Conflict Change and Persistence: The India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli Conflicts Compared 1498549500, 9781498549509

Table of contents :
Dedication
Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Acronyms
Preface
1 Two Intractable Conflicts
2 Enduring Rivalries Revisited
3 Setting the Stage
4 Warness
5 Actors and Agendas
6 Conflict Change and Prospects of Peace
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

Conflict Change and Persistence

Conflict Change and Persistence The India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli Conflicts Compared Meirav Mishali-Ram

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-4985-4950-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-4951-6 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To Samuel For the infinite support and encouragement along the way

Contents

List of Tables and Figures

ix

Acronyms xi Preface xiii 1  Two Intractable Conflicts

1

2  Enduring Rivalries Revisited

11

3  Setting the Stage

27

4 Warness

75

5  Actors and Agendas

139

6  Conflict Change and Prospects of Peace

195

Bibliography 205 Index 219 About the Author

231

vii

Tables and Figures TABLES Table 3.1 The Settings of the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli Rivalries

66

Table 4.1 Trends of Warness in the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli Rivalries 128 Table 5.1 Actors and Agendas in the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli Rivalries 185 FIGURES Figure 4.1 India-Pakistan Conflict: Density of Militarized Interstate Disputes 77 Figure 4.2 India-Pakistan Conflict: Hostility Levels of Militarized Interstate Disputes

82

Figure 4.3 India-Pakistan Conflict: Density of State-NSA Armed Confrontations 88 Figure 4.4 India-Pakistan Conflict: Trends of Interstate vs. State-NSA Warness 94 Figure 4.5 Arab-Israeli Conflict: Density of Militarized Interstate Disputes at the Conflict Level

97

Figure 4.6 Arab-Israeli Conflict: Density of Militarized Interstate Disputes at the Dyadic Level

97

Figure 4.7 Arab-Israeli Conflict: Hostility Levels of Militarized Interstate Disputes

105

Figure 4.8 Arab-Israeli Conflict: Density of State-NSA Armed Confrontations 112 Figure 4.9 Arab-Israeli Conflict: Trends of Interstate vs. State-NSA Warness 119 ix

Acronyms ALA Arab Liberation Army  APG All Palestine Government APHC All Parties Hurriyat Conference BJP Bharatiya Janata Party BRL Basic Rivalry Level COW Correlates of War DFLP Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine ER Enduring Rivalry HuA Harakat-ul-Ansar HuM Harakat-ul-Mujahideen ICB International Crisis Behavior IDF Israel Defense Forces INC Indian National Congress ISI Inter-Services Intelligence JKLF Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front LoC Line of Control MAC Mixed Armistice Commission MDI Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad MID Militarized Interstate Disputes MJC Muttahahida Jihad Council NDA National Democratic Alliance NLA National Liberation Army NLF National Liberation Front NSA Non-State Actor NWFP North West Frontier Province OCHA (United Nations) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs PC Protracted Conflict PFLP Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine PFLP-GC Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command PLO Palestine Liberation Organization RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation SAM Surface-to-Air Missile SSNP Syrian Social Nationalist Party TTP Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan  UAR United Arab Republic xi

xii

UNCCP UNCIP UNEF UNIFIL UNRWA UNSCOP UPA VHP WZO

Acronyms

UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan  United Nations Emergency Force UN Interim Force in Lebanon United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees United Nations Special Committee on Palestine United Progressive Alliance Vishwa Hindu Parishad World Zionist Organization

Preface

This book was written at a time when armed struggle and violent public protest were continuing to wear down the countries and peoples involved in the Indian-Pakistani and Arab-Israeli conflicts. Despite the processes of dialogue that have taken place between the protagonists over the years, the two regional conflicts seem far from comprehensive resolution. The world’s attentiveness to these intractable conflicts is especially crucial given the many dangers they pose. The two violent conflicts threaten the security and stability of countries, constitute a source of regional and global terrorism and have the potential for igniting a nuclear flare-up. The difficulty in reconciling these rivalries stems from their great complexity, which, inter alia, includes the linkage between states and non-state actors (NSAs) that bring a variety of issues and contradictory objectives to the conflict’s agenda. In other words, the interstate rivalries between India and Pakistan and between Israel and its neighboring Arab states are inseparable from the liberation struggles carried out in Kashmir and the Palestinian territories. This linkage, however, has taken different shapes in the two regions. The book examines the origins of both conflicts and focuses on change dynamics that states and NSAs have undergone over time, with the aim of understanding why they became intractably hostile and remain so to date. It is not a simple task to compare ongoing conflicts as dynamic and multifaceted as the Indian-Pakistani and Arab-Israeli rivalries. The comparison of change processes in the two arenas enables us to draw lessons from each vis-à-vis the other, and enhances our understanding of the broader phenomenon of enduring rivalries. To deal with the challenge of a broad comparison, I combined a quantitative analysis of hostile interactions with a qualitative analysis of the agendas of the actors involved. The quantitative analysis relied on two established worldwide datasets. I used the Militarized Interstate xiii

xiv

Preface

Disputes (MID) data, drawn from the Correlates of War (COW) project, to analyze trends of interstate hostilities; and the Armed Conflict Dataset, drawn from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), to detect patterns of state-NSA confrontations. This was complemented by narratives from the vast literature on the states, national movements and societies involved in the conflicts in South Asia and the Middle East. I hope that the systematic analysis this book offers will be of value for scholars and policy makers who wish to better comprehend the causes and consequences of the ongoing IndiaPakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts. It is a pleasant duty to thank several colleagues and assistants for their valuable help. Michael Brecher brought me into the absorbing world of international conflict and the mysteries of the India-Pakistan protracted conflict, back when I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation under his guidance. My friend and colleague Hemda Ben-Yehuda offered useful comments and valuable advice in outlining the research design. Stephen Cohen, Marvin Weinberg and Vali Nasr enriched my knowledge on the South Asian states and the Islamic world through fascinating conversations we held while I was on sabbatical at UC Berkeley. Bar-Ilan students Aviram Shemen and Moran Deitch contributed remarkable research assistance, and Ira Moskowitz provided superior editing.

Chapter One

Two Intractable Conflicts

After seven turbulent decades, the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts remain two of the world’s most intractable conflicts. Indeed, the conflicts in South Asia and the Middle East are often regarded as prototypes of enduring rivalries,1 featuring many unresolved issues, psychological manifestations of enmity and repetitive militarized disputes. The two persistent conflicts profoundly affect many aspects of political relations, not only in their regions, but also well beyond. This book examines and compares the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts, focusing on conflict change. The underlying assumption motivating this examination is that change leaves a mark on the depth of conflict—constant change revives and renews animosity between the rival parties, thereby impeding conflict resolution and creating barriers to peace. In other words, I examine conflict persistence through the notion of change. Reviewing more than seven decades of conflict in South Asia and the Middle East, the book detects variation in regional military hostilities between and among state and non-state players, and discusses possible explanations of this change. A large distance separates the two regions of conflict, and different cultural, political and historical attributes characterize the respective rivalries. Both conflicts derive from a territorial dispute generated by partition and war; both involve state and non-state participants. Yet their casts of players differ greatly. The South Asian conflict arose from the creation of two independent states, India and Pakistan, while the Middle Eastern conflict developed from an abortive partition plan, and has since revolved around the struggle between stateless Palestinians and the State of Israel. Thus, from its outset, the IndiaPakistan conflict has involved a territorial dispute between two countries, with Kashmiri separatist movements caught in the middle, struggling for an autonomous future. In the Arab-Israeli case, partition, which aimed to create 1

2

Chapter One

an Arab Palestinian state and a Jewish one, was thwarted by the Arab side; in the end, only one new independent state arose in Palestine. Though deeply burdened by their own formidable domestic problems, the surrounding Arab states—Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon—entangled themselves in the Palestinian issue. Indeed, from the beginning, the Arab countries became part of a conflict that essentially touched upon ambitions of the Palestinian Arabs and the Israeli state; the Arab states were swept into the animosity between them, engaged in militarized hostilities and lost territories in the wars that ensued.2 While fascinatingly diverse, the two conflicts nevertheless share interesting similarities that can shed light on the origins, development and persistence of enduring rivalries. Both conflicts were born of inter-communal strife long before the creation of independent states. The ensuing interstate conflicts began with the end of British rule. In both cases, the post-colonial period was characterized by bitter disputes over territory, identity and security threats. A growing spread of terrorism and the establishment of nuclear capabilities followed. Intermittent peace talks have been conducted among the rival parties throughout the last several decades, yet neither conflict is showing promising signs of resolution in the foreseeable future. The India-Pakistan conflict emerged from a nationalist struggle to end British colonial rule. The independence movement, though led by an allIndia political organization, the Indian National Congress, was eventually torn apart due to power struggles between the Hindu and Muslim elites. Even though the Congress envisioned a unified, secular and democratic country, with no advantage to any religion, fears of majority rule led Muslim leaders to found the Muslim League. The League, which originally aspired to advance Muslim agendas and protect the position of upper-class Muslims in India, became a promoter of partition.3 In 1940, after realizing that the struggle for power-sharing had come to an impasse, the Muslim League began to advocate the claim of Islamic nationalism, embodied in a separate national home in northwestern and northeastern India, where Muslims were a majority. That claim sowed the seeds of partition and the formation of Pakistan, a new state carved out of Hindu-majority India. Several years later, the British proposed a federal framework for an independent India that would give political autonomy to the provinces. The plan was rejected by the Hindu leaders, who strongly opposed any scheme that weakened India’s political center. The British eventually gave up hope for a unified solution and adopted a pathway to territorial division that was reluctantly accepted by the competing communities. The eventual partition of India in 1947 entailed a massive population transfer: Millions of people crossed the newly defined borders between the two states, seeking the safety



Two Intractable Conflicts 3

of a religious majority.4 A persistent interstate conflict then arose, involving deep animosity and mutual security threats. The buds of the Arab-Israeli conflict appeared in the late period of Ottoman rule in Palestine with the emergence of Zionism, the Jewish nationalist movement, and the Jewish aspiration to “return to Zion.” The following waves of European Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine, stemming largely from the need for a haven from anti-Semitism, sparked inter-communal strife over land and rights between Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The publication of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British government stated its commitment to the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, intensified the dispute. In the following decades, with Palestine under the British Mandate, the Zionist movement endeavored to build the institutional foundations of a Jewish state. The rapid growth in the Jewish population in Palestine and the construction of state-like Jewish institutions accelerated the emergence of Palestinian nationalism and resistance to Jewish settlement in the disputed land. In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine and establish two sovereign states, an Arab-Palestinian state and a Jewish one. However, as in the IndiaPakistan conflict, partition did not resolve the inter-communal struggle. In fact, the proposed partition of Palestine was never implemented due to Arab opposition. In May 1948, shortly after the State of Israel declared its independence, five Arab countries reacted by invasion and war.5 This war launched a persistent interstate territorial dispute and left the Palestinian demand for a sovereign state unresolved. Nevertheless, the two conflicts have undergone major changes since the decisions to partition India and Palestine, reflected in the militarized interactions between the contending actors. I conceptualize these militarized interactions as “warness.” Warness captures conflictual relations between or among the parties to the conflict, embodied in the probability of the use of military rather than other foreign policy means. Variation of warness in the IndiaPakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts has encompassed situational shifts from hot war to cold war, with periods of détente and segments of peace. While these shifts imply moderation in interstate militarized interactions, they may also entail escalation in asymmetric warfare between states and non-state actors (NSAs). Warness, then, takes into account the growing role of NSAs in conflict. As such, it captures conflictual relations in both the interstate and state-NSA domains. Taken together, variations of warness are instructive in portraying development and change in the South Asian and Middle Eastern conflicts, which stand at the center of this book. Aiming to explain development and change in the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts, and evaluate the prospects of abatement and peace,

4

Chapter One

the book focuses on two sets of questions: What are the characteristics of warness in the two conflicts, and have they varied considerably over time? What underlies warness variation, and what does it tell us about the persistence of conflict? While addressing these questions, the first task of the book is to detect and explain warness variation. The study defines warness and examines its association with changes occurring within the parties involved. That is, warness variation is examined through the lens of two attributes: actors and agendas. More specifically, the study explores developments in the actors’ characteristics, including their competencies and the identity discourses and political agendas that fuel animosity between the rival parties. With actors and agendas in flux, the threats, interests and goals of the contending parties change, as well as the hostile interactions between them. The analysis of warness, actors and agendas in both the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli rivalries over time serves the second task of the book; it enables us to understand conflict persistence and change through the comparison of two of the most prominent conflicts in our times. COMPARING THE INDIA-PAKISTAN AND ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICTS Empirical studies on the two conflicts abound. The extensive international interest in their ongoing and violent characteristics underlines the fact that they are both central rivalries in contemporary world politics. Numerous monographs, edited volumes and articles have addressed the conflicts’ historical roots and persistence over time, as well as the prospects for their resolution.6 While many studies have treated the India-Pakistan and ArabIsraeli conflicts separately, only few have addressed their intriguing similarities, along with the substantive differences between them.7 Studies that draw insights from the comparison of the two sustained conflicts usually focus on specific aspects, like partition in the initial phase or peace negotiations in recent decades. As such, they offer a partial opportunity to draw lessons and broaden our understanding of regional disputes and enduring rivalries. This book aims to fill this gap with a systematic comparison of conflict change in the two rivalries over time. Varying Actors and Agendas In addition to tangible issues in dispute like territory and security threats, the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts also encompass animosities that touch upon competing identities. To be sure, the identities of the rival actors



Two Intractable Conflicts 5

have always included national and religious markers, yet the relative volume of these aspects in identity discourse and politics has varied over time. The rise of religious ideologies within each of the involved communities has bred modifications of identity discourse, expressed in the rise of Islamism, Hindu nationalism and religious Zionism. While both conflicts arose from nationalist struggles between religiously distinct communities—Hindus and Muslims in India, Jews and Muslims in Palestine and the surrounding Arab states— identity discourses have changed within all of the communities involved in these conflicts.8 Drawing on religious ideologies, collective identities became much more complex than they were at independence.9 Indeed, the intersection of national and religious identities has played a central role in the two conflicts, yet its impact on the rivalries has varied. On the one hand, it contributed to the growth of radicalism, culminating in a rising tide of subnational and transnational Islamist militancy. On the other hand, changes in identity discourse created new paths for interstate collaboration, born of necessity in the face of mutual threats. In Pakistan and the Arab states, the growing role of religious ideologies is part of a process occurring in the larger Islamic world, entailing fierce contention over the role of Islam in defining the identity of individuals, states and the ummah. Vibrant Islamic discourse diverges not only over competition between the Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam, but more broadly regarding the proper role of Islam and Sharia law in socio-political life. In Pakistan, the centrality of Islam was initially utilized as a strategy of state formation. Islamic notions were harnessed by political leaders to motivate a mass movement aimed at forming a separate Muslim state. Islam was thus employed as a framework of national identity, drawing on communal identification rather than religious faith. In post-independence Pakistan, however, the political elite sought to consolidate national unity that would provide legitimacy to its rule. Gradually, political leaders turned to religious notions, thereby assigning Islam a prominent role in political life. The comprehensive Islamization program adopted by Muhammad Zia ul-Haq in the late 1970s marked a watershed in Pakistan’s identity discourse, turning Islam into a political ideology that has held sway in the country’s politics. In the Middle East, a fierce competition between two of the leading Arab countries, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, dominated identity discourses. Here again, state ideologies and preferences initiated identity discourse change, raising questions about the role of Islam at both the national and transnational levels. On the one hand, identity discourses were affected by the Pan-Arabist ideology promoted by Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt; on the other hand, they were influenced by the Pan-Islamist ideas spread by the al-Saud royal family of Saudi Arabia. While Pan-Arabism drew on secular Arab nationalism,

6

Chapter One

stressing that the Arabs constitute a single nation, Pan-Islamism advocated the unity of all Muslims under one caliphate, under the rule of Allah. Religious notions of collective identity also became prominent in identity discourse in India and Israel. Notably, Hindu nationalism and religious Zionism are more concerned with heritage, communal unification and historical rights than with religiosity and forms of worship. In both cases, however, overarching worldviews drawn from religious ideologies are entwined with nationalist ideas, affecting collective identity discourse. In India, the independence struggle led by the Indian National Congress relied on a civic national identity, classifying as Indians all the populations of British India. Hindu nationalists, on the other hand, sought to unify the Hindu community. The idea of Hindu unification was then translated into the idea of a Hindu nation, whose implementation was promoted by the National Volunteer Organization—the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In recent decades the RSS has become India’s dominant Hindu nationalist association, seeking to uphold Indian culture and consolidate the majority Hindu community. It focuses on the notion of Hindutva (“Hinduness”), perceiving the Indian nationhood as one that encompasses all religious traditions that ascended in the Indian subcontinent. By the late 1970s, Hindu nationalist parties became a major force in India’s politics. In 1977, an alliance of Hindu nationalist parties defeated the Congress Party and formed a government. In the following years, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) became the most prominent Hindu nationalist party in India’s politics. Zionism, the Jewish nationalist movement, emerged in the late 19th century in Europe as essentially a secular ideology. Its aim was the re-establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in the historic Land of Israel. Notably, in the vision of Theodor Herzl, the “visionary” of the Jewish state, Jews constituted not merely a religious community, but rather a nationality, a people. To be sure, religion was always a part of the Jewish heritage, a binding element of Jewish unity, yet Zionism utilized it as a marker of the nation. Religious Jews, on the other hand, stress that the right of the Jews to the Land of Israel stems from God’s inalienable promise to the ancient Israelites. As expounded by Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, the chief rabbi of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine, settling the Land of Israel is an obligation of religious Jews, and helping Zionism is therefore obeying God’s will. Religious Zionism, established at the beginning of the 20th century with the creation of the Mizrachi movement, marked the entrance of the religious Jewish world into institutionalized politics. Combining Zionism and observant Judaism, and emphasizing Jewish values, heritage and tradition, the Mizrachi movement joined the World Zionist Organization and became part



Two Intractable Conflicts 7

of the Zionist efforts to build the Jewish state. After independence, nationalist and religious worldviews became increasingly integrated into the Israeli identity discourse. The 1967 Six-Day War and the capture of the West Bank, a territory referred to in Jewish historical terms as Judea and Samaria, augmented right-wing nationalist vindication in the national discourse regarding the Palestinian-Israeli territorial dispute. Indeed, religious Zionists are currently among the keenest opponents of separation schemes, embodied in the two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Development and change in the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts are also manifested in the evolution of non-state players. Both conflicts encompass a wide variety of political and military organizations that have shaped and reshaped the state-NSA domain of disputes. Originally created by states and operated as proxies against a stronger rival (by Pakistan in South Asia and by the Arab states in the Middle East), these organizations evolved into powerful autonomous actors, adopting their own agendas and operative modes, becoming key players in the regional conflicts. In the India-Pakistan rivalry, the proxy war has played a predominant role, as evident in the number of insurgent groups, the extent of state patronage and Pakistan’s continued use of proxies throughout the long years of conflict. Indeed, Pakistan’s regional strategy has focused on maintaining a balance of power vis-à-vis India by nurturing anti-Indian militancy in Kashmir, and supporting Islamist groups in war-torn Afghanistan. Seeking security in alliances with non-state militant elements, the Pakistani state has ultimately become home to many influential jihadist groups. In recent years, with increasing contagion effects from the war in neighboring Afghanistan, many of Pakistan’s allied organizations spiraled out of state control, reframing their political goals and turning to autonomous action, in both the internal and regional spheres. In the Middle East, the Palestinian national movement became part of Arab politics, since it was largely dependent on the Arab states to promote the goal of liberating Palestine. Anxious to avoid further militarized confrontation with Israel, the Arab states initiated the formation and sponsorship of Palestinian armed struggle against Israel. Indeed, the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a product of inter-Arab politics, was initiated by President Nasser of Egypt and formally endorsed by the Arab League. The takeover of the PLO in 1969 by Fatah, under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, marked a turning point in the conflict, in which state-NSA relations began to change. Since then, Palestinian organizations have grown in number and influence, undergoing substantive ideological and structural developments, and becoming a powerful autonomous factor in the complex rivalry. Notably, in 1987, the Hamas movement was founded in the Gaza Strip as an offshoot

8

Chapter One

of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas became an influential actor in Palestinian-Israeli hostile interactions and a major political rival to the PLO. In this book, I examine transformations in actors’ characteristics and agendas, and their roles in fueling warness variation in the two conflicts over time. LAYOUT OF THE BOOK The six chapters of this book develop the explanation of conflict change and persistence by comparing the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli enduring rivalries. Following this introductory chapter, Chapter 2, “Enduring Rivalries Revisited,” presents a succinct overview of central theoretical insights drawn from the existing literature on enduring rivalries. This is followed by a conceptual and analytical framework, which outlines conflict situations defined in terms of warness, in both the interstate and state-NSA domains.10 Two factors associated with warness variation are then introduced, focusing on actors and agendas. Chapter 3, “Setting the Stage,” discusses and compares the origins of the two conflicts, reviewing the historical background of partition and the subsequent wars that initiated each of the enduring rivalries. It also portrays the political profiles of the contending countries in the early years of the conflicts, and draws the regional and global contexts of each rivalry. Chapter 4, “Warness,” describes situational shifts in the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts, detecting fluctuations in interstate and state-NSA dimensions of militarized disputes. The analysis of militarized disputes over the course of each conflict refers to dispute density and hostility levels between the rivaling parties. The chapter then presents major trends of diplomatic negotiations held in the two regions. Finally, it analyzes and compares warness variation, referring to transitions along a range of relational situations, encompassing hot war, cold war, cold peace and warm peace. Chapter 5, “Actors and Agendas,” examines factors related to conflict change and persistence in the South Asian and Middle Eastern rivalries. It discusses changing profiles of state and non-state players in the two regions, focusing on the evolvement of autonomous and influential NSAs, and their release from state patronage and control. The chapter addresses the growing role of Kashmiri and Islamist movements in militarized hostilities in the IndiaPakistan arena, as well as the increasing role played by nationalist and Islamist Palestinian organizations in violent disputes in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The chapter explores changes in actors’ preferences and agendas, looking at national, Islamic and Hindu identities in Indian and Pakistani discourses, and national, Islamic and Jewish identities in Arab and Israeli discourses.



Two Intractable Conflicts 9

The conclusion to this study, presented in Chapter 6, “Conflict Change and Prospects of Peace,” reviews major findings from the comparison of the two rivalries, assessing my argument and its contribution to our understanding of change and conflict persistence in enduring rivalries. The chapter reflects on the feasibility of the “two-state solution,” a product of the idea of partition. The partition of India, as we know, culminated in a Pakistani civil war and the creation of Bangladesh as another independent state in the Indian subcontinent. In the Middle East, the idea of partition remains disputed among political parties in Israel and between the divided Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza. Assessing the applicability of territorial division in contemporary realities in the two regions, the chapter considers the prospects of reconciliation and peace among the contending states and NSAs in the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli rivalries. NOTES 1. For core characteristics of enduring rivalries, see Zeev Maoz and Ben Mor, Bound by Struggle: The Strategic Evolution of International Enduring Rivalries (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 5–6; Michael Brecher, The World of Protracted Conflicts (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016) and Chapter 2 below. 2. The India-Pakistan conflict is analyzed here as a dyadic rivalry, though China’s key role in the larger strategic landscape of South Asia is acknowledged. Likewise, the treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict as a multi-sided rivalry does not overlook the existence of several different sets of bilateral disputes between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries—Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Iran. Nor does it ignore other rivalries among those countries. Rather, the discussion refers to the broad frameworks within which interrelated actors and issues interact, shaping the boundaries of the two conflicts and their changing dynamics over time. 3. T. V. Paul, “Causes of the India-Pakistan Enduring Rivalry,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6–7. 4. Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 14–17. According to Jalal, the origins of an Islamic identity distinct from Hindu-dominated India can be found in the birth of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula, or with the Arab invasion of India’s northwestern region in 712 CE. 5. Efraim Karsh, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The 1948 War (New York: Rosen Publishing, 2009), 27–31. 6. See for example Sumit Ganguly, Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions since 1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan; Stephen Cohen, Shooting for a Century: The India-Pakistan Conundrum (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 2013); Hillel Cohen, Year Zero of

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the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929 (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2015); Neil Caplan and Laurie Zittrain Eisenberg, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: Patterns, Problems, Possibilities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Hemda Ben-Yehuda and Shmuel Sandler, The Arab-Israeli Conflict Transformed (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).  7. See Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013); Moonis Ahmar (ed.), The Arab-Israeli Peace Process: Lessons for India and Pakistan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Dalia Dassa Kaye, Talking to the Enemy: Track Two Diplomacy in the Middle East and South Asia (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2007); Hemda Ben-Yehuda and Meirav MishaliRam, “Protracted Conflicts, Crises and Ethnicity: The Arab-Israeli and IndiaPakistan Conflicts 1947–2005,” The Journal of Conflict Studies 26, 1 (2006), 75–100.   8. Christians, it should be noted, played a key role in the early stages of Arab nationalism, which is discussed in Chapter 5.   9. Vali Nasr, “National Identities and the India-Pakistan Conflict,” in Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict, 180–82. 10. Conflict situations, defined by warness, rely on classifications of regional forms of war and peace proposed by Miller. See Benjamin Miller, “The Global Sources of Regional Transitions from War to Peace,” Journal of Peace Research 38, 2 (2001), 202–3.

Chapter Two

Enduring Rivalries Revisited

Persisting over seven decades now, with repetitive crises and wars erupting between the adversaries, the India-Pakistan and the Arab-Israeli conflicts are commonly recognized as enduring and intractable rivalries. Beginning with partition and the birth of new sovereign states, the two conflicts have lingered on with unresolved disputes over territory, identity and security threats. Throughout the years of conflict, as terrorism spread and nuclear capabilities were acquired, intermittent peace talks engendered fluctuations in hostilities, but no significant signs of resolution. The examination of the South Asian and Middle Eastern conflicts thus draws from the rich literature on enduring rivalries, their origins and dynamics, and touches upon the challenges of resolving these conflicts. This chapter delineates the theoretical framework of the book. It commences with a succinct literature review of the phenomenon of enduring conflict, and closes with the conceptual and analytical framework for the comparative analysis of rivalries. This section introduces the concept of warness utilized to detect conflict transformation over time, and offers actors and agendas as two main factors associated with warness variation throughout the years of conflict. THE PHENOMENON OF ENDURING CONFLICT Realizing that repeated conflict among the same set of states entails unique aspects of confrontation, scholars of interstate conflict have incorporated developed models relating to persistent military disputes. Although there are various opinions on the number of disputes required to characterize a conflict as “enduring” and the kind of disputes that should be used as the unit of 11

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Chapter Two

analysis in such conflicts, scholars largely agree that enduring conflicts are not episodic or brief, but persist for a reasonably long period on a continuous basis.1 Azar et al. describe these recurring conflicts as protracted, defining them as “hostile interactions which extend over long periods of time with sporadic outbreaks of open warfare fluctuating in frequency and intensity.”2 In the mid-1980s, this definition was adopted by the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) project, constituting the protracted conflict (PC) school.3 About the same time, scholars utilized the notion of recurring confrontations to explore interstate militarized disputes within the Correlates of War (COW) project, constituting the enduring rivalry (ER) school.4 While there are various conceptual and operational definitions of such lingering conflicts, they all share the view that persistent conflicts should be examined as processes, not events. As such, they permit us to study an overall relationship from a long-term perspective within its historical context. Indeed, understanding the processes and dynamics of prolonged conflicts is notably valuable as empirical studies indicate that confrontations within such conflicts appear to be more severe than non-protracted confrontations and therefore more prone to escalate into war.5 However, long duration is not the only feature of enduring rivalries. Indeed, the essence of persistent conflict lies in the frequency of confrontations that occur between the opposing sides over time. That is, conflict severity stems from durability and number of disputes. Thus, both the PC and ER schools use a dispute-density approach to define persisting conflicts, requiring a minimum number of international crises (in PCs), or militarized interstate disputes (in ERs), within a minimum number of years.6 The dispute-density approach is thus a useful tool for estimating change in conflictual relations over time. I use this measurement to detect warness variation in the two rivalries in South Asia and the Middle East. One of the main differences between the PC and ER schools of prolonged conflict is the level of analysis. While protracted conflicts are observed from a system-level viewpoint, enduring rivalries are examined from a dyadiclevel outlook. This is most relevant in the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which unlike the bilateral interstate India-Pakistan conflict, consists of several dyadic rivalries between Israel and its neighboring Arab states. In this book, I combine the two outlooks, examining patterns of dyadic conflicts in order to detect change over time in the rivalry as a whole. Looking at a rivalry as a whole requires the consideration of all the major actors involved. However, both the PC and ER schools of conflict endurance, and most applications of international rivalries, tend to focus on confrontations between nation-states.7 Indeed, the ICB project acknowledges the participation of non-state actors (NSAs) in interstate confrontations, but refers



Enduring Rivalries Revisited 13

mainly to their role in crisis onset, without focusing on their involvement as the crisis unfolds. In fact, the primary condition for an ICB-defined international crisis is the participation of at least two state adversaries in the dispute. The role of NSAs in the recurrence of crises, and their impact on the endurance of the conflict as a whole, are overlooked. In this vein, the COW project divides war into four major categories: inter-state (between or among sovereign states); intra-state (between a state government and a non-state group within the territory of the state); extrastate (between a state and a non-state entity outside the borders of the state); and non-state (between or among non-sovereign entities).8 While covering a variety of war types and encompassing the participation of NSAs in some of the variants of war, this distinction does not relate to the role played by non-state players in interstate confrontations. Similarly, the study of enduring rivalries in the COW project relies on militarized interstate disputes (MID), which are defined as “a set of interactions between or among states involving threats to use military force, displays of military force, or actual uses of military force.”9 The coding rules for MID data specify that militarized interstate disputes are those cases where “the threat, display or use of military force short of war by one member state is explicitly directed towards the government, official representatives, official forces, property, or territory of another state.”10 Here again, enduring rivalries are demarcated as disputes between sovereign states, where the impact of non-state players on rivalry endurance remains unheeded. However, some researchers acknowledge that it may be unproductive to analyze enduring rivalries without including NSAs.11 More specifically, Maoz and San-Akca claim that non-state armed groups play a significant role in rivalry dynamics, as states in rivalries often choose to support such groups that operate against their rivals, and use them as proxies.12 Recognizing the central role NSAs play in conflict, I incorporate them in the analysis of the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli rivalries, examining conflict change in two paths: interstate and state-NSA. While sharing the basic notion that many international disputes are linked in an ongoing relationship between states, the different schools of prolonged conflict emphasize diverse conflict features. The PC school stresses the large scope of issues and values around which repetitive disputes revolve. Brecher and Wilkenfeld characterize protracted conflict as “a deep, abiding clash over multiple values, whether between ideologies, civilizations, or belief systems.”13 While each crisis within the conflict may focus on specific issues and goals, they explain, it is linked to the enduring values in conflict over a prolonged period of time. This link affects relational dynamics within which crises unfold. Indeed, applications of international crisis indicate that the

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profile of a crisis can be anticipated more reliably in terms of a protracted conflict setting. That is, the context of protracted conflict influences virtually every key feature of crisis, including the characteristics of the triggering events, the extent of violence employed in the dispute, the profiles of thirdparty intervention, and the substance of crisis outcomes.14 The ER school encompasses several different approaches, which offer diverse views regarding continuity and change throughout the conflict. One of the main theoretical frameworks dealing with enduring rivalries is Goertz and Diehl’s punctuated equilibrium model.15 Drawing on the punctuated equilibrium model in biology, which stresses the stability of most species throughout most of their lives, Goertz and Diehl posit that enduring rivalries are characterized by great stability. They describe enduring rivalries as processes similar to biological evolution, with long periods of stasis punctuated by sudden change. The underlying premise of this theory is that once enduring rivalries are established, they remain stable until they are stunned by “political shocks.”16 Operationally speaking, the rivalry begins following a political shock, described by Goertz and Diehl as a dramatic change in the interstate system that can fundamentally alter the processes, relationships and expectations driving interactions between states.17 These changes include both environmental shocks (e.g., rapid shifts in the distribution of power or the aftermath of a world war), and internal shocks (e.g., the achievement of state independence or regime change following a civil war). When the rivals fail to resolve the dispute in the onset phase, hostile relations “lock in” and an enduring rivalry ensues between the states. The dynamics of the ensuing rivalry after this “lock in” phase are characterized by recurrent, though fluctuating, hostile interactions. The termination of the rivalry comes after another political shock occurs. The basic notion of the punctuated equilibrium model in rivalries relies on Azar’s explanation of conflict fluctuation, proposing that each pair of states has a “normal relations range” of hostile and cooperative interactions, and that their relations fluctuate within this range.18 Similarly, Goertz and Diehl propose the concept of a “Basic Rivalry Level” (BRL), anticipating that relations between the contending states will “lock in” around this BRL after the outbreak of conflict and will remain the same throughout the rivalry.19 Thus, the punctuated equilibrium approach considers fluctuations of overt conflict and détente as “random variations around this basic level, with no secular trend toward more conflictual or more peaceful relations.”20 Unlike the punctuated equilibrium model, the evolutionary approach to enduring rivalry emphasizes incremental change, focusing on the way in which relationships evolve over time. In particular, it emphasizes the



Enduring Rivalries Revisited 15

impact of past relations on evolution toward or away from enduring rivalry. Somewhat like the premise of protracted conflict, the evolutionary approach stresses that the development of an enduring rivalry depends on the severity and outcomes of previous confrontations between the two adversaries. The severer the confrontation and the less satisfactory its outcome for one or more of the contending parties, the more likely that distrust and hostility will increase. Increased distrust and hostility are in turn likely to catalyze the evolution of a prolonged rivalry. And so, after two adversaries have engaged in repetitive confrontations, the push of the past and the pull of the future, as Hensel puts it, create perceptual baggage that affects conflict behavior.21 Emphasizing threat perceptions that evolve in light of past experiences and future expectations, Hensel’s evolutionary outlook is thus part of the larger “subjective school,” which focuses on sociopsychological aspects of prolonged conflicts. This school underlines the role of decision makers’ belief systems, perceptions and expectations developed in the rivalry over the course of time. From this outlook, conflict endurance is understood in the context of evolving belief systems defined by prior confrontations.22 Using the concept “intractable conflict” Bar-Tal describes such persisting rivalries as all-out conflicts, without compromises and with adherence to all the original goals.23 Society members involved in intractable conflicts, according to Kriesberg, do not perceive a possibility of resolving them peacefully. As neither side can win, they expect the conflict to continue and involve violent confrontations.24 Similarly, Thompson, who refers to protracted conflicts as “strategic rivalries,” expects them to linger on as long as the decision makers of the adversary states perceive each other as threatening enemies and competitors.25 Much has been written about the wide variety of issues around which enduring conflict revolves. To recount that work and do it justice is a task well beyond this review. The classical issues in conflict include, for example, territoriality and contiguity, power discrepancy and military-security concerns, regime, economy, ideology, religion and ethnicity.26 The number and salience of issues in conflict vary. However, most conflict research emphasizes the centrality of territorial disputes, which are often viewed as the most salient and persistent source of conflict and war.27 There is a wealth of studies on territoriality in the onset of long-lasting conflicts.28 Tir and Diehl, for example, show that a vast majority of enduring rivalries they examined revolved partly or primarily around territorial issues.29 There is also compelling evidence that most of the militarized conflicts over the past several centuries have occurred between neighboring states.30 Yet, scholars note that the mere presence of territorial issues in dispute does not necessarily mean that land is the source of conflict. Firstly, as

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Vasquez stresses, territorial issues are understandably likely to occur between neighbors due to the proximity factor, so geography is relevant to the study of conflict primarily because it affects the ease with which states can attack each other militarily.31 Furthermore, he explains, escalation to war does not depend on the geographical disagreement, but on the way it is handled. In this vein, Diehl distinguishes between territory as a cause of conflict and territory as a facilitating condition for conflict.32 Hensel explains that when geography is at stake, the same adversaries are more likely to become involved in recurrent conflict because of the salience of territorial issues.33 Territory, he says, is highly salient for its tangible contents, its psychological value and its effects on a state’s reputation.34 Scholars also agree that territorial issues are highly associated with the escalation of enduring rivalries. That is, disputes involving territorial issues are more prone to escalatory militarized confrontations than disputes fought over non-territorial stakes. The findings presented by Tir and Diehl on the geographic dimensions of enduring rivalries, for example, indicate that while both territorial disputes and contiguity increase the frequency of conflict, the severity of conflict is determined more by the territorial contention than by the proximity that facilitates the opportunity to fight.35 Similarly, Vasquez concludes that territory is the source of conflict most likely to culminate in war.36 Moreover, territorial issues are associated with rivalry persistence, because they are more difficult to settle than other issues in dispute. When rivals are unable to resolve their territorial disagreement early in their relationship, explain Vasquez and Leskiw, the resulting dispute is likely to last for many years.37 Even when territorial agreements are reached between the adversaries, historical rights may be reclaimed in an attempt to regain territories that were lost in negotiated accords. Both the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts broke out in the wake of territorial disputes, whose salience and persistence have hindered their termination. The two conflicts embody the significance of land in state-NSA contentions that are entwined with unresolved disagreements on interstate boundaries. Indeed, scholars find that “ethno-territorial” disputes—that is, ethnic conflicts involving either secessionist or irredentist claims—are more apt to escalate to intense levels of conflict.38 In a nutshell, the main difference between secessionist and irredentist claims stems from the goals of separatist NSAs. Secessionist groups seek independence, whereas irredentist groups pursue unification with an adjacent mother country. In both cases, however, relatively concentrated groups seek to be politically and territorially separated from an existing state.39 Placed in a regional context, state-NSA territorial issues cannot be detached from interstate rivalries. Rather, kinship ties and materialistic interests draw



Enduring Rivalries Revisited 17

states to intervene in other state-NSA disputes. Notably, groups with ethnic ties to actors in positions of power elsewhere are more likely to receive external assistance. More importantly, the intersection of interstate and stateNSA territorial issues often breed irredentist conflicts. This may entail efforts by states to annex territory considered theirs based on ethnic or historical grounds, or efforts by ethnic groups to be united with an adjacent mother country. As Saideman notes, one should expect a group under tight state sponsorship and control to be likely to seek union with the patron motherland.40 It follows that secessionist groups seeking autonomy or independence that do not offer potential gains to nearby countries, would pose a greater threat to regional stability and be less likely to receive external support.41 Indeed, irredentist Kashmiris obtain Pakistan’s patronage in their struggle for uniting with Pakistani-controlled Azad Kashmir, more than the secessionist Palestinians who receive mainly Arab states’ lip service, rather than effective assistance to promote Palestinian independence. More precisely, the Kashmiri case is complex, in part, because both secessionist and irredentist groups are in play; various organizations seek independence, whereas many others (mainly those formed and funded by Pakistan’s military institutions) seek to promote the reunion of Kashmir under Pakistani rule. The ArabIsraeli conflict embodies another distinctive situation because Israel has not annexed the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and therefore the Palestinians are not struggling to secede from a sovereign state in which they reside. The lack of sovereign rule in these territories—by the State of Israel, the Palestinian Authority or the Hamas government—makes the territorial issue in the Israel-Palestinian rivalry unique, difficult to apply to classical definitions of secessionist and irredentist conflicts, and even harder to manage and resolve. While the territorial issue has undoubtedly persisted throughout both regional conflicts, other issues and conflict attributes have been transformed, including the actors involved, their agendas and the identity discourses they bring to the troubled regions. Focusing on conflict change, this book relies on the logic of the evolutionary approach, which assumes that conflict patterns vary during the course of the rivalry in response to interactions between the adversaries. That is, rivalry processes and dynamics shape the way in which relationships evolve over time. However, enduring conflicts are not linear processes; rather, conflictual relations fluctuate over time. As the actors involved in the conflict develop and change, so do the agendas motivating the competing parties and shaping the overall issues in dispute. Accordingly, the comparative analysis of the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts refers to incremental change in actors and their agendas, which play a role in shifting hostile interactions and hindering their termination. In terms of the punctuated equilibrium model, the

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study examines variations in the “normal relations” between the adversaries, detecting relational shifts over time. Operatively, relational shifts over the course of the rivalries are examined through the lens of militarized hostilities, which I conceptualize as “warness.” A CONCEPTUAL AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK Like the PC and ER schools of conflict endurance, this book looks at international disputes that are linked together, creating prolonged and persistent conflicts. While both the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts surely endure, they have encompassed varying situational shifts from hot war to cold war, with periods of détente and segments of cold peace. Aiming to understand conflict endurance, I focus on variability processes, positing that constant change fuels and revives animosity between the adversaries over time. The analysis of change begins with detecting variation in militarized hostilities, termed here as warness. Examined at the macro level, warness captures relational situations. As such, it resembles Azar’s notion of “normal relations range” and Goertz and Diehl’s concept of “basic rivalry level” that characterize conflictual relations between the adversaries in an enduring rivalry.42 The conceptualization of warness variation draws on Miller’s work on regional conflict transitions.43 Seeking to explain transitions from regional war to peace, Miller first focused on the global sources of regional transitions, referring to great power involvement in conflict. In later research, Miller offered a “state-to-nation” argument that explains conflict and war by the luck of compatibility between the existing territorial boundaries in the region and the national identifications of the peoples inhabiting the region.44 This argument essentially relies on the intersection between territorial and identity issues. The imbalance between state boundaries and nations occurs when subnational or transnational movements pose nationalist challenges to the existing state system. Thus, the substantive issues in such conflictual situations draw on national and ethnic identities, on the one hand, and territorial claims, on the other. To be sure, both the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts encompass those entwined components of rivalry, which I address and compare in the following chapters. Miller defines four situations of war and peace relations, including hot war, cold war, cold peace and warm peace.45 Like Miller, I examine war and peace situations in terms of militarized hostilities. Unlike his definitions of these relational situations, which rely on the probability of the outbreak of militarized hostilities and the employment of diplomatic means, I define situations



Enduring Rivalries Revisited 19

in terms of the actual manifestations of militarized hostility. To complete the picture of hostile interactions, I then place them in the context of the diplomatic contacts between the adversaries throughout their years of rivalry. To be sure, not all militarized disputes culminate in overt warfare between the rivals. Hostility is expressed in various forms of militarized behavior, including threat, display of military force or the actual use of force at various levels. Warness is thus defined here in terms of militarized hostilities recorded during the conflict, measured in terms of dispute density and hostility levels. Dispute density relates to the frequency of militarized interstate disputes along the rivalry, recorded per decade. Hostility level refers to the severity of the disputes in terms of the use of military force, as coded in the MID dataset. Its values are defined on a scale of 1 to 5 as follows: 1- No militarized action, 2- Threat to use force, 3- Display of force, 4- Use of force, 5- War.46 The analysis of militarized hostilities over time seeks to detect variation in regional military hostilities, focusing on war termination (e.g., the cessation of hot wars) and, more broadly, conflict reduction (e.g., the transition from hot/cold war to peace). Aiming to characterize the rivalry as a whole, and capture the role of both state and non-state players in processes of conflict change, I add a distinction between two domains of conflict: interstate and state-NSA. In the first domain of conflict, I examine the scope of militarized hostilities between armed forces of sovereign states; in the other domain, I detect the scope of militarized hostilities between a state and non-state insurgent groups. I then define four theoretical models of warness situations and apply each of them to the interstate and state-NSA domains of conflict. The four warness situations are defined as follows: 1.  Hot War is a state of armed conflict, including sustained combat between armed forces on both sides. This warness situation entails the occurrence of repetitive militarized hostilities, most of them culminating in the actual use of force, some of them climaxing in full-scale wars between states (interstate hostilities), or between armed forces of states and forces of nonstate political entities (state-NSA hostilities). 2.  Cold War is a situation that lacks sustained combat, yet includes militarized hostilities short of major violence. This warness situation includes sporadic manifestations of violence between states (interstate hostilities), or between armed forces of states and forces of non-state political entities (state-NSA hostilities), with ceasefires or armistice agreements between the violent hostilities, along with security tension and threats of use of force. Military forces may regularly be used for show-of-force purposes aimed at deterrence.

