The Palestinian Military: Two Militaries, Not One

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hillel Frisch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
West Bank ◽  
The United States ◽  
Palestinian Authority ◽  
The West ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
External Threat ◽  
Yasser Arafat ◽  
The One ◽  
Security Structure

The considerable variation in the way national security agencies are structured is a function of two basic factors: the state’s political and social heterogeneity and the possibility of allying with a strong external state, usually the United States. The problem, however, with fragmenting the military and security forces to achieve “coup-proofing” is that a tradeoff exists between fragmentation and assuring internal security on the one hand, and ensuring offensive capabilities to ward off external enemies, on the other. According to this model, centralized homogenous entities enjoying U.S. protection will tend to fragment their security systems most. States that duplicate their security forces least are plural societies that cannot command U.S. interest and commitment to meet their external security threats. The Palestinian Authority (PA) under Yasser Arafat was emblematic of political entities that were homogenous and enjoyed the protection of the United States and Israel, and it could therefore fragment its security forces into 12 or more security agencies compared to Eritrea, which achieved independence a year before the establishment of the PA, and maintained a very unified security apparatus to meet the threat of a vastly larger enemy—Ethiopia. As long as Israel (and the United States and its allies) supported the PA, Arafat made do with a fragmented inefficient security structure that was nevertheless efficient enough, with Israeli security backing, to meet the major external threat—Hamas and the Jihad al-Islami in both the West Bank/Judea and Samaria and Gaza. Israel’s decision to withdraw from Gaza in December 2003 and to complete its withdrawal from Gaza by September 2005 forced the fragmented PA to face these enemies alone, leading to the loss of Gaza to Hamas. By contrast, in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, the more fragmented PA security structure prevailed as a result of considerable security cooperation with Israel. Hamas, bereft of a close external ally, challenges a superior Israeli military and therefore has a unified security structure much like Eritrea in the 1990s.

Israel will keep shooting Palestinian protesters

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
West Bank ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Independent Investigation ◽  
The Us

Significance However, the United States has already blocked a Kuwaiti-drafted statement expressing “outrage” at Israeli security forces’ killings of protesters and calling for an independent investigation. The demonstrations by thousands of Gaza Palestinians approaching the Israeli security fence coincided with the formal opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem. Impacts The turn in international opinion against Israel could bolster Iran and its Lebanese protégé Hezbollah. Events in Gaza make progress in the stalled Egypt-backed ‘reconciliation’ agreement with the West Bank authorities even more unlikely. Few countries will follow the US example of moving their embassies to Jerusalem, despite Israeli inducements. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s recent foreign policy successes could bolster his position against corruption investigations.

Israel will try to sustain frail Palestinian Authority

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
West Bank ◽  
The United States ◽  
Palestinian Authority ◽  
The West ◽  
Financial Transfers ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Fuel Tax

Significance The pledge is the latest in a string of Israeli policy announcements that further undermine the purpose of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to pave the way for an independent state. Bitter disputes in recent months with Israel -- and the United States -- have left the PA virtually bankrupt and generated a deep economic crisis in the West Bank. Impacts An August fuel tax agreement will tide the PA over financially for a short while. The PA’s refusal to accept financial transfers from Israel offer a popularity boost, disincentivising reconciliation. Pressures on UN refugee funding, on which many Palestinians rely, will grow.

scholarly journals Environmental justice, settler colonialism, and more-than-humans in the occupied West Bank: An introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Irus Braverman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
West Bank ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The West ◽  
The Core ◽  
Waste Concrete

Our special issue provides a first-of-its kind attempt to examine environmental injustices in the occupied West Bank through interdisciplinary perspectives, pointing to the broader settler colonial and neoliberal contexts within which they occur and to their more-than-human implications. Specifically, we seek to understand what environmental justice—a movement originating from, and rooted in, the United States—means in the context of Palestine/Israel. Moving beyond the settler-native dialectic, we draw attention to the more-than-human flows that occur in the region—which include water, air, waste, cement, trees, donkeys, watermelons, and insects—to consider the dynamic, and often gradational, meanings of frontier, enclosure, and Indigeneity in the West Bank, challenging the all-too-binary assumptions at the core of settler colonialism. Against the backdrop of the settler colonial project of territorial dispossession and elimination, we illuminate the infrastructural connections and disruptions among lives and matter in the West Bank, interpreting these through the lens of environmental justice. We finally ask what forms of ecological decolonization might emerge from this landscape of accumulating waste, concrete, and ruin. Such alternative visions that move beyond the single axis of settler-native enable the emergence of more nuanced, and even hopeful, ecological imaginaries that focus on sumud, dignity, and recognition.

