The Israeli Military: Imprisoned by the Religious Community

What is it about?

The possible renewal of the Israel-Palestine peace talks raises concerns about the extent to which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will follow the civilians’ orders to evacuate Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Critical here is the clash between the reality that has been created in the West Bank with the growing number of Jewish settlements and the increasing reliance of the IDF on religious and settler soldiers whose ideological commitment is to the entrenchment of the settlement project, not to peace making. It is argued that these constraints on the military result from the IDF’s deviation from two constitutive principles of the mod¬ern military: the distancing of the military from domestic policing and the creation of relatively impermeable boundaries between the military and society. Consequently, Israel’s ability to implement painful politi¬cal decisions involving the dismantling of Jewish settlements has been circumscribed. With the hobbling of the military, the op¬portunity for peace may once again slip away, while Israel may promote the pursuit of peace agreements that do not require the dismantling of settlements.

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