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3.  Cold Peace is a situation that lacks militarized hostilities and threats between states (interstate hostilities), or between armed forces of states and forces of non-state political entities (state-NSA hostilities). This warness situation is characterized by formal or semi-formal agreements, in which the underlying issues of dispute are moderated and reduced, yet are not fully resolved. While efforts are made to further decrease the level of dispute through negotiations and security regimes, militarized hostilities are still conceivable. Therefore, military doctrines, structures and planning are maintained. 4.  Warm Peace is a situation that lacks any form of militarized hostilities, including threats to use military force, displays of military force or actual uses of military force, between states (interstate hostilities), or between armed forces of states and forces of non-state political entities (state-NSA hostilities). In this warness situation, the underlying issues of dispute are resolved and non-violent procedures to resolve future disputes are institutionalized, coupled with mutual expectations that neither side will resort to armed violence in the foreseeable future. Warness variation denotes shifts between these relational situations over time. To capture warness variation, I first examine situational shifts between war and peace in interstate and state-NSA relations, separately. Then, I compare variation in the relative salience of interstate and state-NSA warness in the rivalry as a whole. However, as noted above, situational shifts within conflicts are not linear processes. Often, periods of transition from war to peace encompass diverse processes of contention and appeasement. Under such complex circumstances, the rivals may be able to ease their tense relations but remain unable to break through the restraints of a cold war and move toward a cold/warm peace. Such transitional circumstances may create intermediate situations, which I refer to as détente. The reduction of tensions in détente situations does not suffice for eliminating all manifestations of militarized hostilities and threats, yet both parties are expected to gain from the improved relations and the danger of warfare is reduced. The resort to armed violence, which is present in cold war situations and is still conceivable, though unlikely, in cold peace situations, exists in intermediate détente circumstances, yet hostilities are confined to low-level incidents without intentions of returning to war. Operationally, militarized hostilities that constitute warness are examined at the dyadic level. Looked at from an interstate perspective, this is an obvious choice for analyzing the South Asian rivalry, which is essentially a two-sided conflict between India and Pakistan. The employment of a dyadic analysis in the Middle Eastern case, on the other hand, requires clarification, as the rivalry



Enduring Rivalries Revisited 21

is multi-sided, conventionally demarcated as a conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors—Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.47 For the purpose of this study, I pair the adversaries in each of the Arab-Israeli disputes, so that there are multi-dyad disputes, like the 1967 Six-Day War involving Israel-Egypt, Israel-Syria and Israel-Jordan hostilities, as opposed to single-dyad disputes, like the 1956 Suez War involving only one of the rivalry’s dyads, Israel and Egypt. Then, aiming to detect warness variation in the Arab-Israeli rivalry as a whole, I collect the various dyadic interstate disputes into a combined interstate depiction. Finally, I add state-NSAs hostilities recorded in each conflict, drawing warness profiles throughout the entire period of rivalry. The data on interstate hostilities relies on militarized interstate disputes (MIDs), which, as noted, are defined by the Correlates of War (COW) project as “a set of interactions between or among states involving threats to use military force, displays of military force, or actual uses of military force.”48 Drawn from COW’s MID dataset (participant level, version 4.1), the data covers interstate hostilities from 1816 to 2010.49 This is complemented by data drawn from COW’s Dispute Narratives (1993–2001; 2002–2010, based on MID versions 4.0 and 4.1 datasets, respectively);50 as well as Crisis Summaries of the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project for the period between 1947 and 2013 (based on ICB version 11 dataset).51 The data on state-NSA hostilities draws on UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset (version 4–2016),52 which defines conflict as “a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a calendar year.”53 The parties in this case are a government of a state, on the one hand, and a non-state organization or alliance of organizations, on the other hand. This includes hostilities occurring either within the territory of the state or outside its territorial boundaries. To be sure, Kashmir, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are territories in dispute. India and Pakistan claim all of Kashmir but control only parts of it; the Palestinians demand the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in all areas of the West Bank and Gaza, various parts of which are under different levels of Israeli effective control. None of these territories is independent. Yet, these regions stand at the core of the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts, and host many of the organizations that are engaged in state-NSA hostilities within the two rivalries. Sub-state hostilities that are not directly related to the South Asian and Middle Eastern regional rivalries are not covered in the analysis of state-NSA warness, including, for example, the numerous militarized confrontations between Pakistan and Islamist opposition groups like Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), commonly known as the

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Pakistani Taliban, and the domestic strife between Arab governments and opposition militant groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the numerous rebel organizations fighting against the Assad regime in the Syrian civil war. Understanding Warness Variation The conceptualization of warness allows us to address two sets of questions: What are the characteristics of warness in the two conflicts, and have they varied considerably over time? What stands behind warness variation, and what does it tell us about the persistence of conflict? I posit that warness has varied greatly, though to different extents, in both the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts. Warness change is embodied in a considerable decrease in the magnitude of militarized interstate disputes and a significant increase in the scope of state-NSAs hostilities. I show that warness variation is highly associated with change in two key factors—actors and agendas. Significant transformations in these two micro-level attributes contributed to warness variation and kept the regional conflicts vigorously alive. So, to better understand warness variation, the study explores change in the characteristics of state and non-state actors, and detects transformation in their political and ideological agendas. With changing configurations of actors and agendas in the conflict, the threats, discourses, interests and goals of the rival parties vary, as well as the hostile interactions between them. “Actors” is a flexible term. It refers to the political entities that constitute the backbone of the conflict, namely, the principal stakeholders engaged in the enduring rivalry. The analysis thus includes prominent political parties, leaders and organizations. It mostly concentrates on the evolvement of nonstate players in the conflict, profiling their ability to promote their goals and exercise their policies independently in the internal and international arenas. The discussion portrays varying patterns of the relationship between all of the actors in the conflict, including states and NSAs, and detects change in the relative centrality of the various players in the conflict over time. “Agendas” is a complex term. It refers to the goals and ideologies of the main actors in the conflict, as reflected in discourse among political and military leaders, the media and the public. Touching upon the main issues and stakes in the conflict, discourse provides a tool for thinking about identity, which, according to the social constructionism approach, is the result of social interactions and practices.54 Discourse represents the overarching worldviews drawn from nationalist and religious ideologies, which define collective identities. Agendas capture the manifestations of these worldviews in politics, reflecting the varying roles played by nationalism, religion and



Enduring Rivalries Revisited 23

other identity markers in the views and preferences of the actors engaged in the conflict. To understand conflict dynamics and warness change, I examine developments in actors’ profiles and agendas. Profiles of actors are objective attributes, whereas agendas are perceptual. Changes in each of the attributes have an impact on behavioral patterns. While this study finds that the roles of the actors and their agendas differ in the enduring rivalries in South Asia and the Middle East, it shows that in both regional conflicts they complicate and revive animosity, thereby setting up barriers to peace. NOTES   1. T. V. Paul, “Causes of the India-Pakistan Enduring Rivalry,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 4.   2. Edward E. Azar, Paul Jureidini and Ronald McLaurin, “Protracted Social Conflict: Theory and Practice in the Middle East,” Journal of Palestine Studies 8, 1 (1978), 50.   3. See Michael Brecher, “International Crises and Protracted Conflicts,” International Interactions 11, 3–4 (1984), 237–97; Michael Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).  4. See Charles S. Gochman and Zeev Maoz, “Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1976: Procedures, Patterns, and Insights,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 28, 4 (1984); Paul F. Diehl and Gary Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).   5. Michael Brecher and Patrick James, “Patterns of Crisis Management,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 32, 3 (1988); Scott D. Bennett, “Integrating and Testing Models of Rivalry Duration,” American Journal of Political Science 42, 4 (1998), 1200–32.  6. Brecher and Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis, 6; Diehl and Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry, 21–22.  7. Paul R. Hensel, “An Evolutionary Approach to the Study of Interstate Rivalry,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 17, 2 (1999), 177.   8. Meredith Reid Sarkees, Frank Whelon Wayman and David J. Singer, “InterState, Intra-State, and Extra-State Wars: A Comprehensive Look at Their Distribution Over Time, 1816–1997,” International Studies Quarterly 47, 1 (2003), 58.   9. Gochman and Maoz, “Militarized Interstate Disputes,” 587. 10. Daniel M. Jones, Stuart A. Bremer and J. David Singer, “Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1992: Rationale, Coding Rules, and Empirical Patterns,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 15, 2 (1996), 163.

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11. Richard W. Mansbach and John A. Vasquez, “The Effect of Actor and Issue Classifications on the Analysis of Global Conflict-Cooperation,” The Journal of Politics 43, 3 (1981), 864. 12. Zeev Maoz and Belgin San-Akca, “Rivalry and State Support of Non-State Armed Groups (NAGs), 1946–2001,” International Studies Quarterly 56, 4 (2012), 720. 13. Brecher and Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis, 824. 14. Brecher and James, “Patterns of Crisis Management,” 426. 15. Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl, “The Initiation and Termination of Enduring Rivalries: The Impact of Political Shocks,” American Journal of Political Science 39, 1 (1995), 30–52; Diehl and Goertz, War and Peace. 16. Diehl and Goertz, War and Peace, 137–38. 17. Goertz and Diehl, “The Initiation and Termination of Enduring Rivalries.” 18. Edward Azar, “Conflict Escalation and Conflict Reduction in an International Crisis: Suez 1956,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 16, 2 (1972), 183–201. 19. Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl, “The Volcano Model and Other Patterns in the Evolution of Enduring Rivalries,” in Paul F. Diehl (ed.), The Dynamics of Enduring Rivalries (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 98–128. 20. Gary Goertz, Paul F. Diehl and Daniel Saeedi, “Theoretical Specifications of Enduring Rivalries: Applications to the India-Pakistan Case,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict, 31. 21. Hensel, “An Evolutionary Approach.” 22. Russel Leng, Bargaining and Learning in Recurrent Crises: The Soviet-­ American, Egyptian-Israeli and Indo-Pakistani Rivalries (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). 23. Daniel Bar-Tal, “Sociopsychological Foundations of Intractable Conflicts,” American Behavioral Scientist 50, 11 (2007), 1430–53. 24. Louis Kriesberg, “Intractable Conflicts,” in Eugene Weiner (ed.), The Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence (New York: Continuum, 1998), 332–42. 25. William R. Thompson, “Identifying Rivals and Rivalries in World Politics,” International Studies Quarterly 45, 4 (2001), 560–61. 26. Brecher and Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis; Kristian S. Gleditsch, Idean Salehyan and Kenneth Schultz, “Fighting at Home, Fighting Abroad: How Civil Wars Lead to Interstate Disputes,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, 4 (2008), 479–506. 27. John A. Vasquez and Brandon Valeriano, “Territory as a Source of Conflict and a Road to Peace,” in Jacob Bercovitch, Victor A. Kremniuk and William Zartman (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Resolution (London: SAGE, 2009), 193–209. 28. See for example Hemda Ben-Yehuda, “Territoriality and War in International Crises: Theory and Findings, 1918–2001,” International Studies Review 6, 4 (2004), 85–105; Douglas M. Stinnett and Paul Diehl, “The Path(s) to Rivalry: Behavioral and Structural Explanations of Rivalry Development,” Journal of Politics 63, 3 (2001), 717–40.



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29. Jaroslav Tir and Paul F. Diehl, “Geographic Dimensions of Enduring Rivalries,” Political Geography 21, 2 (2002), 263–86. 30. Charles S. Gochman, “Interstate Metrics: Conceptualizing, Operationalizing, and Measuring the Geographic Proximity of States since the Congress of Vienna,” International Interactions 17, 93 (1991). 31. John A. Vasquez, “Why Do Neighbors Fight? Proximity, Interaction, or Territoriality,” Journal of Peace Research 32, 3 (1995), 277–93. 32. Paul F. Diehl, “Geography and War: A Review and Assessment of the Empirical Literature,” International Interactions 17, 1 (1991), 11–27. 33. Paul R. Hensel, “Charting a Course to Conflict: Territorial Issues and Interstate Conflict, 1816–1992,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 15, 1 (1996), 43–73. 34. Paul R. Hensel, “Territory: Theory and Evidence on Geography and Conflict,” in John A. Vasquez (ed.), What Do We Know about War? (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). 35. Tir and Diehl, “Geographic Dimensions of Enduring Rivalries.” 36. John A. Vasquez, The War Puzzle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 124. 37. John A. Vasquez and Christopher S. Leskiw, “The Origins and War Proneness of Interstate Rivalries,” Annual Review of Political Science 4, 1 (2001), 303. 38. See respectively, Valery A. Tishkov, “Ethnic Conflicts in the Former USSR: The Use and Misuse of Typologies and Data,” Journal of Peace Research 36, 4 (1999), 571; Stephen M. Saideman, “At the Heart of the Conflict: Irredentism and Kashmir,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict, 202. 39. David Carment, “The International Dimensions of Ethnic Conflict: Concepts, Indicators, and Theory,” Journal of Peace Research 30, 2 (1993), 137–150; Donald L. Horowitz, “Irredentas and Secessions: Adjacent Phenomena, Neglected Connections,” in Naomi Chazan (ed.), Irredentism and International Politics (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991), 9–22. 40. Saideman, “At the Heart of the Conflict,” 203, 205. 41. Stephen M. Saideman, “Discrimination in International Relations: Analyzing External Support for Ethnic Groups,” Journal of Peace Research 39, 1 (2002), 27. 42. Azar, “Conflict Escalation and Conflict Reduction in an International Crisis”; Goertz and Diehl, “The Volcano Model.” 43. Benjamin Miller, “The Global Sources of Regional Transitions from War to Peace,” Journal of Peace Research 38, 2 (2001), 200–3; Benjamin Miller, “When and How Regions Become Peaceful: Potential Theoretical Pathways to Peace,” International Studies Review 7, 2 (2005), 229–67. 44. Miller, “When and How Regions Become Peaceful,” 230. 45. Miller, “The Global Sources of Regional Transitions,” 202–3. 46. Michael R. Kenwick, Matthew Lane, Benjamin Ostick and Glenn Palmer, “Codebook for the Militarized Interstate Dispute Data” (version 4.0 2013), http://www.unm.edu/~ckbutler/StatsOfConflict/MID_v4.0_Codebook.pdf

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47. The discussion will also refer to the role played by Iraq and Iran, and to a lesser extent by some other states, as part of the larger, regional context of the Arab-Israeli rivalry. 48. Gochman and Maoz, “Militarized Interstate Disputes,” 587. 49. The Correlates of War (COW) Project, Militarized Interstate Disputes (v4.1), http://www.correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/MIDs. 50. The Correlates of War (COW) Project, MID Narratives 1993–2001.pdf; MID Narratives 2002–2010.pdf, http://www.correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/MIDs. 51. The International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project, Crisis Summaries, https:// sites.duke.edu/icbdata/data-collections/. 52. UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset, Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) and the Centre for the Study of Civil War at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset (version 4–2016), https://www​ .prio.org/Data/Armed-Conflict/UCDP-PRIO/ 53. UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset Codebook (version 4–2016), http://ucdp​ .uu.se/downloads/ucdpprio/ucdp-prio-acd-4-2016.pdf 54. Anna De Fina, Deborah Schiffrin and Michael Bamberg (eds.), Discourse and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Chapter Three

Setting the Stage

As two of the longest and most severe enduring rivalries of our times, the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts have deep historical roots. The origins of both rivalries can be traced back to political shocks associated with the formation of independent states. Indeed, the partitions of India and Palestine, which exacted an enormous price in human life and created a myriad of refugees, initiated multidimensional intractable conflicts. This chapter presents the historical backgrounds of the two partitions. More specifically, it looks at the origins of the rivalries in South Asia and the Middle East, addressing the clash of communal and national identities, the territorial dimension of conflict, the role of colonial rule in conflict initiation and the casts of actors involved. It then puts each rivalry in regional and global contexts, providing a brief overview of the involvement of major powers in the two regions. ORIGINS OF THE INDIA-PAKISTAN CONFLICT The Indian subcontinent is home to peoples of diverse religions, ethnicities and languages. While inter-communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims had occurred since the arrival of Islam to the region in the 7th century, the partition of India in 1947 was the consequence of a political rivalry between the two communities in their joint struggle for India’s independence. Remarkably, what ended in a solution of two states for two nations was initiated by a clash between two religious communities that had shared an Indian national identity. That is, the common denominator of India’s Muslims within the evolving inter-communal struggle was their religion, rather than ethnicity, language or national identity. However, to justify the creation of a 27

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new sovereign state, India’s Muslim leadership underwent a process through which a new national identity was forged. Born in the Arabian Peninsula in 622 CE, Islam first arrived in South Asia in 660, when Umar, the second caliph, sent an Arab expedition to Sindh. The conquest of the province by Mohammad ibn Qasim of the Umayyad Caliphate in 712 was the first great expansion of Islam into the Indian subcontinent, which generated an influx of missionaries and traders, setting in motion the conversion to Islam.1 By the end of the 13th century, most of India was under the loose control of Muslim rulers; and by the early 16th century, much of the subcontinent came under the rule of the Muslim Mughal Empire. However, the roots of the partition of India and the ensuing India-Pakistan rivalry can mainly be traced to the mid-19th century, when Great Britain assumed direct control of India. To be sure, British influence in India began much earlier in the form of colonialism aimed at expanding trade. In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted the East India Company a royal charter to trade with Mughal India. In 1757, the East India Company defeated the nawab of Bengal in the Battle of Plassey, and thereby consolidated its presence in Bengal. This presence spread to large parts of India in the following century and the company obtained great influence in the region. Indian resistance to British colonialism began a hundred years later, with a large-scale rebellion against the East India Company in 1857 and led to the transfer of power to the British government. The rebellion and the subsequent Government of India Act of 1858 signaled not only the beginning of the British Raj, but also the rise of Indian political awareness and the emergence of local leadership. In 1870 and 1882, the British passed resolutions that granted local selfgovernment to the Indians, providing for financial decentralization and political participation in municipal governance.2 Yet, these resolutions could not thwart anti-colonial sentiments. In December 1885, a group of 72 Indian delegates, led by Allan Octavian Hume, a former member of the Imperial Civil Service, gathered at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College in Mumbai to establish the Indian National Congress (INC). Soon, the INC took the lead of the mounting campaign for independence from Great Britain. Although its members were predominantly mainstream Hindus, the Congress encompassed all major ethnic and linguistic groups. The prevailing national identity of its leaders was molded into a vision of a unified secular state that would not favor any single religion.3 To be sure, at its outset, the independence movement’s leadership could not imagine separate independence for India’s Hindu and Muslim populations. While the Congress promoted the idea of an all-India independent state, Muslim fears of majority rule led to the formation of the All-India Muslim



Setting the Stage 29

League in 1906, which sought to advance Muslim agendas and protect the position of upper-class Muslims in India. In this vein, the Muslim League pressed the demand for minority protection by means of separate electorates. Hoping to weaken the emerging nationalist movement, the British acceded to this demand. In 1906, John Morley, the British Secretary for India, announced that Britain intended to introduce new reforms for India, aiming to grant the Indian citizens more powers in legislative affairs. The correspondence between Morley and Lord Minto, the Governor General of India, resulted in the Indian Councils Act of 1909, which presented the elective principle in the governance of India. The Morley-Minto Reforms offered limited political rights to the Indians and granted separate constituencies for Muslims. The British had yet to realize that over time the separate electorates helped to reinforce Muslim communal unity and accelerated Muslim separatist demands. In 1916, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, then president of the Muslim League and still a member of the Congress, facilitated the mutual adoption of the Lucknow Pact, aimed to induce the British government to enact political reforms that would give dominion status to India.4 The Congress-League pact stressed the demand for the establishment of self-governance in India. The joint scheme granted the Muslims a one-third representation in the central government and approved the principle of separate electorates for all of the communities. As such, it signaled a shift in the Congress’ long-standing position as the representative organization of all Indians. For the first time in Indian inter-communal politics, the Congress acknowledged the League as a political party that represented the Muslim community of India.5 Indeed, this initiative demonstrated mutual Hindu-Muslim desire to find a joint platform to advance the independence of a unified India. However, the agreement failed to yield long-lasting cooperation. In fact, the demise of the agreement was a milestone in the formation of communal consciousness, underlining the distinction between the two communities and their pursuit of separate goals.6 In the winter of 1917, Edwin Samuel Montagu, the British Secretary of State for India, began a series of discussions with Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy of India, which yielded a report recommending the transfer of responsibility over some aspects of provincial government to Indian ministers. However, the British government’s refusal to satisfy the rising demand for Indian self-governance, as demonstrated in the ensuing 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, prompted the establishment of opposition organizations—the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements. The panIslamic Khilafat movement, formed to protect the Ottoman Empire and the authority of the Ottoman Sultan as the Caliph of Islam after World War I, was not directly related to India’s independence struggle, yet it had a sweeping

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impact on the consolidation of nationalist sentiments among the Muslims of South Asia. Upset by the British treatment of Turkey at the end of the war, the Khilafat movement became increasingly critical of British rule and started taking united action on the Islamic issue, which forged a sense of solidarity among the Muslims of India.7 In November 1919, the All India Khilafat Conference, a joint forum of Muslim and Hindu leaders, met in Delhi. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was soon to become the president of Congress, called upon these leaders to start an active campaign against British rule, expressed in a boycott of British goods. Still with the spirit of Hindu-Muslim cooperation, established in the Lucknow Pact, he embraced the Khilafat cause, seeing it as an opportunity to win Muslim support for Indian nationalism. In 1920, Gandhi launched the non-violent Non-Cooperation Movement to boycott all aspects of the British Raj. Jinnah, who opposed this policy, resigned from the Congress. In the following years, trusting the support of the Congress’ Muslim base, the party under Jawaharlal Nehru ignored Jinnah’s calls to negotiate an agreement with Britain. However, it was not until 1940 that Jinnah officially adopted the idea of partition, which started to surface among Muslim nationalists in the 1930s. To be sure, the idea of communal division of the Indian subcontinent was not new. The two-nation theory was articulated in the 1880s by Sir Sayed Ahmad Khan, who claimed that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate nations.8 In 1930, this vague theory was formulated as the idea of Pakistan by the Muslim nationalists Muhammad Iqbal and Chaudhry Rehmat Ali, who advocated the creation of a separate Muslim homeland in South Asia. The poet and the philosopher Iqbal urged Jinnah to negotiate the establishment of a separate federation of Muslim provinces. In his view, however, the Muslim state was to remain part of the larger independent Indian entity, allowing the Muslim-majority northwestern provinces to conduct their lives according to their traditions, released from Hindu domination.9 Ultimately, realizing that the struggle for power sharing had reached an impasse, Jinnah had to abandon his all-India vision and embrace communal distinctiveness. In 1940, in his presidential address at the Muslim League Lahore session, Jinnah first made the claim for an independent Pakistan, arguing that India’s Muslims embodied not merely a communal minority but rather a nation, entitled to a national home in northwestern and northeastern India, where they constituted a majority. In 1943, talking with a British interviewer about Hindu-Muslim relations in India, Jinnah sounded convinced of this view: “We are different beings. There is nothing in life which links us together. Our names, our clothes, our food—they are all different; our economic life, our educational ideas, our treatment of women, our attitude to animals . . . we challenge each other at every point of the compass.”10 Indeed,



Setting the Stage 31

the endorsement of the partition route marked a turning point in the history of the Hindu-Muslim inter-communal struggle in the subcontinent. Aiming to pressure the British government to concede to the demand for a separate Muslim nation, Jinnah began a public campaign to mobilize mass support. In August 1946, he called for Muslims throughout the country to suspend all business. The Muslim League declared a Direct Action Day, intended to be a peaceful demonstration for the Indian Muslims’ cause. The demonstrations, however, triggered a week of inter-communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal that resulted in thousands of fatalities. Known as the “Great Calcutta Killing,” this was a precursor of much greater violence to come. The brutal riots did eventually serve to increase rage and alienation among Muslims, reinforcing their desire for a separate state. Nevertheless, in his vision of the Pakistani state, Jinnah did not give up on the idea that Hindus and Muslims could live together peacefully, with no religious-political distinctions: “In any case, Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state to be ruled by priests with a divine mission,” he said in an address to the Constituent Assembly in August 1947. Rather, he envisioned, “…Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims” in the new Muslim state, not in the sense of their faith but in the political sense, as citizens of the state.11 The idea of a Muslim unitary state required the formation of a new political center. However, the centralizing ambitions of the Muslim elite were countered by strong regional ambitions and anti-center sentiments, coming mainly from the Muslim-majority provinces of East Bengal, the North-West Frontier Province and Sindh. While sharing a religious consciousness at the cultural level, the political aspirations of these provinces were based mainly on affinity with local and regional traditions. The separate electorates granted to Muslims in 1909 had promoted their provincial particularism.12 The local political aspirations of the Muslim-majority provinces thus generated a conflict between ambitions of peripheral autonomy within Hindu-dominated India, and the alternative of becoming a subordinated part of a new political center in an independent Muslim state.13 By 1945, devastated by the global war, the British government came to realize that it could not afford to hold on to the British extended empire, and sought to end the Raj in India. Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last British viceroy, began planning the withdrawal. In 1946, Britain proposed a plan that offered provincial grouping within a federal framework and confined the all-India federal center mainly to defense and foreign affairs. In light of this offer, the Muslim League leaders had to consider their preference between an all-India federal state with a weakened center, and a Muslim independent state stripped of the Hindu-majority districts of Punjab and Bengal. However,

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the plan was hampered by the Hindu leaders, who were strongly opposed to any scheme that weakened India’s political center. Eventually, the British decided in favor of partition and turned to the impossible task of demarcating the borders of the independent states of India and Pakistan along religious lines. The Muslims occupied two main regions in the north, on the eastern and western parts of the country, separated by a wide Hindu-majority region. Furthermore, throughout wide areas of northern India, Hindus and Muslims, along with other minority groups, were mixed together. Most challenging was the fertile Punjab province, with a roughly even share of population from the two communities. The Bengal Legislative Assembly also addressed the post-partition future of the province, with its predominantly Hindu West Bengal and predominantly Muslim East Bengal regions. Within less than ten weeks, Britain rashly presented a partition map, which divided both the Punjab and Bengal provinces. Moreover, it left the eastern and western wings of the newly created Pakistani state separated by approximately 1,700 kilometers of Indian territory. While both Gandhi and Jinnah tried to delay the execution of the British plan, the British government announced its intention of transferring power to Indian hands by June 1948, and then advanced the date to August 1947, leaving a myriad of issues and concerns unresolved.14 On July 5, 1947, the British parliament passed the Indian Independence Act that partitioned British India into the independent dominions of India and Pakistan. The act received royal assent on July 18, 1947. Shortly thereafter, on August 14, Pakistan came into being, and India became an independent state on the following day. The end of British colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent marked the beginning of a bitter territorial dispute embedded in a larger interstate rivalry. This territorial dispute has remained the main bone of contention throughout the ensuing rivalry.15 To begin with, while Pakistan was created as a homeland for Muslims, far more were left behind in India than were incorporated into the new Muslim country. Indeed, the chaotic manner in which the two independent states came into being catalyzed a human tragedy on a grand scale, displacing over 10 million people, with Hindus and Sikhs fleeing from Pakistan to India, and Muslims migrating in the opposite direction. Hundreds of thousands lost their lives in the revolts that accompanied this mass transfer of population.16 Moreover, the fate of 562 princely states scattered throughout the subcontinent remained undecided. By August 15, 1947, the rulers of all but three of the princely states signed an Instrument of Accession to either India or Pakistan, according to two criteria—their territorial location and the identities of their rulers and populations. Three princely states—Junagadh, Hyderabad and the State of Jammu and Kashmir, in which one or both of these



Setting the Stage 33

conditions did not obtain—refused to join either of the newly declared states and triggered the first three in a series of Indo-Pakistani militarized disputes. Hindu-majority populations were ruled by a Muslim nawab in Junagadh and a Muslim nizam in Hyderabad. In Jammu and Kashmir, the largest princely state in the subcontinent, a Hindu maharaja ruled over a predominantly Muslim population.17 Contiguous to both India and Pakistan, Kashmir emerged as the most challenging territory, with a considerable Muslim majority concentrated mainly in Gilgit-Baltistan (formerly known as the Northern Areas) and Kashmir Valley, a large Hindu population in the Jammu region and a Buddhist population in the Ladakh region. Its Hindu ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, attempted to negotiate Indian and Pakistani support for an independent Kashmir. Following the invasion of Kashmir by Muslim tribesmen from Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province in October 1947, however, the maharaja appealed for Indian help. India, in turn, demanded the accession of Kashmir to the newly established Indian state. The maharaja acceded. The Instrument of Accession of Kashmir to India was accepted by the Governor General of India, Lord Mountbatten, but Pakistan strongly denied its legality.18 Mountbatten then proposed the idea of holding a plebiscite on the future of Kashmir. Instead, the two countries went to war, which ended in an uneasy truce and Indian sovereignty over nearly two thirds of Kashmir. Pakistan controls two other parts of the previous princely state, Gilgit-Balistan and Azad (free) Kashmir, which has become a self-governing administrative division of Pakistan. A plebiscite on Kashmir was never held. Seven decades later, the Kashmir region remains highly troubled and the conflict over its fate remains unresolved. Although relatively small in size, nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, the State of Jammu and Kashmir has both strategic importance and unusual beauty. It contains the upper regions of the Indus River and its tributaries, upon which Pakistan depends for irrigation. For democratic India, in addition to these advantages, Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in India since partition, is crucial to its identity as a secular state that accommodates multiple religions. After independence, India’s leaders attempted to create a pluralist state with a national identity that would supersede regional, religious or cultural identities. Ideologies of Islamic nationalism in Pakistan, on the other hand, supported Muslim separatist ambitions in Kashmir. The ceasefire agreement that divided Kashmir in 1949, later renamed the Line of Control (LoC), demarcated the major territorial dispute around which the entire India-Pakistan conflict revolves. In the midst of this dispute stands the Muslim majority in Indian-administrated Kashmir that fights for its freedom. Parts of the Muslim population in Kashmir seek to overthrow

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India’s rule and merge with Muslim Pakistan, while others strive to achieve independence.19 In the wake of repeated militarized confrontations, however, the rivalry has evolved into a much more complex conflict, characterized by ideological contrasts, mutual security threats, amplified religious discourse and a growing role of non-state players. Detecting change and continuity in the characterization of these elements throughout the India-Pakistan rivalry is essential to understanding variation in military hostilities and the persistence of conflict over time. Profile of the Rival Countries in the South Asian Conflict The India-Pakistan conflict encompasses two very different states. Indeed, the Hindu and Muslim communities of the subcontinent have long lived together, sharing political history and entwined cultural traits. However, after the partition of British India, the history of the independent states of India and Pakistan sharply diverged. In the early years after independence, India adopted a constitution that embodied the legacy of British rule, with a system of administration and a secular democratic government based on the Government of India Act of 1935. Yet, the new constitution, which was adopted by the Constituent Assembly in November 1949 and entered effect in January 1950, introduced a new model of parliamentary government, different from the mixed parliamentary-bureaucratic authoritarian system of British India.20 Indeed, Indian nationalists had already debated the character of a future independent state during their independence struggle and drew from this discussion.21 Pakistan, on the other hand, turned to rely on the military to cope with the overwhelming tasks of constructing a new state and upholding political order. Indeed, it took Pakistan nine years to forge a constitution. The state has suffered political instability from the outset, with fluctuations between authoritarian military rule and parliamentary democracy. For a country that was born out of its religious identity, it was implausible, even for Pakistani modernists, to ignore the role of Islam and develop an entirely Western-like secular state. Thus, Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly sought a constitutional model that would incorporate Islam in a modern political structure; yet, at Pakistan’s inception, there were few contemporary examples to draw upon. In 1949, the Assembly appointed a Basic Principle Committee, which in turn appointed a Board of Islamic Learning. As the Board offered a scheme that essentially subjected the secular leadership to the ulema, the Assembly rejected most of its recommendations. Instead, the Assembly passed the Objective Resolution, defining the constitutional principles of Pakistan as a federal, democratic and Islamic entity.22 Over time,



Setting the Stage 35

however, Pakistan has hardly preserved its democracy, while placing more emphasis on fostering the Islamic nature of the state. Certainly, differences between the partitioned entities were not limited to the ideological and institutional features of the evolving polities, but also included an enormous gap between their material powers. For example, India is more industrialized than Pakistan and considerably larger in territory, population and economy. Most importantly, India has a significantly greater military force, expressed in both quantitative and qualitative terms.23 In effect, from the outset, military asymmetry has characterized the IndiaPakistan conflict, shaping security perceptions and strategies throughout the enduring rivalry. Indeed, the persistence of the rivalry can be largely attributed to the imbalance of power, by which Pakistan, the weaker and insecure party, challenges the status quo and constantly attempts to amend the asymmetry of power. Yet, alongside the asymmetry of power, there is mutual nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan. As part of the arms race between them, both countries sought to acquire nuclear weapons. India successfully tested its first nuclear device in 1974 in the northern state of Rajasthan, in what is known as Pokhran-I or the “Smiling Buddha Operation.” Pakistan, which had recently lost its eastern part in the Bangladesh War, was rightly anxious about its larger and more powerful rival becoming a nuclear power, and joined the nuclear race. By the end of the 1980s, both India and Pakistan had the capability to produce nuclear arms. In 1998, the two countries conducted nuclear tests that officially turned the South Asian rivalry into a conflict between nuclear powers.24 Indeed, it is within the context of Indian conventional military superiority and mutual nuclear deterrence that Pakistan began to effectively deploy non-state militant proxies. Regional and Global Context The involvement by world powers—mainly the U.S., the UK and China in support of Pakistan—institutionalized the conflict and allowed Pakistan to continue to challenge Indian superiority in the region.25 In 1954, Pakistan signed a Mutual Defense Assistance agreement with the United States. India, on its part, adopted a stance of nonalignment in the Cold War. In effect, Pakistan played a role in the U.S. anti-communist alliance in the region, while India, swayed by Nehruvian thought, inclined toward socialism.26 At the same time, India signed a treaty of friendship with China (1954). While the IndoChinese treaty included mutual recognition of each country’s territorial integrity, territorial disputes over border areas remained unsettled. Indeed, in 1962, a border dispute between India and China led to the outbreak of war. In the wake of this episode, China sought to undermine India’s power in the region.

