempt to reset thepolitical agenda but can also be semi-legal or illegal. In terms of policy studies, wedefine these initiatives as alternative politics, in which citizens dissatisfied with thegovernment’s performance and skeptical of the regular democratic means of protest,take a proactive course of action and attempt, at times illegally, to supply a public goodor governmental services they find missing (Lehman-Wilzig, 1991, 1992). Thus, thepublic creates a threat to the government monopoly with respect to the public product,compelling the politicians to change the policy in accordance with the demands made

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by the public. We find this to be a central feature of the political culture in Israeland a significant explanatory factor of political processes, domestic and also foreign(Mizrahi and Meydani, 2003). Differently stated, we argue that the political culture ofunilateral initiatives (legal, semi-legal, and illegal) has penetrated all political systemsincluding the government and underscores the dynamics of the Israeli–Palestinianpeace process, both within Israel and between Israel and the Palestinians.

The arguments are elaborated through an empirical analysis of dynamics in Israelisociety for the years 1992–2004 and the debates over the territories occupied in the1967 war. More specifically, the article attempts to explain the transformation ofIsraeli (foreign) policy towards the conflict with the Palestinians from a policy thathas been basically shaped from the top down (top-down orientation), into a policywhich has been shaped from the bottom up (bottom-up orientation). A bottom-upapproach usually presupposes that the public is not a unitary actor and that policies areinfluenced not only directly, by narrowing the options available for decision makers,but also indirectly, by influencing the coalition-building processes among elites andby strengthening or weakening the positions of bureaucracies or single actors withinthe government (Risse-Kappen, 1991). In this article, we extend this view and showthat the public, through the use of “alternative politics” can actually shape foreignpolicy and impose its influence upon politicians who then respond positively.

We identify two policy paradigms adopted by Israeli policymakers. The first, the“New Middle East” highlighted the role economic cooperation could play in thetransformation of the conflict and the second, “unilateral withdrawal and the securityfence” was based on Israeli perceptions of “no partner” on the Palestinian side. Thesetwo paradigms, despite their difference, were attempts by policymakers, operatingwithin a two-level game framework, to find a way to circumvent the negotiationof those issues that are deadlocked between Palestinian demands and the perceivedIsraeli public refusal to yield. But, while the New Middle East never materialized(and, in fact has been likened to a “pipe dream”) (Ben-Porat, 2005a), the unilateralwithdrawal and the fence were translated into a concrete plan. In this article, weexplain the difference between the two paradigms by the changes in the politicalculture and participation patterns of the Israeli society. Specifically, the “New MiddleEast” paradigm was a top-down effort by policymakers and the economic elite, whilethe unilateral initiatives and the fence are a bottom-up process compatible with thetransformation of Israel’s political culture.

In the next section, we discuss the mutual relations between internal politics andforeign policy. In the third section, we present a theoretical framework for explainingthe evolution of alternative politics as informal institutions. In the fourth section, weexplain the evolution of the two policy paradigms mentioned above, as well as the im-pact of alternative politics and systemic changes in Israeli society on these paradigms.

Internal politics and foreign policy

Foreign policy analysis “unpacks the black box” of foreign policy decisions andfocuses on the people and units that make up the state. The “national interest”accordingly, is viewed “as the interests of various players – not all of which may

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coincide, and not all of which are coherently related to anything resembling an objec-tive national interest” (Hudson and Vore, 1995). Therefore, a state operates in boththe domestic and the international dimensions as it seeks “both to compete with otherstates by mobilizing resources internally, and to use its international role to consol-idate its position domestically” (Halliday, 1994: p. 84; see also Barnett, 1991). Assuch, internal and external factors that are apparently unrelated become related in theactions of decision makers in economic decisions and in the security field (Barnett,1991; Katzenstein, 1978; Sapin et al., 1954: p. 43). The pursuit of internal and ex-ternal goals, however, is not necessarily complementary (Barnett, 1991) and involvesthe possibility of raising internal instability or external hostility. Because the state issituated in both domestic and international structures, policymakers play a two-levelgame, in which they attempt to make foreign and domestic policies compatible. AsPutnam (1988) puts it:

The politics of many international negotiations can usefully be conceived asa two-level game. At the national level, domestic groups pursue their interestsby pressuring the government to adopt favorable policies, and politicians seekpower by constituting coalitions among those groups. At the international level,national governments seek to maximize their own ability to satisfy domesticpressures, while minimizing the adverse consequences of foreign developments.Neither of the two games can be ignored by central decision-makers, so longas their countries remain interdependent, yet sovereign.

Under these conditions, policymakers have to take account of and attempt to bal-ance external pressures and internal demands. It has been argued, however, that thetwo-level game is more a metaphor than a full-fledged theory, lacking three essentialbuilding blocks: specification of domestic politics, of the international environment,and the state’s foreign policy preferences (Moravcsik, 1993; Trumbore, 1998). Theunderstanding of the two-level game, therefore, requires the unpacking of the do-mestic and the international levels. Indeed, research into foreign policy has examinedthe role of leaders, elites, bureaucracies, societal groups, and also of wider issues ofdomestic structure and coalition-building processes (Risse-Kappen, 1991), as well asof public opinion and political culture.

