The Politics of State Prevention and Creeping Annexation

• In Event: Strategies of Shaping Peoples and States

Abstract

Why did the Israeli-Palestinian peace process produce an intensified system of control in the occupied territories and diminish the prospects for independent statehood? In the early 1990s Israel began a political process with the Palestinians that was widely thought to be leading towards withdrawal from the occupied territories in the context of a peace agreement and the birth of a Palestinian state. Three decades later Israeli control over the West Bank is as strong as ever, the number of settlers has increased by hundreds of thousands, and talk about annexation of the West Bank has grown in volume and frequency. What explains this paradoxical outcome? In this paper I trace the evolution of Israeli strategy in the West Bank and Gaza since the initiation of the Oslo Accords. I use qualitative methods and historical process tracing to explain why and how Israeli strategies for preventing Palestinian statehood have evolved over time. To increase explanatory leverage, I locate this conflict in a comparative perspective alongside other self-determination conflicts and examine Israeli strategy alongside other state strategies against separatists. I argue that one of the effects of the political struggles around the peace process and its aftermath was to shift the structure of the bargaining framework in the two-level game that Israeli leaders are playing. This shift has curtailed the prospects for a negotiated solution, but has not entirely eliminated the possibility of Israeli withdrawal. My analysis further suggests that Israeli strategy in the Palestinian arena cannot be adequately explained by either domestic or international variables, but rather requires linking “internal” and “external” explanations of strategy formation.

Author

• Nathaniel Shils, University of Pennsylvania