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Relations between the United States and India were ambivalent in the early decades of the Cold War and, while keeping stable and positive relations with Pakistan, the U.S. provided India with development assistance throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Nevertheless, by the mid-1960s, the global Cold War was highly embodied in the regional rivalry, with the U.S. and the UK supporting the Pakistani stand on Kashmir, and the Soviet Union vetoing UN resolutions on Kashmir. The treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation signed between India and the Soviet Union in 1971 marked the full incorporation of the global Cold War division in the India-Pakistan conflict. After the Bangladesh war ended in late 1971, the U.S. and China formed a strategic alignment in support of Pakistan, to counter the India-USSR alliance. China thus became a major intervening factor in the India-Pakistan rivalry, supplying conventional and nuclear armaments to Pakistan. Furthermore, by the end of the 1970s, Saudi Arabia had also become an ally of Pakistan, part of a larger PakistanChina-Saudi alignment. The end of the Cold War, and the diminishing of the special Indo-Soviet relations following the dissolution of the USSR, did not signal a major shift in American and Chinese connections with Pakistan. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and ahead of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the United States persuaded Pakistan to join the war on terror, as it needed Pakistan for supply routes and later for negotiating a lasting settlement in Afghanistan. In this context, the United States extended economic, social and military assistance to Pakistan. By the end of the war, however, the close ties between the United States and Pakistan unraveled over mutual discontent and growing distrust. China and Russia began filling the void the Americans left in Pakistan.27 While the United States remained a central supporter of Pakistan, it started curtailing military aid to it. In contrast, Russia, a long-time ally of India, has tightened its ties with Islamabad, as embodied in the Russian-Pakistani military cooperation agreement signed in late 2014. This pact was followed by joint military exercises in 2016 and 2017, and a Russian-Pakistani agreement on naval cooperation signed the following year. Regional and global efforts to mediate the India-Pakistan rivalry, however, have long been limited in scope, due to the lack of strategic interest in mediation engagement and India’s consistent opposition to the involvement of any foreign power in Indo-Pakistani dialogue.28 After 1989, nuclear proliferation became a major concern for the United States and shaped its policy in the region. Indeed, U.S. policy focused on preserving stability and preventing war, rather than resolving the regional conflict. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, security concerns continued to guide American strategy, now with an eye toward its war endeavor in Afghanistan. Normalizing relations between the South Asian neighbors became a means to stability. In this path,



Setting the Stage 37

the European Union offered its good offices, and sponsored academic and Track II dialogues.29 Even though Pakistan has partially offset the imbalance of power through foreign alliances and the acquisition of qualitative weapons and nuclear arms, the interstate balance of power in the conflict remains in favor of India.30 To fill the gap, Pakistan has adhered to a proxy-war strategy, supporting the insurgency of non-state actors (NSAs) against India. Chapter 4 elaborates on the consequences of Pakistan’s strategic choice, which has corresponded with global trends of growing NSA militancy, and discusses how it has changed the nature of Indo-Pakistani warness and kept the rivalry alive. ORIGINS OF THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT The civilizational background of the Arab-Israeli conflict can be traced to the hostility between Islam and Judaism commencing with the foundation of Islam in the 7th century. However, the tangible origins of the inter-communal conflict date back to the beginning of the “Return to Zion” in 1881, when Jews strived to return to their ancestral homeland—the Land of Israel, internationally known as Palestine, a territory then inhabited mainly by indigenous Arabs.31 The early conflictual background is therefore located within the late period of Ottoman rule in Palestine. In reaction to mounting anti-Semitism in Europe, and in correspondence with budding Jewish nationalism, thousands of Jews began arriving in Ottoman-ruled Palestine, purchasing land and preparing for the restoration of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Holy Land, aiming to construct a safe haven for persecuted Jews. While the return of Jews from exile to the Promised Land has long persisted as a religious notion, the desire for Jewish statehood, inspired by Western ideas of nationalism, arose in the 19th century. Thus, impelled by the spread of anti-Semitism in Europe, the Zionist movement originated in Eastern Europe, where the largest Jewish minority lived, suffering from rising persecution. The buds of Jewish nationalist organizations that called for the return to Zion appeared in the 1870s, with movements like Hibat Zion (Love of Zion) and BILU (an acronym for a biblical phrase entreating the Jewish people to return to Israel). In 1882, the leader of Hibat Zion, Leo Pinsker, a RussianPolish Jewish physician, published the pamphlet “Auto-Emancipation” that advocated Jewish self-rule. Pinsker called for the development of a Jewish national consciousness and argued that a homeland was the only solution for incurable anti-Semitism.32 Indeed, a major catalyst of the development of Zionism was the four-year series of large-scale attacks and riots against Jews

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sparked in 1881 by the assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The waves of violent attacks, known as pogroms, shattered hopes of emancipation and fueled the Jewish pursuit of a safe national homeland. In 1897, Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist from Vienna, convened the first Zionist Congress in Basel.33 The Zionist idea was then fully formalized as Herzl initiated the foundation of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), an umbrella organization for the various Zionist institutions. Tensions between the secular Zionist leadership and delegates of Orthodox Jewry arose ab initio, a precursor of a long-lasting dispute over the identity and role of the Jewish state. With the institutionalism of Zionism, Herzl launched a series of diplomatic initiatives aimed at attaining international recognition of a charter for Palestine. Other streams within the Zionist movement embraced the notion of auto-emancipation and encouraged immigration to Palestine without waiting for legal permission. Between 1904 and 1914, some 35,000 young Jews migrated to Palestine as part of a second wave of Jewish migration (the Second Aliyah). With focused political intent, the arriving Jews accelerated the acquisition of land and laid out the institutional foundations of a Jewish state. Before long, conflict ensued between the growing Jewish community and the much larger Arab one.34 In October 1917, Chaim Weizmann, a Jewish biochemist from Belarus, was elected president of the British Zionist Federation; he later became the president of the World Zionist Organization and the first president of the State of Israel. Weizmann’s diplomatic connections in British circles, particularly his association with Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary of Britain, facilitated the Balfour Declaration, which established British recognition of the Zionist quest to found a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This recognition became a milestone in the unfolding Arab-Israeli conflict. The late 19th century also saw the emergence of Arab nationalism, as the peoples of the Middle East sought independence from both the declining Ottoman rule and Western colonialism. Highly influenced by Western thought, Arabism was developed in reaction to Ottomanism, emphasizing Arab history, language and culture as sources of national unity. By 1919, Arab nationalism had become the prominent political ideology in Syria and Lebanon, advocating political, cultural and religious unity among the people of Arab nations. The aim of this ideology was to create an independent Arab state with Greater Syria at its core.35 The united Arab identity evolved in parallel to prominent Islamic faith and affinity, introducing a distinctive but not a substitutive identity of the Arab nations. That is, Islam has been a major identity marker of Arabism, a central pillar of Arab unity. However, the idea of an all-encompassing Arab nation (al-qawmiyya alArabia) was by no means unanimously accepted throughout the Arab world.



Setting the Stage 39

Rather, it competed with other nationalist thinking, being at odds with ideas of separate territorial nationality (watanyia), mainly with Egyptian local nationalism at the time. When Egypt adopted the political ideology of panArabism as state policy in the 1950s, it remained highly contested in other Arab states. Essentially, Arab nationalism, compounded with secular ideologies of modern statehood and socialism, was opposed not only by local Arab nationalists but also by movements that operated under an Islamic banner. It was also challenged by a pan-Islamist ideology that envisioned the rebirth of a supra-ethnic Muslim nation, embodied in the Islamic ummah.36 Palestinian Arabs, though strongly affiliating with local families and clans, were part of this reshaping of identity in the broader Arab world.37 However, the threat posed by the rise of Zionism and the growth of the Jewish community in Palestine, spurred the formation of a distinctive Palestinian national identity. Notably, political developments in the greater Middle East after World War I, mainly British policy in the region, influenced the emergence of the Palestinian national movement in the 1920s and 1930s, which gave precedence to securing the independence of Palestine over the idea of unifying with Syria.38 The demise of the Ottoman Empire by the end of World War I brought about change in imperial rule in the Middle East, with the British and French taking over the region. Prior to the UN assignment of official mandate rule to Britain and France in the Middle Eastern countries, the British negotiated three separate plans, making conflicting promises that would shortly escalate political tensions and establish the setting of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the 1915–16 Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, a series of letters between Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, and Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt, the British government expressed support for the ambitions of Arab nationalism in the region. Britain promised to back the establishment of an independent Arab state (excluding areas in which France had interests) in exchange for Arab assistance in fighting the Ottomans. However, the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, signed between the British and French shortly after the British correspondence with Hussein, exposed the planning of the two European powers to divvy up the Arab world and occupy parts of the promised Arab state.39 The following year, another British scheme appeared to contradict the idea of an Arab state and further complicated the changing regional arena. The 1917 Balfour Declaration expressed official British support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Thus, British rule in Palestine commenced with conflicting plans, pledging three different political futures for the peoples of the region. The following three decades saw Arabs and Jews fighting over national rights and territorial control, a

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fight that engendered the United Nations’ partition plan and the Arab-Israeli rivalry. Arab politics in Palestine at that time was dominated by the elite class of urban notable families, the a‘yan, who constituted the political leadership from which the Palestinian national movement arose. The shifting regional realities required cooperation among the divided notable families to confront European, Zionist and broader Arab interests. While sharing opposition to the Zionist endeavor, the Arab elites debated the options of Palestinian self-rule under limited British control versus unification with an independent Greater Syria. The political organizations that sprung up in Palestine after World War I, roughly divided between the “Older Politicians” and the “Younger Politicians,” represented this debate. The Older Politicians, a‘yan who had figured prominently in Ottoman Palestine, were represented in al-Jam‘iyat al-Islamiyyah al-Masihiyyah, a Muslim-Christian Association that favored Palestinian self-rule in the framework of Greater Syria, while endorsing British control in the region. The Palestinian Younger Politicians, on the other hand, represented in the al-Nadi al-Arabi (Arab Club) and the al-Muntada alAdabi (Literary Society), advocated Arab independence embodied in union with Syria.40 In January 1919, the Muslim-Christian Association organized the first Palestinian Arab Congress in Jerusalem. In its concluding statement, the Congress declared that as “part of Arab Syria,” Palestine “should remain undetached from the independent Arab Syrian Government that is bound by Arab unity, and free from all foreign influence and protection.”41 However, the vision of Arab independence dissolved with the installation of the League of Nations’ mandate system in June 1919. The postOttoman Middle Eastern countries were placed under the trusteeship of Western powers until gaining the capacity to operate state affairs on their own. The mandate for Syria and Lebanon was awarded to the French; the mandate for Iraq and Palestine (with Transjordan) was allotted to the British. The appointment of Sir Herbert Samuel as the first High Commissioner for Palestine in July 1920 marked the shift from military to civilian rule. Soon thereafter, King Faisal’s government in Damascus fell to the French army. The dream of Greater Syria was shattered. The tide turned in favor of the local nationalist option, enhancing the consolidation of Palestinian collective identity and the growth of the Palestinian national movement. The divided a‘yan, still drawing on clan and family ties, contended for power in the new political order. The internal political competition, led by two Jerusalem families, the Husseinis and Nashashibis, was conducted through new political and religious organizations. In 1920, the Palestinians convened the third Arab Congress in Haifa, and formed the Arab Executive, the leading Arab political committee.



Setting the Stage 41

In the following years, the Husseinis gained control of the Arab Executive, as well as the Supreme Muslim Council, the main religious organization in Palestine, with Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, serving as its president. In 1923, the Nashashibis, excluded from the Arab Executive, and supported by other notable families who resented the dominance of the Husseini family, led the formation of an opposition movement, the Palestinian National Party. Though the Haifa platform authorized the Arab Executive to act as the representative of the Palestinian Arabs, the British government never recognized it.42 Nevertheless, in 1921, the Arab Executive sent a delegation of notables to meet the British Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, and demand the repudiation of the Balfour Declaration. Several weeks earlier, Palestinian uncertainty and discontent with British policy in Palestine were manifested in anti-Zionist riots that broke out in Jaffa and elsewhere in Jewish settlements. Churchill, in an attempt to ease inter-communal tensions, turned to moderate the promises made to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration. In 1922, Churchill issued the first White Paper, stating that a Jewish national home was indeed to be founded in Palestine, but rejecting the interpretation that Palestine as a whole should become a Jewish national home.43 Accordingly, the White Paper declared that Jewish immigration to Palestine would be limited to match the economic capacity of the country, and steps would be taken to set up a legislative council. The Palestinians rejected this moderated British approach, which still allowed for Jewish immigration (though not unlimited) and sustained the commitment to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. In August 1929, tensions between Arabs and Jews escalated into a crisis. A long dispute over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a site of deep religious significance to both Jews and Muslims, turned violent. Riots broke out in Jerusalem and spread to other towns, resulting in the death of 133 Jews (killed by Arabs) and 116 Arabs (most of them killed by the British police while trying to suppress the riots). The British reacted by sending a commission to investigate the causes of the violent events, which in turn produced a series of further investigations and reports. The 1929 Shaw Report and the 1930 Hope-Simpson Commission concluded that Jewish immigration was the major source of Arab discontent, even though Jewish immigration had begun to decline.44 The commission recommended limits on Jewish immigration and the cessation of Arab eviction from land transfers. These recommendations were incorporated into the 1930 Passfield White Paper, which was later renounced by the British prime minister under Zionist pressure.45 The continued Arab frustration with British policy in Palestine, along with the success of anti-colonialist activities in neighboring Arab countries at that

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time,46 sparked the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939. The revolt, which the Arabs call “the Great Arab Rebellion,” began with a general strike that soon turned into the most significant and prolonged violent uprising against British colonial rule in Palestine. The Arab Higher Committee was set up to steer the revolt, and Amin al-Husseini was elected as its chairman. Indeed, the urban Arab Higher Committee led the first phase of the revolt, focused mainly on strikes and political protest, which by the end of 1936 was quashed by the British civil administration. The second phase of the revolt, beginning in late 1937, took the shape of a peasant-led violent resistance featuring hit-and-run attacks against British and Jewish targets; the revolt was fiercely suppressed by the British Army. In light of the Arab insurgencies against the British policy of allowing Jewish immigration, the Zionist leadership adopted a self-reliance strategy to defend the yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine. Following the Arab riots against Jews in April 1920, the yishuv leadership founded the Haganah as a national defense organization. In 1931, a group of Haganah members seceded from the organization, protesting its policy of “restraint” in retaliating against Arab groups that were attacking Jewish settlements. Shortly thereafter, in 1932, the splinter group formed the National Military Organization (known by its Hebrew acronym, Etzel, or as the Irgun), whose ideology was based on Revisionist Zionism, founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Even more militant was the splinter group that seceded from the Irgun in 1940, forming the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel organization (known by its Hebrew acronym, Lehi) that vowed to forcibly expel the British from Palestine. And so, the conflict in Mandatory Palestine continually deteriorated, encompassing inter-communal strife between Arab and Jewish military organizations, and their separate national struggles against British colonial rule. In an effort to bridge the nationalist differences between the two communities, the Zionist leadership made several attempts to negotiate a solution with the Arab leadership. In the 1930s and 1940s, Zionist leaders conducted several unsuccessful discussions with members of the Nashashibi family in Jerusalem and with other Arab leaders in neighboring states.47 The British, on their part, continued to seek a plan that would accommodate the wishes of both sides, while preserving their own interests. The Arab rebellion of 1936 and its inter-communal violent offshoots resulted in additional British commissions and reports. The conclusions of the 1937 Peel Commission regarding the causes of the Arab uprising resembled those of the previous ones, yet this commission declared the mandate unworkable and ultimately recommended resolving the conflict by partitioning Palestine into two separate states. The Zionist leadership



Setting the Stage 43

hesitantly accepted the plan, which granted the Jews 20 percent of the land. The Palestinians furiously rejected it. The Arab revolt was then re-ignited, with Arab attacks on both Jewish and British targets, and internal accusations of corruption and failure against the Arab notables. In September 1937, the British declared martial law. The Arab Higher Committee was dissolved, the mufti fled to Lebanon and many other Arab activists were arrested. Seeking to quiet Arab unrest, the British then set up another commission, to be followed by the publication of yet another White Paper. The 1938 Woodhead Commission, appointed to examine economic and financial aspects of the Peel partition plan for Palestine, suggested three alternative modifications of the original plan, all of them reducing the area of the Jewish state and limiting the sovereignty of the proposed states by maintaining a British zone in Palestine. Concluding that partition was unviable and Britain’s commitments to Arabs and Jews were irreconcilable, the British called for a roundtable conference in London. After the failure of the London conference to resolve the dispute, the British issued the 1939 MacDonald White Paper, which essentially yielded to Arab demands, repudiating the Balfour Declaration. The white paper called for an independent binational state in Palestine within ten years, where the Arabs were to be the clear majority. As expected, the Zionist leadership opposed the plan. Quite remarkably, the Arabs also rejected it, demanding immediate independence for the Palestinians and an end to Jewish immigration. In effect, the fragmentation of the Palestinian leadership (mainly a consequence of the Arab Revolt) led to increasing involvement by leaders from the surrounding Arab states. In October 1944, Arab leaders formed the Alexandria Protocol, a precursor of the Arab League, and adopted a resolution on Palestine declaring that “Palestine is an important part of the Arab world,” and that “the rights of the [Palestinian] Arabs cannot be touched without prejudice to peace and stability in the Arab world.”48 Indeed, the Arab League, formed in Cairo four months later, established the Arab states’ engagement in the Palestine issue, championing the Palestinian cause until the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) took control of the Palestinian struggle in the early 1970s. The British decision to withdraw from its various colonial holdings after World War II, including the Middle East, was followed by a struggle over superpower strongholds in the region as part of the evolving Cold War. The ensuing changes in the distribution of global political power engendered growing superpower involvement in the region’s affairs. In 1946, the Truman administration urged the British to allow Jewish refugees into Palestine.49 This request led to the formation of an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1946, which indeed recommended the issuing of 100,000

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immigration certificates for Jews, yet also rejected the partition of Palestine and sought to secure Jewish rights under the continuation of British administration. Unsatisfied with these recommendations, the British set up the Anglo-American Morrison-Grady Committee, which in turn recommended the division of Palestine into semi-autonomous cantons to be incorporated in a bilateral federal state under British administrative supervision. The Arab and Jewish leaderships rejected the plan. So did the United States, following Zionist pressures in Washington. Finally, in February 1947, the British relinquished responsibility for Palestine and referred the problem to the United Nations, which set up its own special committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). The UNSCOP members unanimously agreed on termination of the mandate, with seven of its eleven members endorsing a partition plan, and three members recommending a federal bilateral state; the committee rejected the unitary Arab state advocated by the Arab Higher Committee. In September, as the UN vote on partition drew near, Aubrey (Abba) Eban, Jon Kimche and David Horowitz of the Jewish Agency in Palestine met with ‘Azzam Pasha, the Secretary General of the Arab League and a renowned Egyptian nationalist, in quest of a peaceful solution to the bitter dispute. The meeting, held at the Savoy Hotel in London, revealed ‘Azzam Pasha’s complete rejection of a Jewish state, and his suggestion that violence would be the only possible resolution. His blunt statement indicated once again the tough stance of the Arab League and the major influence it had on the Palestinian issue: “The Arab world is not in a compromising mood,” he said. “It’s likely, Mr. Horowitz that your plan is rational and logical, but the fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won’t get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps, get something, but only by the force of your arms. We shall try to defeat you. I am not sure we’ll succeed, but we’ll try.”50 And they did try. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181 to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, which would join to form an economic union. According to the UN resolution, Jerusalem would not be part of either state but an international zone under UN control. The Zionists, witnessing the fulfillment of their long desire to return to the Land of Israel and establish a Jewish national home on that land, approved the plan. The Arabs, on the other hand, adhering to their long-held standpoint that Palestine was an integral part of the Arab world, opposed its partition. Violent clashes soon ensued, with escalating Arab assaults on Jewish settlements, and reprisals by Jewish military organizations against Palestinian targets. Though the Palestinian forces were reinforced by Arab volunteers, led by the Arab Liberation Army (ALA) formed



Setting the Stage 45

by the Arab League under the command of Fawzi al-Qawuqji, the betterorganized Jewish forces were at an advantage. This phase of civil strife between Arab and Jewish armed organizations lasted until the formal declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. And then war broke out. On May 15, five Arab countries invaded Israel—Syria and Lebanon from the north, Jordan and Iraq from the east and Egypt from the south.51 The invasion by the regular forces of Arab states signaled the failure of a plan to form a combined army of Arab League volunteer forces under Iraqi command. This was also a source of friction among the Arab states, as the Arab leaders fought not only against the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, but also against the ambitions of King Abdullah of Jordan to annex Palestine’s territory to his kingdom. The war ended after the signing of separate armistice agreements between Israel and the invading countries, except for Iraq. The agreements divided the territory of the former British Mandate of Palestine between Israel, Jordan and Egypt, leaving the UN Partition Plan unfulfilled and the Arab players frustrated and hostile. The ensuing conflict has witnessed periodic bursts of violent hostilities between Israel and the Arab players, including multi-sided interstate hostilities and state-NSA confrontations. The first Arab-Israeli war (1948–49) left the Palestinians without a sovereign state of their own. In the following years, the Palestinian actors underwent substantive ideological and organizational changes. They were no longer a feeble factor, highly dependent on the patronage of Arab states, but had become a central player in the Arab effort to liberate Palestine. Notably, the takeover of the PLO in 1969 by Fatah, under Arafat’s leadership, marked a turning point in the conflict. The Palestinians emerged as an autonomous actor, and state-NSA relations began to change. Indeed, the evolution of the Palestinian national movement, manifested in actor transformation from loosely organized fedayeen to well-established organizations like the PLO and Hamas movements, is part of the larger story of conflict change and persistence in the Middle East. Profile of the Rival Countries in the Middle East Conflict The Middle East conflict is highly complex in terms of the actors and issues involved. The Arab-Israeli rivalry is a broad regional conflict comprising a series of bilateral disputes between Israel and the Arab countries, notably the four “frontline” Arab states—Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.52 These states were already at conflict with the future State of Israel in the 1930s, and the repeated defeats they suffered in Arab-Israeli wars since 1948 further complicated the conflict. To better understand the setting of the Arab-Israeli

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rivalry, the following section profiles the rival countries, focusing on their first years of independence. In general, the countries involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict can be divided into two main contending parties—Israel on the one hand, the Arab states on the other. However, inter-Arab relations have long been characterized by dissension and discord. While the Arab states uphold the idea of Arab unity, grasping the struggle against Israel as one of the few pillars of Arab cooperation, they actually remain deeply divided. Even when dealing with Arab-Israeli issues, including the paramount Palestinian cause, the Arab countries remain unable to reach consent and cooperation. Indeed, the conflict with Israel was employed to enhance Arab unity, yet, at the same time, it contributed to inter-Arab tension and dispute. Israel ended the first Arab-Israeli war with boundaries that extended far beyond those allocated to it in the UN partition plan. Its military victory over the Arab armies placed it in an advantageous position vis-à-vis its defeated neighbors. Yet Israel was far from feeling secure. The wider Arab world, and the neighboring enemy states within it, was much larger and more populous than Israel. The Arab states were bound together in their animosity toward the Zionist state. Indeed, even after the expansion of its borders following the war, Israel’s geography remained a major constraint on its ability to fight and protect itself. Within its narrow borders, Israel’s population was under constant military threat from the adjacent enemy states.53 The newly created state also faced nation-building tasks. While coping with the security challenges, Israel bore the human and financial burdens of absorbing immigrants on a grand scale. Committed to the original aim of its creation, the state enacted the Law of Return in 1950, which promised to absorb every Jew who wants to live in Israel. Indeed, the waves of immigrants coming to Israel from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe during the first decade of its establishment dramatically changed the number and nature of its population. Particularly challenging were the tasks of constructing housing and finding employment for the mass of new immigrants. Israel resolved to manage these tasks while establishing a democratic system, based on a political model of proportional representation, designed to give expression to the various groups that make up the society.54 However, Israel was mainly concerned about security threats. The 1949 armistice agreements did not officially end the state of war between Israel and the Arab countries, nor did they pave the way toward imminent peace negotiations. In this context, Israel feared Arab unity. However, the Arab states were weak and divided, unready to fulfill the promises they made in their propaganda. In the years following the 1948 war, the Arab states underwent political upheavals that touched upon internal and international issues,



Setting the Stage 47

including national identities, financial and economic problems, Arab unity, relations with the Western powers and power struggles over which Arab state would assume the leading role in the emerging Arab-Israeli rivalry. After a long nationalist struggle against the French Mandate, Syria was proclaimed an independent republic in 1941. However, Syria attained true independence following recognition by the UN in October 1945 and the final evacuation of French troops from Syrian territory on April 17, 1946. The new state began its independent life with fragmented leadership that led to continuous political upheavals. In 1948, supported by a divided parliament, President Shukri al-Quwatly sent the inexperienced Syrian army into the Arab war against Israel. By the end of 1948, dissatisfaction with the civilian regime increased—not only in light of the impending defeat in the war, but also due to the failure to stabilize the Syrian currency and reform the economy. Army officers blamed the military defeat on the corrupt regime. In March 1949, the Syrian army, led by Colonel Husni Za’im, staged the first of what would be a series of military coups, which culminated in the establishment of a military dictatorship. The sequence of three coups d’état in 1949 broke the political back of the traditional ruling class and shifted the balance of political power to new groups and a younger generation of politicians. The military government was overthrown in 1954, and the civilian parliamentary system restored, yet the military remained actively involved in politics. Indeed, military officers led the overthrow of several regimes in the first two decades of Syrian independence, yet internal struggles within the army prevented the consolidation of a long-term military regime. In the general elections held after the 1954 coup, the pro-Egyptian and anti-imperialist Ba’th party extended its power, becoming a prominent actor in Syria’s politics. Combining pan-Arab nationalist and Arab socialist ideologies, the Ba’th party came to be the leading advocate of a political merger with Egypt under Gamal Abd al-Nasser. In February 1958, Syria integrated with Egypt within the United Arab Republic (UAR). Before long, however, relations between the constituent parts of the UAR ran aground. Syrian politicians and officers were disappointed at the centralized regime the Egyptians established, which undermined Syria’s status, damaged its traditional politics and economy, and threatened the military leadership’s secure position. Syrian public support for the merger also began to wane.55 In this atmosphere, Syrian officers carried out another military coup in September 1961 that resulted in the breakup of the UAR. The renewed independent state was renamed the Syrian Arab Republic; its political upheavals continued. In March 1963, encouraged by the Iraqi Regional Branch of the Ba’th Party, the military committee of the Syrian Regional Branch seized power in Syria. A Ba’thist government was

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installed. In 1966, another coup toppled the traditional leaders of the Ba’th and brought a radical military faction to power, under Salah Jadid. Four years later, General Hafez al-Assad, then minister of defense, seized power and appointed himself the undisputed leader of Syria.56 Egypt attained its independence in 1922, when the British government unilaterally declared the termination of its protectorate over Egypt. The end of the British protectorate marked the formation of the Kingdom of Egypt as a constitutional monarchy, yet this was far from fulfilling Egyptian nationalists’ demand for unqualified independence. Britain continued to maintain military forces in Egypt, and Egyptian sovereignty was severely restricted. The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty signed in 1936 was designed to meet Egyptian demands by stipulating the withdrawal of all British troops from Egypt— except those required to protect the Suez Canal. Britain was unwilling to relinquish its military presence there. By the end of World War II, Egypt was flooded by social discontent and political disorder. Popular resentment against the British combined with rage against the ruling elite and King Faruq, who were held responsible for the widening socio-economic gaps and the ignominious defeat in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.57 In 1952, in response to Egypt’s leadership crisis, a group of young officers took over the Egyptian government in a military coup known as the Free Officers’ Revolt. Led by Gamal Abd al-Nasser, the coup d’état launched a reformist era and a policy of independence from Great Power alliances. Attaining a leadership role in the Arab world, Nasser promoted major ideologies and foreign policies, including the adoption of Arab socialism and pan-Arabism, the advancement of Arab sovereignty and the attempt to adopt a policy of nonalignment. His leadership inspired the Syrian initiative to merge the two countries in the framework of the Nasser-ruled UAR. Nasser also championed the rejection of Israel’s legitimacy as a state. Significant developments in Egypt’s foreign relations under his leadership included an arms deal with Czechoslovakia, the 1956 Suez Crisis and the Six-Day War in June 1967. The Arab states’ territorial losses in 1967 added a direct interstate territorial dispute to the core Arab resentment of a Jewish state in the region and the Arab commitment to resolving the Palestinian problem. Lebanon, like Syria, was under the mandatory rule granted to France in the Levant. The colonial power debated whether Lebanon should remain part of Syria or become an independent state. In 1920, faced with pressure from Lebanese nationalists, France decided to establish the state of “Greater Lebanon,” which entailed a change in the territorial boundaries of Syria and Lebanon. The new Lebanese state encompassed the Maronite-majority region of Mount Lebanon, supplemented by the mainly Muslim areas of northern and southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and the coastal area of Beirut. The



Setting the Stage 49

expansion of Lebanese territory, at the expense of what would become the state of Syria, became a source of long-standing dispute between the two states.58 It also had long-term ramifications for the future of Lebanon, which became a religiously and ethnically diverse country. Lebanon gained independence in 1943. However, as in neighboring Syria, its independence was fully realized only in 1946, after the last of the French soldiers left the Levant. In the years after independence, until the end of the 1960s, Lebanon enjoyed economic prosperity. Beirut became a major international banking center, a busy commercial and financial metropolis, and a bustling tourist site. However, under the veil of calm and prosperity, sectarian tensions simmered. The unique political system of Lebanon, which derived from the National Pact of 1943, was designed to maintain a balance of power between the various sectarian communities. Based on the (controversial) 1932 census, it gave the Maronite Christians control of the presidency and a parliamentary majority. The Sunni Muslims were allotted the position of prime minister, and the Druze received the command of the army. However, following demographic changes, it soon turned out that the Maronites held a disproportionate share of power. And so, instead of forming a balanced and stable political structure, the Lebanese system perpetuated communal loyalties and intensified sectarian rivalries. Before long, the semblance of coexistence turned into an open rift.59 In 1958, sectarian tensions, accompanied by a deepening dispute over pan-Arabist and pro-Western orientations, led to the outbreak of civil war. The pro-Western president, Camille Chamoun, called for U.S. military assistance to prevent the fall of the country into pro-Nasserist forces. The civil strife ended in September of that fateful year, with the end of Chamoun’s presidential term and the departure of American forces. Under the leadership of Chamoun’s successor, Fuad Shihab, inter-sectarian relations improved and the country thrived again; but not for long. In 1975, Lebanon became embroiled in a second, larger civil war, reflecting a myriad of communal and political differences. Major sources of violent turbulence, which lasted in several phases until 1990, included the shift of the demographic balance in favor of the Muslim population, the Syrian intervention in Lebanon and the regional Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as the waves of Palestinian refugees who fled the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars and the 1970 Black September events in Jordan. Indeed, the growing Palestinian presence dragged Lebanon into repeated militarized confrontations between Palestinian militant organizations and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).60 Colonial interests and decisions made by colonial powers while ruling the Middle Eastern states led to the creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. After gaining control of the region at the end of World War I, Britain

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established the Emirate of Transjordan in a territory carved out of Mandatory Palestine. In 1946, the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan was granted independence and Emir Abdullah was declared king.61 In the spirit of Arab opposition to the establishment of the Zionist state, Jordan joined the ArabIsraeli war in 1948, which had significant ramifications for the new independent state. The influx of Palestinian refugees to Transjordan during the war, and the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank in the aftermath of the war, transformed the demographic structure of Jordan, tilting the balance in favor of a Palestinian majority. Seeking to win the allegiance of the Palestinians, King Abdullah granted most immigrants citizenship and equal civil rights. However, the Palestinians remained suspicious of the king, who was an ally of the British. In 1951, a Palestinian assassinated King Abdullah at the AlAqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. His grandson, Hussein, ascended to the throne in 1953, inheriting a vulnerable kingdom; the young king had to steer cautiously between regional and global forces. King Hussein was subject to conflicting pressures—from Britain on the one hand, and from Nasser and his supporters on the other. Britain sought to bring Jordan into the Baghdad Pact, which allied the Western powers and Muslim countries against the Soviet Union in the context of the Cold War. Nasser led a pan-Arab and anti-Western ideology, which won great popularity among the Palestinians in Jordan. Hussein decided to reject membership in the Baghdad Pact, and for a short while joined the Nasserist camp. In 1957, however, political tensions grew in the kingdom and the Hashemite regime faced a domestic uprising; Hussein’s loyal army enabled him to overcome an attempted military coup. In response, he quashed the internal opposition by suspending the constitution, outlawing all political parties and declaring martial law. To ensure his power, Hussein also re-allied himself with the West, and even requested immediate U.S. military and economic aid. The choice to ally with the West took a toll. Hussein was targeted by harsh criticism from Egypt and Syria, and subjected to growing Palestinian resentment from within. In 1958, political tension peaked in the wake of a coup that toppled the Hashemite regime in Iraq; this reflected the danger posed to Jordan, which was now the only remaining Hashemite regime. Hussein put the army on alert and called on British forces to help him. During the 1960s, Jordan expanded ties with the Western powers. Increased U.S. financial aid enabled Hussein to develop the country and modernize the army. Yet, in 1964, Jordan renewed diplomatic relations with Nasserist Egypt. In May 1967, Jordan signed a defense agreement with Egypt, and a month later joined Egypt and Syria in the war against Israel. The decisive Arab defeat in the Six-Day War in June 1967 included Jordan’s loss of the West Bank. Relations with the Palestinians, now represented



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by the Egyptian-sponsored PLO, remained tense. In the 1950s and 1960s, Jordan became a launching pad for attacks against Israel by Palestinian fedayeen, and a target of Israeli reprisals against Palestinian militants. In 1970, the distrustful relations between the Jordanian regime and Palestinian organizations reached an open confrontation, bringing the kingdom to the verge of civil war. In the wake of the fighting between the Jordanian army and the PLO, known as the Black September events, the ranks of Palestinian activists and leaders fled to Lebanon, shifting the problem of Palestinian refugees to southern Lebanon and turning that country into a major front in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In its early years, therefore, the Arab-Israeli rivalry was conducted in the shadow of major internal challenges in all of the countries involved. Despite the many disputes between the Arab states, they set up an alliance against Israel and refused to accept the legitimacy of its existence. Yet, in terms of the regional balance of power, the conflict was characterized by contradictory expressions of asymmetry between Israel and the Arab states. Israel stood as one against many that were larger in territory and population. Before long, however, Israel succeeded in gaining a qualitative advantage over its rivals in various fields. In 1950, the members of the Arab League signed a treaty of collective security and economic cooperation with the aim of overpowering Israel. In turn, David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, defined Israel’s qualitative military edge as its basic defense doctrine to compensate for its quantitative inferiority.62 Even with the anti-Zionist Arab alliance, Israel was able to attain clear superiority in the regional balance, in spite of its limited geographic and demographic size. With effective strategy, it achieved a major advantage in conventional power. This advantage combines substantial national expenditures relying on national industrial capacity, fortified by massive external funding. In addition, Ben-Gurion’s strategy of maintaining a qualitative edge included the vision of making Israel a nuclear-weapon state, which was realized in 1966–67.63 Indeed, the nuclear asymmetry complemented Israel’s military dominance in the region. Israel’s capture of the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt in the Six-Day War in 1967 further improved its position in the region, as did the 1979 and 1994 peace accords Israel signed with Egypt and Jordan, respectively.64 Remarkably, the IsraeliEgyptian peace treaty eliminated Israel’s most powerful Arab adversary in the conflict, setting back the prospect of a united Arab front. The 1990 Gulf War and its severe economic, political and military consequences further undermined Arab unity.65 In recent decades, however, the interstate imbalance of power has been increasingly coupled with asymmetric warfare carried