The role of public opinion has been a major source of debate, regarding its impacton governmental decisions to go to war or to negotiate peace. While some scholarsargue that public opinion lacks coherence and structure with regard to foreign policyand, therefore, does not have a large impact on its conduct, others find more stabilityin public opinion and identify recognizable ideological positions (Hudson and Vore,1995). Public opinion, therefore, can act as a constraint on decision-makers, who haveto take into account political reprisals for their action or nonaction (Mo, 1994, 1995).It has often been argued that these constraints make democracies less prone to war, be-cause governments must build consensus for the use of large-scale violence (Russett,1993). Other studies have found nondemocratic regimes also sensitive to domes-tic politics and public opinion (Lamborn, 1991; Lebow, 1981). In crisis situations,democratic and nondemocratic regimes alike have been found to produce a policyprocess largely closed to widespread participation (Trumbore and Boyer, 2000). Not

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only war, but also peace, can present leaders with a two-level game dilemma. Percep-tions or myths established during conflict become embedded in countries’ domesticpolitics and are difficult to dislodge. Institutions or political actors whose goals andmissions are related to these myths will resist attempts to change them (Richter, 1992).In peace negotiation, like in war, public opinion can act as a constraint that limits gov-ernment’s negotiation leverage. Public opinion seems to matter most when there isa lack of congruence between the public’s preferences and decision maker’s prefer-ences, when the issue under negotiation is of intense interest and when the public haseither direct or indirect power to ratify an international agreement (Trumbore, 1998).

In Putnam’s original model, statesman negotiate internationally and ratify agree-ments locally (Putnam, 1988; Moravcsik, 1993). While public opinion is susceptibleto framing efforts (Shamir and Shikaki, 2005), the government is not the only agentinvolved in shaping win-sets. Final outcomes depend fundamentally on domestic in-terest groups (Evans, 1993) that can either mobilize public opinion or take initiativesthat actively influence foreign policy. Thus, diplomacy can not only respond to do-mestic interests, restructure domestic interests (Evans, 1993), but also be structuredby domestic initiatives and developments. Domestic institutions are important both infiltering the forces that confront policymakers and in constituting the relevant actors(Caporaso, 1997). Once citizens are mobilized on a certain issue, governments have topay attention to voter opinion in both domestic and foreign policymaking (Trumbore,1998). In the US, for example, ethnic or diaspora politics was found to be an importantdeterminant in US foreign policy (Glazer and Moynihan, 1975; Shain, 1994). Beyondopinion, citizens, as will be described in detail below, can take matters into their ownhands, create alternatives, and influence the decision making process. To illustrate,Thomas Risse-Kappen (1994) explains how intellectual communities helped hastenthe end of the Cold War. These epistemic communities developed ideas and formedtransnational networks that cooperated with “new thinkers” in foreign policy institutesand elsewhere in the former USSR. In an elaborate study of “transnational advocacynetworks”, Keck and Sikkink (1998) argue that these networks can provide alterna-tive channels of communication, so that voices suppressed in their own societies cangain influence in the international arena, which can, in turn, reverberate in their owncountries. Network actors not only bring new ideas, norms and discourses, but alsopromote implementation by pressuring target actors to adopt new policies (Keck andSikkink, 1998: p. 3). Thus, when domestic actors who aim to change local or nationalpolicies find government inaccessible or deaf to their demands, they may seek in-ternational connections to express their concerns (Keck and Sikkink, 1998: p. 12) oralternatively, turn to domestic initiatives that extend beyond normal politics to changeor create policies. In terms of policy studies, this conduct can be conceptualized asalternative politics. We elaborate this concept, below.

Alternative politics as informal institutions

The concept of alternative politics has been developed to describe a situation inwhich people who are dissatisfied with policy outcomes independently provide public

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services via nongovernmental or semi-private, often illegal or semi-legal, channels.Alternative politics does not include all privately provided services but rather onlythose that are designed to be provided by the government according to the formalinstitutional setting.

To explain the evolution of alternative politics as informal institutions, we applyNew Institutionalism where any process of change starts with a certain “reality”characterized by a certain institutional status quo (Mantzavinos et al., 2004). Aslong as that institutional framework, i.e., the formal and informal rules of the game,provides sufficient help for citizens to solve social problems, it is likely to be stable.The institutional setting also specifies the role of government and of publicly suppliedservices, as well as the available channels for citizens to express grievances when theyare dissatisfied with outcomes. One of the main reasons for citizens’ dissatisfactionwith the government can be termed “government failure” i.e., the inefficient provisionof governmental services (Weimar and Vining, 1998). Government failure may appearin various degrees and it may motivate citizens to adopt a wide variety of strategiesor alternative problem-solving mechanisms. Citizens’ response to government failuremay range from physically leaving the society by emigration (exit), through activeexpression of dissatisfaction via protest and political participation (voice), to passiveacceptance of the situation combined with social alienation (neglect). We rely hereon Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty model (1970) and its extensions (Rosbultand Lowery, 1985; Lyons and Lowery (1986). These strategies correspond to manyanalyses of political participation which we do not review here due to space limitations.

The availability of each strategy, as well as the cost-benefit calculations attachedto it, are a function of the formal institutional setting in a given society. For example,in democracies, most of these strategies are available at relatively low cost, while inauthoritarian regimes, both the exit and voice options usually bear high costs. Whenthere are certain institutional shortcomings that produce government failure, as longas the existing institutional setting provides sufficient tools for improving outcomes,either through the actions of government or civil society, citizens are likely to respondto government failure using these tools. In other words, when citizens are dissatisfiedwith policy outcomes, they attempt to improve outcomes through the channels madeavailable by the institutional setting – i.e., prevailing formal and informal rules atboth the governmental civil-society level.

