ISRAEL UNDER SIEGE This page intentionally left blank ISR AEL UNDER SIEGE The Politics of Insecurity and the Rise of the Israeli Neo- Revisionist Right RAFFAELLA A. DEL SARTO Georgetown University Press | Washington DC © 2017 Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for third-party websites or their content. URL links were active at time of publication. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Del Sarto, Raffaella A., author. Title: Israel under Siege : The Politics of Insecurity and the Rise of the Israeli Neo-Revisionist Right / Raffaella A. Del Sarto. Description: Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, 2017. | Includes bibli- ographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016024176 (print) | LCCN 2016040475 (ebook) | ISBN 9781626164062 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781626164079 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781626164086 (eb) Subjects: LCSH: Israel—Foreign relations—21st century. | Israel—Politics and government—1993– | Right and left (Political science)—Israel. | National security— Israel. Classification: LCC DS119.6 .D45 2017 (print) | LCC DS119.6 (ebook) | DDC 327.5694— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024176 ♾ This book is printed on acid- free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. 18 17 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing Printed in the United States of America Cover design by Martyn Schmoll. Israel–Egypt barrier, Wikimedia Commons image (ISR-EGY border 6521a.jpg) This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license. To N. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Preface ix A Note on Transliteration xiii Abbreviations xv Introduction: Israel’s New Foreign Policy Consensus after the Oslo Peace Process, 2000–2010 1 1. F eeling under Siege: Conflicts, Threats, and Regional Order 21 2. I srael’s Foreign Policy Consensus: Impact and Implications 96 3. A New Domestic Hegemony: Factors and Explanations 149 4. T he Return of Dissent? 2010 to the Present 187 Conclusions: Insecurity and the Power of Neo- Revisionist Hegemony 211 Appendix A: Key Political Figures 227 Appendix B: Chronology 241 Bibliography 255 Index 269 About the Author 279 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE The idea for this book first emerged while I was a Pears-R ich Fellow in Israel and Mediterranean Studies at the Middle East Centre of St. Ant- ony’s College at Oxford University between 2007 and 2011. In that period, the first Gaza war between Israel and Hamas took place, termed Oper- ation Cast Lead by Israel and lasting from December 2008 to January 2009. In September 2009 the so- called Goldstone Report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict was published, accusing both the Israeli army and Palestinian militants of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during that war. In May 2010 the Israeli navy stormed the Turkish- owned flagship of a flotilla of vessels, the Mavi Marmara, which was crewed by pro-P alestinian activists trying to break the Israeli– Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip; nine Turkish citizens were killed in the incident. The heated discussions about these and other Middle East events with students, colleagues, and friends in these years convinced me that specific notions and policies, together with the question of who is to blame, had become “common sense” and were thus widely uncontested in Israeli politics and society. However, from an outside perspective, Is- raeli policies were becoming increasingly incomprehensible. Fierce and polemic disputes between supporters and critics of Israeli policies, with their respective justifications, characterized that period and the follow- ing years. The growing international criticism of Israeli policies would, however, only reinforce the domestic consensus in Israel, together with the sense of besiegement that had taken hold of Israeli society in those years. Toward the end of the 2000s, the Israeli body politic had thus con- siderably changed from the Israel I had come to know earlier, while living, studying, and working there (and in the Palestinian territories) for almost eight years. That period comprised the years of the Oslo peace process, in which cooperation with the Palestinians, however difficult, was a reality. It was also a time in which contestation and heated debates in Israeli pol- itics on anything related to relations with the Palestinians and the wider region, the future borders of the state, and Israel’s place in the region were