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out by Palestinian and other non-state forces, sponsored by the Arab countries within and outside the boundaries of the regional conflict. Some autonomous Palestinian actors have become potent representatives of the Palestinian cause and leaders of its struggle. An analysis of trends in the Arab-Israeli conflict in recent years cannot overlook the growing role of another state player in the region. Iran, which underwent an Islamic revolution in 1979, has become a significant factor in the Middle Eastern conflict arena. While it has never been an integral part of the Arab-Israeli rivalry, the non-Arab Shi’ite state has become a powerful enemy of Israel, as well as the rival of some of the Sunni Arab countries. Seeking to consolidate its network of influence across the Middle East, Iran has fostered militant organizations in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip, providing them military and economic support. In particular, the consolidation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Lebanon and their support of Shi’ite militant organizations, notably Hezbollah, have undermined both Lebanese and regional stability. The development of ballistic missiles and an advanced nuclear program have turned Iran into a source of threat not only to Israel and the Arab countries, but also to major powers that seek to curb Iran’s military buildup and the continued development of its nuclear weapons. Though militarized disputes with Iran are not included in the analysis of the Arab-Israeli rivalry, Iran’s growing role in the region is conveyed by its non-state proxies and is manifested in state-NSA confrontations, which have become a central component of the rivalry. Regional and Global Context In addition to its complex cast of actors, the Arab-Israeli conflict has long attracted enormous attention in the wider regional and global arenas, where strategic and economic interests, the fate of holy places, the Palestinian issue and the quest for superpower influence are salient concerns for many other players. While great-power involvement is highly common in regional disputes all over the world, its scope in the Middle Eastern rivalry is remarkably broad. Indeed, since the inception of Arab-Jewish tensions in Palestine, the region has been extensively influenced by foreign powers, beginning with the Ottoman Empire, replaced by British and French colonial rule, and followed by the competing interventions of the U.S. and USSR in the region’s affairs. Historically, the United States and Israel have maintained strong relations, specifically in the field of defense, while the Soviet Union supported the leading Arab countries in the conflict, Egypt and Syria. The U.S. has also fostered close relations with Jordan. Foreign powers gradually established their relations with Israel and the Arab states during the first decades of the conflict. In 1948, seeking to protect its oil interests and to develop military alliances to



Setting the Stage 53

counter Soviet influence in the region, the U.S. refrained from open support of Israel and banned the sales of heavy arms to the nascent state. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, arranged a Czech arms deal with Israel, which was critical for Israel in its War of Independence. Before long, however, the Soviet Union switched sides in the conflict, and the region became a major wrestling arena in the global Cold War. The revolutionary governments established in Egypt and Syria in the early 1950s relied on the Soviet Union to balance Western influence in the region. By late 1953, the Russians began to side with the Arab states in Security Council discussions regarding armistice violations. In 1955, they initiated Czech arms deals with Egypt and Syria. Indeed, from the latter half of the 1950s and throughout the rest of the Cold War years, the Soviets openly supported the two states in their conflict with Israel, including arms delivery, economic aid and political support. The Six-Day War in June 1967 increased the Arab states’ dependence on the Soviet Union, which further intensified Soviet influence in the region.66 By the mid-1970s, however, global and regional developments changed the relations between Egypt and the Western powers. Notably, after the Yom-Kippur War in October 1973, Egypt shifted loyalty from one superpower to another; gradually, the U.S. replaced the Soviet Union as Egypt’s main military supplier. The United States also began to provide significant economic assistance to Egypt, seeking to establish long-term cooperation with the influential Arab state in order to preserve regional stability and sustain the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 widened the power gap between Israel and its Arab rivals, first and foremost Syria, which lost the economic, diplomatic and military aid it had received from the USSR throughout the Cold War years. Interestingly, two and a half decades later, as part of an effort to renew its status and influence as a global power, Russia restored its massive military support for the Assad regime, which was mired in the Syrian civil war. This support for Syria, which began in 2015, aimed to strengthen that regime and reinforce Russian influence in the region; it was not directed against Israel. Nevertheless, it fortified the standing of the Syrian camp, now including Iran and Hezbollah, thereby posing a threat to Israel’s security in a broader and different context than that of the regional rivalry between Israel and its neighboring Arab states. Israel received its first arms from the U.S. in 1958. Until then, Israel had turned to France in search of heavy weapons,67 and France replied with diplomatic support and arms agreements. Indeed, between 1956 and 1964, France was Israel’s major strategic ally, though Israel continued to seek American strategic support.68 In 1962, the Kennedy administration ended the ban on the sale of heavy weaponry to Israel and approved an arms deal of anti-aircraft

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missile batteries.69 This sale cleared the way for many future sales, reflecting the strengthening relations between the two states. In 1965, the U.S. sold Israel offensive weapons for the first time. This was followed a few months later by the sale of American combat aircraft. Before long, the United States replaced France as Israel’s largest arms supplier. In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, President Lyndon Johnson sold Israel fighter jets, and during the Yom-Kippur War, the U.S. delivered massive amounts of ammunition, tanks and artillery to Israel. After the war, the U.S. multiplied its military aid to Israel; however, it also continued to supply weaponry to Israel’s neighbors, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, to counter Soviet arms sales in the region.70 Increased military exercises and defense spending continued between the United States and Israel through the 1980s under the administration of President Ronald Reagan, including the signing of a Strategic Cooperation Agreement. This cooperation continued during all of the following American administrations, with increased military aid authorized by the U.S. Congress and Pentagon. However, the interstate imbalance of power has been countered by irregular warfare, as the weaker side turned to a proxy-war strategy, building on asymmetric balance. In the following chapter, I examine warness variation through the Arab-Israeli conflict, relating first to militarized interstate disputes, then to state-NSA armed confrontations. The examination highlights the Arab states’ ambivalent relations with the Palestinians, and the consequences of their support of Palestinian militancy against Israel. Indeed, the increasing role played by Palestinian non-state actors in recent decades has complicated the nature of Arab-Israeli warness and kept the rivalry vigorously active. This complexity is manifested in fluctuating military hostilities exchanged by the various parties throughout the years of conflict, in both the interstate and state-NSA domains of warness. A COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF THE CONFLICTS The overview of the origins of the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts and their profiles reveals intriguing similarities and substantive differences. Often regarded as prototypes of enduring rivalries, the two conflicts have historical, territorial, religious and security commonalities, alongside structural distinctions, embodied in the array of opposing forces, characteristics of political systems, distribution of nuclear weapons and roles of foreign intervention in conflict management and resolution. The India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli rivalries arose from upheavals in the political structures in the Indian subcontinent and in the Middle East,



Setting the Stage 55

respectively. In both conflicts, external processes, involving global wars and collapsing empires, stimulated the reformation of collective identities, around which the conflicts have evolved. Indeed, the India-Pakistan and the Arab-Israeli conflicts emerged under the unique circumstances of minority nationalism fulfilled by Muslims in India and Jews in Palestine, giving birth to new sovereign states and igniting interstate enduring rivalries.71 The following comparison of the history of the two rivalries, and its summary in Table 3.1 below, relate to the clash of identities, the territorial dimension, the role of colonial rule in conflict initiation and the casts of actors involved in each conflict. A Clash of Identities Looking at the identities developed in the two arenas, we find intertwined influences of European-inspired ideas of nationalism and primordial religious affinities that divided the contending communities. Interestingly, nationhood was expressed in both regions in a unique form of religion-based national identity: Muslim and Jewish identities were at the core of Pakistani nationalism and Zionism, respectively, leading to the establishment of Pakistan and Israel, which are not nation-states in the conventional sense. National identity, Anthony Smith asserts, “involves some sense of political community, history, territory, patria, citizenship, common values and traditions.”72 Like many Western theorists of nationalism, Smith suggests that ethnicity is the primary criteria for the construction of a national community, pointing at pre-modern “ethnies” that define the boundaries in which modern nations are formed.73 The national identities of the peoples in Pakistan and the State of Israel relied on religious affiliations, which formed the basis for their national self-determination. The Pakistani case is furthermore unique because the Muslims in India have long shared attributes like citizenship, values and traditions with the Hindu population in India. In both regional rivalries, the assertion of nationhood was utilized for the attainment of statehood. Zionism was born outside the Land of Israel, in the Jewish Diaspora in Europe. The national identities of the Arabs, on the other hand, as well as those of the Muslim and Hindu communities in India, developed in their respective homelands. The birth of Zionism entailed the emergence of associations and groups that began organizing in various Eastern Europe cities with the dream of returning to Zion (the “Lovers of Zion” movement). The rise of Pakistani nationhood, on the other hand, was largely the result of an elite conception. Indeed, when Pakistan attained independence, the masses of Indian Muslims, vaguely aware of the Muslim League’s struggle for partition, were forced to leave their watan (homeland) and migrate to the newly

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constructed Muslim state.74 Thus, to a large extent, the inception of the Pakistani state lacked the mass component of nationalism. Certainly, the conflict would not have developed without the emergence of competing national movements that fought for self-determination in both regions, each for its own community. Both arenas saw the development of contending, yet mutually dependent, national movements. In the Indian subcontinent, where Hindus and Muslims have longed lived together, the two communities initiated a joint anti-colonial struggle with the goal of achieving independence within an all-Indian framework. However, Muslim fears of Hindu majority rule soon stirred inter-communal competition, which in turn gave birth to Muslim nationalism. The widening gap between the interests of the two communities created a political rift between their leaderships, spilling over to larger parts of Indian society. Thus, the all-Indian independence struggle split along communal lines. This split was accompanied by a transformation process in which the Muslim community developed national selfawareness and was recognized as a nation. While originally far from aiming to divide India, the shift in communal consciousness generated demands for separate territorial sovereignty. Indeed, Islam gave birth to a country that lacked the basics of a nationstate, including territorial integrity, linguistic uniformity and shared ancestry. In effect, religion was the sole identity marker that formed Pakistani nationalism. Thus, the Pakistani ruling elites sought to consolidate a cohesive national culture, drawing on language and religion. After independence, Urdu, which prior to partition was a symbol of the shared identity of South Asian Muslims, was accorded the status of an official national language in Pakistan, though it was never accepted by the multiple ethnic groups that comprised the new state. The dominance of Islam, initially utilized as a strategy of state formation, was exploited to provide the framework in which the state defined its national interests.75 Interestingly, despite the hostility toward Zionism and later the State of Israel, Pakistani leaders referred to Jewish nationalism in elucidating the idea of Pakistan, especially in defending the role assigned to Islam in its politics. In 1981, President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan stressed the link between the two national ideologies, saying that “Pakistan is, like Israel, an ideological state. Take out Judaism from Israel and it will fall like a house of cards. Take out Islam from Pakistan and make a secular state; it would collapse.”76 In Zionism, however, unlike Pakistani nationalism, national identity has not relied on religious affinity alone, but also on ethnic attachment to the ancient Hebrews and ancestral ownership of a land. As such, Zionism drew a path between the ethnic past and the national present, relying on historical territory as a key element in defining the Jewish nation.77 Nevertheless, like



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in the Pakistani case, religion has been a pillar of collective identity. Even though the Zionist movement was mostly secular, and though the State of Israel, as emphasized in its Declaration of Independence, embraced its nonJewish citizens, the Jewish heritage is at the core of Zionism and the Israeli state. Yet again, while the yearning for Zion counted on biblical prophecy, the Zionists who sought to fulfill this vision were not religious believers themselves. Rather, they were Europe-inspired nationalists who drew upon the Jewish connection to the biblical Promised Land, often referred to as the Holy Land. By relying on religious affinity and national consciousness, Zionism combined old and new identity markers, molding a fresh collective identity for the Jewish nation. The rise of Zionism, especially its vigorous implementation in Palestine, had great ramifications for the formation of Palestinian nationalism and the emergence of inter-communal struggle. Arabs and Jews had lived together for a long time under foreign rule, yet, unlike Hindus and Muslims in India, they never sought the establishment of a shared sovereign state for the two communities in Palestine. Moreover, prior to the outbreak of conflict, the majority of Jews lived in the Diaspora, mainly in Eastern Europe, and only a small Jewish community remained in Palestine, living alongside the larger Arab one. The winds of change in 19th-century Europe revived the centuries-long desire of Jews to return to their homeland. However, the Jewish homeland was also the motherland of indigenous Arabs, who felt threatened by Zionism and the waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine. While the formation of new collective identities was at the core of both the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts, the manifestation of these reshaped identities in regional politics differed greatly. Notably, the two regions witnessed different expressions of religion-based nationalism. Indeed, as discussed above, we can identify similarities between the religion-based logic of the Muslim nationalism that developed in the Indian subcontinent and the Jewish nationalism that evolved among European Jewry. However, a comparison of identity formation processes in the Indian Muslim and Arab Muslim communities reveals striking differences. The creation of a national identity among the Muslims living in both regions, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, involved conceptual changes of identification and loyalty. In the colonial era, prior to the independence of Pakistan and the Arab states, most people in these countries upheld local affiliations, giving their main loyalty to the tribe, clan or ethnic group, and not to the nation-state. Over time, these ties have weakened, but still exist. In the early years of the 20th century, the peoples of the Arab countries acquired an ethno-national consciousness. In addition to their shared Arab identity, these countries developed distinct national identifications. In the

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Indian subcontinent, on the other hand, Pakistani nationalism drew upon the religious identity of the Muslim community. Indeed, the failure of the joint struggle led by Hindu and Muslim leaders to liberate India from British rule created the need to distinguish the Muslim community from the Hindu community, and give it the features of a nation that merits its own state. At that time, the peoples of the Middle East concentrated on shaping their unique national identities within the larger Arab world. Until the mid-1930s, a conception of territorial nationalism prevailed in Egypt, emphasizing the separation of Egyptian and Arab national identities. Based on the perception of the Egyptian nation’s distinct “personality” since the days of the pharaohs, Egyptian nationalists sought to establish a sovereign Egyptian nation-state.78 The Syrian Congress at the time called for the independence of Greater Syria that would include the territories in which Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority now reside. Conversely, Lebanese nationalists demanded a separate Lebanese state that would include parts of what was then Syrian territory. Similar debates over the boundaries of nationalism were held in Iraq and Transjordan. Thus, the creation of the Arab nation-states was not based primarily on their dominant Arab national identity, nor on the Islamic identity of the Arab peoples. The struggles for independence drew on local ethno-national identities. The nationalism that developed among the Palestinian Arabs also reflects the gap between pan-Arabism and particularistic identities. The birth of the Palestinian national movement drew on both a Palestinian national identity (watanniya) and an Arab identity (qawmiyya), embodying the intersection between indigenous connection to Palestine and identification with the larger Arab world.79 This dual-layer nationalism increased the complexity of the Arab-Israeli conflict. As we discuss in Chapter 5, abiding inter-Arab contentions and differing views on the “Palestinian question” reflect a conflict of interest between the Arab countries and Palestinian national ambitions. Indeed, inter-Arab tensions have impeded a joint Arab struggle to defy the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine and to promote the establishment of a Palestinian state on that land, in the heart of the Arab sphere.80 A transnational identity, however, has long connected the Arab peoples. Pan-Arabist ideas, which emerged in the late 19th century when the region was under Ottoman rule, stressed that Arabic-speaking areas constituted one people with a shared national consciousness. According to this view, the linguistic bond generated a cultural identity that outweighed religious, tribal and specific territorial affinities. Despite its importance in the history of the Arab states, pan-Arabism played a limited role in shaping the map of Middle Eastern sovereign countries. Indeed, in the 1950s and 1960s, after the Arab states attained independence and the colonial powers withdrew from



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the region, Nasser swept the Arab countries with pan-Arab ideology. At the height of its power, pan-Arabism was a homogeneous force that shaped the Arab sphere, undermining the legitimacy of the state.81 Then, the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War diminished the allure of the “one Arab nation” ideology, and marked the beginning of its decline.82 Islam, though a major identity marker of the Arab peoples, did not play a central role in consolidating their nationhood. Although Islam provided a common bond for the Arab peoples and nations, the legacy of their independence processes relied on diverse regional and cultural traits. Indeed, back in the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire promoted a pan-Islamic ideology to enhance Islamic solidarity, hoping this could prevent the empire’s fragmentation. This ideology, however, never become the foundation upon which national identities and modern statehood were formed in the Middle East. The conceptions of Pakistani nationhood and independence, on the other hand, relied mainly on Islamic identity. Essentially, the formation of Muslim nationalism introduced a challenge not only to the premise of a unified Indian nation, but also to the very idea of nationalism as defined by Western theorists.83 The writings of Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, two of the most significant theorists of Islamism, suggest that religion, like ethnicity, can motivate a political community to construct a state of its own.84 In effect, the religious community is assigned a primary role in asserting territorial sovereignty. This idea was expressed in the views of Muhammad Iqbal and Rehmat Ali, who cultivated the idea of the Pakistani state, and was realized in the transformation of the Indian Muslim community into a Muslim nation. And so, the emergence of Pakistani nationalism introduced a new sense of collective identity that was politically salient and constituted a direct challenge to ethnic and territorial notions of nationalism and statehood. The ensuing struggle over the nature of the Muslim Pakistani state underscores the incongruity between the secular view of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who sought a modern, moderate Muslim state, and the Islamic ideology of Mawlana Mawdudi, the influential Islamic thinker who conceived the idea of an Islamic state in Pakistan.85 However, Pakistan’s Muslim identity did not suffice to create a coherent national identity. The ethnic groups that comprised the new Pakistani nation also drew on other sources of collective identity.86 Indeed, after independence, Pakistan’s leaders stepped up efforts at national unification, appealing to Islam as a common identity trait. Islam was seen as a promising solution to ethnic and regional fragmentation, which potentially threatened to undermine Pakistan’s integrity. The unification efforts gained only partial success; the existence of distinct tribal and linguistic affinities among the Muslims

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of Pakistan, and the central role these affinities play in socio-political life, created a perfect setting for the emergence of ethnic divisions. The geographic concentration of ethnic groups entailed the creation of communities with common public cultures, laws and customs, which strengthened social interactions and binding political loyalties to local kinship networks. These subnational loyalties, manifested in inter-provincial and inter-ethnic tensions, challenged the creation of a unified national identity, and have long remained a source of civil rivalries in Pakistan.87 Nurtured by discriminative policies and ethnic domination, friction and strife culminated in the civil war that broke out in 1971, resulting in a division between East and West Pakistan and the creation of the sovereign state of Bangladesh. The Territorial Dimension Consistent with findings in the broad literature on enduring rivalries, territory is an underlying factor in the origins of both the India-Pakistan and ArabIsraeli conflicts. The two conflicts not only arose from territorial disputes that culminated in partition, but also continued to revolve around bitter contentions over sovereign boundaries and control. Indeed, as research on enduring rivalries shows, the unresolved territorial issues have become a primary source of conflict persistence. Territory was the very source of the Arab-Israeli rivalry. It was the major bone of contention between Jews and Palestinian Arabs who claimed historical rights to the same piece of land, and it remained a central issue in dispute between the countries that attained independence in this region. In the IndiaPakistan conflict, on the other hand, the origin of conflict was political discord between majority and minority communities, which sought to establish a joint independent state in the Indian subcontinent that would accommodate all of its residents—Hindus, Muslims and others alike. The territorial dimension of the conflict stemmed from inter-communal strife and the ensuing partition of India into two states. Indeed, the idea of territorial partition intended to resolve both regional conflicts. However, the implementation of the two partitions and their long-term ramifications differed greatly. To begin with, in the South Asian conflict, both the Hindu and Muslim communities accepted, albeit reluctantly, the British-drawn partition plan. And though soon after partition the two sides engaged in war, the fact remained: the Indian subcontinent was divided. Thus, the formation of two new independent states transformed the internal political dispute into an interstate rivalry where territorial boundaries became central issues in the protracted conflict. Seven decades after partition, the main dispute between India and Pakistan remains the territory of Jammu and Kashmir. A Line of



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Control separates the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir, assigning roughly 43 percent of the former princely state to Indian control, and 37 percent to Pakistan. China administers the disputed Askai Chin area in Kashmir. A few other territories remain in dispute between India and Pakistan, including the Siachen Glacier in the Himalayas (in northern Kashmir), and the Sir Creek in the saline wetlands of the Rann of Kutch between the state of Gujurat in India and the province of Sind in Pakistan. In addition, India and Pakistan are involved in territorial disputes with their other neighbors, including contention over the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, much of which China claims as Lower Tibet, and the historical Durand Line demarcating the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the Arab-Israeli conflict, the territorial partition was never realized. While the Zionist movement accepted all British designs to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, as reduced as they gradually became, the Arab countries and the Palestinian Arabs rejected the very idea of partitioning the land. Refusing to recognize the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine, the Arabs responded to the proclamation of the State of Israel by declaring war. The result was indeed catastrophic for the Palestinians, who refer to this period as al-Nakba (the catastrophe), marking the beginning of their displacement and exile. The war left the Palestinians without sovereignty— the West Bank came under Jordanian rule, and the Gaza Strip came under Egyptian control. Israel, on the other hand, emerged from the war with 21 percent more territory than the UN partition plan had allotted to it.88 Yet Israel’s territorial borders remained challenged. Indeed, as in the India-Pakistan case, the consequences of the partition plan and subsequent war plunged the region into cycles of conflict centering on territorial disputes. After the first Arab-Israeli war, all of Israel’s borders were based on armistice lines. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel took control of the Golan Heights in the north, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip in the south and the West Bank in the east. The “Green Line,” set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between the armies of Israel and those of its Arab neighbors after the war, became an internal administrative boundary separating sovereign Israel from the territories captured in 1967. Thus, the territorial dimension of the conflict encompassed multiple frontiers. Two of them were resolved by the peace accords signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979 and between Israel and Jordan in 1994, which included boundary revision (notably the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egyptian control). The peace agreements changed the status of those boundaries from armistice lines to internationally recognized borders.89 In addition to these interstate territorial disputes, the Palestinians are still fighting for their right to a sovereign state. In 1994, following the Oslo

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Accords between Israel and the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority was established, providing self-rule for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza under the leadership of the PLO. Following elections in 2006 and the subsequent Fatah-Hamas confrontation, the Palestinian Authority’s control was limited to the West Bank. Administrative divisions established in agreements with Israel define areas of Palestinian civilian and security control (Area A) and areas of Palestinian civil control subject to Israeli security control (Area B). The Hamas government has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007. Although it is not recognized as a sovereign state and its territorial borders with Israel remain in deep dispute, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority regards itself as the “State of Palestine.” The territorial partitions of India and Palestine entailed large-scale displacements in both regions. Here again, the different structures of the two conflicts and the diverse actors involved in them influenced the characteristics of post-partition migration. In the two-sided conflict in South Asia, Hindu and Muslim minorities fled from both countries and effectively exchanged places in India and Pakistan; in the multi-sided conflict in the Middle East, on the other hand, Palestinian Arabs fled territories occupied by Israel during the 1948 war, and sought refuge in neighboring Arab countries. Nearly three-quarters of a million Palestinians were driven from their homes in the wake of the war. While Jordan granted citizenship to Palestinians living in the West Bank (which Jordan annexed), others who fled to Lebanon and Syria remained refugees without civil rights.90 Seven decades later, the Palestinian refugee issue remains one of the core concerns in the enduring rivalry. Indeed, the Palestinian demand for the “right of return” to Palestine, including territories now within the boundaries of the State of Israel, threatens the very idea of a safe and sovereign Jewish state and still awaits a solution.91 The partition of India triggered one of the largest mass migrations in recent history, entailing the exodus of over 10 million people. Hindus and Sikhs fled from Pakistan to India, while Muslims fled in the opposite direction.92 Among the immigrants from India to Pakistan were large numbers of Urdu-speaking Muslims who settled in the urban areas of the Sindh province and in its capital, Karachi. Due to their high rates of education and urban background, these Urdu-speaking migrants, known as Muhajirs, soon joined the Punjabi-dominated ruling elite of the new Pakistani state. Yet, in sharp contrast to the non-violent ideology advocated by Gandhi in the independence struggle, an ideology that Jinnah later adopted in leading the struggle for Muslim statehood, the forced displacement was accompanied by violent riots and local fighting in both countries, which cost the lives of nearly one million people.



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The Role of Colonial Rule in Conflict Initiation Both the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts were born in times of global change, when colonialism began winding down. The rise of national movements in the two regions and the struggles for self-recognition these movements led were part of a wider phenomenon, spreading in Europeanruled colonies around the world. Specifically, the birth of new independent states embodied the end of an era in which Britain governed major parts in the two arenas, through the British Raj in India and the UN-authorized mandate in Palestine. While Britain was not the sole imperial power heavily involved in the evolution of these regional conflicts, it certainly was the most influential power in the initial phase of each conflict. Indeed, Britain was caught in the ebbing tide of colonialism and this historical point in time shaped its foreign policy: Britain was eager to quickly rid itself of the territories it held overseas. This haste instigated the downfall of the partition plans Britain introduced in both regions. Haste, however, characterized British policy in India only toward the end of the Raj. For decades, the British policy was designed to preserve its control, not to end it. Thus, aiming to weaken local opponents to its rule in India, the British played a complex game vis-à-vis the Hindus and Muslims, alternately favoring one community over the other, seeking to “divide and rule” the vast country.93 Kapur explains that in effect the British “played with religion,” exploiting it as a divisive element in Hindu-Muslims politics, with the aim of countering the uniting force of Indian nationalism.94 While pursuing their colonial interests in the subcontinent, the British repeatedly introduced reforms, but these measures failed to satisfy the demands for Indian self-rule. In the closing decades of the 19th century, the British missed the opportunity to grant the Indians greater political rights before the all-Indian nationalism turned into communal nationalism. Then, in the early decades of the 20th century, the British failed to seize the moment when the Hindu and Muslim communal parties reached consent on principles of power sharing and separate electorates, and thereby cooperated in seeking dominion status for a united India. The British rejection of the united scheme boosted the development of Muslim separatist thoughts. By the 1940s, Muhammad Ali Jinnah turned the British policy to the Muslims’ advantage, utilizing communal consciousness to establish a concrete demand for Pakistan. The prospects of a unified solution were dashed. After World War II, weary of the colonial burden, the British made a final attempt to reach a federal solution for India. When the Hindu leaders rejected the plan, which entailed provincial grouping and a weakened center, the British government turned to the route of partition. Hurriedly, they designed a twostate solution that included the partitioning of India’s two largest multicultural

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provinces—Punjab and Bengal. The eventual partition map the British proposed, and in effect imposed on the two communities, entailed the loss of major parts of the Pakistani state envisioned by Muslim nationalists. Moreover, the timespan the British government initially set for the transfer of power was cut in half by the British viceroy, who hastily promoted the outline of the new borders, without consulting Gandhi and Jinnah, and ignoring their pleas to slow down the grand-scale venture. Indeed, as Nehru had well anticipated, the hasty partition caused tremendous confusion and fear among millions of Indians who found themselves on the wrong side of the new boundaries of India and Pakistan. As noted, the partition of India sparked widespread communal violence and prompted one of the largest population transfers in human history. It was a defining moment in the history of the region. Britain’s contribution to the making of the Arab-Israeli conflict can be understood in the context of anti-Semitism and war in Europe, which shaped its inclination to support the Zionist cause.95 However, as in the IndiaPakistan case, Britain’s pivotal role in the conflict stemmed mainly from its colonial interests. The background for Britain’s policy in this region was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The British and French took control of the Middle East, dividing it into separate states and spheres of influence. As discussed above, even before Britain was officially appointed as the mandatory power in Iraq and Palestine, the British negotiated three separate plans with the Arabs, the Jews and the French for the future of the Middle East. In the following years, Britain made conflicting promises to the various nations that lived within the mandate system. By doing so, it actively stirred tensions and animosity, and further complicated the multi-actor regional conflict. Indeed, the great powers, Britain and France, shaped the political borders in the Middle East, creating new sovereign states. Just as Britain contributed to the emergence of Pakistan as a new state in parts of Indian territory, the great powers promoted the creation of Jordan at the expense of parts of Mandatory Palestine and the establishment of Lebanon in areas that were part of Syria. Colonial rule thus played a central role in promoting and realizing the idea of partition in the Indian subcontinent and in Palestine. The great powers took the liberty of creating new nation-states, and arbitrarily drew political borders that would be at the heart of territorial conflicts in both regions. The Casts of Actors Involved The India-Pakistan rivalry is principally a double-sided interstate conflict, though its endurance should be studied in the larger regional and global settings, which involved a U.S.-UK-Pakistani alignment against India in



Setting the Stage 65

the 1950s, and a China-Pakistan alliance versus India from the 1960s to the present.96 The Arab-Israeli rivalry, on the other hand, is a multi-sided interstate conflict, involving varying levels of Arab-state alignments (between Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) versus Israel. Here too, conflict dynamics and persistence should be understood in the larger regional and global settings. The regional context encompasses other Arab and Muslim countries, mainly Middle Eastern states, which have long opposed the legitimacy of the State of Israel in the region. The global context incorporates majorpower interference, including the pursuit of British and French interests in the post-colonial Middle East in the 1950s, followed by a U.S.-USSR rivalry and superpower sponsorship of the rival regional parties in the shadow of the Cold War. However, any examination of the major actors involved in both conflicts should consider the role of non-state actors, which have become prominent players, as in other conflict areas throughout the world. The development of forceful NSAs was evident in the Arab-Israeli case earlier than in the India-Pakistan conflict. As we discuss in Chapter 5, the number of Palestinian NSAs and their level of institutionalization grew rapidly and continually since the mid-1960s. These actors transformed from fedayeen and sporadic infiltrators to well-established organizations like the PLO, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Hamas, and other prominent organizations. The transformation of Kashmiri NSAs from “freedom fighters” to established organizations occurred by the late 1970s with the formation of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which believed in a sovereign Kashmir, independent from both India and Pakistan. The outbreak of violent insurgency in 1989 engendered other Kashmiri organizations, like the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), a political alliance of 26 organizations operating to promote the cause of Kashmiri separatism. External NSAs, like Lashker-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad in the South Asian arena, and Hezbollah in the Middle Eastern Arena, also take part in both regional rivalries. Complex relations between states and NSAs, including state support of NSA militancy against rival states, have become a major barrier to conflict abatement and peace. Table 3.1 below summarizes the comparative history of the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts. Chapter 4 then examines conflict change in the two enduring rivalries, focusing on variation in interstate and state-NSA conflictual relations over time.

• Both rivalries emerged from pre-partition tensions under foreign rule; in both cases, partition generated political shocks that catalyzed territorial conflicts, expressed in violent civil strife and full-scale interstate war. • In the IP rivalry, partition was implemented with the creation of independent India and Pakistan, leaving unresolved territorial disputes and a Kashmiri struggle for independence. In the AI rivalry, partition was not implemented, resulting in the creation of the independent State of Israel, unresolved territorial disputes and a Palestinian struggle for independence. • Partition and war entailed large-scale displacements in both regions. • Both rivalries originate in inter-communal strife, involving national and religious identities; both introduced unique forms of religiously based nationhood. (Muslim and Jewish identifications were at the core of Pakistani nationalism and Zionism, respectively.) • In the IP rivalry, the independence struggle began after the failure of mutual efforts to find a power-sharing solution within an all-Indian framework; In the AI rivalry, Jews and Arab Muslims sought separate national homelands. • Religion has been a pillar of the collective identity of the Muslims of India, the secular Zionist movement and Arab nationalists. • Muslim nationalism played a major role in defining Pakistan, more than in the Arab states.

A UN partition plan, 1947—accepted by the Zionist leadership, rejected by the Arab side. UN Resolution 181: passed by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947. Conflict commenced with political shocks: UN partition resolution on Palestine led to civil strife, a subsequent interstate war and Palestinian refugees. The partition of Palestine and subsequent war displaced several hundred thousand Palestinians, who fled their homes and sought refuge in neighboring Arab countries. Inter-communal strife between Jews and Muslim Arabs in Palestine, under the British Mandate. Arabs and Jews never sought the establishment of a shared sovereign state for the two communities in Palestine. Inter-communal clashes were driven by national and religious diversities and ideologies. Jewish nationalism relied on religious affinity, combined with ethnic identification with the ancient Hebrews. The transnational Arab identity (qawmiyya) paralleled with local national identity (wataniyya).

Conflict Onset A British partition plan, 1947— accepted by both Hindu and Muslim leaderships. Indian Independence Act: received British royal assent on July 18, 1947. Conflict commenced with political shocks: the partition of India, resulting in mass migration, violent inter-communal strife and an interstate war. The partition of India led to one of the largest mass migrations in recent history, with millions of Hindus and Sikhs fleeing from Pakistan to India and Muslims moving in the opposite direction.

A Clash of Identities

Inter-communal strife between Hindus and Muslims in India, under British colonial rule. The Hindu and Muslim leaderships initiated a joint anti-colonial struggle for independence within an all-Indian framework. Inter-communal clashes were driven by national and religious diversities and ideologies. The creation of Muslim-Pakistani nationalism relied on religious-based communal affinity. The existence of distinct tribal and linguistic groups among the Muslims of India led to ethno-national tensions among them.

Summary

Arab-Israeli (AI) Rivalry

Characteristics India-Pakistan (IP) Rivalry

Table 3.1.  The Settings of the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli Rivalries

A multilateral interstate rivalry between A bilateral interstate rivalry between Israel and the “frontline” Arab India and Pakistan, combined with a countries: Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and gradual growth in the number and role Jordan, combined with the gradual of salient NSAs. growth in the number and role of Pakistan adopted a proxy-war strategy, salient NSAs. sponsoring an NSA militant struggle The Arab states supported NSA militant against India. struggles against Israel.

The Casts of Actors Involved

• The AI rivalry is more complex than the IP one in terms of the actors involved. Israel-Egypt and Israel-Jordan peace accords reduced the complexity of the interstate conflict. • There are close ties between the state and nonstate actors in both rivalries.

• Britain governed the two arenas, through the British Raj in India, and the UN-authorized mandate in Palestine. Britain’s policies largely contributed to the initiation of both conflicts. • Britain was not the sole imperial power heavily involved in the evolution of the two regional conflicts, yet it was the most influential power in the initiation phase of both.

After World War I, the UN assigned mandate rule to Britain and France in the Middle Eastern countries. The British gave conflicting promises to the various nations within the mandate system, thereby exacerbating tensions and animosity in the region. In November 1947, Britain ended its mandatory rule in Palestine and handed it to the UN, which in turn adopted the British partition plan.

British Raj (colonial rule) formally began in 1858, when Great Britain assumed direct control over India. The British introduced reforms which failed to satisfy the demands for Indian self-rule, and played a complex game between the Hindus and Muslims of India. In July 1947, after failing to reach a federal solution for India, the British government adopted a hurriedly designed partition plan.

The Role of Colonial Rule in Conflict Initiation

• Territory is an underlying factor in the origins of both rivalries - in both cases, the quest for sovereign statehood entailed territorial division and contention. • The IP conflict revolves mainly around defined territories in Jammu and Kashmir. The AI conflict encompasses an overarching dispute over Palestine/the Land of Israel, combining Palestinian demands for partition and specific territorial disputes between Israel and neighboring Arab states.

Interstate - a series of bilateral interstate disputes over boundary location; Israel enlarged its territory through wars, and then returned territories to Egypt and Jordan following peace accords. State-NSA - originally, a struggle between Zionists and Palestinians over the Land of Israel/Palestine. Currently, a struggle over boundaries between the State of Israel and the Palestinians (in the autonomous Palestinian Authority), who seek an independent state.

Interstate - a bilateral interstate dispute over boundary location; the main dispute remains the territory of Jammu and Kashmir. State-NSA - originally, a struggle for political power between Hindus and Muslims in India. Currently, a Pakistani-backed NSA struggle against India for Kashmiri liberation (as an independent entity or as part of Pakistan).

The Territorial Dimension

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NOTES   1. Stephen P. Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan (Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), 15.  2. G.R. Thursby, Hindu-Muslim Relations in British India: A Study of Controversy, Conflict and Communal Movements in Northern India, 1923–1928 (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1975), 124.   3. T. V. Paul, “Causes of the India-Pakistan Enduring Rivalry,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6.  4. Stanley Wolpert, India and Pakistan: Continued Conflict or Cooperation? (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010).  5. Bimal Prasad, Pathway to India’s Partition: A Nation within a Nation (New Delhi: Manohar, 2009), 151.   6. On the following Congress’ repudiation of the pact see Abhay Datar, “The Lucknow Pact of 1916: A Second Look at the Congress-Muslim League Agreement,” Economic & Political Weekly 47, 10 (2012), 65–69.  7. Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 65–110.  8. Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 265.  9. Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 15. 10. Beverley Nichols, Verdict on India. (Kowloon: Hesperides Press, 2006). 11. G. Allana, Pakistan Movement Historical Documents (Karachi: University of Karachi, 1969), 407–411. 12. Peter Hardy, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 147–48. 13. About ongoing tensions between the federal government and provincial assemblies over political power and provincial autonomy, see Katharine Adeney, “A Step towards Inclusive Federalism in Pakistan? The Politics of the 18th Amendment,” Journal of Federalism 42, 4 (2012), 539–65. 14. Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan; Sankar Ghose, Jawaharlal Nehru: a Biography (New Delhi: Allied Publication, 1993), 151. 15. For a comprehensive historical review, see Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); and Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 16. Karl DeRouen and Uk Heo (eds.), Civil Wars of the World: Major Conflicts since World War II (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2007), 414. 17. Michael Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 165. 18. Kamal Chenoy, “Contending Nationalisms,” Harvard International Review 28, 3 (2006), 24.