It follows that when the institutional setting not only produces government failurebut also fails to provide sufficient tools for improving outcomes, citizens are likelyto adopt alternative problem-solving approaches. This may occur when citizens feelthat influence channels are blocked, meaning the “voice” option is exhausted. Thisis more likely to happen when the political, administrative, and economic systemsare relatively centralized. Unilateral initiatives, or a “do-it-yourself” approach, maybe viewed as such an alternative problem solving approach. It suggests that whenpeople are dissatisfied with outcomes and they believe that all the existing mech-anisms to influence and solve social problems are blocked, they must devise theirown institutional arrangements. From the aggrieved citizens’ perspective, progressis understood in terms of unilateral initiatives, in the sense that these initiatives areindependent of the existing institutional setting and are coordinated neither with thegovernment nor with other sectors in society since all influence channels are blocked.

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This often means that these initiatives are often illegal or semi-legal. Thus, we arguethat continuous government failure, combined with blocked influence channels bothat the state and the social level, potentially trigger the evolution of an alternativeproblem solving approach – unilateral initiatives. When, due to government failure,this problem solving approach is applied by citizens to improve outcomes and provessuccessful, it gradually transforms the belief system. This process of continuouslyapplying unilateral initiatives for solving social and political problems constitutes theevolution of alternative politics as informal institutions.

Furthermore, through this process the public creates a threat to the governmentmonopoly with respect to the production of public goods and services, compellingpoliticians to change policy in accordance with the demands made by the public. Inother words, in many cases, politicians react to pressures of this kind, by legalizingthe illegal institutions created by certain groups in the society. This indeed has beenthe reaction of the Israeli political system with respect to the illegal settlements, thepirate cable operators, the black economy, the private payments to public physicians,and the privately paid supplements to state education (Lehman-Wilzig, 1992; Mizrahiand Meydani, 2003). Alternative politics is, therefore, a central feature of the politicalculture in Israel and a significant explanatory factor of political processes.

Alternative politics, systemic changes in Israeli society and the policy towardsthe conflict with Palestinians

In this section, we attempt to explain the impact of alternative politics, which evolvedas a dominant informal institution in Israel in the 1980s and 1990s, on the processof policy formation in general and on Israeli foreign policy towards the conflict withthe Palestinians in particular. The core argument is that, due to the existence ofthe structural starting conditions described above, Israeli society underwent learningprocesses. The learning process created the conditions for the evolution of alternativepolitics as informal institutions and later led to institutional change in all areas oflife, as well as at all decision-making levels. In particular, it transformed the nature ofrelations between citizens and politicians from a top-down to a bottom-up approachand significantly changed the principle of the separation of powers.

The evolution of alternative politics and bottom-up orientation in Israeli society

Historically, before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, many of the po-litical, social, and economic institutions of the Jewish community developed throughchannels that were either semi-legal or totally illegal under the British Mandate. Thisdevelopment took place through the creation of facts on the ground and by forcing acertain reality on the British authorities (Horowitz and Lissak, 1978, 1989; Migdal,2001; Shprinzak, 1986; Lehman-Wilzig, 1992). Later on, after the foundation of theState, in the 1950s and 1960s, the political, economic, and administrative systemswere extremely centralized (Horowitz and Lissak, 1989). The combination of ex-tremely centralized systems and a tradition of influence through semi-legal channels

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had a significant effect on the political culture in Israel. The extreme centralizationprevented the development of alternative power bases, such as interest groups andgreatly slowed down the development of a civil society with liberal features. Further-more, due to the problem of collective action, no public pressure arose to change thesituation, as long as policy outcomes were not catastrophic (Horowitz and Lissak,1978; Arian, 1997).

Such a catastrophe did indeed occur, with the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which trig-gered public dissatisfaction and loss of faith with the policies of the Labor party.In order to change policies and/or replace the government, the public mainly useddemocratic, legal tools, such as demonstrations, strikes, use of the media as well asthe ballot box. By the late 1960s, however, illegal courses of action had also becomenoticeable. The illegal settlements in the territories occupied in 1967 were an attemptto establish facts on the ground and force a certain reality on the government.

During the 1970s and 1980s, sociopolitical processes, discussed elsewhere(Mizrahi and Meydani, 2003), led to the inability of the government to produceefficient and stable policy decisions, as well as to political stalemate. This intensifiedthe feeling among the Israeli public that the government continuously faltered to pro-vide public services, combined with the sense that influence channels were blocked.The crisis was even deeper than a systemic governmental inability to provide ser-vices, because there were no other agreed social mechanisms of compromising andsolving conflicts between sectors and groups in society. The deep cleavages cuttingthrough Israeli society – religion vs. secular, hawks vs. doves, and Jews vs. Arabs– have made compromise and central decision making all the more difficult and,consequently, encouraged more groups to pursue alternative politics.