An Ordinary Soviet Death

2019 ◽  
pp. 127-149
Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
The West ◽  
Rational Argument ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter describes the timing and motivations of the USSR's promotion of atheist doctrine. At the outset, it seems, the Soviets expected Orthodoxy to wither away, invalidated by rational argument and the regime's own record of socialist achievement. This did not happen, but Soviet officialdom did not take full cognizance of the fact until the 1950s and 1960s at the height of the Cold War. Then it was that the Soviet Union's confrontation with the West came to be recast in religious terms as an epic battle between atheist communism on the one hand and on the other that self-styled standard-bearer of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the United States. So, here indeed, in Soviet atheism, is a secular church militant—doctrinally armed, fortified by the concentrated power of the modern state, and, as many believed, with the wind of history at its back. It speaks the language of liberation, but what it delivers is something much darker. The chapter then considers the place of ritual in the Soviet secularist project.

"Pioneering" on the West Bank

Worldview ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (12) ◽  
pp. 11-13
Author(s):  
Grace Halsell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
West Bank ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West

The United States has maintained consistently since the Arablsraeli war of 1967 that Jewish settlements on lands inhabited by Palestinian Arabs are illegal, and in June, 1980, legislation was proposed that would deduct a portion of American aid that goes to pay for such illegal settlements.

Praying with Their Eyes Closed: Reflections on the Disengagement from Gaza

2005 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 64-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Roy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
West Bank ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Community ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
The West ◽  
Eyes Closed

Israel's disengagement plan is widely hailed by the international community, led by the United States, as a first step toward the final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. This essay is a refutation of that view. After presenting the current situation of Gaza as the result of deliberate Israeli policies of economic integration, deinstitutionalization, and closure, the author demonstrates how provisions of the plan itself preclude the establishment of a viable economy in the Strip. Examining the plan's implications for the West Bank, the author argues that the occupation, far from ending, will actually be consolidated. She concludes with a look at the disengagement within the context of previous agreements, particularly Oslo——all shaped by Israel's overwhelming power——and the steadily shrinking possibilities offered to the Palestinians.

scholarly journals Western Myths about Russian and Chinese Threats

2021 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Yury Morozov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Media ◽  
The One ◽  
Western Media

The growing geopolitical confrontation between the West, led by the United States on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other, leads to the appearance in the Western media of myths about Russian and Chinese threats to the international community. The article describes what myths are circulating in the modern media and what such publications lead to. At the same time, the article presents facts that expose these myths.

Israel’s New Strategic Setting

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles D. Freilich
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Arab World ◽  
West Bank ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West

Chapter 2 analyzes the changes in Israel’s strategic environment in recent decades and presents an overview thereof today. Israel no longer faces existential threats or major conventional ones, the Arab world is in crisis, and the primary threat it now poses stems from its weakness. Peace with Egypt and Jordan is a strategic boon. Conversely, the de facto annexation of the West Bank negates the strategic depth provided by the 1967 borders and incorporates Palestinian terrorism into Israel itself. Acquisition of additional territory has become a liability, and military decision is hard to achieve without it. Hezbollah and Hamas have become significant threats, Iran a major one. The prospects for peace with the Palestinians are meager for now, and it is unclear whether the conflict with them is resolvable. The United States remains the primary player for Israel, but its decreasing regional stature affects its security adversely, as does Russia’s increasing influence.

Core Europe and the United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 129-150
Author(s):  
Mitchell A. Orenstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
The Us ◽  
The One ◽  
Democratic Elections

Core Europe and North America have often imagined themselves to be invulnerable to the Russian influence campaigns that have affected smaller, weaker countries in the lands in between. However, in recent years, that perception has broken down as Russia regularly hacks democratic elections in the West, sponsors extremists, spreads disinformation, and may have tipped the US 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump. The West now exhibits a similar politics to what we observe in the lands in between—with growing political extremism and polarization on the one hand and the rise of cynical power brokers on the other who seek to profit from both sides of an intensifying divide. Increasingly, democratic elections seem to pose a “civilizational choice” between the forces of liberal democracy and authoritarian nationalism on the Russian model.

Regional Energy Security Cooperation and Geo-Politics with Specific References to India

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-402
Author(s):  
Akhilesh Chandra Prabhakar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Energy Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Security Cooperation ◽  
The West ◽  
Regional Energy ◽  
Vital Interest ◽  
The One ◽  
Transit Routes

Abstract The path from Africa to Indonesia – via West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia – has been of vital interest to North America. Situated at a junction of three continents – namely Asia, Africa, and Europe – linkage over land and across sea between Europe and the Indian Sub-continent on the one side and Africa and India on the other side, it offers the shortest and cheapest trade and transit routes between the West and the East. It commands a vast reservoir of oil – about 60 percent of the world's proven reserves of oil – which enormously contributes to the affluence of the United States.

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