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19. Praveen Swami, India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad: The Covert War in Kashmir, 1947–2004 (London: Routledge, 2007). 20. See Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). 21. Sumit Ganguly, Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 14–15. 22. On the role of Islam in the new constitution, see “The Objectives Resolution,” Islamic Studies 48, 1 (2009), 89–118 at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20839154. See also Louis D. Hayes, Politics in Pakistan: The Struggle for Legitimacy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), 50–55. 23.  Rajesh Rajagopalan, “Neorealist Theory and the India-Pakistan Conflict,” Strategic Analysis  22, 10 (1999), 1525–36. 24. Saira Khan, “Nuclear Weapons and the Prolongation of the India-Pakistan Rivalry,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 156–177. 25. For a thorough review of the role of major powers in the India-Pakistan rivalry, see Ashok Kapur, “Major Powers and the Persistence of the India-Pakistan Conflict,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 131–55. 26. On Nehruism, see Shekhar Gupta, “India Redefines Its Role,” ADELPHI ­Papers 293 (1995), 50–51. 27. Vinay Kaura, “Russia’s Deadly Embrace of Pakistan,” BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 936 (2018), at: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/ russia​-pakistan-navies/. 28. Amitabh Mattoo, “Lessons for India and Pakistan from the Arab-Israeli Peace Process: A View from New Delhi,” in Moonis Ahmar (ed.), The Arab-Israeli Peace Process: Lessons for India and Pakistan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 57–71. 29. In 2011, the Obama administration led an attempt to address the conflict as a whole, yet this uncommon initiative failed. See Stephen P. Cohen, Shooting for a Century: The India-Pakistan Conundrum (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2013), 155. 30. T. V. Paul, “Causes of the India-Pakistan Enduring Rivalry,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 5. 31.  The debated name of the territory in dispute is not semantic, but rather symbolic. It signifies the conflicting claims for inheriting the land. Though the exact origins of the word “Palestine” remain contested, it is related to the Hebrew peleshet mentioned in the Bible in reference to the land of the Philistines. The Philistines were an Aegean people who in the 12th century BCE conquered the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. This region, generally known in biblical times as Canaan, overlaps with contemporary Israel and the Gaza Strip. Under Ottoman rule, the land was generally regarded as Filastin, a concept that was not consistently applied to a clearly defined area. The name Palestine was formally used when the

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British received the UN mandate for the country, after World War I. For the historical background of the names Palestine and the Land of Israel, see Martin Sicker,  Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831–1922 (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 1999), ix-x; and Bernard Lewis, “Palestine: On the History and Geography of a Name,” The International History Review 2, 1 (1980), 1–12. 32. Gregory Harms and Todd M. Ferry, The Palestine-Israel Conflict: A Basic Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 2012), 47–53. 33. An earlier Zionist Congress was convened in 1882 in Focsani by Romanian Jewish leaders who, in response to political repression, began to consider organized Jewish immigration to Ottoman-ruled Palestine. 34. Itamar Rabinovich, The Lingering Conflict: Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East 1948–2012 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2013), 1–4. 35. Muhammad Y. Muslish, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). 36. Raymond William Baker, One Islam, Many Muslim Worlds: Spirituality, Identity, and Resistance across Islamic Lands (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 33–34. 37. Neil Caplan and Laurie Zittrain Eisenberg, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: Patterns, Problems, Possibilities (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), 3–6. 38. Muslish, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism, 3. 39. Martin Sicker, The Middle East in the Twentieth Century (New York: Praeger, 2001), 26–28. 40. Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009). 41. Muslish, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism, 181–82. 42. Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (New York: Free Press, 1993), 81–82. 43. Leslie Stein, The Hope Fulfilled: The Rise of Modern Israel (London: Praeger, 2003), 156–57. 44. Yehoshua  Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement 1918–1929 (London: Frank Cass, 1974), 17–18. 45. Harms and Ferry, The Palestine-Israel Conflict, 78. 46. On the treaties signed between Britain and the Egyptians in late 1935, and between France and the Syrians in early 1936, following riots in Cairo and a general strike in Syria, see Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1998 (New York, NY: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011). 47. David Horowitz, State in the Making (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 233. 48. Quoted in Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Boston: Bedford, 2010), 182. 49. Harms and Ferry, The Palestine-Israel Conflict, 87–88. 50. Horowitz, State in the Making, 234–35.



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51. Efraim Karsh, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The 1948 War (New York, NY: Rosen Publishing, 2009), 27–31. 52.  The analysis of warness in the Arab-Israeli conflict includes four dyads, focusing on militarized disputes between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. MID data also records several militarized disputes between Israel and non-adjacent states, including some cases with Iraq and one case with Iran. As this book focuses on the core rivals in the regional rivalry, it excludes bilateral relations between Israel and other Arab and Muslim states, in the Gulf region and beyond. 53. Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel Security & Foreign Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 7–9. 54. T.G. Fraser, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (London: Palgrave, 2015), 51–55. 55. Itamar Rabinovich, Syria Under the Ba’th 1963–1966: The Army-Party Symbiosis (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1972), 15–20. 56. Patrick Seale, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1990), 162–64. 57. William L. Cleveland and Martin Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East (Boulder: Westview Press; sixth edition, 2016), 286–87. 58. Youssef Chaitani, Post-Colonial Syria and Lebanon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007). 59. Cleveland and Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East, 316–20. 60. Brecher and Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis, 295–300. 61. In 1949, the country’s name was changed from Transjordan to Jordan. 62. William Wunderle and Andre Briere, “Augmenting Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge,” The Middle East Quarterly 15, 1 (2008), 49–50. 63. Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 1. 64. Anthony H. Cordesman and Aram Nerguizian, “The Arab-Israeli Military Balance: Conventional Realities and Asymmetric Challenges,” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), (Washington D.C., 2010), 4. 65. Adel Safty, “The Arab-Israeli Balance of Power after the Storm,” International Relations 12, 3 (1994), 55–62. 66. Bernard Lewis, “The Great Powers, the Arabs and the Israelis,” Foreign ­Affairs 47, 4 (1969): 642. 67. Zach Levey, “Israel’s Pursuit of French Arms, 1952–1958,” Studies in Zionism 14, 2 (1993), 183–210. 68. Yossi Goldstein and Yvette Shumacher, “France or the US? The Struggle to Change Israel’s Foreign Policy Orientation, 1956–64,” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 4, 2 (2010), 99. 69. Gideon Israel, US Foreign Aid to Israel: A Reassessment (Jerusalem: The Jewish Statesmanship Center, 2013), 17. 70. Wunderle and Briere, “Augmenting Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge,” 51. 71. Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 3. 72. Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (London: Penguin, 1991), 9.

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73. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1986). 74. Said Khan explains that for many Pakistani immigrants, primarily the women she studied, “the watan is in India but is not India.” See Nighat Said Khan, “Identity, Violence and Women: A Reflection on the Partition of India 1947,” in Kamala Visweswaran (ed.), Perspectives on Modern South Asia: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2011), 134. 75. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 159. 76. An interview with The Economist, December 1981, quoted in Devji, Muslim Zion, 49. 77. See Anthony D. Smith, “When Is a Nation,” Geopolitics 7, 2 (2002), 5–32. 78. Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 97–99. 79. Neil Caplan, Palestine Jewry and the Arab Question, 1917–1925 (Oxon: Routledge edition, 2015), 166–68. 80. Aaron David Miller, The Arab States and the Palestinian Question: Between Ideology and Self-Interest (Washington: The Washington Papers, 1986). 81. Bernard Lewis, The Middle East and the West (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 94. 82. Fouad Ajami, “The End of Pan-Arabism,” Foreign Affairs 57, 2 (1978), 357. 83. On the ethnic component of nationalism, see for example Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986); see also Smith’s classic definition of the nation: Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (London: Penguin, 1991). 84. Paul Brykczynski, “Radical Islam and the Nation: The Relationship between Religion and Nationalism in the Political Thought of Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb,” History of Intellectual Culture 5, 1 (2005), 14–15. 85. On Mawdudi’s coherent Islamic ideology, and the ideology of his revivalist Islamic party Jamaat-i-Islami, see Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 3–4. 86. Meirav Mishali-Ram, “When Identity and Politics Meet in Strife-Torn Pakistan,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 21, 3 (2015), 318–19. 87. The Punjabis are the largest (and most privileged) ethnic group in Pakistan. They are followed by the Pashtuns, Sindhis, Sariakis, Muhajirs and Baloch; each of them are geographically concentrated. See Minorities at Risk data: http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar. 88. Joel Peters, “Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” in Joel Peters and David Newman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013), 2. 89. David Newman, “Territory and Boundaries,” in Joel Peters and David Newman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013), 135–36.



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90. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1. 91. Rex Brynen, “Palestinian Refugees,” in Joel Peters and David Newman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013), 109. 92. Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 93. The British “divide and rule” policy was embodied in several fields, as exemplified in the way they managed the Indian army, the partition of Bengal in 1905, which catalyzed the development of Muslim separatist ideas, and the separate electorates they granted the Muslims in 1909. See Karl E. Meyer, The Dusk of Empire (New York: Century Foundation, 2003; Neil Stewart, “Divide and Rule: British Policy in Indian History,” Science and Society, 15, 1 (1951), 49–57. 94. Kapur, “Major Powers and the Persistence of the India-Pakistan Conflict,” 141. 95. Rosemary Hollis, “Europe,” in Joel Peters and David Newman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013), 336–38. 96. Harms and Ferry, The Palestine-Israel Conflict, 139–40.

Chapter Four

Warness

Enduring rivalries, as discussed in Chapter 2, are characterized by repetitive confrontations occurring over extended periods. Over the course of time, enduring rivalries fluctuate in intensity: some move from war to partial accommodation and back to hostile interactions; others go through varying intensities of continuous confrontation. All of them stir intense animosities on a wide variety of issues and concerns. However, some enduring rivalries persist longer than others; some involve a larger number of hostilities and some encompass more intense disputes than others. The India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts are among the world’s most persisting rivalries, featuring frequent militarized disputes, including several full-scale wars. The first militarized confrontations in both rivalries included war, and this established high levels of hostility, sustained by subsequent disputes and warfare. This chapter discusses conflict change in terms of variation in militarized hostilities, conceptualized in this book as “warness.” That is, the chapter observes situational shifts in the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts, detecting variations in the interstate and state-NSA dimensions of hostile interactions over time. Warness captures conflictual relations between the parties to the conflict, embodied in the probable use of military rather than other foreign policy means. The four categories of warness vary along a range of relational situations, defined in terms of the manifestations of violence: hot war, cold war, cold peace and warm peace. The analysis of militarized disputes over the course of the rivalry seeks to detect major transitions, referring to war termination (i.e., the cessation of hot wars) and, more broadly, to conflict reduction (i.e., the transition from hot/cold war to cold/warm peace). Warness in the interstate domain of conflict is examined through the militarized interstate disputes recorded in each rivalry.1 The analysis relates to 75

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dispute density and hostility level, examined at the dyadic level, as detailed in the analytical framework in Chapter 2. Dispute density relates to the frequency of militarized confrontations per decade along the rivalry. Hostility level of dispute refers to the severity of the confrontation in terms of the use of military force, as coded in the MID dataset. Its values are defined on a scale of 1 to 5: 1—no militarized action; 2—threat to use force; 3—display of force; 4—use of force; 5—war. Warness in the state-NSA domain of conflict is examined through the armed confrontations recorded between the state and non-state insurgent groups in each conflict.2 Here, only dispute density is indicated, based on the PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset.3 The following discussion first examines warness in the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli rivalries separately, and then compares them. The examination of each rivalry focuses on the interstate and state-NSA domains of the conflict, including trends of militarized hostilities and diplomatic interactions. A discussion of warness variation follows, referring to change dynamics during each conflict as a whole. The discussion concludes with a comparison of warness variation in the two rivalries over time. THE INDIA-PAKISTAN CONFLICT: TRENDS OF WARNESS The India-Pakistan rivalry, discussed in Chapter 3, erupted in an intensive militarized dispute associated with territorial contention between the newly formed states. As I describe below, the territorial issue remains central to the interstate rivalry. However, other issues have also arisen and conflictual expressions have developed and changed. Militarized Interstate Disputes Since its inception, the enduring India-Pakistan rivalry has demonstrated not only high persistence, but also significant dispute density and severity over time, with 46 militarized disputes occurring between 1947 and 2010. The frequency of interstate confrontations has fluctuated over time. As seen in Figure 4.1, dispute density has persistently declined throughout the years of conflict. After mounting in the first two decades of the conflict, reaching a peak with 16 militarized interstate disputes during the 1960s, the conflict witnessed a sharp decline in interstate hostilities, with only three to six militarized confrontations per decade from 1970 to 2010. The partition of British India in August 1947 initiated the long-standing interstate conflict in South Asia. Two days after the transfer of power from Britain to the new dominions of India and Pakistan, the first Indo-Pakistani



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Figure 4.1.  India-Pakistan Conflict: Density of Militarized Interstate Disputes Source: author, based on data drawn from the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) dataset (v4.1)

militarized disputes broke out over the accession of Junagadh to Pakistan. India sent forces into the Hindu-majority princely state, and instantly attained its surrender. Similarly, a year later India forced the accessions of Hyderabad, another Hindu-majority state whose Muslim ruler opted for independence.4 India’s takeover of Junagadh entailed limited violence, but before this first militarized dispute ended, the two states became embroiled in a more severe confrontation, in Kashmir. The Kashmir War began in October 1947, after armed tribesmen from Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (currently known as the Khyber-Pakthunkhwa Province) invaded the disputed territory. Faced with an internal revolt and an external invasion, Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir requested India’s military assistance. In return, he signed an instrument of accession to India, slated to be ratified by a referendum in Kashmir after hostilities ended. The Indian army entered Kashmir to repel the invaders, and demanded the withdrawal of the Pakistani troops as a precondition for a plebiscite. Pakistan, on its part, demanded a simultaneous withdrawal of both armies to allow a free Kashmiri referendum. India rejected the demand, Pakistan sent regular forces to Kashmir and the first Indo-Pakistani war broke out. The war ended in January 1949 through a UN-brokered agreement, which included a recognized ceasefire line, a UN peacekeeping force and a recommendation to pursue a plebiscite on the future of Kashmir. However, tensions between the two states remained high. The next two decades saw a rising

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tide of dyadic militarized disputes, mounting to 10 confrontations throughout the 1950s and peaking at 16 incidents during the 1960s, as shown in Figure 4.1. Growing Indian concern over Pakistani violations of the Kashmir Ceasefire Agreement of 1949 characterized the beginning of the 1950s, coupled with increasing war propaganda. High tensions led to several interstate clashes, including a war scare in 1951 in Punjab and the Kashmir district of Poonch, and armed incidents in 1956 over the disputed marshy land in the Rann of Kutch. Dispute density further increased throughout the next decade, including intense military hostilities in the northern part of the Rann of Kutch in 1965, followed by a second war in Kashmir later that year. In early 1965, encouraged by India’s defeat in the war with China in 1962, and fortified by military supplies it had received from the United States in the preceding years, the Pakistani army began patrolling in disputed areas in Kutch. In April, Pakistan launched Operation Desert Hawk, escalating violent clashes between the two states. International pressure then forced Pakistan to end its operation in Kutch. Mediation efforts by Britain and the United Nations resulted in an Indo-Pakistani ceasefire agreement in June 1965, including a formal agreement to set up a tribunal to resolve the Rann of Kutch dispute. In early July, President Ayub Khan ordered the withdrawal of all Pakistani troops from the frontiers with India. Shortly thereafter, Indian forces withdrew from the disputed area. However, the Rann of Kutch maneuver was the first phase in Pakistan’s strategy, designed to test India’s preparedness to go to war. Now encouraged by its successful fighting in the Kutch dispute, Pakistan turned to promote its strategic goals in Kashmir. On August 5, 1965, Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar. Pakistani soldiers, dressed as local Kashmiris, crossed the ceasefire line, hoping to stir up local support and ignite an uprising against Indian control in the Kashmir Valley. India responded by sending several thousand troops across the ceasefire line. Pakistan retaliated by dispatching an armored column to southern Kashmir. By early September, India invaded West Pakistan, triggering a fullscale war. The heavy fighting caused thousands of casualties on both sides without a conclusive victory. After the crisis came to a stalemate, the UN mediated a ceasefire between the neighboring states, which ended the second Kashmir War. In January 1966, three and a half months after attaining the truce, India and Pakistan signed a USSR-mediated agreement in Tashkent, assenting to withdraw to the pre-war ceasefire line and restore economic and diplomatic relations. Both states pledged to settle their disputes through peaceful means.5 In 1971, a third war broke out in the enduring rivalry, this time stemming from an internal Pakistani crisis. Civil strife erupted between the West and



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East wings of Pakistan following the overwhelming victory of the Bengalinationalist Awami League in the National Assembly elections of 1970. Concerned over the flow of millions of Bengali refugees into its territory, India intervened militarily on behalf of the Bengalis of East Pakistan, catalyzing an Indo-Pakistani war. Before long, the clashes that erupted between the Indian and Pakistani armies in East Pakistan spread to the Western part of the country. The war ended in December 1971 with the surrender of Pakistan’s Eastern Command, heralding the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent state in the former East Pakistani territory. The 1947 partition of British India, designed to resolve the Hindu-Muslim rivalry in the sub-continent, now spawned another division, creating another Muslim state in the region. The war divided Pakistan into two, and ultimately weakened its power. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s new civilian president, opened negotiations with India’s prime minister, Indira Gandhi. In July 1972, the two leaders signed the Simla Agreement, which re-designated the 1949 ceasefire line in Kashmir as the Line of Control (LoC). They also reestablished their mutual commitment to settle further disputes by peaceful means. However, ambassadorlevel diplomatic relations were renewed between India and Pakistan only four years later, and there were no substantive talks between them throughout that decade. Nevertheless, the Bangladesh War produced relational change. The defeat in the war was devastating for Pakistan, which lost its Eastern wing along with half of its population and large portions of its military and economy. These consequences left a mark on internal processes in Pakistan and affected the course of the international rivalry in the following decades. The 1970s saw a sharp decline in the occurrence of Indo-Pakistani militarized disputes, with only two brief episodes of hostility during the early years of the decade, after the all-out war of 1971. Indeed, dispute density subsided and has remained relatively moderate since 1972, with six militarized disputes occurring throughout the 1980s, four disputes in the 1990s, and another four interstate clashes in the first decade of the 2000s. Nonetheless, hostility and mutual suspicion have continued to characterize Indo-Pakistani relations. The two countries came close to war twice during the 1980s, first in 1984 over the Siachen Glacier region in northern Kashmir, then in 1987 over the disputed border in Punjab. The Siachen Glacier confrontation broke out when India learned that Pakistan allowed foreign expeditions in the area, and suspected that its neighbor was planning to occupy the glacier. India launched Operation Meghadoot and occupied strategic positions along the Siachen region. The confrontation in Punjab erupted in the wake of renewed fighting in Kashmir in 1986, and amidst growing complaints by India about Pakistan’s material assistance to

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Sikh guerrillas fighting for independence in the Indian state of Punjab. Tensions escalated in November 1986, when India launched Operation Brass Tacks, a large-scale military exercise in the desert area of Rajasthan, a few hundred miles from the Pakistani border. Interpreting the exercise as a threatening demonstration of conventional force, Pakistan responded with a military buildup in West Punjab. India in turn, placed its army and air force on alert. The two states, however, did not resort to violence, and were able to reduce tensions through diplomatic talks. Negotiations began in January 1987, culminating in an agreement of mutual withdrawal. The 1990s saw a further moderate decline in dispute density, with only four militarized disputes occurring between India and Pakistan throughout this time span. Yet, the rivals came close to war at the beginning of the decade and actually engaged in another war before it ended. In 1990, tensions between the South Asian neighbors mounted in light of mass anti-India violent demonstrations in India-controlled Kashmir, and brutal suppression by Indian forces. Once again in the prolonged rivalry, India accused Pakistan of being responsible for the turmoil in Kashmir. On March 13, in the midst of the crisis, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto travelled to Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and promised a “thousand-year war” to support the militants and free Kashmir.6 The militarized dispute persisted through most of the year, including an exchange of heavy artillery between the armies, along with the deployment of Indian troops in the region to prevent cross-border infiltration from Pakistan, and large numbers of Indian and Pakistani troops in the desert borderlands of Rajasthan and Sind. The dispute also included, for the first time in the rivalry, an implicit Pakistani threat to use nuclear weapons if India intervened militarily across the LoC, which in turn brought the United States to mediate and abate the militarized crisis. In 1999, after almost ten years of Pakistan-supported resistance in Kashmir, India and Pakistan engaged in another interstate war, in the Kargil district in northern Kashmir.7 The crisis followed an escalation of tensions in May 1998 over nuclear testing conducted by both sides. The armed confrontation began with the infiltration of Pakistani troops and militants into positions on the Indian side of the LoC. Fighting ensued and Indian forces, using ground and air power, recaptured these positions. More limited in scope than the three previous Indo-Pakistani wars, the Kargil War included a series of interstate militarized incidents in north Kashmir and in the Rann of Kutch.8 The Kargil crisis underscored that despite the mutual attainment of nuclear weapons, the danger of war between the two rivals remained unchanged. The Pakistani incursions into the Indian part of Kashmir signaled that Pakistan intended to continue to challenge India militarily under the umbrella of nuclear deterrence.



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Relatively moderate dispute density continued in the next decade, with four Indo-Pakistani militarized disputes recorded during the first ten years of the 2000s. In two cases, hostilities mounted following major terrorist attacks in India, allegedly conducted by Pakistani-sponsored Islamic militants. In July 2001, following a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi, both states massively deployed forces in the Kashmir frontier and engaged in a prolonged series of clashes along the disputed border. Interstate violence escalated again following an attack by militants on an Indian civilian bus and a family-accommodation military camp in Kaluchak, Kashmir. The dispute ended in November with agreement on a formal ceasefire between the two states. In 2008, the rivalry flared up again following a large-scale terrorist attack against several civilian targets in Mumbai. The ensuing interstate dispute involved Indian counter-insurgency operations and several border clashes. In all, then, militarized interstate disputes have persisted in the rivalry over time, yet there has been a noticeable downward trend in their relative frequency in recent decades. While dispute density tells us a story of evolution and change in the IndiaPakistan rivalry, hostility levels indicate continuity in the prolonged conflict. The baseline around which this rivalry fluctuates, or its basic rivalry level (BRL) as Diehl and Goertz put it, is relatively high.9 Figure 4.2 displays hostility scores of the 46 disputes in the bilateral conflict. The average hostility level is 3.53 on a scale of 1–5, and the mode value is 4—that is, the vast majority of the disputes (35 of 46 cases) included the actual use of force. Although the oscillatory trend shown in this figure indicates instability in hostile interactions, it partly accords with Diehl and Goertz’s punctuated equilibrium theory because the rivalry lingers on with no inclination toward more conflictual or more peaceful relations. However, the rivalry does not show the flat distribution of hostile interactions typical of most enduring rivalries.10 Rather, it demonstrates a highly diverse pattern of hostile interactions. Stability in the enduring rivalry is therefore observed only in the sense that the conflict consistently includes fluctuated hostilities. Hostility levels reached a peak four times throughout the years of conflict, embodied in the escalation of four wars: Kashmir I (1947), Kashmir II (1965), Bangladesh (1971) and Kargil/Kashmir III (1999). These peaks in hostility levels came roughly once every two decades, each followed by a series of low- and medium-level disputes. However, since India and Pakistan have become nuclear powers, this pattern occurred only once, in the limited Kargil War of 1999; it has not reappeared in the last two decades. Interestingly, low-level disputes were recorded mainly in the 1950s-1960s, when dispute density was extremely high. This data indicates that interstate warness has considerably declined in terms of dispute density but not

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Figure 4.2.  India-Pakistan Conflict: Hostility Levels of Militarized Interstate Disputes Source: author, based on data drawn from the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) dataset (v4.1)

so much in terms of hostility level. Thus, to understand developments in Indo-Pakistani relations, and to be able to assess transformation in interstate warness, we should also look at aspects of diplomatic interactions between the two rivals over time. Major Trends in Indo-Pakistani Diplomatic Negotiations Throughout the years, India and Pakistan have engaged in various diplomatic interactions, aimed at solving their ongoing disputes. During the first decades of the rivalry, the two states concluded a number of successful agreements. However, these mainly focused on resolving specific problems, such as post-war settlements, treaties on the division of rivers and nuclear non-attack agreements.11 A broader conflict-resolution effort was initiated in the 1990s, with the two sides discussing the underlying issues in dispute. Nevertheless, these talks have produced issue-specific agreements and confidence-building measures, and have not led to genuine reconciliation and conflict resolution. Sponsored by the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) after the war of 1947, the Karachi Agreement of 1949 established a ceasefire line in Kashmir. Each of the two neighbors agreed to administer a different part of the disputed region until a plebiscite on the future of Kashmir could be held. In the following years, between 1950 and 1954, the United Nations was actively involved in the nascent India-Pakistan rivalry, mediating a series of talks to promote a plebiscite on the future of



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Kashmir. By 1954, however, India abandoned the idea of a plebiscite, declaring the obligatory accession of Kashmir to India. In January 1957, it implemented the Constitution of India in Kashmir.12 In 1960, India and Pakistan held successful talks over the division of rivers. Brokered by the World Bank, the bilateral negotiations produced the Indus Water Treaty, which resolved the severe dispute over the distribution of water from the plentiful Indus and its tributaries. The dispute over the Rann of Kutch was resolved through an arbitral tribunal established in the wake of the 1965 ceasefire agreement. In February 1968, the international tribunal awarded Pakistan about 10 percent of the territory it had originally claimed, thereby ended the conflict over the Rann of Kutch. While Pakistan reluctantly accepted the award, India bitterly resented the denial of its sovereignty over the entire Rann of Kutch.13 Following India’s loss in the 1962 war with China, the United States and the United Kingdom launched a more ambitious diplomatic effort to improve Indo-Pakistani relations. Using India’s need of Western support, the great powers promoted, and closely monitored, a new round of bilateral talks over the broad territorial dispute in Kashmir. In 1963, disappointed at the course of the Indo-Pakistani talks, the Western powers presented the “Elements of a Settlement” document, which abandoned the idea of a plebiscite on Kashmir and suggested apportioning Jammu and Kashmir between the two countries.14 Once again, however, India and Pakistan failed to reach an agreement. Two years later, they went to war again in Kashmir. By the end of their second war, India and Pakistan could only agree to restore the status quo in Kashmir, as confirmed in the Tashkent Agreement of 1966.15 Mediated by Soviet premier Aleksey Kosygin, the accord established a ceasefire between the contending states, secured by the UN Security Council. India and Pakistan agreed to withdraw all armed forces to pre-war positions, to restore diplomatic relations, and to discuss economic and refugee matters. However, the agreement did not contain a no-war pact between the old rivals, nor any renunciation of violent insurgence. Thus, the failed talks of 1963 and the subsequent war of 1965 led to a break in official Indo-Pakistani negotiations on the Kashmir dispute. The next round of Indo-Pakistani diplomatic talks took place following another war between the two neighbors. The Simla Agreement signed in 1972 after the dreadful Bangladesh War indicated that time was ripe for the commitment of both countries to resolving the prolonged conflict. The objective of the treaty, as stated in its preface, was profound: The governments of India and Pakistan declared their resolve to “put an end to the conflict and confrontation that have hitherto marred their relations and work for the promotion of a friendly and harmonious relationship and the establishment of

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durable peace in the subcontinent.”16 However, the declaration of intent was not supported by corresponding actions. Perpetual disagreements regarding the legitimacy of Pakistan’s claim for Kashmir, coupled with continuous hostility and distrust, hindered efforts to resolve the main bone of contention—the future of Kashmir. Moves toward reconciliation were evident only at the end of the decade. In 1978 and 1979, a series of high-level meetings between representatives of both states laid the groundwork for a process of normalization in the 1980s. Indeed, there were active diplomatic efforts in the 1980s to resolve some of the territorial disputes between India and Pakistan and ease tensions between them. The diplomatic efforts suffered a setback when the United States and Pakistan announced a new security and military assistance program in 1981. Nonetheless, regular meetings continued. In late 1982, the two states institutionalized these meetings in the form of the Indo-Pakistan Joint Commission, including sub-commissions for trade, economics, information and travel. In November, Indira Gandhi and Zia ul-Haq met in New Delhi for the first official face-to-face talk between leaders of the two nations in ten years, and authorized their foreign ministers to proceed with talks on improving relations. During this decade, the parties reached an agreement regarding their nuclear facilities. In December 1985, after the Siachen Glacier crisis, President Zia ul-Haq and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi met in Delhi to discuss normalization measures. The two leaders concluded a non-attack agreement on nuclear facilities, and decided to negotiate the Sir Creek and the Wullar/ Tulbul water disputes. The Siachen Glacier issue was included in their talks, but the future of Kashmir remained excluded.17 Two other top-level meetings took place at the close of the decade, after the Punjab war scare and the death of Zia ul-Haq. Zia’s successor, Benazir Bhutto, met with Rajiv Gandhi in December 1988 and July 1989, yet these summits failed to achieve real progress other than ratifying the nuclear non-attack agreement. The two leaders signed a non-nuclear aggression agreement, pledging to reduce nuclear arms and committing not to attack each other’s nuclear installations.18 Indo-Pakistani relations deteriorated again following the outburst of violent insurgency in Kashmir in 1989. By the spring of 1990, the South Asian neighbors were at the brink of another war in light of India’s accusations of Pakistani support for militancy in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Nevertheless, the violent insurgency in Kashmir also led to a new series of talks between the two states, conducted at the foreign secretary level between December 1990 and January 1994. Although the parties failed to make progress in the talks, they kept the conflict on the track of interstate dialogue. Indeed, these IndoPakistani negotiations took place in parallel to the bellicose militancy and fierce counter-militancy operations in Indian Kashmir. The dialogue failed



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to bridge the gap between the contradictory goals of the two countries, with India seeking to stop Pakistani sponsorship of the Kashmir insurgency and Pakistan pursuing a change in the status quo. In June 1997, India and Pakistan agreed to restart the dialogue process in the form of bilateral talks carried out by eight working groups discussing all the issues in dispute. This “composite dialogue” aimed to advance peace and security between the old rivals. Backchannel talks followed, leading to top-level meetings in 1998 and 1999 between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan, which generated cautious optimism for reconciliation.19 The 1998 nuclear tests interrupted the dialogue, but the parties soon resumed talks that culminated in the historic Lahore Declaration. Signed on February 22, 1999, the agreement of Lahore explicitly affirmed mutual obligations to avoid unintended or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons, and enhanced responsibility toward reducing conventional and non-conventional tensions. The two sides concluded a series of confidence-building measures, including a commitment to avoid intruding into each other’s airspace and an agreement to conduct military exercises at defined distances from their mutual border. They also agreed to establish hotlines between the two states.20 Moreover, the prime ministers of India and Pakistan, Vajpayee and Sharif, committed their countries to the principles of peaceful co-existence, and agreed that their respective governments would intensify their efforts to resolve all of the issues in dispute, including the fundamental issue of Kashmir. However, the Kargil crisis in May 1999 soured the peaceful atmosphere. The Kargil incident ended without a formal agreement, when Prime Minister Sharif announced that Pakistan would withdraw its troops to its side of the LoC; a ceasefire then came into effect. In July 2001, Prime Minister Vajpayee invited President Perves Musharraf, who toppled Sharif in a military coup in October 1999, to come to India with the aim of renewing discussions on longstanding issues between their countries. The two leaders met for a two-day summit in Agra and discussed a wide range of security matters, as well as the crucial question of Kashmir. However, the two sides failed to find common ground on the sovereignty of the disputed territory and the talks collapsed.21 They only agreed that the dialogue process should continue.22 After the summit, however, Indo-Pakistani relations reached another impasse following the September 11 attacks in the United States, and the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi in December 2001. While the Agra summit did not bring about substantial change in the status of Kashmir, it set in motion a dialogue that helped reduce tensions between the old rivals. Indeed, negotiations between India and Pakistan during this decade expanded, both in scope and in substance. In 2003, the two states

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embarked on another round of bilateral talks in yet another attempt to normalize their relationship. In December 2003, President Musharraf said his country was willing to drop its long-standing demand for implementation of the UN resolution calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir on its future.23 India initiated a series of confidence-building measures and Pakistan responded in kind. The neighboring states began a gradual process of normalization during which they added personnel to their respective embassy staffs, resumed bilateral sporting ties, restored bus service between their cities and facilitated border permits. These measures ultimately led to a bilateral meeting at the sidelines of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in 2004, held in Islamabad, where President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee agreed to launch a composite dialogue. Their initiative markedly highlighted and prioritized diplomatic efforts.24 The comprehensive talks included discussions on the Kashmir issue at the foreign secretary level. Backchannel talks included discussions on Musharraf’s proposal of self-governance for Kashmir, short of full independence, and the demilitarization of borders. India and Pakistan decided to forge ahead despite the backdrop of frequent terrorist attacks against Indian targets throughout this period. By 2007, the parties were reportedly on the verge of an agreement on Kashmir.25 However, domestic upheavals in Pakistan and the consequent ouster of Musharraf in August 2008 interrupted the diplomatic progress. The composite dialogue wound down without achieving substantial agreements on the issues in dispute. Finally, after four rounds of talks, fluctuating from achievements to disappointments, the peace process reached an impasse following the large-scale Mumbai attacks in 2008. Diplomatic negotiations between India and Pakistan slowly resumed only in 2010, after a meeting between Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani on the sidelines of the SAARC summit in Thimpu, Bhutan. In February 2011, a meeting between their respective foreign secretaries ensued, marking the renewal of the composite dialogue. This dialogue addressed all of the issues in the conflict and was supported by confidence-building measures, but still failed to achieve significant progress. In early 2014, tensions grew between the two countries with increased ceasefire violations along their disputed border. Then, in May of that year, the elected prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, invited Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to attend his inauguration, raising hope for policy change toward regional engagement. However, this optimism faded when India canceled talks planned between the foreign ministers of the two states. The cancelation was in response to the Pakistani minister’s meeting with separatist Kashmiri leaders. In July 2015, the two prime ministers met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Ufa, Russia, and issued a joint statement



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about Modi’s expected trip to Pakistan to participate in the SAARC conference in Islamabad in 2016. Yet again, an armed militant attack on India’s army base in Uri, one of the largest attacks against Indian forces in Kashmir in decades, led Modi to cancel his trip and boycott the summit in Pakistan. Indeed, ceasefire violations have become more frequent during the term of Modi’s government, including an incident of mutual diplomatic expulsion in 2016 after Pakistan accused India of running an espionage network from its mission in Islamabad. In May 2018, Indian and Pakistani commanders agreed to restore the 2003 ceasefire agreement along the LoC. Thus far, however, diplomatic talks between the two countries have not ripened for resolving the Kashmir dispute and the enduring Indo-Pakistani rivalry. State-NSA Armed Confrontations From the outset, the state-NSA realm of the India-Pakistan rivalry has involved Pakistan’s political and military support for non-state insurgent groups fighting against Indian rule. However, this aspect of the enduring rivalry has also changed over time. In 1947, state-NSA armed hostilities erupted between India’s security forces and Pakistani-armed Pathan tribesmen who invaded Kashmir from Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Fifty years later, local Kashmiris were the ones who led the low-intensity war in Jammu and Kashmir. Before long, however, Pakistan hijacked the homegrown insurgency and Pakistani-backed Islamist organizations attained prominence in the Kashmir struggle. In the following years, foreign organizations joined in the Kashmiri arena, fighting India under the banner of transnational jihad. Undeniably, Pakistan has been involved in all these manifestations of state-NSA confrontations in various ways. As discussed in Chapter 3, the maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India following the partition of British India. In view of India and Pakistan’s competing claims for the princely state, Lord Mountbatten, the British governor-general, proposed a plebiscite on the future of the state. UN Security Council Resolution 47 of April 1948 also called for a plebiscite on the fate of Kashmir. However, a plebiscite was never held. Following the first Kashmir War, the territory was divided between the contending neighbors, with two-thirds under India’s control, including Jammu, the Valley of Kashmir and Ladakh; and about one-third under Pakistan’s control, including Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas (Gilgit-Baltistan). During the first two decades of the conflict, political struggle over the status of Jammu and Kashmir dominated state-NSA relations and involved limited manifestations of armed confrontations. In 1947, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, the Muslim leader of the National Conference, then the ruling party

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of Jammu and Kashmir, opposed the idea of dividing the state and endorsed its accession to India. The Hindu stance on the accession of Kashmir was even firmer. The Jammu Praja Parishad (People’s Council) party agitated for the full integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India. However, reflecting Nehru’s view that Jammu and Kashmir was not yet ripe for full integration, Article 370 of India’s 1949 Constitution granted the state a special status including internal autonomy.26 By 1952, Sheikh Abdullah withdrew his support for accession to India in favor of independence for Kashmir. Subsequently, the Indian government dismissed and arrested him. Sheikh Abdullah then became the patron of the All Jammu and Kashmir Plebiscite Front, a political party he never formally joined, which called for a referendum under the auspices of the United Nations to decide the issue of sovereignty.  The Kashmiri struggle remained mainly political through the early decades of the rivalry even in the wake of Pakistan’s invasion of the Indian Kashmir Valley in 1965. As seen in Figure 4.3, the struggle encompassed limited manifestations of state-NSA armed confrontations until the 1980s. Taking advantage of the discontent in Indian Kashmir, and hoping to ignite a largescale uprising in the Kashmir Valley, Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar in August 1965, sending several thousand armed Pakistani infiltrators across the Kashmir ceasefire line. A second Indo-Pakistani war broke out, entailing a rise in violent incidents in Kashmir Valley. After the war, guerilla groups increased their activities against Indian security forces, but a Kashmiri revolt did not ensue.