Given these conditions, large sectors of Israeli society employed unilateral initia-tives as a problem solving approach. The 1980s were characterized by a significantgrowth in the “black-market economy” – particularly regarding illegal trade in foreigncurrency, “gray-market medicine” – expressed in a semi-legal private supply of healthservices using public facilities, “gray-market education” – expressed in the occupa-tion of privately paid teachers, and the evolution of independent private schools andpirate cable networks – all of which are alternatives to publicly provided services i.e.,informal institutions (Lehman-Wilzig, 1992; Mizrahi and Meydani, 2003). Indeed,during the 1980s it became clear that, for many people, only unilateral initiativescould help improve their situations. Furthermore, most of these initiatives were in-stitutionalized via the formal rules of the game and became part of governmentalpolicy.

The emergence of informal institution embodies an even deeper change in informalinstitutions, i.e., the nature of relations between citizens and politicians in Israel. Inthe 1950s and 1960s, these relations were informally based on a top-down orientation,in the sense that policies were decided through a highly centralized system with verylimited participation of citizens. In the 1980s and 1990s, on the other hand, the natureof these informal relations was transformed, and recast in a bottom-up orientation.In this new informal status-quo, citizens identify policy problems and solved themunilaterally, by forming substitutive informal institutions. In doing so, they actuallysignaled the required institutional change to politicians and thus institutional changesas well as specific policies and outcomes were initiated from bottom up.

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In the following analysis, we argue that this transformation can explain themovement from a top-down oriented policy towards the conflict with Palestinians,as expressed in the New Middle East concept, to a bottom-up oriented policy that ledthe Israeli government to adopt the plan of unilateral separation from the Gaza Stripand North Samaria (in the West Bank).

Oslo and the New Middle East – top-down orientation

The “New Middle East” written by Shimon Peres (1993), Israeli Foreign Ministerbetween 1992–1995 and former Prime Minister, outlined a vision of a peace projectbetween Israel, the Palestinians, and the wider Arab world, on the basis of whatwas perceived as a new reality and new possibilities associated with globalization.Within Israel, this concept indicated a paradigmatic shift among policymakers andbureaucrats away from the conceptualization of conflict as inevitable, permanent orintractable (Ben-Porat, 2005a, 2005b). The New Middle East (hereafter, NME) wasintended to provide a blueprint for the future of the region, on the basis of economicrationality, peace, democracy, cooperation, mutual gain, and general prosperity.

Globalization, on the one hand, and the continuation of the conflict, on the other,provided Peres in the 1990s with a powerful rationale for peace that converged withbusiness and professional perceptions developed earlier. According to this plan, eco-nomic cooperation would be followed by increasing, ongoing political understandinguntil stability was achieved. The NME shared the optimism of liberal accounts ofglobalization and faith in market economics as forces of rationality and progress.Peace and global integration would be the way for the Middle East to escape a webof poverty, backwardness, and hatred. Like in the European Union, it was argued,the economic transformation would introduce new interests, a new rationality anda “zeitgeist” that at once was both inevitable and desirable for the Middle East tofollow (Ben-Porat, 2005a). These ideas were well received by Israel’s liberal elites,whose desire to “normalize” Israel was translated into a three-part agenda that in-cluded economic and political liberalization, termination of the conflict, and globalintegration (Ben-Porat, 2005c). While the Israeli economy had been on a rapid path ofliberalization since the mid-1980s, the continuation of the conflict was perceived asimpeding economic progress and holding back Israel from the path of globalization.This policy was directed from the top down and was intended to resolve the two-levelgame by offering incentives both to Palestinians and the Israeli public. Specifically,the NME prescribed economic growth (resulting from peace) as a win–win situationthat would bridge the differences between Israelis and Palestinians and, consequently,appeal to both publics and enable them to accept the compromises their leaders wouldnegotiate.

Indeed, the Oslo Agreement between Israel and the PLO, signed in 1993, attemptedto set forth a peace process on the basis of mutual recognition, co-existence, mutualdignity, and security. Yet, the Oslo Agreement was essentially different from the visionof the NME, as its core embodied a partition that would supposedly answer Israel’s de-sire to maintain its Jewish status, as well as the Palestinian demand for independence.The promise of economic growth, nevertheless, remained in the background of theagreement and underscored its logic. However, three significant obstacles challenged

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the possibility of partition. First, since the 1970s, Israel had been building a systemof settlements across the West Bank and Gaza, so by 1993 over 100,000 Israelis wereliving on the land of the would-be Palestinian state. Second, Palestinians who had fledor been deported from Israel in the 1948 war were demanding, for themselves andtheir progeny, “the right of return” to their original homes from the refugee camps andother places of habitation. And, third, both sides lay uncompromising national andreligious claims to the city of Jerusalem. The Oslo Agreement attempted to maintaina balance between cooperation and partition. Partition was to be achieved gradually,through a series of interim agreements involving Israeli withdrawal and establishedcooperation. The difficult issues mentioned above, which could not be resolved at thisstage, were deferred to a later stage, in the hope that trust and cooperation built up inthe interim agreements would facilitate their resolution.

The Oslo process moved slowly, as Israeli leaders attempted to balance betweenPalestinian demands and a reluctant Israeli public. Cooperation between Israelis andPalestinians after 1993 did not change the overall situation as it suffered not only fromthe lingering effects of 25 years of occupation and high levels of inequality, but wasalso sacrificed in order to maintain popular domestic support. Israel’s imposition ofclosures on the territories in response to terrorist attacks, put an end to many initiativesof economic cooperation, while the replacement of Palestinian with foreign laborerscreated a de-facto economic separation between Israel and the Palestinians. Securitycooperation also suffered from the contradictions of the demands and expectations ofboth sides and external and internal pressures.

