Analysing Israel-Hamas Conflict Based on Game Theory Approach

ABSTRACT The Islamic Resistance Movement (AKA: Hamas) has taken control over Gaza Strip, Palestine, in 2007. Since then, the organization was in a continues hit-run conflict against the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). The conflict is very resistant to any sort of resolution, and Hamas and Israel engage frequently in what it seems an endless cycle of resentment and violence. Despite numerous mediations by global and regional powers, this conflict appears to be further away than ever. This particular conflict can’t be addressed according to the common negotiation theories that based on rationality and hard politics, which seems not that functional. Instead, a model based on the game theory approach is presented in this study to explain this phenomenon. In this work, some facts about Israel - Hamas regional concerns are explained. Moreover, the study analyses the reasons behind Hamas enforcing calm in Gaza, even though Hamas considers Israel as its arch enemy. The presented model shows that whenever Israel and Hamas reach an agreement, both sides can collaborate in maintaining a state of calm. Moreover, results show that the proposed model is applicable to analyse a conflict in terms of actions, duration and terms of settlement. KEYWORDS: Israel; Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Hamas; Gaza strip; Game theory

Wars in Review: Subaltern Methodologies in Conflict Studies

This essay reviews four disparate studies on war narratives: ‘Right to Mourn’ by Suhi Choi (2019), ‘Fly Until You Die’ by Chia Youyee Vang (2019), ‘Soldiers in Revolt’ by Maggie Dwyer (2018), ‘Breaking the Binaries in Security Studies’ by Ayelet Harel-Shalev and Shir Daphna-Tekoah (2019). The studies take a ‘view-from-below’ approach and build new theoretical frameworks that not only expose ‘the price of war’, but also investigate how ‘subaltern subjects’ subjects view their place and participation in the conflict and resist over-arching homogenous interpretations. The studies respectively focus on post-war remembrance in South Korea, oral histories of Hmong pilots, mutinying in West African states, and the experiences of female combatants in the Israeli Defence Forces. Although dissimilar in terms of geographic spaces, actors and even methodology, the authors all commonly challenge established binaries within conflict studies that assume a separation of the ‘military’ and the ‘civilian’, the prevalence of power-hierarchies within armed forces, and the supposed passiveness of powerless actors in conflict. This essay reviews these books as not individual publications that contribute to the literature of their own disciplines, but as interactive theoretical frameworks that not only dispute prevailing theories of war but also present new understandings on how these narratives interrelate.

Briefly Noted

On September 2, 2019, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Appeals Chamber delivered its judgment in the Situation on the Registered Vessels of the Union of Comoros, the Hellenic Republic and the Kingdom of Cambodia case, Case No. ICC-01/13 OA 2, and rejected the appeal filed by the ICC Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I's decision on the November 15, 2018 “Application for Judicial Review by the Government of the Union of Comoros.” As noted in the ICC's press release, “a referral was received by the Office of the Prosecutor from the authorities of the Union of the Comoros, a State Party to the Rome Statute, in relation to an attack on 31 May 2010 by the Israeli Defence Forces on the Humanitarian Aid Flotilla bound for the Gaza strip. On 6 November 2014, the Prosecutor issued her decision not to investigate the attack. On 16 July 2015, Pre-Trial Chamber I, by majority, requested the Prosecutor to reconsider the 6 November 2014 decision not to investigate the attack. Subsequently, on 29 November 2017 the Prosecutor filed her decision, which she considered to be final, reaffirming her previous decision not to investigate the attack. On 15 November 2018, Pre-Trial Chamber I directed the Prosecutor to reconsider her decision of 6 November 2014 not to investigate the attack in light of the specific directions of the Pre-Trial Chamber's 16 July 2015 decision. The Prosecutor then appealed this decision.” The Appeals Chamber confirmed the Pre-Trial Chamber's decision, directing that the OTP must reconsider its decision regarding the Comoros referral by December 2, 2019. The Appeals Chamber found that the Pre-Trial Chamber “did not err in reviewing whether a decision of a Prosecutor that she considered to be ‘final’ subsequently to a first request for reconsideration does actually amount … to a proper ‘final decision.’” The Appeals Chamber did maintain that the “ultimate decision” regarding whether or not to initiate an investigation remains with the OTP.

Commercialised occupation skills: Israeli security experience as an international brand

This chapter demonstrates how knowledge about security becomes a commodity that can be marketed, sold, and, in fact, moved. Engaging the reputation of the Israeli Defence Forces as not only experts in security, but notably practitioners of security, the chapter shows how private security firms in the United States construct their business model around precisely this reputation. The chapter highlights the capacities of markets to render things mobile and relocate the abstract notion of Israeli security to another country where it manifests itself and transcends boundaries from the military sector to private service provisions for the civil sector. These companies do so by transforming the ‘Israeli Security Experience’ into a brand that symbolises not only security and safety but also values such as discretion and toughness.

On Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Genet and representing the Palestinians

In July 2014, the people who took part to the banned demonstration in Paris against the intervention of the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza were expressing their support of a besieged people. However, this very support was also an excuse to demonstrate their religious and ethnic allegiances as well as their political opinions. The use of the Palestinian struggle for recognition as a tool in domestic political debates is not a recent trend in French political culture: it can be traced back to 1968 when the Palestinian cause was discovered in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. A pioneer of the Palestinian cause, Jean-Luc Godard, was recently accused of anti-Semitism when he was considered for a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars in 2010. The same year, in Marseille, a conference celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Jean Genet’s birth was almost cancelled because it could supposedly have caused problems of public safety. Long after their works on this topic came out, both authors’ positions regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are still considered extremely controversial. This article explores the speeches of both men regarding movements of Palestinian resistance after they visited refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon in the 1970s and the 1980s. It argues that, as fiery anti-Zionists, Jean Genet and Jean-Luc Godard unconsciously create a mythology of Palestinian struggle for recognition and independence in order to protest against its representation in the mass media of capitalistic societies.

Waltz with Bashir (2008; director/writer: Ari Folman)

Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir is an animated documentary about the 1982 Lebanon War through the eyes of Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) veterans. The narrative, which follows Folman on a quest to uncover his lost memories of the War through interviews with his peers, plays out like psychotherapeutic intervention; Folman questions his own responsibilities, his hereditary scars and, ultimately, his guilt as he ‘unwillingly [takes on] the role of the Nazi’. While it would be disingenuous to call the film apolitical, it is not as political as one might expect from such evocative history. Rather, it is a treatise on memory and psychological survival through predominantly neurotic defence mechanisms.