Figure 4.3.  India-Pakistan Conflict: Density of State-NSA Armed Confrontations Source: author, based on data drawn from the UCDP/PRIO dataset (v4-2016)



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In 1971, non-state players ignited another Indo-Pakistani war. The separatist Bengali revolt in East Pakistan and subsequent civil war in Pakistan became entangled with war between the neighboring states. This time, the war was detached from the Kashmiri arena. However, the ethno-national rationale that motivated the Bengali self-determination movement had ramifications for the Kashmiri struggle, reinforcing the idea that ethnic-based nationalism divides the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, and thus justifies the demand for independence of distinct groups. Even so, the successful revolt of the Bengalis did not engender a similar uprising of Kashmiris. The extent of state-NSA confrontations in Indian Kashmir remained very low during the rest of the decade. Indeed, the placidity of both interstate and state-NSA relations during the 1970s, with only rare instances of armed hostilities, could almost give the impression that Pakistan’s defeat in the Bangladesh War essentially concluded the regional rivalry, and therefore tacitly ended the struggle over Kashmir. That, however, was far from reality. By that time, Kashmiri militant organizations had begun to emerge in both the Indian and Pakistani parts of Kashmir. In the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, Al-Fatah, an indigenous insurgent group, carried out systematic sabotage actions against Indian security forces. In Pakistan-held Azad Kashmir, the Plebiscite Front established the National Liberation Front (NLF) as an unofficial armed wing. In January 1971, two NLF members hijacked Ganga—an Indian Airlines aircraft en route from Srinagar to Jammu. The hijackers flew the aircraft to Lahore, Pakistan, where they demanded the release of about two dozen NLF members from Indian prisons. The hijackers then released the passengers and set the plane on fire. In response, India suspended Pakistani aircraft overflights and pressed Pakistan to act firmly against NLF activists. Pakistan’s operation against hundreds of NLF members severely weakened the organization. However, its leader, Amanullah Khan, moved to Britain, where, in May 1977, he established the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) and its armed wing, the National Liberation Army (NLA). During the 1980s, the buds of an organized militant insurgency sprouted in Indian-held Kashmir. Both Pakistani instigation and Indian inattention to its Kashmiri citizens contributed to the rise of grievances and resistance. To be sure, India placed full responsibility on Pakistan for encouraging and actively assisting the evolving Kashmiri uprising. However, the deterioration of law and order in the Kashmir Valley was, in large part, an upshot of mounting grievances among the Kashmiri population. Political discontent and alienation toward the central government in New Delhi intensified in the wake of social and economic aspirations that had grown among the Kashmiris with the spread of education. Alienation also grew in light of the Indian

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government’s continuous neglect of the region and an erosion of the special status granted to the state in Article 370.27 Then again, Pakistan indeed played a major role in igniting the Kashmir uprising. Kashmiri ethnic grievances and national ambitions intersected with changing dynamics in Pakistan, where the state and its army showed signs of recovery from the Bangladesh calamity. In the wake of the war waged by the Soviets in Afghanistan, the United States restored its aid to the Pakistani Army, assisting its revival. At that time, the Pakistani government under General Zia ul-Haq launched an Islamization process in the country and established a wide network of Saudi-funded madrassas that offered religious education. Indeed, Zia institutionalized Islamic law and culture in Pakistan’s administration, society and army.28 Before long, Islamist actors and agendas became prominent factors in the struggle over Kashmir. As noted above, Pakistan’s proxy war dates back to the very beginning of the rivalry, when Pakistan-supported Muslim tribesmen invaded the Kashmir Valley from the NWFP, and catalyzed the first Indo-Pakistani war in Kashmir. Gradually, Pakistan developed a strategy of non-state insurgency.29 By the 1970s, following the Bangladesh War, Pakistan shifted its cross-border infiltration and people’s war scheme into an overall strategy of low-intensity conflict. Pakistani officers concluded that guerilla warfare, conducted by non-state actors supported by regular forces, was effective in offsetting India’s advantage in conventional military capability. Furthermore, in the context of nuclearization—following India’s first nuclear test in 1974, and after the mutual nuclear tests in 1998—the Pakistanis anticipated that low-intensity warfare would be the most appropriate form of future Indo-­Pakistani confrontations.30 Through the 1980s, the deeply ingrained proxy-war approach integrated with Pakistan’s Islamic agenda. This was also evident in another arena, Afghanistan, where Pakistan supported jihadi militancy against the Soviets.31 These developments, combining a proxy war and Islamic creed, fueled the mounting unrest in Kashmir. By 1987, Kashmiri militant organizations had started operating from Pakistan, across the LoC, against Indian security forces. Among these organizations, Islamic groups like Hizb-ul-Mujahideen begun to emerge, alongside ethno-nationalist and more secular groups, like the JKLF. In 1988, tension rose in Indian Kashmir, as the JKLF initiated an armed revolt with two bomb blasts in the capital city of Srinagar. In response, India stationed a large number of troops in the region and imposed strict curfews and press restrictions. Once again, India accused Pakistan of training and funding the rebels. While Pakistan denied that its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was supplying arms to rebel organizations, it admitted that it was offering political support to such groups.32



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By the end of 1989, a large-scale revolt broke out in Indian Kashmir. On December 8, members of the JKLF kidnapped Dr. Rubiya Sayeed, the daughter of the Indian minister of home affairs, as she left a government hospital in Srinagar. The kidnappers demanded the release of several imprisoned members of their outlawed group. After several days of negotiations, the Indian government agreed to meet the captors’ demands. However, severe counter-insurgency measures soon followed. Indeed, forty years after the division of the princely state, the incident sparked violent mass resistance against the Indian rulers in Kashmir. In the following months, Indian Kashmir witnessed fierce anti-India demonstrations and brutal suppression by an expanded Indian police and military presence, resulting in substantial civilian casualties.33 Subsequently, many new insurgent groups of varying size and ideological orientation emerged, creating chaos throughout the Kashmir Valley. Indian authority in the state was on the verge of collapse.34 The India army launched harsh counter-insurgency operations and the rebellion subsided. However, the revolt bred a Pakistani-sponsored network of extremist Islamic groups, which became powerful new actors in the old regional conflict. The following years thus witnessed a sharp increase in state-NSA armed confrontations within Kashmir and beyond. To be sure, Pakistan is widely believed to have encouraged the Kashmiri militancy as part of a calculated proxy-war strategy. Initially, it provided covert military and logistical support to the JKLF, which played a central role in igniting the Kashmir insurgency. However, with the rise of powerful pro-Pakistani Islamist groups, Pakistan shifted its support from the pro-independence JKLF to organizations that advocated Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan, like Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.35 In 1994, the Pakistani ISI formed the Muttahahida Jihad Council (the United Jihad Council) as an umbrella organization aimed at combining the forces and resources of leading militant groups engaged in the anti-India militancy in Kashmir.36 Among the member organizations, some of which joined during the late 1990s, are Hizb-ulMujahideen, Haraqat-ul-Ansar, Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, Al-Bark, Al-Badr, Lashker-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Haraqat-ul-Mujahideen and Tehriki-Jihad.37 The development of these players, their agendas and their connections with Pakistan, are discussed in detail in the following chapter. The second half of the 1990s saw a decline in the Kashmir militancy, yet overall state-NSA confrontations remained high. In 2000, India reached a three-month ceasefire with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. However, Lashker-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad and other Pakistan-based groups refused to accede to the ceasefire arrangement, and infiltrations from the Pakistani side of the LoC continued. By the opening decade of the 2000s, the ramifications of state-NSA warness had spread beyond the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

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This included terrorist attacks in major cities in India, carried out by Islamist organizations based in Pakistan, like the 2001 Jaish-e-Muhammad attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi, the 2002 Lashker-e-Taiba massacre of army families in Kaluchack and the 2008 Lashker-e-Taiba series of attacks on civilian targets across Mumbai. Armed attacks on Indian forces in Kashmir have persistently continued throughout the succeeding decades, like the deadly attack on the Indian army base in September 2016, in the border town of Uri in Jammu and Kashmir. The consistent escalation of state-NSA warness has not entailed substantial state-NSA diplomatic negotiations to resolve the issues of dispute. India has traditionally agreed to talk only with those organizations that recognize its sovereignty in Kashmir. It has long refused to include separatist organizations in any dialogue over the future of Kashmir, and has protested Pakistani meetings with such groups ahead of Indo-Pakistani summits.38 Nevertheless, India has made a few exceptions with players it considered moderate. The first took place after the Indo-Pakistani engagement in the 1971 Bangladesh War39 and resulted in the Kashmir Accord of November 1974, signed by Sheikh Abdullah, representing Jammu and Kashmir, and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The accord retained Article 370 and changes made after 1953 to reduce Kashmir’s autonomy. Another attempt to achieve a settlement was made in response to the Kashmir uprising. By the mid-1990s, when it appeared that the militancy was contained but far from eradicated, the Indian government sought to initiate a dialogue in order to calm the situation and bring Kashmir back onto a political track. With this in mind, the central government tried to drive a wedge between the extremists and moderates in the Kashmiri separatist leadership.40 While some moderate leaders of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) tried to engage in dialogue with the central government, the extremist ­Hizb-ul-­Mujahideen opposed these initiatives, violently.41 In 2004, India’s deputy prime minister, Lal Krishna Advani, met with Hurriyat leaders, possibly seeking to thwart Kashmiri unrest just before the resumption of talks with Pakistan. The meeting resulted in a declaration that the parties had agreed to end “all forms of violence.”42 This promising statement, however, has yielded no significant dialogue or agreements, only a few symbolic meetings that took place in the succeeding years. Warness Variation It is the central premise of this work that rather than remaining stable, enduring rivalries undergo change, which revives animosity and dispute between the rivals, thereby hindering conflict resolution. The examination of interstate



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and state-NSA disputes has revealed that indeed, warness in the India-­ Pakistan rivalry has constantly varied and transformed over time. As defined in Chapter 2, warness variation in enduring rivalries denotes situational shifts between hot war, cold war and peace in the interstate and state-NSA domains of conflict. As explained earlier, the transition from war to peace in intractable conflicts like the Indo-Pakistani rivalry may go through the intermediate circumstances of détente. Indeed, warness variation in the protracted conflict between India and Pakistan has included transitions from hot war to cold war with segments of détente. Evidently, conditions have not yet ripened for reconciliation and peace. The two states made progress in diplomatic talks that produced functional agreements on specific issues such as the distribution of water and limitations on nuclear weapons. They have eased tensions and improved their relations, and even initiated a process of normalization. However, they have not yet shown readiness to make substantial concessions on the major issues of dispute. For now, the old rivals remain suspicious toward one another, maintaining varying levels of dialogue and intermittent militarized disputes. The introduction of nuclear weapons further raised mutual fears, which have largely guided the behavior of both states throughout the rivalry. Dialogue thus reflects their shared interest in avoiding war, rather than a substantial change in their positions. When looking at the state-NSA domain of conflict, which is largely manifested in the Kashmir militancy against Indian rule, we see another trend. Along with the decline in interstate warness witnessed in the 1970s, state-NSA armed disputes began to escalate, even before Pakistan developed its proxy-war strategy. The growth of assertive non-state players that demanded the liberation of Kashmir instigated armed confrontations. Non-state violence and state counter-insurgency repression climaxed with the outbreak of the 1989 uprising. The militant Islamist actors and agendas that subsequently infiltrated the disputed region, encouraged by Pakistani support, have gradually overshadowed local organizations in the struggle on the future of Kashmir. The examination of the interstate and state-NSA domains of the rivalry thus demonstrate that the two parts of the conflict have developed in contradictory directions: While militarized interstate disputes have gradually declined over the course of time, state-NSA armed conflicts have increased in recent decades, as displayed in Figure 4.4. The two domains of the conflict also differ in terms of diplomatic efforts: While India and Pakistan have intensified bilateral negotiations in recent decades, no substantial talks have been conducted between India and nonstate players. Nonetheless, the two realms of conflict remain highly entwined, largely because of Pakistan’s support for proxy militant forces. These

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Figure 4.4.  India-Pakistan Conflict: Trends of Interstate vs. State-NSA Warness Source: author, based on data drawn from both the MID and UCDP/PRIO datasets.

different trends of warness indicate a transformation of the conflict rather than its denouement. Reflecting on what we already know about enduring rivalries, the review of the India-Pakistan rivalry tells us a story of change. Identifying a “basic rivalry level” (BRL) that embodies the severity of militarized disputes in enduring rivalries, Goertz and Diehl observed that hostility levels are established early in the conflictual relations, and remain constant throughout most rivalries.43 Though persisting over a long period, the India-Pakistan rivalry has not demonstrated such stability. The magnitude of recurrent hostile interactions between the two states has largely fluctuated, and the rivalry has demonstrated a consistent trend of decline in terms of dispute density over time. Through the first two decades of the rivalry, the conflict indeed “locked in” around a high BRL, with a peak in the frequency of militarized disputes, including two episodes of full-scale war. However, warness has not remained the same throughout the rivalry. As described in this chapter, the frequency of hostilities has dramatically dropped since the 1970s. Regrettably, this warness variation does not point to substantial conflict abatement, but rather to change in warness characteristics. The rivalry, which commenced by a political shock, did not end after it was stunned by another one. The Bangladesh War shook up the India-Pakistan conflict, repudiating the two-nation idea upon which Pakistan was created as a home for the Muslims of India. The war actually consisted of both kinds of political shocks described by Goertz and Diehl—internal and environmental.44



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What started as a civil war between East and West Pakistan, and expanded to the interstate arena, entailed the collapse of Yahya Khan’s dictatorship in Pakistan, the emergence of Bangladesh as a new state in the regional landscape and a shift in the Indo-Pakistani balance of power in the aftermath of the Pakistani defeat. However, rather than ending the rivalry, the Bangladesh War changed its course and became a historical landmark in the troubled relations of India and Pakistan. Indeed, it was a turning point in the prolonged conflict, constituting a situational shift from hot war to cold war, in which animosity and contention continued while their violent expressions subsided. Manifestations of détente ensued as the two enemies engaged in a composite dialogue to resolve their long-standing conflict. After the political shock instigated by the Bangladesh War, Pakistan embraced its Islamic identity and brought Islam to the center of its public life. Deeply humiliated by the defeat in war at the hands of its biggest enemy, Pakistan started meddling in India, covertly fostering and supporting militancy in Kashmir and Punjab. Pakistan’s growing insecurity also emphasized its need to pursue the development of nuclear weapons to defend the country against a stronger India. The acquisition of nuclear weapons reduced the military imbalance of power between the rivaling neighbors, providing Pakistan with more confidence to carry on the militarized rivalry with its stronger foe. With these two developments, the facilitation of Pakistani covert insurgency in Kashmir and the establishment of both countries as nuclear powers, the conflict was transformed. The Kashmir uprising in 1989 marked an escalation of hot war in state-NSA relations. Pakistan’s proxy war in the following years appears to have replaced direct and dangerous militarized interstate disputes. While India preserved its conventional military superiority, Pakistan began to effectively use militants to undermine Indian rule in Kashmir, under the threat of a nuclear umbrella. Thus, to comprehend trends of warness variation accurately, one should look at the picture as a whole, taking into account both state and non-state players. The increase of state-NSA armed confrontations since the 1980s, which was the result of a deliberate Pakistani decision to pursue a limited conflict strategy, indicates that the decline in interstate warness does not signify profound change in the competing attitudes of the rivals. Rather, it points to change in the form their competition takes. As we have seen, state-NSA warness remained steadily tied to the interstate conflict, so despite the decline in interstate warness, Indo-Pakistani relations remained essentially hostile. Taken together, therefore, the contrasting trends in the interstate and stateNSA domains of the conflict suggest that India and Pakistan have made limited progress toward reconciliation. They were able to reduce direct interstate tensions and reach tentative détente relations, but remain unable to

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break the limits of cold war interactions. While managing to stabilize their nuclear deterrents and beginning some limited trade, the old rivals have only achieved an uneasy stalemate, which both preferred over the projected solutions. Indeed, behind the territorial dispute over Kashmir lies a deep animosity, relating to identity conflict between the two different polities. Chapter 5 focuses on changes in actors and their agendas in the persisting rivalry, and addresses the role of the identity conflict in the Indo-Pakistani impasse. THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT: TRENDS OF WARNESS On May 14, 1948, the last day of the British Mandate in Palestine, Israel declared its independence. The Arab states responded by invading Israel the following day, commencing a war that marked the beginning of an interstate enduring rivalry. In the following section, I discuss evolution and change in the relations between Israel and the four bordering Arab states, tracing fluctuations in their conflictual expressions over time. Militarized Interstate Disputes The Arab-Israeli conflict is characterized by a high dispute density and a high level of hostility. During the years under study, the rivalry included 98 militarized interstate disputes between Israel and four of its Arab neighbors—Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. The Israel-Syria and Israel-Egypt dyads have played a leading role in interstate confrontations throughout most of the rivalry. Viewed as a whole, the rivalry has demonstrated a consistent decline in dispute density over time. As shown in Figure 4.5, dispute density peaked during the 1950s and 1960s, encompassing most of the confrontations recorded between Israel and its Arab rivals. Among the four inspected dyads in the multisided rivalry, the Israeli-­ Syrian relationship is most troubled in terms of both dispute density and hostility levels; the Israeli-Lebanese relationship is the least troubled among the four, mainly in terms of overall number of disputes recorded over time. Between 1948 and 2010, the conflict involved 51 Israeli-Syrian militarized disputes, 40 Israeli-Egyptian disputes, 17 Israeli-Jordanian disputes and 10 Israeli-Lebanese disputes. The ratios of these dyadic-level disputes remained quite consistent throughout the years of conflict, with all the dyads demonstrating a gradual decline in the frequency of militarized disputes per decade. As seen in Figure 4.6 below, the decline in the frequency of interstate disputes began in the 1970s and continued in the coming decades, including not only the Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian arenas, where the parties

Figure 4.5.  Arab-Israeli Conflict: Density of Militarized Interstate Disputes at the Conflict Level Source: author, based on data drawn from the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) dataset (v4.1)

Figure 4.6.  Arab-Israeli Conflict: Density of Militarized Interstate Disputes at the Dyadic Level Source: author, based on data drawn from the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) dataset (v4.1)

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concluded peace accords, but also the Israeli-Syrian scene, where the major issues at stake remained unresolved. In November 1947, UN Resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine stirred a two-phase war, a militarized confrontation that set in motion the enduring rivalry. The first phase of the war, whose evolution began long before the partition vote, was a civil war between Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The second phase was an interstate war between Israel and five Arab states—Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, commencing on May 15, 1948, following the formal declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel. Fighting ended in defeat for the Arab states. The ensuing armistice agreements signed between Israel and each of the neighboring Arab states left Israel with extended territory, well beyond the land allocated to it in the partition plan.45 Though formally provisional, the armistice lines redrew Israel’s boundaries, including the Galilee in the north, the Negev in the south and the western parts of Jerusalem in the east. The succeeding two decades witnessed growing tensions, coupled with an intensive power struggle and an arms race between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. The mounting tensions erupted in 32 militarized disputes during the 1950s. As in most years of the enduring rivalry, Syria and Egypt were most frequently involved in militarized disputes with Israel (on 17 and 13 occasions, respectively). Jordan and Lebanon took part in fewer disputes with Israel (four times and once, respectively). One of the earliest disputes revolved around control of the sources of the Jordan River.46 Following the armistice agreements signed in 1949, a demilitarized zone (DMZ) was set up on the Israeli-Syrian border. Part of the DMZ stretched from the Sea of Galilee to the Yarmuk River, where the borders of Israel, Syria and Jordan converge. The dispute over the scarce resources of the Jordan-Yarmuk system has been a major issue at stake for the three countries. In 1951, Syria and Israel were embroiled in a militarized dispute over the Hula Valley in the DMZ. The confrontation concerned Israel’s Hula drainage project, which Syria claimed violated the 1949 Armistice Agreement between the two countries. Militarized hostilities ensued. The confrontation ended following an agreement mediated by the UN Mixed Armistice Commission (MAC). However, tensions remained extremely high throughout the 1950s, mainly due to regional power struggles, which culminated in a second interstate war. In February 1955, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and the United Kingdom signed the Baghdad Pact, aiming to protect the Middle East against communist expansion. The treaty threatened Egypt’s primacy in the Arab world. Thus, Egypt turned to the USSR for assistance, which in turn sponsored Czech arms agreements, providing weaponry to Egypt and Syria. Threatened by these arms deals, Israel and France forged a military alliance, which by



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October 1956 led to the invasion of Egypt by Israeli forces, followed by the armies of the United Kingdom and France. While the tripartite attack terminated the imperial role of Britain and France in the Middle East, it also provided Israel with an opportunity to improve the regional balance of power. Despite pressure from the United States to withdraw from its conquests in the Sinai, Israel gained an American guarantee for the stationing of a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), as well as an assurance from Nasser of Egypt that he would respect the status of the Straits of Tiran as an international waterway.47 Though commencing with several non-violent militarized disputes, the 1960s were characterized by steadily mounting tensions, embodied in high dispute density, with 28 recorded cases. Syria and Egypt remained highly involved in these disputes, taking part in 15 and 10 confrontations, respectively. Jordan increased its participation in militarized disputes during this decade: It was involved in six incidents, which marked the highest Jordanian share per decade recorded through the entire conflict. Lebanon remained minimally involved, taking part in militarized disputes on two occasions only. In early 1960, tensions heightened when the USSR notified Egypt (then united with Syria in the UAR) that Israel was moving troops on its northern border with the aim of attacking Syria. In response, Egypt began military maneuvers across the Suez Canal in Sinai toward the Israeli border. In late 1963, tensions escalated again concerning the long-standing dispute over the use of the Jordan waters, when Israel presented its National Water Carrier project. Nasser reacted by convening an Arab League summit. The Arab states decided not to go to war with Israel, but to divert the three tributaries of the Jordan River and set up a joint military command to defend the “frontline” Arab countries. However, greater escalation was impending and erupted in a major regional war in 1967, one that would intensely affect the regional balance of power and bring about a dramatic change in the fate of the Palestinian people. The origins of the 1967 June War should be understood in the context of inter-Arab relations, which called for Arab unity. In September 1961, a group of officers staged a military coup and declared Syria’s withdrawal from the UAR. In 1962, the military ousted Yemen’s ruler, sparking a civil war shortly thereafter. Intervention in the Yemen civil war divided Arab loyalties, with Jordan and Saudi Arabia supporting the royalist side, and Egypt intervening on behalf of the republican side. Egypt’s disastrous military adventure in Yemen ended in a withdrawal in 1968, after suffering heavy losses.48 With his prestige diminished by this and other failures, Nasser sought to retain his leading role by uniting the Arab states. Relying on his pledge to liberate Palestine from the Zionist grasp, Nasser used Israel as a common threat to

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mobilize Arab cooperation. By May 1967, he had embarked upon a series of steps that would soon culminate in a full-fledged war. Nasser sent troops into the Sinai Peninsula, demanded the evacuation of the UN Emergency Force, and declared the closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. These actions were accompanied by increasingly aggressive speeches, calling for the destruction of Israel.49 The question of whether Nasser really intended to wage war against Israel remains a subject of historical debate.50 His bellicose speeches fell short of a declaration of war. However, Israel watched Egypt’s moves with growing alarm. Increasing tensions along the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Jordanian borders due to Palestinian guerrilla raids into Israel also brought the region closer to war. In effect, a series of border infiltrations from Syria and Jordan generated repeated militarized disputes between Israel and these two countries in the years preceding the 1967 war. Indeed, the Egyptian deployment of troops began in the wake of reports Nasser received from the Soviet Union that Israel was concentrating forces on its northern border, preparing a massive reprisal against Syria for its active support of Palestinian raids. The reports were false, yet they set in motion the preparations for war. By the end of May, Jordan and Egypt signed a mutual defense pact. Then, on June 5, Israel took the initiative and launched a preemptive airstrike on Egyptian air bases, destroying most of Egypt’s air force while it was still on the ground. Soon the war expanded to the Jordanian and Syrian fronts, including high-level involvement of both the Soviet Union and the United States. The war ended in a swift and humiliating defeat for the Arab states, revealing the remarkable superiority of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) over its Arab adversaries. All three Arab countries surrendered territory to Israel, and this changed the regional balance. Egypt’s loss of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, Jordan’s loss of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Syria’s loss of the Golan Heights, created an extensive Arab refugee problem—notably the inclusion of an additional Arab population of 1.5 million people under Israeli administration.51 Essentially, all of the territory that had been Mandatory Palestine came under Israeli rule. How Israel should cope with this became the focal issue in the conflict over the succeeding decades. Indeed, the results of the 1967 Six-Day War have reshaped not only the territorial borders of the region, but also the boundaries of the Arab-Israeli conflict as a whole. In the aftermath of the war, there were neither peace initiatives nor military tranquility. The 1960s ended with a resumption of hostilities in the form of limited artillery clashes between Egypt and Israel. By 1969, this escalated into a war of attrition, including large-scale shelling along the Suez Canal. Hostilities ended in August 1970 with a ceasefire that did not include any changes



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in the border lines. Nonetheless, the following decade saw a major decline in militarized interstate disputes, with 15 incidents recorded throughout the 1970s. The drop in dispute density was mostly attributable to Syria’s reduced role in militarized confrontations, which declined by nearly a half compared to its share in Arab-Israeli confrontations during the previous decades. There was also a moderate decline in Egypt’s involvement in interstate disputes (Syria and Egypt were each involved in eight cases). Jordan and Lebanon remained marginally involved in militarized disputes with Israel during this decade (each took part in two cases). Nevertheless, by late 1973, Israel and its major foes, Egypt and Syria, became embroiled in another full-scale war. In 1970, Anwar Sadat succeeded Nasser as president of Egypt and sought the recovery of the Sinai. He convinced Moscow to resupply weapons and rebuild the Egyptian army. Seeing peace with Israel as a means of achieving stability and recovery, Sadat also tried to gain American support. As this endeavor was less successful, he came up with a bold plan to attack Israel again. He believed that even if the attack failed, it might persuade Israel that peace with Egypt would be of value. In February 1973, Sadat initiated coordination with President Hafez al-Assad of Syria for a joint attack. The following months saw mounting tensions, including Egyptian war exercises, countered by Israel with a large-scale mobilization. Tensions rose higher in September, when Israel and Syria fought an air battle in which 13 Syrian MIG jet fighters and one Israeli Mirage were shot down.52 The violent incident triggered a mutual deployment of forces. Despite the fact that Egyptian and Syrian military mobilizations were noted by Israeli intelligence, as late as October 3 an Israeli intelligence report said that war was not imminent.53 On October 5, Israel was caught by surprise when news arrived that the families of Soviet personnel were being evacuated from Syria. Yet, in need of American support in the impending war, the Israeli government refrained from a pre-emptive strike that would portray it as an aggressor. Consequently, with the outbreak of war on October 6, the IDF was on the brink of a catastrophic defeat before it regained the initiative and began retaliating against the Arab forces. By the end of the intense fighting, Israel was threatening both enemy capitals, Cairo and Damascus. The war included massive intervention by the two superpowers, which came to the brink of an armed confrontation. The Soviet Union repositioned its naval vessels and issued a clear threat of unilateral intervention. While pressing Israel to allow nonmilitary supplies to reach Egypt’s Third Army, which by the end of the fighting was surrounded by the IDF, the United States also put its armed forces on a high state of alert. The war ended on October 25, when a ceasefire went into effect. Israeli-Egyptian and IsraeliSyrian disengagement agreements were signed in January and May of 1974,

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respectively. By the end of the war, Israel managed to turn the tide and prevailed. Its military victory however, came at a steep cost. Israel suffered heavy casualties; its appearance of invincibility was shattered. Sadat’s venture proved worthy: He managed to force Israel to negotiate the return of Arab territory and restored Arab dignity. Indeed, the war that led to a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt at the close of the decade marked a turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict; it was the last full-blown interstate war in the region. Manifestations of warness in the following years transformed from mainly militarized interstate disputes to predominantly state-NSA confrontations, centering upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, dispute density further declined in the following decades, yet ArabIsraeli interstate disputes were not over. The 1980s included 11 militarized disputes, the bulk of which concentrated on Israel’s northern borders with Syria and Lebanon. These disputes were mostly associated with two interrelated developments that took place in Lebanon. One was the transfer of PLO forces from Jordan to southern Lebanon following their defeat in a military confrontation with the regime of King Hussein in 1970. These Palestinian forces launched a persistent campaign of guerilla and terrorist incursions from Lebanon into northern Israel. Israel responded by retaliation attacks in Lebanon, accompanied by routine reconnaissance flights. The other development was the outbreak of the Lebanon civil war in 1975. In this context, Syria sent troops into its fragile neighbor in January 1976 and became the dominant power in the country for the next three decades. As a result, Syria and Israel became embroiled in a power struggle in the region, which included several armed confrontations, mostly aerial incidents. In 1976, the United States brokered a tacit Red Line agreement between Israel and Syria that underlined legitimate actions and constraints on their conduct in Lebanon. The Litani River was accepted as the line that neither side would breach. In 1978, Israeli troops invaded Lebanon up to the Litani River in a retaliatory action against PLO bases in southern Lebanon. The three-month Operation Litani led to the establishment of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the restoration of the Red Line agreement. In 1981 and 1985, however, Syria and Israel engaged in military disputes that centered on alleged violations of the Red Line agreement. In each of these militarized disputes, Israeli planes shot down Syrian aircraft. Syria responded by deploying surface-to-air missiles (SAM) in the Bekaa Valley, posing a threat to Israeli reconnaissance missions over Lebanon. In both cases, American pressure helped to lower the interstate tensions. However, the central militarized dispute during the 1980s took place in the Israeli-Lebanese arena. In June 1982, Israel launched a retaliatory large-scale military campaign against Palestinian bases in southern Lebanon: Operation Peace for the



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Galilee, which escalated into the first Lebanon War, embodied the transformation in the nature of Arab-Israeli militarized disputes. While Israel invaded Lebanon’s territory and was engaged in fighting Syrian forces, the core of the dispute, as well as the bulk of armed confrontations, took place between the Israeli army and PLO forces. Interstate and state-NSA disputes converged. On June 6, Israel invaded Lebanon in retaliation for the near-fatal shooting of Israel’s ambassador in London and constant PLO raids. Originally planned as a 40-kilometer operation to destroy PLO positions, the incursion rapidly expanded, including an extensive air battle between Israeli and Syrian aircraft. By June 9, after destroying PLO positions in southern Lebanon, as well as Syrian installations in the Bekaa Valley, Israeli forces advanced all the way to Beirut and laid siege to the capital. In a U.S.-brokered deal, the PLO leadership and most of its fighters were expelled from Lebanon, and the organization’s headquarters moved to Tunisia. On May 17, 1983, almost a year after the invasion, Israel and Lebanon signed a security agreement aimed to terminate the state of war between them.54 The accord included the terms for the withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon, while keeping Israel’s involvement in policing the southern region of Lebanon. However, Syrian resistance blocked the implementation of the Lebanese-Israeli accord. Eventually, Israel maintained a massive presence of troops in Lebanon until 1985, which entailed continuous low-intensity military hostilities. The IDF established a “security zone” in southern Lebanon, which Israel continued to control until its final withdrawal from Lebanon, in 1999. As the 20th century drew to a close, interstate hostilities seemed to wane. With only two Arab-Israeli militarized interstate disputes, the 1990s was the most tranquil period since the beginning of the conflict. Interestingly, Syria and Lebanon, the central Arab players in the interstate disputes of the 1980s, were not involved in militarized confrontations with Israel in the subsequent decade. Unexpectedly, the disputes in the 1990s involved Israel and the two Arab countries it had signed peace accords with—Egypt was involved in one of the two cases; Jordan was involved in both. The two militarized disputes related to increasing Iraqi hostilities in the Gulf War of 1990 and the subsequent no-fly zone crisis of 1998, when Israel and its Arab neighbors placed their armies on alert. The Egyptian army participated in the American-led coalition against Iraq in the Gulf War, while the IDF remained restrained despite Iraqi missile attacks on Israeli cities. It is worth noting, therefore, that neither of the two incidents recorded in this decade involved an actual Israeli militarized dispute with Jordan and/or Egypt. Indeed, this count of ArabIsraeli interstate disputes, drawn from the MID dataset, reflects a change in warness trends. In effect, no militarized Arab-Israeli confrontation took place

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in the rivalry during the 1990s. Israel’s military operations in Lebanon during this period encompassed IDF-Hezbollah clashes in 1993 and 1996, identified as state-NSA disputes. The beginning of the 21st century heralded reescalation of interstate relations, with nine incidents recorded between Israel and the surrounding Arab states in the first decade of the 2000s. Syria returned to take the lead; it was involved in four militarized disputes with Israel. Egypt, despite its peace accord with Israel, was involved in three of the recorded disputes. Lebanon was involved in two of the cases, while Jordan took part in none of them. The disputes involving Syria and Lebanon revolved around Israeli operations against Lebanese military targets, in response to hostile actions of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and concerned the support Syria provided to Hezbollah and other insurgent groups operating against Israel. The last Israeli-Syrian militarized dispute in the period under study included a massive Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria in 2007. The disputes between Israel and Egypt, on the other hand, were characterized by minor, unintended incidents, like the exchange of fire between Israeli soldiers and three Egyptian security officers who crossed into Israel in 2006 on their own initiative; and an Israeli soldier’s shooting of an Egyptian policeman on the border in 2009, after the latter acted in a suspicious manner.55 It should be noted, however, that the armed confrontations between Israel and Syria resumed and intensified over the next decade, which is not covered by the MID database. Repeated militarized interstate disputes were recorded on this front when the Israeli air force acted to remove threats posed by the deployment of Hezbollah and Iranian forces on Syrian soil, in the context of the civil war waged in Syria since 2011. Conflict change is evident in the Arab-Israeli rivalry not only in terms of dispute density but also in the magnitude of interstate hostilities. Figure 4.7 displays hostility scores of the 98 disputes in the rivalry between 1948 and 2010.56 The baseline around which the rivalry fluctuates is high: Its average hostility level is 3.58 on a scale of 1–5, and its mode value is 4. Patterns of hostility level changed after the 1973 October Yom-Kippur War, with the severity of militarized disputes becoming more diverse and generally lower. Indeed, the first two and a half decades of the conflict witnessed four fullscale interstate wars, and one limited war (in 1969). The post-1973 period included one limited war (in 1982), fought mainly between Israel and nonstate Palestinian actors. The relatively steady pattern of hostility witnessed until 1973 accords well with Goertz and Diehl’s punctuated equilibrium model, in which enduring rivalries linger on with no inclination toward more conflictual or more peaceful relations.57 In recent decades, however, the Arab-Israeli rivalry



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Figure 4.7.  Arab-Israeli Conflict: Hostility Levels of Militarized Interstate Disputes Source: author, based on data drawn from the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) dataset (v4.1)

has undergone change. Violence in the interstate realm of conflict has considerably dropped. While the rivalry has not yet demonstrated momentous progress toward conflict resolution, it has clearly shown variation in military hostilities embodied in both interstate-war termination and conflict reduction. Yet again, the rivalry continues to exist with great force in light of the convergence of the interstate and state-NSA domains of conflict. Hostility levels climaxed six times throughout the years of conflict, embodied in six episodes of war: the First Arab-Israeli War / Israel’s War of Independence (1948–49), Suez War (1956), June / Six-Day War (1967), War of Attrition (1969–70), October / Yom-Kippur War (1973) and Lebanon War (1982).58 These peaks in hostility level came roughly once in a decade; all of them except the 1973 war were followed by a return to disputes of medium-high levels. It may be that Israel’s undeclared yet widely believed possession of nuclear weapons since 1966 played a moderating role in the following decades. It is obvious, however, that the results of the 1973 war and the ensuing peace accord signed between Israel and Egypt at the close of the decade, as well as the peace treaty reached between Israel and Jordan fifteen years later, have played a significant role in altering hostility patterns in the interstate domain of conflict. In the wake of the dramatic breakthrough achieved in the relations between the old enemies, Egypt, which led all the Arab-Israeli wars between 1948 and 1973, was no longer a bitter enemy of Israel and took no active part in any further major militarized dispute in the enduring rivalry. Jordan was not involved in further violent disputes either. Indeed, transformation in interstate warness should be understood in light

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of divergent political priorities of the Arab states, expressed in peace agreements and other diplomatic interactions between Israel and some of the Arab countries over time. Major Trends in Arab-Israeli Diplomatic Negotiations Diplomatic interactions have taken place in various forms throughout the rivalry, resulting in some conflict management agreements, two durable peace accords and many failed attempts to resolve the conflict as a whole. During the first decades of the rivalry, the United Nations actively initiated diplomatic interactions, the first of which was the creation of the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), aimed to mediate disputed issues between the rivaling parties with special attention to the acute refugee problem. The commission initiated the Lausanne Conference in 1949 with the participation of Israel, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. The Arab Higher Committee represented the Palestinians. The conference addressed the core issues of contention, including borders, Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, but concluded as the first of many failed attempts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Arab delegations refused to negotiate directly with the Israelis. They demanded to negotiate on the basis of UN resolutions 194 and 181, and to tackle each problem separately, especially the refugee issue. In contrast, Israel demanded a comprehensive settlement of the conflict as a whole.59 Inter-Arab agreements and joint Arab declarations in the following years reflected on the (a posteriori failed) endeavor to join forces against Israel. In 1950, the Arab League Council decided that no member would be permitted to conduct negotiations with Israel separately. In 1964, Egypt convened the first Arab League summit in Cairo, where the assembling members decided to pull together to resolve inter-Arab disputes and to adopt common principles regarding Israel. After the 1967 war, the leaders of the Arab states gathered at a summit in Khartoum, Sudan, where they pledged to continue their struggle against Israel, under three joint principles, known as the “three no’s of Khartoum”: no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel. The Khartoum Declaration also addressed the Palestinian issue, vowing to maintain the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country. Over time, however, the attitudes of the Arab states toward Israel have diverged; some have become more moderate toward Israel than others. After the June Six-Day War, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, establishing the principle of exchanging land for peace. Most of the main adversaries, including Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, approved the resolution, which called for “the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” and “the termination of all claims or states of belligerence . . . and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial



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integrity and political independence of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries.”60 Syria, and later the PLO, dissented, because the resolution did not stress the total withdrawal of Israel from all of the territories occupied in 1967. Both actors, however, accepted the principles of Resolution 242 later in the conflict. Indeed, Resolution 242 has become one of the most viable principles in the Arab-Israeli enduring rivalry, and formed the basis for peace negotiations and accords in the following years. In 1971, the United Nations initiated another round of negotiations aimed at conflict resolution. UN Secretary General U Thant appointed Gunnar Jarring as a special envoy to mediate the talks. Israel rejected the peace plan Jarring presented, asserting its opposition to withdrawing its forces to the June 4, 1967 borders. A breakthrough in peace negotiations came only six years later, after another full-scale war in the region. Meanwhile, peace efforts resulted mainly in conflict management measures. After the October-Yom-Kippur War in 1973, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger conducted intensive “shuttle diplomacy” to reinforce UN Resolution 338, which called for a ceasefire. Kissinger’s efforts led to the Geneva Conference of 1973 under the auspices of the UN Secretary General, with the foreign ministers of Israel, Egypt and Jordan in attendance. According to Kissinger’s “step-by-step” diplomatic strategy, the conference aimed at an immediate disengagement of forces in order to strengthen the ceasefire, as a preliminary step toward peace.61 While failing to bring about peace, the Geneva Conference laid the foundations for Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Syrian disengagement agreements in the following months. Notably, Egypt’s initial successes in 1973 enabled President Anwar Sadat to declare the war an Egyptian victory and to pursue an honorable peace. Indeed, Egyptian priorities, as Sadat saw them, dictated peace with Israel. In 1974, the two enemies signed a disengagement agreement, which established a zone of separation between their military forces in Sinai and paved the way for diplomatic negotiations. In September 1975, as part of the Geneva process, and despite Syrian dissent, Israel and Egypt signed the Sinai Interim Agreement, avowing that the conflicts between them should be resolved by peaceful means.62 Two years later, the security regime established in Sinai as a means of conflict management led to bilateral negotiations for peace. In November 1977, President Sadat came to Jerusalem, addressed Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, and initiated peace talks with Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The pivotal round of Israeli-Egyptian talks at Camp David in September 1978, under the auspices of President Jimmy Carter, facilitated the first peace accord and the most significant one in the Arab-Israeli rivalry to date. Signed in March