With limited cooperative measures, the peace process gradually focused on the el-ement of partition and separation and developed a zero-sum dynamic of territorialitythat neither approached transformation nor brought the sides any closer to agreementon the issues not subject to partition (Ben-Porat, 2005b). Each side blamed the otherfor breaching the agreement and refused to cooperate before the other party fulfilledits obligations. Israel was concerned with the Palestinian Authority’s lack of com-mitment to combat fundamentalist terrorism and the continuation of inflammatoryanti-Israeli propaganda in the Palestinian media and schools. The Palestinians werefrustrated by Israeli military checkpoints across the West Bank and Gaza and per-ceived the continuation of building in the settlements as an Israeli attempt to determineunilaterally the borders of the final agreement.

Israeli policymakers operated within the two-level game dilemma described above,as the pressure from “without” vis-a-vis the Palestinians was matched by pressuresfrom within as the peace process failed to instill sufficient domestic support. Onthe external level, it was not only Palestinian demands for Israeli withdrawal butalso demands from foreign powers (especially the United States), from Arab statesthat just initiated diplomatic and economic relations with Israel, and also indirectpressures from economic investors who demanded and expected the continuation ofthe peace process. The external dimension became significant in the late 1980s due tothe United States government deeper involvement and to Israel’s growing desire forglobal integration. In 1991, President George Bush was able to enforce the Madridconference upon an otherwise reluctant Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. USloan guarantees of $ 10 billion required for the absorption of the mass immigration ofJews from the crumbling Soviet Union were conditioned upon Israel’s participation

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in the conference. While the Madrid Conference had no real results, it set a precedentfor Israeli–Palestinian negotiations, and the level of American involvement deepenedduring the Clinton administration. The pressures of foreign investors concerned aboutstability and interested in the advancement of the peace process were relayed tothe government through the Israeli business community, itself a strong supporter ofthe process (Ben-Porat, 2005c). Yet, American involvement and the various otherpressures in the 1990s never reached the level of those of the mid-1970s when theFord and Carter administrations had a crucial role in the peace agreement betweenEygpt and Israel.

On the domestic level, however, Israeli policymakers found it difficult to convincethe public of their policies. While much attention was given to the cooperation betweenthe government and the business community that underscored many of the policies andbusiness initiatives associated with the process, the peace process in general remainedtop-down and was perceived to be elitist. Despite the economic growth in Israelfollowing the Oslo accords, popular support for the peace process remained tepid. Theright-wing, especially the nationalist-religious settlers who described the agreementa “sell out” strongly protested the implementation of the accords. In addition, largesectors of the Israeli public remained indifferent to the peace process, feeling it mainlypromoted the interests of the elite (Ben-Porat, 2005a). Thus, in adhering to a top-downpolicy approach, the government failed to incorporate the moderate right, consistingof many lower-class Mizrachim (Jews that immigrated from Muslim countries, ortheir descendents) who voted for the Likud but held moderate views regarding thefuture of the territories. In a Gallup poll published in a daily paper shortly after theceremony in Washington and at the peak of the “peace festival” only 33% said thatthe agreement with the PLO would improve their economic well being, while 51%foresaw no change (Yedioth Aharonot Daily, September 15, 1993). Polls conductedby a Tel Aviv research center in the summer of 1994, after a celebrated economicyear, found general support for the agreement quite modest. Less than 52% of JewishIsraelis expressed support for the peace process, while almost half perceived theterritorial and political “price” of the agreement too high (Yaar et al., 1996).

The victory of the right wing and anti-agreement Likud party in the 1996 electionswas indicative of the declining support for the process. Although most Israelis hadrecognized the need for a territorial compromise since the late 1980s, the fact that thespecific nature of the agreement was imposed from top down and reflected the viewsand interests of elite groups, created a situation in which many Israelis felt alienatedto the peace process. They believed they were not enjoying its fruits but rather payingthe price of a deteriorating security situation. In the next 3 years, relations betweenIsrael and the Palestinians further deteriorated. Under American pressure, the newly-elected Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, signed two agreements (Hebron andWye) but frustrated Palestinians with demands for “reciprocity” and the delay ofredeployments.

In the summer of 2000, 7 years after the signing of Declaration of Principles,Ehud Barak, the newly elected Israeli Prime Minister of the Labor party and YasserArafat met in Camp David for a crucial negotiation. Barak, who initiated the summit,declared his intention to pass over the interim agreements that, for reasons discussedabove, had only been partially implemented and reach a final agreement that would

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put an end to the conflict. Despite breaking away from Oslo’s interim steps in favor of acomprehensive package of peace, Camp David was also a top-down initiative, a contin-uation of the old dynamics, pushing its zero-sum nature to the edge and overburdenedby the history of the previous 7 years of negotiations. The all-or-nothing approach,Barak’s attempt in Camp David proved a poor gamble, as Israel and the Palestiniansentered the negotiations after 7 years that not only left them little confidence in eachother, but also with difficult domestic settings that made compromises even moredifficult. The continuing reality of, on the one hand, the continuation of settlements,checkpoints, and economic instability, and, on the other, anti-Israeli propaganda, ter-rorism, and lack of action against Palestinian fundamentalist groups, left both publicsskeptical of the other’s commitment to peace.

