The Arab Israeli Conflict In American Political Culture

This book surveys discourse and opinion in the United States toward the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1991. Contrary to popular myth, it demonstrates that U.S. support for Israel is not based on the pro-Israel lobby, but rather is deeply rooted in American political culture. That support has increased since 9/11. However, the bulk of this increase has been among Republicans, conservatives, evangelicals, and Orthodox Jews. Meanwhile, among Democrats, liberals, the Mainline Protestant Church, and non-Orthodox Jews, criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians has become more vociferous. This book works to explain this paradox.

Although political culture is not sole explanatory factor in development of US policy toward Israel, it has played a key role in serving to shape and define American approach to foreign affairs. This book explains American commitment to Israel within a framework of political culture.

Ten leading scholars and practitioners of politics, political science, anthropology, Israel studies, and Middle East affairs address the theme of continuity and change in political culture as a tribute to Professor Myron (Mike) J. Aronoff whose work on political culture has built conceptual and methodological bridges between political science and anthropology. Topics include the legitimacy of the two-state solution, identity and memory, denationalization, the role of trust in peace negotiations, democracy, majority-minority relations, inclusion and exclusion, Biblical and national narratives, art in public space, and avant-garde theater. Countries covered include Israel, Palestine, the United States, the Basque Autonomous Region of Spain, and Poland. The first four chapters by Yael S. Aronoff, Saliba Sarsar, Yossi Beilin, and Nadav Shelef examine aspects of the conflict and peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, including alternative solutions. The contributions by Naomi Chazan, Ilan Peleg, and Joel Migdal tackle challenges to democracy in Israel, in other divided societies, and in the creation of the American public. Yael Zerubavel, Roland Vazquez, and Jan Kubik focus their analyses on aspects of national memory, memorialization, and dramatization. Mike Aronoff relates his work on various aspects of political culture to each chapter in an integrative essay in the Epilogue.

Although political culture is not the sole explanatory factor in the development of US policy toward Israel, it has played a key role in serving to shape and define the American approach to foreign affairs. This book explains the American commitment to Israel within a framework of political culture.

The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict illuminates the controversial course of America's Middle East relations from the birth of Israel to the Reagan administration. Skillfully separating actual policymaking from the myths that have come to surround it, Spiegel challenges the belief that American policy in the Middle East is primarily a relation to events in that region or is motivated by bureaucratic constraints or the pressures of domestic politics. On the contrary, he finds that the ideas and skills of the president and his advisors are critical to the determination of American policy. This volume received the 1986 National Jewish Book Award.

This historical study of international Middle East politics in regional perspective presents a comprehensive analysis of the interplay between inter-Arab politics and the conflict with Israel—the two key issues which have shaped the Middle East contemporary history (and made it simultaneously tumultuous and a focus of international affairs). The Decline of the Arab-Israeli Conflict addresses the changing political behavior of the regional Arab system in the Palestine conflict, from total enmity to negotiated peace with Israel. This change is explained as a reflection of state formation process and constant thrust of ruling elites to disengage from compelling supra-state commitments stemming from Pan-Arab nationalist ideology and Islamic political culture. The book scrutinizes the role of Arab summit conferences which, since 1964, became the main collective Arab institution for decision making on common core issues—foremost of which was the conflict with Israel. The summits' main role was to legitimize incremental departure from the overburdening Palestine conflict whose powerful collective symbolism threatened states' autonomy. Summits' consensus sanctioned shifts from hitherto established collective Arab norms toward Israel as well as on inter-Arab relations, in accordance with core actors' interests. The summits offer a view to the Arab regional system's evolution as a negotiated inter-state order based on mutual recognition of sovereign states as opposed to compulsive collectivism in the name of Pan-Arabism. They were, in fact, a manipulation of the regional Arab system by primary participants' coalitions through employment of financial, ideological, and political trade-offs to resolve inter-Arab differences and reach a consensus on redefined collective goals.