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1979, the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt was strongly denounced by the Arab world; the Arab states severed relations with Cairo and expelled Egypt from the Arab League. Though initially seeking a more comprehensive resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, President Sadat indeed signed a separate agreement with Israel, focusing on the termination of the bilateral dispute between the two states.63 However, the agreement also included a framework of principles for resolving other issues in the wider Arab-Israeli rivalry, mainly the Israeli-Palestinian dimension of the conflict. As noted above, the failure to implement the principles regarding the Palestinian issue provided Sadat and his successors a justification for maintaining low-level diplomatic relations with Israel. The complex nature of the rivalry is reflected in the evolving actor and issue characteristics of the peace talks. In view of the increasing magnitude of the Palestinian dimension, Palestinian NSAs have become participants in peace initiatives in the region. While Israel and the United States dismissed Yasser Arafat’s declaration of independence in 1988, and his announcement that the Palestinians accepted the State of Israel’s existence, a Palestinian group formally became part of the Jordanian delegation at the Madrid Conference in 1991. Attended by the principal rivals that had yet to make peace (that is, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria), the Madrid Conference was the first scene where the adversaries engaged in direct negotiations. While this post-Cold War and post-Gulf War peace initiative failed to achieve reconciliation, it broke new ground in the peace process, establishing an acceptable framework for all the parties involved. In this fresh atmosphere, a bilateral track of interstate negotiations continued through twelve rounds of meetings in Washington, from November 1991 until January 1994. In 1992, the newly elected government of Israel, under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin, offered Syria implicit acceptance of the “peace for territory” principle. In response, Syria proposed a draft Declaration of Principles for a peace agreement between the two states, which Israel rejected. Israel and Syria resumed talks in late 1994, this time between top security officials of the two countries. These talks soon reached a dead end, mainly over disagreements regarding the security arrangements Israel demanded in exchange for its withdrawal from the Golan Heights. As described below, the Palestinian component of the violent conflict has come to the fore since the first Palestinian uprising, the intifada, of 1987. In 1993, conditions matured for a major Palestinian role in peace negotiations as well. State-NSA direct negotiations began first in “backchannel” discreet informal talks, and then in formal tracks of bilateral dialogue. Indeed, the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the Palestinians in September 1993 marked a new phase in the Arab-Israeli rivalry, raising hopes for an imminent



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breakthrough in the Israel-Palestinian domain, and the regional conflict as a whole. The first phase of the Oslo Accords concentrated on concrete measures to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, granting the Palestinians selfgovernance over parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The accords did not address the major issues of dispute, like the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the demarcation of borders, other than stating that they would be part of later permanent status negotiations. The 1993 phase of the Oslo agreements defined a five-year transition period, as a precursor of a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. In September 1995, Prime Minister Rabin and Chairman Arafat signed the Interim Agreement, known as Oslo II. Aimed to outline the transfer of powers and responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority, the agreement defined three areas in the West Bank, granting the Palestinians limited authority in Areas A and B, and maintaining full Israeli jurisdiction in Area C. Negotiations over the most contested issues of the conflict were to begin by May 1996. However, the implementation of the Oslo Accords fell short of the optimistic expectations they raised, and hopes for an imminent reconciliation remained unfulfilled. Although several supplementary agreements followed the 1993 accord, Israeli-Palestinian relations reached an impasse. The state-NSA domain of the Arab-Israeli conflict continued to bleed, with radical opponents of the peace process conducting violent acts to undermine it—including an extensive terrorist campaign against Israeli civilians and a massacre of Palestinian worshipers in Hebron. In October 1995, an Israeli opponent of the government’s peace policy assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. The peace process lost momentum. Since 1996, several other Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives have taken place, including the 1997 Hebron Agreement, the 1998 Wye River Plantation Agreement, the 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum, the 2000 Camp David summit, the 2001 Taba talks, the 2002 Road Map for Peace and further talks in 2008 and 2013–14. None of these efforts resulted in substantial agreement on the major issues of contention.64 The association between interstate and state-NSA relations in the ArabIsraeli conflict has remained strong, particularly in the case of Israel-Jordan relations, which are closely tied to the Palestinian issue. The general sense that Israeli-Palestinian relations were finally moving toward peace in the Oslo process paved the way for an Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty in 1994. Prior to the separate interstate agreement, there was an attempt to execute the “Jordanian Option” aimed at resolving the Palestinian issue through a peace agreement with Jordan, by way of conceding the West Bank to the Hashemite Kingdom. In 1987, Israel Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein of Jordan signed the London Agreement, defining a framework for a Middle Eastern peace conference. However, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir

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opposed the plan and prevented its implementation. The following year, in the wake of the first intifada, Jordan formally disengaged from the West Bank, withdrawing its claim for the territories Israel occupied in 1967 and advocating instead for a negotiated resolution between Israel and the PLO. Eventually, it was the Palestinian engagement in direct peace talks with Israel, and the signature of the Oslo Accords, that enabled Jordan to pursue its bilateral agenda with Israel. By the beginning of the next decade, at the start of the 21st century, other Arab countries had modified their strong animosity toward Israel. Indeed, they had come a long way since affirming the “three no’s” of Khartoum in 1967. In March 2002, the Arab League Council adopted the Arab Peace Initiative. Proposed by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the Arab Peace Initiative was based on two principles: normal relations and security for Israel in exchange for full withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories; and recognition of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem (al-Quds al-Sharif) as its capital, along with a “just solution” for the Palestinian refugees. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres termed the initiative interesting and positive, yet Israel rejected the peace initiative, opposing the comprehensive terms defined for its withdrawal, the return of Palestinian refugees and the future of Jerusalem.65 Though reaffirmed by subsequent Arab League summits, the Arab Peace Initiative has yet to bear fruit. Indeed, relations between Israel and some Arab countries in the wider Middle East have improved in recent decades, stemming largely from regional dynamics and developments in the Muslim world, like the Saudi-Iranian conflict and the larger Sunni-Shi’ite competition. However, the road to normalization between Israel and the Arab world still requires passing through the Palestinian lane. State-NSA Armed Confrontations The history of state-NSA disputes within the Arab-Israeli rivalry encompasses varying forms of political violence. Clashes between the Arab and Jewish communities in pre-partition Palestine were followed by violent engagements between Israel and various Palestinian organizations. Indeed, over the years, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became the most dynamic element in the broader Arab-Israeli enduring rivalry. Several Palestinian political organizations were established and became increasingly involved in the armed struggle against Israel; some of them rose to prominence, others perished. As noted earlier, the inter-communal strife between Jews and Palestinian Arabs was set in motion long before the November 1947 resolution on Palestine. The approaching partition vote intensified tensions, culminating in a



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civil war in Palestine. During the early weeks following the UN resolution, violence gradually increased, and some poorly organized armed bands arose among the Arabs. The Arab Liberation Army (ALA), formed by the Arab League to fight the partition, was the largest of these. Composed of Palestinians and volunteers from the Arab states, and led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji, the ALA forces were repeatedly defeated in fighting with the better-trained and organized Israeli forces, comprised mainly of the Jewish defense force, Haganah, along with Lehi and Irgun fighters. After the outbreak of an interstate war between Israel and its neighboring Arab states in May 1948, the inferior ALA forces engaged in fighting with the newly formed Israeli army, the IDF. By October 1948, the IDF had expelled the ALA forces from Palestine.66 The first Arab-Israeli war concluded for the Palestinians in what is called al-Nakba, “the catastrophe,” with hundreds of thousands of people who moved, or were moved, to another part of Palestine (that is, to the West Bank and Gaza Strip), or outside of Palestine (primarily to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon). This marked the onset of the Palestinian refugee problem.67 Further augmented by the results of the June 1967 War, the refugee problem became a core factor in Palestinian national identity, as well as a focal issue in the larger Arab-Israeli conflict. For the Palestinians, it generated the ultimate demand of their “right of return,” which includes not only first-generation refugees but also their descendants. Israel perceives the return of millions of Palestinians to the pre-1948 boundaries of Palestine as a threat to the very survival of the Jewish homeland. The decades following the first regional war saw varying manifestations of state-NSA violent hostilities, including cross-border incursions, military raids, terrorist attacks and two Palestinian intifadas in 1987 and 2000. Figure 4.8 presents the UCDP/PRIO data on armed conflicts between 1947 and 2010, which indicates a consistent increase in state-NSA hostilities, peaking during the first decade of the 2000s. After the 1948 war, state-NSAs hostilities took the form of Palestinian cross-border raids, followed by Israeli reprisal attacks on Palestinian camps in the surrounding Arab states. In the early 1950s, nationalist militants emerged from among the Palestinian people, forming loosely organized units under the epithet fedayeen—meaning those willing to sacrifice themselves. The fedayeen units began launching violent incursions from Syria, Jordan and the Gaza Strip (then under Egyptian control) against Israeli military and civilian targets. Israel retaliated with raids targeting Palestinian camps in neighboring Arab towns, like the military operations in Qibya (1953), Gaza (1955) and Qalqilya (1956).68 After the Gaza raid, which targeted an Egyptian military outpost, Egypt began to sponsor fedayeen incursions into Israel. The

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Figure 4.8  Arab-Israeli Conflict: Density of State-NSA Armed Confrontations Source: author, based on data drawn from the UCDP/PRIO dataset (v4-2016)

mounting cross-border attacks then became one of the objects of Israel’s Suez campaign of 1956.69 Though often limited to lip service paid by leaders of the Arab states, the Palestinian cause became a pillar of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Indeed, since its inception in 1949, the Palestinian problem was widely seen as an Arab issue, to be solved by the Arab governments. However, the aftermath of the Suez War reinforced suspicions among the Palestinians that the Arab countries were not genuinely concerned about the fate of the Palestinian people, and did not give priority to the struggle for a Palestinian state. In 1957, in the wake of these doubts, a number of young Palestinians began discussions on how to advance the national struggle. Led by prominent figures in the General Union of Palestinian Students, the group delineated a Palestinian nationalist ideology according to which the Palestinians would take their fate into their own hands and win liberation through their own actions. As discussed in Chapter 5, these ideas led to the founding of the Fatah movement in 1959. The new organization advocated two main principles, which became the pillars of the Palestinian struggle: the autonomy of Palestinian decision-making and armed struggle as the sole alternative for achieving Palestinian national liberation.70 Israeli-Palestinian hostilities increased throughout the 1960s, with continuing fedayeen incursions and Israeli counterattacks, including raids on the villages of El-Samu (1966) and Karameh (1968) in Jordan. Despite the formation of Fatah, the Palestinian struggle remained under the sponsorship



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of the Arab states, mainly Egyptian. In 1964, the Arab League, meeting in Cairo for its first summit, founded the PLO to represent the Palestinian people and lead its liberation struggle. Ahmad Shuqairy was appointed PLO chair. Nasser’s initiative to form the Palestinian organization indicated his intention to keep the Palestinian struggle under Egyptian patronage. Indeed, the PLO under Shuqairy proved to be weak and dependent. However, the formation of the Palestine Liberation Army as the PLO’s military wing attracted Fatah members to join its ranks. It was in response to this development that Yasser Arafat decided to initiate military actions by Fatah, hoping to escalate regional tensions and draw the Arab countries into war with Israel, contrary to Nasser’s position and plans.71 Fatah was centered in Jordan, but operated in several Arab countries. By 1963, it had established a paramilitary organizational structure, and in December 1964, it carried out its first armed operation against an Israeli target. Then, less than a year after the Arab defeat in the June 1967 War, Fatah became engaged in heavy fighting with the IDF in the Karameh operation, which resulted in severe losses on both sides. Fatah’s strong showing in this armed conflict boosted its prestige and emphasized the utility of non-state military engagement in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. By 1969, Arafat had become chairman of the PLO’s legislative body, and Fatah had grown to prominence within the PLO, taking over effective control of the Palestinian umbrella organization. Under Arafat’s leadership, the PLO stepped up its armed attacks throughout the 1970s, drawing Israel and its Arab neighbors into repeated military confrontations, including Israel’s attack on PLO bases in southern Lebanon in Operation Litani in 1978. During the 1970s, the center of gravity of state-NSA confrontations shifted to the Israeli-Lebanese frontier. Tensions between Palestinians and King Hussein’s regime in Jordan led to a massive Jordanian assault on Palestinian armed groups in 1970. In the wake of these events, known as Black September, the PLO was ousted from Jordan and relocated to Lebanon. PLO meddling in Lebanon’s internal struggles ensued, including PLO participation in the civil war in Lebanon. Before long, the PLO established itself in military bases in southern Lebanon, and used these bases to launch rocket and crossborder attacks on civilians in northern Israel. The heightening state-NSA tensions resulted in Israel’s invasions of Lebanon in Operation Litani (1978) and Operation Peace for the Galilee (1982); the latter escalated into the first Lebanon War. The Lebanon War was the first war since 1948 that contained both interstate and state-NSA elements. As noted above, it was catalyzed by an attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London. Israel retaliated on June 4, 1982 with an attack on PLO bases in Lebanon, and the Palestinian

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organization responded with rocket and artillery assaults. On June 6, Israel launched Operation Peace for the Galilee, originally planned as a 40-­kilometer limited incursion aimed at wiping out PLO positions in southern Lebanon. However, by June 9, Israel overran PLO positions, destroyed Syrian installations in the Bekaa Valley and reached Beirut. Fighting in west Beirut ensued, and the PLO leadership ultimately surrendered and agreed to evacuate to Tunisia. In 1985, the IDF withdrew from most of Lebanon. To the dismay of the Shi’ite population of southern Lebanon, and the Lebanese government, Israel maintained a limited military presence in a security buffer zone along the border until May 2000, with the aid of the South Lebanon Army. Indeed, one major consequence of the Lebanon War was the formation of the powerful Shi’ite Islamic movement Hezbollah, “the Party of God,” in 1985. Following the withdrawal of Israeli forces, 18 years after their invasion of Lebanon, the South Lebanon Army’s positions largely fell into the hands of the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah, which has become the major source of state-NSA armed confrontations on the Israeli-Lebanese front. Hezbollah was the major actor in two large Israeli operations in Lebanon during the 1990s: the seven-day Operation Accountability in 1993 and Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996, both aimed to end Hezbollah’s shelling of northern Israel. The Palestinian popular uprising against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza in 1987, introduced a new kind of state-NSA confrontation. The intifada broke out following a road incident in which an IDF truck collided with two civilian cars, killing four Palestinians from the Jabalia refugee camp. Mass demonstrations ensued in the camp, during which young Palestinians confronted Israeli soldiers in an unprecedented way. The harsh reaction by the soldiers and the killing of several demonstrators escalated the situation and the riots spread to other camps, then to cities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. While the road incident was the trigger for the uprising, Palestinian resistance to Israel’s rule had simmered for months, expressed in demonstrations and violent incidents between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. The PLO made efforts to lead the intifada from abroad, yet it was mostly a local and spontaneous popular uprising, especially in its early stages. The first Palestinian intifada significantly waned during the 1990–91 Gulf War, when global and regional attention focused on the threat posed by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the following American-led war against Iraq. The intifada formally ended with the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, in 1993. One major product of the intifada was the formation of the Sunni-Islamic organization Hamas in Gaza as a Palestinian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Encompassing a social service wing and a military one, Hamas rose to dominance in the Gaza Strip, and became the governing authority in



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the Gaza Strip after the split in the Palestinian Authority in 2007. Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz ed-Din al-Qassam Brigades, became a major actor in the Palestinian resistance movement and a central player in state-NSA armed confrontations, carrying out numerous terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and confronting the IDF in repeated military operations. The dramatic events of the intifada, and the rise of Hamas as a major political rival of the PLO, engendered major changes in the PLO’s strategy in leading the Palestinian struggle for statehood. In November 1988, Yasser Arafat recognized Resolution 242, which called for the establishment of “peace within secure and recognized boundaries” between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states. Indeed, the endorsement of the two-state solution by the PLO under Arafat marked a significant landmark in the conflict.72 Another consequence of these major developments in the Palestinian national movement was the beginning of a peace process between the Palestinians and Israel. As discussed earlier, the peace process commenced within the framework of the 1991 Madrid Conference and then culminated in direct (mostly covert) negotiations that led to the 1993 Oslo Accords. In 1994, under the accords, Arafat became the president of the Palestinian Authority, established to govern autonomous areas in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, state-NSA armed confrontations were far from over. The rest of the decade saw mutual Israeli-Palestinian violent actions. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian jihadist organizations opposed to the peace process, carried out frequent suicide attacks against civilian and military targets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The massacre of Palestinians at prayer carried out by an Israeli citizen in 1994 in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron escalated tensions and increased Islamic organizations’ efforts to launch suicide attacks inside Israeli cities.73 In February 1996, a wave of Palestinian suicide attacks began against Israeli civilians. Israel exerted heavy pressure on the Palestinian Authority to act against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The suicide bombings paused, but shooting attacks continued within and outside the Palestinian territories. In September 1996, riots broke out in the West Bank after Arafat called the Palestinians to respond violently to the Israeli opening of the Western Wall tunnels in Jerusalem for tourists. A three-day armed dispute ensued. Indeed, the years following the Oslo Accords saw a complex reality of state-NSA relations, with military coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority taking place in a context of ongoing confrontations. By September 2000, the tense situation turned even more violent with the outbreak of a second Palestinian intifada. As in the first intifada, there was a specific trigger: a clash at the al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem sparked by opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. However,

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various sources of mounting frustration contributed to the flare-up of the alAqsa Intifada. On the Palestinians’ part, there was growing frustration over the failure of the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority to improve their lives and end the Israeli occupation. The Israelis, on their part, blamed Arafat for choosing to unleash Palestinian militants against Israel instead of proceeding to implement the Oslo Accords. Indeed, as the Oslo Accords fell short of their promising objectives, the asymmetric warfare between Israel and the Palestinians reached a peak, embodied in state-NSA armed confrontations on an unprecedented scale. The second intifada was much more violent than the first one. Despite the leading role the Fatah played in the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, which were engaged in the peace process with Israel, its personnel participated in the violent clashes with the IDF and terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.74 Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other smaller jihadist organizations increased the use of suicide bombings, along with the shelling of Israeli towns with Qassam rockets and mortar shells from Gaza. Israel responded forcefully, including armored raids on refugee camps, targeted assassinations and administrative detentions of Palestinian leaders accused of instigating terrorism.75 Among the numerous violent clashes was the fierce fighting that took place in Jenin during Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, marking another climax in Israeli-Palestinian armed confrontations. Many others followed. In March 2003, Arafat appointed Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian prime minister. Abbas engaged in efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement with the militant factions and halt their attacks on Israeli civilians. On November 11, 2004, Arafat died in Paris. Abbas was elected as president of the Palestinian Authority. In an effort to prevent further military escalation, Abbas ordered the deployment of Palestinian police in the northern Gaza Strip to halt rocket and mortar shelling on Israeli settlements. The second intifada gradually weakened, and finally ended in February 2005, when Prime Minister Sharon and President Abbas declared a mutual truce at a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. While the intifada formally came to an end, Hamas and Islamic Jihad rejected the truce and armed confrontations between Israel and various Palestinian factions continued under circumstances of fragile intraPalestinian relations.76 State-NSA confrontations continued on the Israeli-Lebanese front after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, as Hezbollah continued firing on IDF forces and civilian settlements in northern Israel. On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah launched an attack on the border area, killing three IDF soldiers and capturing two others. Israel responded with a massive attack on strategic structures and Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal. The IDF also imposed a general siege on Lebanon, attacked the Beirut International Airport and brought



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about its closure. Throughout the armed confrontation, Hezbollah shelled the Israeli home front with mortar shells and rockets; this barrage intensified as the IDF-Hezbollah confrontation escalated. The fighting ended on August 14 when a ceasefire agreement came into force as part of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, adopted two days earlier. State-NSA violence of varying levels has also continued between Israel and some Palestinian organizations, despite the ongoing security coordination between the IDF and the Palestinian Authority under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas. Notably, armed confrontations escalated intermittently in the Israel-Gaza arena in the wake of continuing rocket attacks on Israel, leading to extensive Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip, including Operation Cast Lead (2008) and Operation Pillar of Defense (2012). Violence escalated again in July 2014 when Israel launched a large-scale military operation against Hamas strongholds in the strip. Four weeks earlier, Hamas members kidnapped and murdered three Israeli youngsters. Israel conducted Operation Brother’s Keeper in search of the three boys, during which the IDF arrested hundreds of Hamas operatives and leaders in the West Bank. Hamas responded by firing rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel, and Israel retaliated by launching Operation Protective Edge (more literally translated as Operation Strong Cliff), also known as the Gaza War. The IDF and Hamas engaged in a seven-week armed conflict, including Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks, Israeli aerial and naval bombardments and ground fighting that resulted in heavy casualties. A stalemate in the diplomatic contacts between Israel and the Palestinians, and in effect the cessation of negotiations between the parties, has increased hostility and suspicion. In 2015, riots broke out in West Bank cities following incidents between Israeli forces and Palestinian worshipers on the Temple Mount. The increasing Palestinian protests led to the outbreak of a wave of terrorist acts, characterized by the spread of individual stabbing attacks, known as the “Knife Intifada.” State-NSA hostilities continued to mount along the Gaza Strip border and throughout the West Bank arena. On March 30, 2018, the date marking the Palestinian Yom al-Ard (Land Day),77 mass demonstrations began near the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. The demonstrations, named the “Great March of Return,” broke out in demand for the return of the Palestinian refugees and the lifting of the siege on Gaza. Since then, Hamas has endorsed the protest and continuously encouraged large-scale weekly demonstrations near the border, the largest of which have taken place on Fridays. Over the following months, the mass demonstrations became increasingly violent, turning into a state-NSA war of attrition. The violence included hurling stones, grenades and firebombs toward IDF forces, attempts to break through the fence and the launching of incendiary balloons

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that ignited fires in the Israeli fields and settlements bordering the Gaza Strip. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian Territories (OCHA), for the first year since they began, 195 Palestinians have been killed in these confrontations,78 making them the deadliest events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 2014 Gaza War. So far, Egyptian efforts to mediate a truce agreement between Israel and Hamas have failed to bring calm. Warness Variation Warness has clearly undergone considerable change throughout the years of the Arab-Israeli rivalry, its manifestations transforming from mainly interstate disputes to mostly state-NSAs confrontations. Nevertheless, from its onset the rivalry has encompassed both of these elements of conflict, which have remained highly entangled with one another. The association between interstate and state-NSA disputes has also developed and changed. In the early years of the rivalry, the Arab states led the armed conflict against Israel, using some unorganized Palestinian groups to attack Israel, harass and exhaust it. After the establishment of Fatah and its takeover of the PLO leadership, the Palestinians gradually began to take the initiative. By the mid-1970s, Palestinian organizations developed a pattern of independent action, drawing the Arab states into military confrontations with Israel. In particular, as the PLO leadership and operatives settled in southern Lebanon, Lebanon and its Syrian patron became highly enmeshed in Israeli-Palestinian confrontations. After the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, and the transition of the Palestinian leadership from exile in Tunisia to the West Bank and Gaza, direct state-NSA confrontations began, peaking in two intifadas. Thus, a cycle was closed. For the first time since the pre-partition struggle between Mandatory Palestine’s Arab and Jewish militias, Israeli and Palestinian forces clashed without the involvement of any Arab state. This divergence between state-NSA and interstate disputes reflects the continual withdrawal of the Arab states from dealing with the Palestinian question, forcing the Palestinians to step in and take their fate into their own hands. Indeed, the changing locations of the Palestinian leadership and resistance organizations, as well as their growing motivation and capacities, have largely determined the arena of warness and its characteristics over time. The increasing salience of non-state actors and issues in the conflict, as well as the cross-cutting trends and spillover effects between the interstate and state-NSA domains of conflict, have made it more difficult to abate hostilities and resolve the Arab-Israeli rivalry. Thus, in order to understand warness variation throughout the conflict, we should note the association between the



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interstate and state-NSA milieus, as well as the opposite directions in which they have developed, as seen in Figure 4.9. The Six-Day War in 1967 convulsed the region, changing the boundaries and bringing the Palestinian people in large under Israeli rule. While not ending the interstate rivalry, the political shock caused by this war changed the rivalry’s progression, planting the seeds of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as we currently know it. By the 1970s, mainly after the large-scale Yom Kippur War of 1973, warness had transformed, with state-NSA confrontations becoming the dominant scene of combat. The Palestinian question became the focal issue of dispute. The interstate conflict commenced with a long, bitter war. The first phase of the rivalry is thus categorized as a hot war situation, as defined in Chapter 2. Throughout this phase, which lasted for two and a half decades, Israel and its four Arab neighbors engaged in substantive combat and major violence, expressed in dozens of militarized disputes, including five interstate wars. However, since the 1970s, the interstate domain of the rivalry has witnessed conflict reduction, embodied in the end of hot wars. The last interstate war took place in 1973; the 1982 war in Lebanon was primarily a state-NSA confrontation. More specifically, the peace accords that Egypt and Jordan signed with Israel marked their departure from military conflict, which continued to characterize Israel’s relations with Syria and Lebanon. Indeed, Israel and its northern neighbors still maintain territorial disputes. Syria claims the Golan Heights, and Lebanon claims sovereignty over the small strip of land

Figure 4.9.  Arab-Israeli Conflict: Trends of Interstate vs. State-NSA Warness Source: author, based on data drawn from both the MID and UCDP/PRIO datasets.

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in Shebaa Farms.79 While the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese fronts lack sustained combat in recent decades, they still include sporadic manifestations of militarized hostilities short of full-blown war. Such relations characterize cold war situations in which the underlying issues of dispute, such as the demarcation of territorial boundaries, remain unresolved. Although the parties to the conflict refrain from sustained warfare, limited armed attacks continue to take place, along with security tensions and threats of use of force. In large part, these tensions express the increasing association between unresolved issues on the interstate level and issues that derive from the stateNSA level of the enduring rivalry. Indeed, confrontations between Israel and PLO militants based in Lebanon until the early 1980s, and between Israel and Hezbollah from that time on, have catalyzed most of the militarized disputes that erupted between Israel and its northern Arab neighbors. That includes air attacks and other military operations Israel conducted against Syrian targets during Syria’s civil war, which Israel often attributed to its efforts to prevent the delivery of weapons from Iran, via Syria, to Hezbollah. While Israel’s relations with Syria and Lebanon have transformed from hot war to cold war interactions, its relations with Egypt and Jordan have changed from hot war to peace. Interestingly however, the persistence of the rivalry, especially the growing magnitude of the Israeli-Palestinian component, has impeded the establishment of normalization between the reconciled parties. War between Egypt and Israel has not been replaced by friendship, but by proper relations, focusing on the end of military hostilities between the neighboring states. Indeed, Anwar Sadat initiated the peace talks as he saw no benefit from the continuous state of war with Israel. Attributing Egypt’s poor economic condition to the burden of war, he sought to strengthen the country, primarily through considerable American aid.80 The road to America, he knew, went through Israel. Thus, Sadat embraced the notion of peace with Israel as a national interest, while precluding the idea of normalizing relations between the two countries in social, economic, academic and other fields of cooperation. The reserved attitude to the peace with Israel was established in both the Egyptian public and governmental arenas. Since the initiation of the peace process, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist forces in Egypt harshly opposed any settlement with Israel, and later stood behind the murder of Sadat, who initiated the talks and signed the treaty. The reconciliation between the two countries has not diminished the wider popular resentment toward Israel and Zionism, and its overt expression in hostile coverage in the Egyptian press. Egyptian leaders since Sadat have also limited their relations with Israel, restricting all aspects of bilateral ties, including commerce, industry and tourism.81 In the wake of Arab and Palestinian accusations of



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Egyptian betrayal, this policy expressed a new form of commitment to the Palestinian issue; it no longer went to war for the Palestinians, but conditioned full normalization of relations with Israel on a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, Egypt’s frosty approach toward Israel and its resistance to advance any kind of normalization have established what is often termed a cold peace between the two countries. Nevertheless, in terms of warness variation, the Israeli-Egyptian peace accord marked a turning point in the history of the conflict. Defined in terms of militarized hostilities, warness between Israel and its most formidable foe transformed from a hot war to a warm peace situation, which lacks any form of militarized hostilities between the two states. Indeed, Israel and Egypt have not yet established full normalization and therefore their relations are commonly referred to as a cold peace. However, the underlying issues of dispute are resolved, institutionalized non-violent procedures to resolve future disputes are in place and there are mutual expectations that no resort to armed violence will occur in the near future. Furthermore, the peace agreement has remained resilient to repeated challenges over the years, starting with the Lebanon War that broke out in 1982, only three years after the agreement was achieved. Indeed, it was mostly Egypt’s heavy reliance on U.S. economic support that obliged it to maintain the fragile peace. Nonetheless, the fact remains that since the mid-1970s Israeli-Egyptian relations have lacked militarized hostilities or even threats to use military force. Egypt has kept its principal commitments to Israel, including diplomatic relations and a security regime in Sinai.82 Moreover, the reconciliation between the two countries endures even in view of significant political upheavals that Egypt has experienced over the years. Under the presidency of Hosni Mubarak, Sadat’s successor, the relationship between the two states evolved and broadened. Indeed, after assuming power in 1981, Mubarak maintained an adversarial diplomacy toward Israel and never paid an official visit to Israel except for his brief attendance at the funeral of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.83 Mubarak was ambivalent about changing trends in Israel’s relations with the Arab world. He was concerned about Israel’s ascendancy in light of the peace initiative with Syria, the peace treaty with Jordan and trends of normalization with the Gulf States and North Africa. He thus embarked on what Itamar Rabinovich called “a peaceful competition” with Israel.84 In this vein, Mubarak led a campaign at the United Nations against Israel’s nuclear power. However, he maintained a dialogue with Israel and permitted some expansion of cultural ties.85 Mubarak also allowed the development of tacit security cooperation between the two states that share increasing terrorist challenges in Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Israel on its part aspired to full normalization, but given

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internal and regional constraints that limited Egyptian cooperation, it recognized the importance of keeping peaceful relations with Egypt, however restrained they might be. These relations have indeed become an essential component of Israel’s national security in recent decades. Even Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s Islamist president in 2012–13, understood the benefits of peace with Israel and pledged to respect the historic treaty. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who seized power in 2014 in a military coup against Morsi, has also continued the policy of his predecessors. According to The New York Times, unmarked Israeli drones and jets have carried out a covert air campaign since 2015 against jihadi groups aligned to the Islamic State organization in Egypt’s northern Sinai, with the approval of President el-Sisi.86 Furthermore, seeing great strategic importance in reinforcing the stability of the Egyptian state and strengthening its sovereignty in the Sinai Peninsula, Israel acceded to Egypt’s requests to make some temporary modifications of the security arrangements stipulated in the peace treaty in order to permit Egyptian deployment of large-scale armored forces in Sinai.87 The remarkable secret security cooperation between Egypt and Israel marks the fruition of their evolving peace. Since its inception in 1979, therefore, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty has not bred a warm friendship, but it definitely created a multi-layered relationship. The Egyptian population largely remains hostile toward Israel, yet the regime’s position is more nuanced. Politically, Egypt continues to restrict its diplomatic interactions with Israel and demands Israeli concessions in order to establish an independent Palestinian state. Strategically, Egypt’s political and military leaders recognize the shared interests of the two states and the potential of cooperation with Israel against common threats and enemies. This includes the growing role of political Islam in general, and the actions of hostile states and NSAs in particular, mainly the increasing Iranian influence in the region; the spread of its proxies in nearby countries like Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria; and the rise of jihadi terrorism in various arenas. Under these circumstances, Israel is a key ally. Israel too benefits from the developing strategic cooperation. In recent years, Egypt has restrained Hamas activities against Israel from the Gaza Strip, played a key role in mediating the tension between Israel and the Palestinians and facilitated cessation of hostilities between the two sides.88 Unlike the abrupt transformation in the Israel-Egypt relationship in the late 1970s, Israel-Jordan relations had gradually changed from hot war to cold war, with manifestations of détente, long before the signing of a formal peace accord in 1994. The peace treaty further improved the relations between the two neighbors. As in the Israeli-Egyptian case, political difficulties have hindered full normalization between Israel and Jordan, yet in terms of warness,



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their relations have transformed from hot war to warm peace. Here again, the unresolved conflict between Israel and the Palestinians puts constant pressure on the Jordanian regime. Consequently, its relations with Israel have ebbed and flowed, but the warness situation between the two countries lacks any form of militarized hostilities, including threats to use military force, displays of military force or actual uses of military force. Though maintaining an official state of war until 1994, Israel and Jordan upheld tacit cooperation since the 1950s, under the rule of King Abdullah of Jordan and under his successor, his grandson King Hussein. Motivated by the mutual quest for stability and endurance of the Hashemite regime, the two countries maintained regular contacts, mainly regarding their shared interest in suppressing Palestinian nationalism. After the war of 1967, the last war Israel and Jordan fought against one another, a state of détente developed between the two neighbors. They established indirect but continuous connections. Israel instituted an “open bridges” policy, leaving the Jordan River bridges open for the passage of people and goods, allowing the ties between Jordan and the West Bank to continue. However, it was only after Israel and the Palestinians signed the Oslo Accords in 1993 that conditions matured for a formal peace agreement between the two states.89 This allowed for increased security and economic cooperation, including the promotion of regional development projects and gas supply agreements. Yet again, with Palestinians accounting for more than half of Jordan’s population, the Jordanian public remains largely hostile toward Israel and its policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank. At times, diplomatic tensions arise between the two sides in the face of sporadic violent incidents initiated by individuals. However, Israel and Jordan have institutionalized non-violent procedures to resolve their disputes, maintaining mutual expectations that no resort to armed confrontations will occur in the near future. Thus, as in the Israeli-Egyptian case, Israel and Jordan have built a multifaceted relationship, reflecting the discrepancy between political circumstances and strategic needs. In summary, interstate warness in the Arab-Israeli rivalry has undergone major changes under conflicting circumstances. On the one hand, some of the most acute issues between the rivaling countries have been resolved; on the other hand, interstate relations have become increasingly entangled with rising non-state actors and issues, which hinder reconciliation between neighboring states. In recent years, these interactions have become extremely complex with political Islam and Islamist NSAs flourishing in various Middle Eastern countries. While interstate warness in the Arab-Israeli rivalry has transformed from an overall hot war to a compound situation, combining a cold war (in Israel-Syria and Israel-Lebanon relations) and a lukewarm peace

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(in Israel-Egypt and Israel-Jordan relations), the state-NSA domain of conflict has witnessed an inverse trend. Indeed, the state-NSA domain of conflict began in hot war between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs and has remained so throughout most of the years of conflict. The Oslo Accords failed to settle this hostile state-NSA relationship. Moreover, the magnitude of state-NSA warness has fluctuated and generally increased over time. As we have seen, the 1949 armistice agreements following the first ArabIsraeli war left some 150,000 Palestinians in Israel, with most of the others divided between the Gaza Strip under Egyptian rule, and the West Bank under the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.90 Devastated by the catastrophic results of the war (al-Nakba), the Palestinians focused on economic survival; their collective political goals were of less urgent concern. Those who fought Israel in the first two decades of the conflict were mainly weak, Egyptiansponsored, fedayeen units. Though officially maintaining a state of war in this period, Israel and the Palestinians engaged in hostilities on a small scale. The situation changed dramatically in the wake of the 1967 war. Two decades later the intifada broke out and hot war between Israel and the Palestinians flared up again. Peace negotiations and the Oslo Accords then marked a turning point in Israeli-Palestinian relations, transforming state-NSA warness from hot war to détente, with hopes for an impending peace. Indeed, the scale of armed hostilities decreased in the first half of the 1990s, but not for long. Disappointment in the implementation of the peace agreements and mutual accusations of violations led to the reescalation of tensions, followed by the renewal of Palestinian terrorist attacks, Israeli reprisal operations and the eruption of the second intifada. However, the peace process established communication channels between Israel and the Palestinian leadership, facilitating coordination between the IDF and the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, the renewal of violence shattered the hopes for an imminent peace, yet a new, complex reality was born. While still fluctuating greatly, state-NSA warness combines persistent hot-war interactions between Israel and resistance organizations like Hamas, Islamic jihad and Fatah’s militant factions, alongside restrained relations with the Palestinian Authority. In the absence of a substantial dialogue to break the impasse, these complex relations include continued hostilities. With frequent manifestations of violence, neither war termination nor substantial conflict reduction is expected in the state-NSA domain of conflict in the near future. To be sure, regional processes in the wider Middle East, involving a myriad of state and non-state players, also play a role in complicating interests and alliances in the region. The civil strife in Syria, Yemen and Iraq in recent years embodies the widening rift between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim countries and the spreading effects of their sponsorship of Islamist terrorist



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organizations across the Muslim world. In particular, the Shi’ite-based axis of Iran-Syria-Hezbollah, reinforced by Russia’s support of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, appears to be reshaping regional strategic interests, further complicating the fighting arena. Another complicating factor is the spread of transnational jihadi groups like al-Qaida and Islamic State, which gained a foothold in Syria and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. In this context, current Israeli strategic interests converge with those of some Sunni Arab states, notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, in light of the threats of global terrorism and growing Iranian influence in the region, cooperation between Israel and these two leading Arab countries is expanding. This is also reflected in changes in political rhetoric about Israel and in the attitude toward Israel in the Arab media. Public meetings are held between Saudi and Israeli figures. However, the Arab states, including Egypt, a signatory to the Israeli peace agreement, remain limited in their ability to deepen relations with Israel, let alone pursue them openly, due to the lack of progress in the political process with the Palestinians. Examined in terms of Goertz and Diehl’s “basic rivalry level” (BRL),91 the Arab-Israeli rivalry has demonstrated change rather than stability over time. As this chapter has shown, interstate warness, embodied in dispute density and hostility levels, has constantly declined. As Goertz and Diehl found in most enduring rivalries, the Arab-Israeli rivalry “locked in” around a high conflict level in its early years, but remained so only for two and a half decades. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Syrian conflicts peaked in terms of militarized disputes per decade. Israeli-Jordanian hostilities also reached their highest level in these decades, albeit with fewer incidents then those recorded on the Syrian and Egyptian fronts. From the 1970s on, dispute density significantly dropped in all three dyadic arenas. Israel-Lebanon is the only interstate conflict that has maintained a constant low dispute density throughout the rivalry. Hostility levels fluctuated but generally declined over time, in all the dyadic fields. Indeed, five of the six wars fought during the prolonged rivalry took place between 1948 and 1973. Warness, therefore, has not remained stable throughout the Arab-Israeli conflict. Chapter 5 discusses changes in actors’ characteristics and their agendas, which have shaped warness variation in the persisting rivalry. A COMPARATIVE PROFILE OF WARNESS This chapter aimed to compare the characteristics of warness in the IndiaPakistan and Arab-Israeli rivalries and its variation over time. The comparative analysis shows that the South Asian and the Middle Eastern rivalries

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share interesting similarities in warness characteristics and trends over the years. Both rivalries are highly prone to dispute and war, and both have undergone considerable change. Both conflicts commenced with major political shocks in 1947–48, and experienced further shocks later in the rivalry. The Bangladesh War of 1971 in the India-Pakistan rivalry and the Six-Day War of 1967 in the Arab-Israeli rivalry left considerable marks on each conflict, respectively, but did not end them. Rather, the two conflicts evolved, becoming more complex in terms of the actors and issues involved. In both cases, interstate and state-NSA disputes became highly associated with each other, and their relative salience in the overall warness changed. However, warness in the two conflicts developed in diverse ways and varied to different extents. Table 4.1 summarizes the comparison between patterns of warness in the two conflicts over time. The India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli rivalries have high BRLs, as expressed in terms of dispute density and hostility levels. High frequencies of militarized interstate disputes were recorded between three dyads in the period under study: Israel-Syria (51 MIDs), India-Pakistan (46 MIDs) and Israel-Egypt (40 MIDs). Two other dyads examined in the rivalry experienced less than half of these dispute figures: Israel-Jordan (17 MIDs) and Israel-Lebanon (10 MIDs). Hostility levels are similar and relatively high in both conflicts, with an average level of 3.53 (on a scale of 1–5) in the South Asian militarized interstate dispute, and 3.58 in the Middle Eastern rivalry. Hostilities escalated to full-scale war four times throughout the India-Pakistan rivalry, and six times through the Arab-Israeli conflict. Over the course of time, interstate warness has varied. Since the 1970s, both conflicts have witnessed a considerable decrease in the frequency of militarized interstate disputes, which seems to correspond with the introduction of nuclear weapons in each region. Dispute severity fluctuated in both regions. However, hostility levels in Indo-Pakistani disputes maintained a consistent pattern without a significant change over time, while hostilities in Arab-Israeli disputes showed a decreasing trend throughout the rivalry. At the same time, the two conflicts witnessed a rise of assertive non-state players and growing state-NSA armed confrontations. Clearly, in both conflicts, the weaker side supported non-state proxy actors to compensate for their inferiority in the interstate balance of power. However, initial differences between the two rivalries, as well as diverse incremental processes that unfolded in each rivalry over time, have shaped distinctive warness dynamics. As elaborated earlier, the conflict in the Middle East is more complex than the conflict in South Asia in terms of the number of countries engaged in militarized disputes, with four Arab-Israeli



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adversarial dyads compared to a single Indo-Pakistani one. The Arab-Israeli rivalry is therefore more complex in terms of the issues in dispute. Strategic security concerns, including balance of power struggles and threats emanating from nuclear weapons, characterize both regional conflicts. Nevertheless, while the core issue in the India-Pakistan conflict is the status of Kashmir, the Arab-Israeli conflict has several crucial questions in dispute, including Palestinian self-determination and the return of refugees, the status of Jerusalem and other territorial disputes in the Golan Heights and the border area between Israel and Lebanon. Accordingly, trends of interstate warness are more complicated in the Arab-Israeli scene, encompassing transitions from hot war to peace in the Israel-Egypt and Israel-Jordan arenas, alongside persisting cold war relations, with intermittent outbreaks of violent hostilities on the Israel-Syria and IsraelLebanon fronts. Warness in the India-Pakistan rivalry has varied from hot war to cold war, with noteworthy manifestations of détente. In other words, some of the adversary states in the Arab-Israeli rivalry have moved toward conflict termination, while others have shown only limited signs of progress toward conflict reduction. In this sense, the latter are similar to the adversaries in the Indo-Pakistani rivalry. In both rivalries, interstate conflicts are closely linked to non-state actors and issues, albeit in different ways, and this linkage hinders stability and peace. Organized militant NSAs emerged in the Arab-Israeli rivalry earlier than in the India-Pakistani one, and became autonomous influential factors in the conflict. While potent militant organizations have also arisen in the IndiaPakistani scene, they have largely remained proxies of Pakistan, highly engaged in armed confrontations with India but less so in political negotiations. Indeed, Palestinian organizations such as Fatah, the PLO and Hamas have exceeded the role of militant groups and became substantial political actors, governing the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since the 1990s, the PLO has become directly involved in talks with Israel aimed at conflict management and resolution, far more than Kashmiri groups have been involved in talks with India. In this matter, the PLO embodies the complexity of Israeli-Palestinian relations. While the PLO (and the PLO-led Palestinian Authority) has engaged in dialogue with Israel and in security coordination with the IDF, Fatah, the dominant political organization within the PLO, has continued to maintain military outfits like the Fatah Tanzim and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which continuously wage armed struggle against Israel. Neither of the separatist political organizations in Indian Kashmir, such as the Hurriyat Conference, takes such a central role in representing the Kashmiri cause in talks with the Indian government. Certainly, there is

Trends of MIDs

Average Hostility Level

Number of Wars

Hostility Levels Israel-Syria 3 Israel-Egypt 5 Israel-Jordan 2 Israel-Lebanon 2 6 in rivalry total*

In both rivalries, a major decline in the number of interstate disputes and wars was recorded over time. Hostility levels fluctuated, with a moderate decline recorded in the AI rivalry over time.