Two weeks of negotiations failed to bridge the differences and the sides departedwithout reaching an agreement, blaming each other for the failure of the summit. Thesituation led eventually to the breakdown of the talks and Barak’s concluding statementthat all understandings reached were “null and void.” The Palestinian frustrations ofthe previous 7 years exploded after a visit of Israeli opposition leader, Ariel Sharon,to the Temple Mount, a visit meant to demonstrate Israel’s sovereignty over the site.The subsequent clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians escalated intounprecedented levels of violence, ending the peace process and, shortly after, Barak’sterm in office. To a large extent during the 1990s, Israeli leaders failed to balance thetwo-level game of foreign policy and also ignored the central sociocultural dynamics,which transformed the nature of citizen-politician relations from a top-down to abottom-up orientation and required grass root support mechanisms. The combinationof these two misinterpretations of Israeli society created significant gaps between itand its leaders, leading to the failure of the top-down oriented policy approach. Thesegaps triggered, on the one hand, public attempts to define a solution to the escalatingconflict and, on the other, learning processes among Israeli leaders who graduallyresponded to bottom-up dynamics, as explained in the next sub-section.

The fence and unilateral disengagement – bottom-up orientation

In the summer of 2002, the Likud-led government, headed by Ariel Sharon, decidedon the construction of a separation fence between Israel and the Palestinian territoriesin the West Bank. The election of Sharon after the collapse of the Camp David talkswas a result of a growing consensus among Israelis of the “no partner” thesis offeredby Barak after Camp David. While the Likud was elected because of its hard-lineapproach towards the Palestinians, it did not take long to realize that the tough militarystrategy it relied on was at most, only partially able to bring security. The right-wingLikud had previously objected to the idea of the fence, raised by the Labor partyand other dovish factions, as it was concerned that a fence, even if built for securitypurposes, would eventually draw the border between Israel and the Palestinians. But,the growing numbers of Israeli casualties from suicide bombers who infiltrated fromthe West Bank into Israel and the growing public pressure for security, caused thegovernment to change its mind and support the construction of the fence. While itwas the government that took action in both cases it was, we argue, responding topressures from below and, in the case of the fence, even following initiatives taken by

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citizens. Furthermore, we argue that the political culture of unilateral initiatives (legal,semi-legal and illegal) has penetrated all political systems including the governmentand, therefore, can explain the unilateral policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians.

Like the Oslo process described above, the fence was a strategy that sought tocircumvent the main issues (settlements, Jerusalem and refugees) and to strike abalance between external demands for compromise and internal opposition. But, aswill be elaborated below, the fence was a different strategy in three important andinterrelated ways. First, in the wake of Camp David and the subsequent cycle ofviolence, a large number of Israelis became disenchanted with the peace process but,especially as violence escalated, were interested in separation as a security measure.Second, unlike Oslo, the decision to build a fence was very much a bottom-up process,influenced by citizens who organized demands and by local initiatives that sought tocreate security which the government failed to supply. Third, since it was based on localpolitics, this strategy ignored Palestinian demands and interests. The empowermentof domestic politics, in other words, tilted the balance of the two-level game andinspired a short-term, immediate solution to the ongoing security crisis.

The concept of a fence between Israel and the Palestinians was not new to thepolitical discourse in Israel. Israeli liberals have often used the threat of a bi-nationalstate, or the need to preserve the Jewish State from a prospective Arab majority,as the rationale to end the occupation. From the time of Oslo, especially when theprocess was undermined by violence, the fence was raised as a fallback position,a security measure Israel could or should use unilaterally, if the Palestinians failedto cooperate. In 1995, after a series of suicide bombings, the government beganexamining the possibility of separation. Two appointed committees, one under thesupervision of the Ministry of Police and another under the supervision of the Ministryof Finance, produced reports that recommended that the police and military shouldmonitor and limit entry of Palestinians to Israel. In March 1996, after a suicideattack on a public bus in Jerusalem, the government decided to pursuit a strategy ofseparation by creating a seam zone with monitored passages and preventing illegalentry of vehicles and people. The military introduced a working plan to implementthe government’s decision and some 300 million Israeli sheqels were allocated bythe government. But, these plans were never implemented and an investigation bythe state comptroller found that, despite the checkpoints, people and vehicles crossedthe seam zone and entered Israel almost without interference. Thus, the 1997 reportconcluded that none of the recommendations and decisions regarding the seam zonewas implemented (State Comptroller, 1997). The state comptroller addressed the issueagain 5 years later in a more detailed report that found, again, that little was done bythe government during that period. Between September 2000 and July 2002, after thecollapse of the Camp David summit, 82 suicide bombers from the West Bank crossedinto Israel. The terrorists, the report complained, had no difficulty in reaching theirtargets and were unimpeded by military checkpoints. The report concluded: “. . . Thefact that no effective and real action was taken in the seam zone to seriously limit theentry of terrorists from the West Bank into Israel is unacceptable” (State Comptroller,2002).

As the peace process encountered more obstacles and was further undermined bynew cycles of violence, ideas of cooperation, and a “New Middle East” gave way to

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interim agreements and a zero-sum dynamic between the negotiating sides (Ben-Porat,2005a). The Labor Party in the 1996 campaign, losing its support due to stepped-upterrorist attacks, adopted the slogan “we are here, they are there, a fence in between”and abandoned the New Middle East dream. This strategy emphasized the need toachieve security by ending the occupation, with or without Palestinian cooperation,and by unilaterally (if necessary) drawing future borders. The fence strategy failed towin the election, but the idea was embedded in the political discourse and re-emerged4 years later. Not only in the political discourse, but also by local initiatives alongthe frontier between Israel and the territories, the idea of the fence gradually turnedinto a reality. Already in 1994, shortly after Oslo, and under the pressure of tworegional councils, Prime Minister Rabin ordered the construction of two 2.5 m-highcement fences, 2 km in length a piece, to prevent direct shooting on Israeli housesin the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem from a town in the Palestinian territories,200 m away. Seven years later, again under pressure from residents, the fence wasextended and heightened. In other areas, an approximately 100 km electric fence wasconstructed to protect agricultural property. The minister of agriculture explained therational behind the construction of fences: “We are responding to the pressure of theresidents. At the moment it is politically impossible to decide on partition and thisis a local solution. Eventually, we will wake up one morning and see fences, walls,and barriers along the whole seam line” (Ratner, 2002). The government officiallydenied that the 1967 border was being re-created but, as one regional council managerexplained: “officially or unofficially, in reality the pressures from below dictate thefuture border to the government and that will determine it” (Ratner, 2002).

Between 1994 and 2002, different citizens’ initiatives along the seam line creatednew facts. The residents of the Gilboa regional council determined to begin buildinga 12-km fence against terrorist infiltration and not wait for government action orapproval. The regional council Mayor, Dani Atar, traveled to the United States toraise funds for the construction of the fence. “This is a message to the government,”explained the Mayor, “there is total anarchy and disregard for the personal securityof citizens” (Ratner, 2002). Another regional Mayor explained: “I have to take careof the security of my residents. They (policymakers) can call it a security fence oran agricultural fence. . .if policymakers would call it separation, it would appear aswithdrawal, so they use security terms” (Ratner, 2002). Atar predicted that if thesecurity situation worsened, policymakers would have to adapt to the needs belowand gradually the border would become a reality.

As explained earlier, these local unilateral initiatives can be understood in termsof alternative politics, which had become the dominant characteristic of Israeli polit-ical culture during the 1980s and 1990s. Given an intensifying government failure toprovide security, Israeli citizens adopted a problem-solving approach that had provensuccessful in many other areas of life – unilateral initiatives. In that way, they even-tually forced a policy shift from the bottom up.

The more terrorism took its toll, the more various groups that advocated the fenceraised their voices, demanding that the government provide the necessary funding.The “Fence for Life” movement, established in 2001, sponsored a vigorous campaigndemanding the construction and completion of the fence to prevent infiltration ofsuicide bombers, regardless of the withdrawal or the future of settlements. Israel’s

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President, Moshe Katzav, who met with leaders of the group, expressed his support fora security fence. The “Fence for Life” campaign attempted to circumvent the politicaldebate, by deliberately avoiding the discussion of withdrawal or stating a position onthe future of the territories. This position enabled the movement to receive supportfrom politicians of various parties.

Uzi Dayan, a retired Major General and the head of the “Forum for NationalResponsibility,” a dovish movement that includes many former generals, describedthe fence as a security measure with long-term significance for the preservation ofIsrael as a Jewish and democratic state against the “demographic threat.”

A decisive Jewish majority must be preserved only through democratic andmoral means, otherwise it will not be a Jewish state. . .the state of Israel shoulddecide on its borders in the next few years, according to two considerations:security and demography: security, so that all the citizens of Israel live in safety,and demography, so that the nature of this state will continue to be Jewish anddemocratic. (Dayan, 2002)

Thus, the fence was not only a short-term security measure, but according to someof its proponents, also part of a wider strategy that would foster peace by reducingfriction and restoring confidence among Israelis. Similarly, unilateral disengagementwas adopted by some of Israel’s peace supporters, who believed that the idea ofseparation from the Palestinians, using the vantage-point of Israeli self-interest, couldmobilize large parts of Israeli society to support an end to the occupation. The “Councilfor Peace and Security,” a voluntary organization made up of retired military personnelwith dovish views, explained that since the political process had reached a deadend, Israel should move towards unilateral separation. Separation would ease thestrain on the security budget, enhance Israel’s defense capabilities, narrow the frictionpoints with the Palestinians, reduce the danger of regional escalation, and contain the“negative” demographic process in which Jews were becoming a minority betweenthe Jordan River and the Mediterranean. In the long run, in view of its advocates, thispartition could be the base for a renewed peace process.

The plan for unilateral separation does not aspire to generate a permanent so-lution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, it is a temporary arrangement,based on an Israeli initiative that is intended to serve the vital and immediateinterests of both peoples. Israel for its part will announce that in parallel withthe process of separation and redeployment along new lines, it will be preparedto offer official recognition to an independent Palestinian state declared by thePalestinian Authority in areas under its control. In this way, future negotia-tions will be held between two legitimate governments. (Council for Peace andSecurity, 2004)

The Labor Party’s attempt to use the idea of unilateral separation in the 2002election failed to make a difference for labor’s immediate political fortunes. But, the

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new Likud government had to face the reality that despite the large number of membersof terrorist organizations, including leaders, killed or captured by Israeli militaryinitiatives, suicide bombings continued and worsened. Consequently, the concept ofa fence gained momentum and public support which the government could no longerignore. Surveys performed in 2002 sent a clear message to the government as theyindicated that a majority of Israelis (83%) supported unilateral disengagement, evenat the price of evacuation of (some) settlements and believed that the fence couldprevent or significantly reduce terrorism (Peace Index, May 2005).

In the summer of 2002, under public pressure, the Likud government began theconstruction of a fence between the territories and Israel. Ariel Sharon, who hadpreviously objected to the fence, was forced to accede to public demands. Accordingto his Senior Adviser and Campaign Manager, Eyal Arad “. . . There was a situationthat the Prime Minister was blamed for every terrorist attack . . . what caused thechange was the pressure of public opinion” (Bachur-Nir, 2003). The constructionof the fence was delayed due to budgetary problems and difficulties determining itsexact course. On the one hand, Israeli settlers opposed a fence that would leave someof them outside, and they demanded that the fence be extended eastward. On theother hand, the American government demanded that the fence not annex territoriesbeyond the 1967 borders. In spite of all the difficulties, the construction of the fenceproceeded, and by spring 2005, a large part of the project was completed.

While the fence strategy was successful in terms of its ability to incorporate viewsof many in the Israeli public, taking into account the two-level dilemma, it is doubtfulwhether the fence can provide a long-term solution. The fence is designed to strikea balance between internal and external pressures, but essentially ignores the Pales-tinians. For the Palestinians, as surveys have shown, the fence effect is devastating,as it implies the de-facto annexation of Palestinian villages to Israel, separating themfrom the West Bank. It also involves instances in which lands are confiscated fromtheir owners so as to accommodate the building of the fence, and cases where thefence would separate farmers from their lands and deprive them of their livelihood.(OCHA, 2003). Overall, the fence will severly hurt virtually all economic ties thatremain between Palestinians and Israel and will add to the economic plight of thePalestinians. The Israeli government has stated over and again that the fence is a se-curity measure that will not determine final boundaries, but with the large investmentin the fence, this claim seems, at best, highly questionable to the Palestinians.

The campaign for the fence was paralleled by a campaign for unilateral withdrawalor disengagement from the Gaza Strip and from a small section of the West Bank. Un-like the campaign for the fence described above, which largely avoided the discussionof withdrawal, other campaigns have advocated a gradual withdrawal and removal ofsettlements. The disengagement plan adopted by Sharon was the logical continuationof the fence strategy, reducing friction points between Israelis and Palestinians andwithdrawing from a densely populated area to which most Israelis were unattached.Like the fence, this idea was also the result of the growing belief that “there is nopartner” on the other side and that, consequently, Israel should re-deploy its forcesaccording to its own interests. Moreover, like the fence, this initiative was supportedby many on the left, but also by the center and moderate right, who either believed thatthe price of holding on to Gaza was too high, or that the withdrawal in Gaza would

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allow Sharon to retain important parts of the West Bank. No less importantly, theunilateral withdrawal plan, unlike the fence, received support from abroad to balancethe two-level dilemma. While in his own right wing party, Sharon’s plan to removeall settlements from Gaza and some settlements in the West Bank was sharply criti-cized, polls showed general public support and it was warmly embraced by the UnitedStates government and President Bush, who congratulated Sharon on his initiative.Thus, on June 6, 2004, the Israeli government accepted the disengagement plan thatincluded the removal of all settlements in the Gaza Strip. In August 2005, followingthe government decision, all the settlements in the Gaza Strip and four settlements inthe Northern part of the Westbank were evacuated.

Conclusion

This article reaches two central conclusions. First, the concept of two-level analysescan be extended to include the possibility that the public actively shapes foreign policyby setting the agenda. In the contexts we described, agenda setting occurs throughunilateral acts in the form of “alternative politics.” Second, the public is likely to takesuch measures under certain cultural and structural conditions in which other influencechannels are blocked. As elaborated theoretically and empirically, such conditionsinclude continuous government failure to provide public services combined with awidely-shared sense that conventional democratic influence channels are ineffective,i.e., a situation of blocked influence channels. These conditions may lead to theevolution of alternative politics as informal institutions.

More specifically, the article explains how sociopolitical processes in Israeli societythat included, on the one hand, growing frustrations with government performanceand, on the other hand, limited channels for citizens’ influence, led to the developmentof alternative politics. It was this development that transformed the nature of citizen–politician relations from a top-down to a bottom-up orientation and gradually led toshifts in foreign policy. We argue that the Israeli public adopted unilateral initiativesto solve social problems and that this approach was also adopted to remedy thegovernment’s failure to provide security. Furthermore, as long as Israeli politiciansignored these changes, they failed to mobilize support for policies imposed from thetop down and lost their position of power.

The analysis illuminates an important aspect of two-level dynamics. When inter-nal dynamics between the public and politicians in a given society are characterizedby a bottom-up orientation, internal and local considerations may dominate foreignpolicy in ways that lead to the neglect of external or international considerations.Specifically, by adopting the strategy of building a fence, combined with unilateraldisengagement, Israeli politicians actually responded to internal demands, thus ignor-ing the negotiations with Palestinians and mostly neglecting the international side inthe two-level equation. Future research could address these findings comparatively.

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