Major Trends

Situational shifts: From hot war to cold war in Israel-Syria and Israel-Lebanon 4 in rivalry total relations, including occasional violent incidents; from hot war to cold war and détente in IP relations, with occasional 3.53 3.58 violent incidents; from hot war to peace in Israel-Egypt and Number of MIDs climbed in the Number of MIDs climbed in the 1950s-60s, Israel-Jordan relations. 1950s-60s, sharply declined in the steadily declined through the 1970s-90s 1970s, moderately increased from and increased again in the first decade of the 1980s on. the 2000s.

India-Pakistan 4

98 in rivalry total*

46 in rivalry total

51 40 17 10

Israel-Syria Israel-Egypt Israel-Jordan Israel-Lebanon

India-Pakistan 46

Interstate Dispute Density Warness (Number of MIDs)

Arab-Israel (AI)

India-Pakistan (IP)

Attributes

Table 4.1.  Trends of Warness in the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli Rivalries

Accumulation of conflict years began Accumulation of conflict years began to rise In both rivalries, a major to rise through the 1980s, then in the 1970s-80s, declined in the early increase in state-NSA armed sharply escalated and peaked in the 1990s and re-escalated and peaked in the confrontations was recorded 1990s-2000s. 2000s. over time, beginning in the 1970s in the AI rivalry and in the 1980s in the IP rivalry. An exchange between interstate and An exchange between interstate and state- State-NSA armed confrontations state-NSA domains of conflict. The NSA domains of conflict. Mixed interstate became more prominent in interstate domain of the rivalry trends: Two dyadic adversaries moved both rivalries. In the IP rivalry, exhibits conflict reduction in terms toward conflict termination, while two they increasingly became stateof dispute density over time. others remain hostile, yet exhibit conflict sponsored. In the AI rivalry, they reduction in terms of dispute density and gradually became less stateseverity over time. sponsored over time. State-NSA confrontations persistently State-NSA confrontations persistently increased, while remaining highly increased, with the Israeli-Palestinian issue entwined with the interstate dispute. rising to the top of the rivalry.

* Some of the disputes and wars included more than one dyad, so there is a discrepancy between their counts in the total rivalry level and in the dyadic level.

Profiles of Warness Variation

State-NSA Trends of Armed Warness Confrontations (conflict years)

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no dialogue with any of the Pakistani-based militant organizations operating in Kashmir, such as Lashker-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Al-Badr and Haraqat-ul-Mujahideen. Moreover, patron-client relationships between states and NSAs are substantially different in the two conflict arenas, as are the links between the interstate and state-NSA domains of warness. The armed Palestinian resistance against Israel began in the mid-1950s with the encouragement of Arab states. By the 1960s, the PLO under Yasser Arafat became an assertive organization that gained wide international recognition as the authentic representative of the Palestinian people. PLO member organizations, as well as other Palestinian groups, have become increasingly involved in state-NSA armed confrontations. While leaders of the Arab countries have constantly proclaimed their commitment to the Palestinian cause, relations between the Palestinian leadership and the Arab states have become controversial and tense. Indeed, an inter-Arab conflict of interest has often led to confrontations between them, including disastrous Palestinian defeats such as the 1970 Black September events in Jordan, the 1976 Tel al-Zaatar massacre during Lebanon’s civil war, and the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre during Israel’s Lebanon War. Yet the Arab leaders have kept paying lip service to the Palestinian cause also in light of popular support for the Palestinians in their countries. Egypt and Jordan, which ventured beyond the bounds of Arab discourse to sign peace agreements with Israel, have limited their relations with Israel, making normalization conditional upon progress on the Palestinian issue. The relationship between the Arab states and the Palestinian movement thus emerges as ambivalent and complex. Conversely, Pakistan’s relationship with organizations operating in Kashmir, specifically those advocating Kashmir’s union with Pakistan, is relatively consistent. Pakistan’s pledge to the Kashmiri struggle includes sponsoring various Kashmiri and Pakistani-based organizations, over which its military and intelligence agencies exert varying degrees of control. Pakistan has long provided these organizations with various resources, allowing them to recruit and train operatives in Pakistan, and execute attacks against Indian targets. Indeed, Pakistan’s sponsorship is designed to promote its own goals and ambitions in Kashmir. Accordingly, interstate and state-NSA warness are closely related. That is, direct interstate hostilities have been partly substituted by NSA attacks backed by the Pakistani state. In effect, as seen in the 1999 Kargil crisis, Pakistan has not only supported a proxy war in Kashmir, but has also adopted a deception strategy by which Pakistani paramilitary and regular forces operate across the LoC in the guise of non-state mujahideen.92



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Interstate and state-NSA armed confrontations in the Arab-Israeli conflict became less associated with one another in recent decades. Though territorial disputes still exist between Israel and her northern neighbors, Syria and Lebanon, the Arab states do not claim the territories of Palestine for themselves. In recent decades, all the Arab countries support the idea of Palestinian independence. Indeed, the state-NSA dimension of the rivalry became a secessionist conflict, with the Palestinians demanding their own sovereign state. The territorial dispute over Kashmir, on the other hand, entails unrealized irredentism. Pakistan seeks to unify a territory inhabited by ethno-religious kin, regaining what it perceives as the lost Muslim-majority territory of Kashmir. The Kashmiris’ stand on their political future is more ambiguous. Some of the Kashmiri separatist groups, like the JKLF, aspire to secession and independence, while others, mainly Islamist organizations such as Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, hold pro-Pakistani positions and desire union with Pakistan. As the literature on separatist conflicts indicates, political processes within two rivaling countries drive the irredentist dynamic, and the India-Pakistan conflict is no exception: India’s policies antagonized the Kashmir population and encouraged their separatist aspirations.93 Considering what we know about irredentist conflicts, however, it is not surprising that Pakistan is the side that persistently encourages insurgence in Kashmir, thereby entangling the interstate and state-NSA domains of warness and obstructing resolution and peace. As we have seen, the two conflicts show a similar trend of de-escalation in interstate warness versus escalation in state-NSA warness, and a long-­ standing connection between the two domains of conflict is a feature of both conflicts. A closer look, however, reveals a greater degree of conflict reduction in the Arab-Israeli rivalry than is evident in Indo-Pakistani dynamics. Indeed, the main contention in the Middle Eastern rivalry has largely shifted from debating Israel’s legitimacy and existence, to a discussion on its boundaries. The main issues of dispute in South Asia, on the other hand, have not changed significantly, and thus conflict reduction in this arena seems instrumental rather than substantial. India and Pakistan have occasionally engaged in dialogue since 1997. Military and economic incentives offered by the United States in the context of the war on terror have further convinced the Pakistani military to adopt a new approach towards India, and to join efforts to reduce tension and promote peace.94 However, neither country has demonstrated a profound change in its understanding of its own national interest and strategic circumstances, the sort of change that might indicate its readiness to make the kind of concessions made by Egypt and Israel in the Arab-Israeli rivalry, and which are essential for conflict resolution.

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NOTES   1. The Correlates of War (COW) project, Militarized Interstate Disputes (v4.1), http://www.correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/MIDs. The unit of analysis is the conflict, observed by year. That is, an indication of a conflict in each year in the dataset means that the conflict persisted through that year, reaching the 25 battle-related deaths threshold.   2. UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset, Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) and the Centre for the Study of Civil War at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset (version 4–2016), https://www​ .prio.org/Data/Armed-Conflict/UCDP-PRIO/   3. The UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset distinguishes between two intensity levels: minor armed conflicts and wars. Preliminary results indicate that the majority of state-NSA confrontations are coded as minor clashes, so no substantial trends of hostility change over time can be traced.   4. Stephen P. Cohen, Shooting for a Century: The India-Pakistan Conundrum (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013), 4.  5. Rathnam Indurthy and Muhammad Haque, “The Kashmir Conflict: Why It Defies Solution,” International Journal on World Peace 27, 1 (2010), 38.   6. “1990 Indo-Pakistan Crisis,” GlobalSecurity.org, at: http://www.globalsecurity​ .org/military/world/war/indo-pak-1990.htm  7. Iffat Malik, Kashmir: Ethnic Conflict, International Dispute (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002).   8. Dispute Narratives, MID 3.0 dataset, Correlates of War 2 project, at: http:// cow2.la.psu.edu.   9. Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl, “The Volcano Model and Other Patterns in the Evolution of Enduring Rivalries,” in Paul F. Diehl (ed.), The Dynamics of Enduring Rivalries (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998). 10. Paul F. Diehl, Gary Goertz and Daniel Saeedi, “Theoretical Specifications of Enduring Rivalries: Applications to the India-Pakistan Case,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 40–43. 11. Dennis Kux, India-Pakistan Negotiations: Is Past Still Prologue? (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006). 12. Musarat Javed Cheema, “Pakistan-India Conflict with Special Reference to Kashmir,” South Asian Studies 30, 1 (2015), 49–53. 13. Lubna Abid Ali, “The Rann of Kutch and Its Aftermath,” South Asian Studies 24, 2 (2009), 250–56. 14.  K. N. Pandita, “Revisiting Indo-Pak Negotiations on Kashmir 1962–63,” The Kashmir Herald (2014), at: http://www.kashmirherald.com/main​ .php?t=OP&st=D&no=190 15. Verghese Koithara, Crafting Peace in Kashmir: Through A Realist Lens (New Delhi: Sage Publications India, 2004), 47–48.



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16. Rashid Qaisar, “Kashmir and the Simla Agreement,” Daily Times (October 18, 2016), at: http://dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/19-Oct-16/kashmir-and-the​ -simla-agreement. 17. Koithara, Crafting Peace in Kashmir, 50–51. 18. P. R. Char, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Stephen P. Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagement in South Asia (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), 34. 19. Cheema, “Pakistan-India Conflict,” 58. 20. Sumit Ganguly, Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 32. 21. Ganguly points to internal disagreement within the BJP, between Prime Minister Vajpayee and Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, as another possible cause of the failure of the Agra talks. Their dispute touched upon the significance of the Kashmir dispute and Pakistan’s involvement in terror against India (Ganguly, Deadly Impasse, 51). 22. Suranjan Das, Kashmir and Sindh: Nation-Building, Ethnicity and Regional Politics in South Asia (London: Anthem Press, 2001). 23. “2002—Kashmir Crisis,” GlobalSecurity.org, at: http://www.globalsecurity​ .org/military/world/war/kashmir-2002.htm. 24. Umbreen Javaid, and Marium Kamal, “The Mumbai Terror ‘2008’ and Its Impact on the Indo-Pak Relations,” A Research Journal of South Asian Studies 28, 1 (2013), 34–35. 25. Ganguly, Deadly Impasse, 95–96. 26. Ashutosh Varshney, “India, Pakistan, and Kashmir: Antinomies of Nationalism,” Asian Survey 31, 11 (1991), 1009–12. 27. Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict (London and New York: I. B. Taurus & Co, 2003), 142. 28. Meirav Mishali-Ram, “When Ethnicity and Religion Meet: Kinship Ties and Cross-Border Dynamics in the Afghan-Pakistani Conflict Zone,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 17 (2011), 263–65. 29. Christine C. Fair, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 230. 30. Fair, Fighting to the End, 239. 31. On Pakistan’s involvement in the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, and its attempt to establish a friendly Pashtun administration there, which was perceived as essential to acquiring strategic depth in the event of an armed conflict with India, see Bruce Riedel, “Pakistan and Terror: The Eye of the Storm,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 618, 1 (2008), 31–45. 32. Varshney, “India, Pakistan, and Kashmir,” 1016–17. 33. Michael Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 176–78. 34. Sumit Ganguly, “Explaining the Kashmir Insurgency: Political Mobilization and Institutional Decay,” International Security 21, 2 (1996), 76.

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35. Rajat Ganguly, “India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Insurgency: Causes, Dynamics and Prospects for Resolution,” Asian Studies Review 25, 3 (2001), 314. 36. Ganguly, “India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Insurgency,” 310–11. 37. Christine Fair notes that not all of these organizations are Kashmiris and that some of them are external militant groups that focus their struggle in Kashmir. Indeed, as discussed in Chapter 5, some of the prominent groups include few ethnic Kashmiris in their ranks and do not limit their activities to Kashmir (Fair, Fighting to the End, 243–50). 38. Ganguly, Deadly Impasse, 130. 39. Cheema, “Pakistan-India Conflict,” 63. The Indian government held talks with Kashmiri representatives as early as 1949, yet these talks, and the ensuing Delhi Agreement signed in 1952, aimed to settle the constitutional relationship between the State of Kashmir and the Union of India, prior to the rise of assertive separatist demands. 40. Navnita Chadha Behera, Demystifying Kashmir (New Delhi: Pearson Education, 2007). 41. Formed in 1993 as an alliance of twenty-six political, social and religious organizations, the APHC represented the political face of the separatist movement, yet most of the groups in the umbrella organization had links with militant outfits. 42. Randeep Ramesh, “Kashmir Talks Yield Promise of Peace,” The Guardian [online], https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/23/india.kashmir. 43. Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl, “The Volcano Model and Other Patterns in the Evolution of Enduring Rivalries,” in Paul F. Diehl (ed.), The Dynamics of Enduring Rivalries (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998); Paul F. Diehl and Gary Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 137–38. 44. Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl, “The Initiation and Termination of Enduring Rivalries: The Impact of Political Shocks,” American Journal of Political Science 39, 1 (1995), 30–52. 45. With Iraq, unlike the four adjacent Arab states, there was no formal agreement to end the war. 46. Miriam R. Lowi, Water and Power: The Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Basin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).  47. T.G. Fraser, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (London: Palgrave, 2015), 72–73. 48. Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 7–8. 49. Moshe Gat, “Nasser and the Six Day War, 5 June 1967: A Premediated Strategy or an Inexorable Drift to War?” Israel Affairs 11, 4 (2005). 50. See for example Moshe Shemesh, Arab Politics, Palestinian Nationalism and the Six Day War: The Crystallization of Arab Strategy and Nasir’s Descent to War, 1957–1967 (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2008). 51. William L. Cleveland and Martin Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East (Boulder: Westview Press; sixth edition, 2016). 52. Brecher and Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis, 287.



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53. Fraser, The Arab-Israeli Conflict, 99–100. 54. Michael Brecher, Dynamics of the Arab-Israel Conflict: Past and Present, Intellectual Odyssey II (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 284. 55. Dispute Narratives, MID 4.0 dataset, Correlates of War 2 project, at: http:// cow.la.psu.edu/COW2%20Data/MIDs/MID_Narratives_2002–2010.pdf 56. The total number of Arab-Israeli militarized disputes is based on the MID dataset at the conflict level. That is, it encompasses the number of confrontations in the rivalry as a whole. Note that some of the disputes included more than one dyad so that there is a difference between the count of disputes at the conflict level and the dyadic level of analysis. For example, the 1967 Six-Day War is recorded as one militarized dispute in the conflict, yet in a dyadic count it appears three times—for Israel-Egypt, Israel-Syria and Israel-Lebanon. The 1969 War of Attrition, on the other hand, is recorded as a single dispute both at the conflict level and the dyadic one (as an Israeli-Egyptian dispute). 57. Goertz and Diehl, “The Initiation and Termination of Enduring Rivalries,” 30–52; Diehl and Goertz, War and Peace. 58. Though often regarded as the Second Lebanon War, the 2006 Israel-Lebanon dispute is not classified as a war in the MID dataset, but rather as a confrontation involving serious clashes short of full-scale war (hostility level 4 on a scale of 1–5). 59. Brecher, Dynamics of the Arab-Israel Conflict, 278–80. 60. Brecher, Dynamics of the Arab-Israel Conflict, 280–81. 61. William B. Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967 (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 2005), 140–41. 62. Brian S. Mandell, “Anatomy of a Confidence-Building Régime: EgyptianIsraeli Security Co-operation, 1973–1979,” International Journal 45, 2 (1990). 63. Itamar Rabinovich, The Lingering Conflict: Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East 1948–2012 (Bookings Institution Press: Washington, DC, 2013), 16–18. 64. Brecher, Dynamics of the Arab-Israel Conflict, 288–306; Rabinovich, The Lingering Conflict, 27–86. 65. Joshua Teitelbaum, “The Arab Peace Initiative,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, September 2011, http://jcpa.org/article/the-arab-peace-initiative/. 66. Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1999 (New York, NY: Knopf, 1999), 184–96. 67. Estimations of the number of Palestinians who became refugees by the end of the war vary. The UN estimated the total refugee population at 940,000, as of June 1949. See Kirsten E. Schulze, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (London: Routledge, 2008), 18. Other estimations revolve around 600,000 to 760,000 Palestinians who fled Palestine during the war. See Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1. On the Palestinian refugee issue see also Rex Brynen, “Palestinian Refugees,” in Joel Peters and David Newman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013), 109–20. 68. See Brecher and Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis, 273–74, 277.

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69. Fraser, The Arab-Israeli Conflict, 64–66. 70. Anat Kurz, Fatah and the Politics of Violence: The Institutionalization of a Popular Struggle (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 29–31. 71. Fraser, The Arab-Israeli Conflict, 76–77. 72. Rami Nasrallah, “The First and Second Palestinian Intifadas,” in Joel Peters and David Newman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013), 61–62. 73. Yoram Schwietzer, “The Rise and Fall of Suicide Bombings in the Second Intifada,” Strategic Assessment 13, 3 (2010), 40. 74. Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, The Seventh War: How We Won and Why We Lost the War with the Palestinians (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Ahronoth and Hemed Books, 2004), 77–82. 75. Nasrallah, “The First and Second Palestinian Intifadas,” 64. 76. Israel’s unilateral withdrawal of its army from the Gaza Strip in August 2005 intensified the power struggle between Fatah and Hamas. In 2007, the internal rivalry culminated in the split of the Palestinian Authority, after which Hamas established separate governance in the Gaza Strip. On the retreating intraPalestinian relations see Chapter 5. 77. Yom al-Ard is an annual day of commemoration for six Arab citizens of Israel who were killed in confrontations with the IDF in 1976 while protesting Israel’s plan of expropriating Palestinian land for state purposes. The Palestinians mark Land Day every year with general strikes and demonstrations. 78. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian Territories: https://www.ochaopt.org/publications. 79. The territorial dispute over Shebaa Farms arose with the demarcation of the Blue Line in May 2000, following Israel’s announcement of its willingness to comply with Security Council Resolution 425 regarding the withdrawal of IDF forces from Lebanon. There is an international debate on whether the original sovereignty over the territory is Lebanese or Syrian. Lebanon demands that Israel withdraw from the area according to its obligations to the UN on Lebanon. 80. Ali E. Hillal Dessouki, “Egyptian Foreign Policy since Camp David,” in William B. Quandt (ed.), The Middle East: Ten Years After Camp David (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1988), 96–97. 81. Dan Eldar, “Israel and Egypt: A Reversible Peace,” Middle East Quarterly 10, 4 (2003), 58–59. 82. Hemda Ben-Yehuda and Shmuel Sandler, The Arab-Israeli Conflict Transformed: Fifty Years of Interstate and Ethnic Crises (Albany: State University of New York, 2002), 114. 83. Eldar, “Israel and Egypt,” 58. 84. Rabinovich, The Lingering Conflict, 208–16. 85. Rabinovich, The Lingering Conflict, 212–14. 86. David D. Kirkpatrick, “Secret Alliance: Israel Carries Out Airstrikes in Egypt, with Cairo’s O.K.,” The New York Times, February 3, 2018, at: https://www​ .nytimes.com/2018/02/03/world/middleeast/israel-airstrikes-sinai-egypt.html



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87. Shlomo (Sami) Turjeman, “Israel’s Sinai Dilemma,” The Washington Institute PolicyWatch 2960 (April, 2018): http://www.Washingtoninstitute.Org/PolicyAnalysis/View/Israels-Sinai-Dilemma. 88. Ofir Winter and Shlomo Brom, “Israel and the New Leaf in Egypt-Hamas Relations,” The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) Insight No. 898, 2017. 89. Yehuda Lukacs, Israel, Jordan, and the Peace Process (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 2–4. 90. For rough estimates of the number of Palestinian refugees, see Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 298; and Brynen, “Palestinian Refugees,” 109–11. 91. Goertz and Diehl, “The Volcano Model.” 92. Christine Fair, “Militants in the Kargil Conflict: Myths, Realities, and Impacts,” in Peter Lavoy (ed.), Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 231–57. 93. Stephen M. Saideman and William R. Ayers, “Determining the Sources of Irredentism: Logit Analyses of Minorities at Risk Data,” Journal of Politics 62 (2000), 1126–44. 94. Vali Nasser, “National Identities and the India-Pakistan Conflict,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 199–200.

Chapter Five

Actors and Agendas

Enduring rivalries raise theoretical questions regarding the origins of conflict and the reasons for its persistence. In order to understand the perseverance of such rivalries and the prospects of their resolution, we need to look into change dynamics in the actors involved and the political and ideological motives that shape their behavior over time. As we have seen in the previous chapters, one of the most prominent changes in the ongoing rivalries in South Asia and the Middle East is the growth of powerful non-state actors (NSAs). The increasing centrality of these players in both conflicts is part of a global phenomenon that has developed in the past fifty years: NSAs have become an influential force in international relations. In the early 1970s, scholars began to question state-centrism and detected the evolvement of a mixed-actor international system.1 The end of the Cold War accelerated these scholarly efforts to understand the complex nature of the emerging world order, particularly the growing role of NSAs in conflicts.2 Today we know much more about the role of NSAs in conflict than we did before the 1990s. For example, we now recognize that when militant political NSAs emerge as prominent participants in enduring rivalries, they bring new issues, agendas and behavioral modes to the conflict and thereby complicate the rivalries, hindering interstate efforts of de-escalation and conflict resolution.3 This chapter reviews the development of actors and agendas in the IndiaPakistan and Arab-Israeli rivalries. More specifically, it focuses on prominent leaders, political parties and non-state organizations that have formed dominant perceptions, attitudes and agendas regarding the two conflicts. The chapter lays emphasis on competing identities and changing identity discourses among key political actors in the two conflict arenas. The assumption behind this inquiry is that identities affect the way these actors shape their 139

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political values and interests, thereby playing a central role in the persistence of rivalries over time. INDIANS, PAKISTANIS AND KASHMIRIS As discussed in Chapter 3, inter-communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims in British India led to a split between the political parties that represented the interests of the two communities. The development of political organizations was part of the national awakening process, accompanied by ideological debates on the very definition of the separate Indian communities. Ethnicity, religion, tribalism, regionalism and nationalism intermingled in defining the identities and goals of Hindus and Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, before and after the partition. After independence, different state ideologies and perceptions of identity carried implications for the onset and endurance of conflict between the two states. Similar debates over national and religious identities have taken place in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which despite its predominantly Muslim population deliberated on its association with either India or Pakistan, and largely sought independence from both. Civic and Hindu Nationalism in India British colonialism in South Asia contributed to the rise of Indian political awareness and the emergence of Indian political leadership. The beginning of the British Raj in 1857 led to the establishment of the Indian independence movement, which encompassed diverse strategies to end the foreign rule, ranging from revolutionary acts of violence to peaceful non-violent protests. It was a mass movement that spurred millions of people of all classes and ideologies into political action against colonial rule. By the end of the 19th century, the Indian National Congress became the principal leader of the independence movement. Formed in 1885, the Congress initially sought to promote civic and political dialogue with the British Raj, aiming to obtain economic rights and a greater share of Indians in government. By the turn of the century, in the face of persistent obstruction from the British, the Congress began to advocate in favor of the independence movement. In 1915, Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from his long human rights mission in South Africa. Gandhi joined the Indian National Congress, and by 1921 took its reins in his hands. Before long, he turned the Congress from a predominantly upper-middle class party to a mass organization. Gandhi promoted the premise of swaraj, self-rule, emphasizing the sovereignty of the people. He also developed the idea of satyagraha, non-violent civil



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resistance, expressed in the Non-Cooperation Movement he launched to boycott all aspects of the British Raj, including not only British manufactures but also institutions operated by the British in India. In the following years, the moderate leaders of the Congress largely adopted Gandhi’s policy of non-violence, making civil disobedience a prominent feature of the Indian independence movement. However, there were assertive nationalist voices within the independence movement that offered a belligerent approach to the struggle for selfdetermination, supporting direct action to secure Indian freedom. Many of them adhered to Hindu nationalism, an endeavor aimed at preserving Hindu culture and its traditional social order.4 The partition of Bangladesh by the British government in 1905 advanced the Hindu nationalist position, with the Swadeshi (“of our own country”) movement advocating a self-reliance strategy of boycotting British goods and boosting local production. The demonstrations, strikes and boycotts they led in Bengal spread to other regions in India. In 1915, an All-India Mahasabha was formed as an umbrella organization, linking provincial Hindu Sabhas (Hindu councils). The Mahasabha incorporated various activist Hindu groups, such as the reform Arya Samaj and the Sanatana Dharma Sabhas movements into a common Hindu communal front.5 In the 1920s, influenced by Western conceptions, the Hindu nationalist movement developed an ethno-national ideology that largely molded the collective identity of the Hindus of India. This identity took shape in the context of rising inter-communal rivalry under the British Raj and a burgeoning Muslim consciousness, influenced by the Khilafat movement in South Asia.6 Advocating Hindu political and cultural nationalism, Hindu activist groups began debating how Indian society should be reorganized, with the aim of reconciling traditional caste-based divisions with Hindu unity under a common identity. In this vein, the Indian independence activist Vinayak Damodar (Veer) Savarkar construed the idea of Hindu unity in terms of an Indian nation. In 1923, Savarkar coined the term Hindutva, or Hinduness, defining nationality (rashtra), race (jati) and civilization (sanskriti) as “three pillars” of the collective Hindu identity.7 The notion of Hindutva encompasses the followers of all Indian religions including Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, but excludes those who follow “foreign religions” such as Islam, Christianity and Judaism. In 1925, Keshav Hedgewar founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, literally the National Patriotic Organization), which was to become India’s preeminent Hindu nationalist association, a major harbinger of Hindutva.8 After independence, the Congress remained the dominant party in Indian politics, forming the first central government under Jawaharlal Nehru, as well

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as some regional state governments. The Congress leaders sought to unite the inhabitants of the subcontinent under a civic, secular and liberal Indian identity. Given the multiplicity of religious, ethnic and regional divisions in Indian society, Congress leaders like Nehru emphasized the plurality and diversity of Indian civilization.9 In July 1948, Nehru wrote: “I believe in India being a secular state with complete freedom for all religions and cultures and for cooperation between them.”10 In his view, a secular state was to bind the diverse range of religious beliefs and traditions in the Indian society. Thus, he claimed, a secular state cannot attach itself to any one religion and declare it as the state religion. It cannot be an anti-religious state either.11 Accordingly, Nehru rejected the idea of a Hindu Rashtra, a Hindu nation-state, asserting that “[T]he moment you talk of a Hindu Rashtra, you speak in a language which no other country except one can comprehend and that country is Pakistan…They can immediately justify their creation of an Islamic nation by pointing to the world that we are doing something similar.”12 The Hindu nationalists, on the other hand, stressed the religious marker of Indian identity. Thus, they largely adopted Savarkar’s concept of Hindutva, emphasizing Hindu sangathan, unification, and not an all-Indian one. Hindu nationalists blamed the Congress leaders for appeasing India’s minorities and weakening the state. Criticizing Gandhi’s ethic of religious tolerance within a secular state, they saw Hinduism not just as a religion but as a culture that touches upon a variety of areas of Indian society and rejected the possibility of secular order. The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, shortly after the partition, reflected this controversial identity discourse, particularly the hostility of Hindu nationalists towards the civic conception of Indian nationalism. On January 30, 1948, a Hindu nationalist, Nathuram Godse, assassinated Gandhi while on his way to address a prayer meeting. The assassin, a past member of the RSS, was linked to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha. In the aftermath of the assassination, Nehru’s government turned to suppress the RSS. In 1951, sticking to his vision of a pluralist secular state, Nehru reiterated his opposition to a Hindu state claimed by the Hindu nationalists: Hindu Rashtra can only mean one thing and that is to leave the modern way and get into a narrow, old fashioned way of thinking, and fragment India into pieces. Those who are not Hindus will be reduced in status. You may say patronizingly that you will look after the Muslims or Christians or others as in Pakistan they say that they will look after the Hindus. Do you think any race or individual will accept for long the claim that they are looked after while we sit above them?13

To be sure, both Nehru and Savarkar pursued the unification of Indian society and the establishment of a modern Indian nation-state. Both sought



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to promote local economic development. However, their visions of the collective national identity diverged. Nehru’s inclusive vision of the Indian state dictated the attitude of the Congress party toward the Muslim minority and the Kashmir dispute. The inclusion of the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir in the Indian Union, in his view, was part of the idea of integrating the Indian nation, a part of India’s civic national identity. Thus, Nehru supported a plebiscite in the princely state that sought independence. Although Kashmir’s population was largely Muslim, Nehru believed that it might choose to join India. Nehru’s support of a referendum in Kashmir largely aimed to undermine the Pakistani communal approach, according to which the Muslim population should necessarily be part of Muslim Pakistan. This communal perception underlying the idea of partition threatened to destabilize India and challenge its legitimacy because of the millions of Muslims who remained in India after the partition. In other words, the perception of a secular and multifaceted Indian national identity greatly increased the importance of Kashmir in the emerging territorial conflict between India and Pakistan. So, when a rebellion broke out in Kashmir in the aftermath of the partition, and Pakistan was preparing to conquer the state, Nehru accepted the request of Maharaja Hari Singh and sent troops to defend Jammu and Kashmir. In return, he required and accepted the accession of the state to India, as well as the maharajah’s consent to transfer the reins of power to Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. Back in 1932, Sheikh Abdullah and Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas formed the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, in light of the Hindu maharaja’s discriminatory policy against the Muslim population. In 1939, the organization was renamed the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, emphasizing its all-inclusive agenda in demanding political and economic rights for all the state’s inhabitants.14 However, Abbas left the organization in 1941 and revived the Muslim Conference and its religious national discourse. In contrast, the National Conference under Sheikh Abdullah introduced a discourse of secular Kashmiri identity and led a struggle for democratic political rights. With this agenda, Abdullah allied the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference with the Indian Congress Party. Realizing that the maharaja refrained from taking steps towards granting greater political rights, Abdullah launched a struggle against the Dogra House to end the reign of the Hindu dynasty in Jammu and Kashmir.15 Inspired by the Quit India movement orchestrated by the Congress in 1942 to demand an end to British rule in India, Abdullah announced the Quit Kashmir movement in 1946 against Maharajah Hari Singh. The agitation triggered a massive crackdown by Hari Singh’s regime.

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However, leading the struggle for the liberation of Jammu and Kashmir was a complex task due to the heterogeneity of its population. Jammu and Kashmir is highly diverse in terms of ethnic, religious and linguistic characteristics, including major ethnic groups like Kashmiris, Gujjars, Bakarwals, Dogras, Ladakhis, Chibalis and Hanjis, and numerous smaller ethnic groups. Though intermingled, the diverse groups have regions of high concentration. In addition, regional division is linked to religious affiliation, with the Valley of Kashmir overwhelmingly dominated by Sunni Muslims,16 Jammu primarily populated by Hindus and Sikhs and Ladakh split mainly between Shi’ite Muslims and Buddhists.17 While the Muslims constitute a majority in the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, the cultural diversity of the population includes differences even between the Muslims of Jammu and the Muslims of Kashmir, as Jammu Muslims are closer to the Muslims in Punjab than to those in the Valley of Kashmir.18 Accordingly, the people of the Jammu region and those of the Kashmir Valley have held different political preferences. The split between the National Conference and the Muslim Conference highlighted the division between the two regions, expressed in broad support of Abbas’ Muslim Conference among the Muslims of Jammu, and widespread popularity of Abdullah’s National Conference among the people of Kashmir. Indeed, even though Abdullah introduced an all-inclusive secular discourse in the selfdetermination struggle, he gradually lost the support of Jammu. And yet, his party was the dominant political organization in the state, with a large Muslim and Hindu following. When the time came for partition, Abdullah and the National Conference supported the maharaja’s accession to India, believing that Jammu and Kashmir’s political autonomy would be better protected in a secular and democratic India. The Muslim Conference, on the other hand, supported the accession of the state to Muslim Pakistan. And so, with the support of Gandhi and Nehru, a few days after India sent troops to prevent a Pakistani occupation of Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah was sworn in as head of an emergency administration in Jammu and Kashmir. A few months later, in March 1948, he was inaugurated as the state’s prime minister. Before long, though, Abdullah turned to focus on Kashmiri identity, emphasizing the unique Kashmiri culture, distinct from that of other regions of the state. Moreover, he began fluctuating between support of Kashmir’s affiliation with India and its demand for self-determination and independence.19 In 1949, seeking to contain Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian Union, India granted it an autonomous status under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. In 1951, the state elected a Constituent Assembly. Dominated by the National Conference, the assembly sought to empower the majority



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community of Kashmiri Muslims, and concentrated state power in the Valley. The government’s communal policies preferred Kashmir politically and economically, thereby alienating the people of Jammu and Ladakh. Against this background, the Jammu Praja Parishad, established in 1947 as a local RSS organization, voiced opposition to the state government. The party, largely adhering to Hindu nationalism, blamed the Muslim leaders of the National Conference for the plight of the Hindus in Jammu. To end Kashmiri domination over Jammu and prevent the Islamization of the state’s administration, the Paraja Parishad rejected Abdullah’s premise of self-determination. Hindu nationalist groups in the Indian Union, including the newly formed Jana Sangh, the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, joined the Jammu Paraja Parishad’s demand to reverse Kashmir’s autonomous status and work toward full integration of the state with India. Although the party was unable to stir up broad political support, it articulated communal discontent. Indeed, it turned out that the endeavor to form a Kashmiri nation was not comprehensive enough to include the people of Jammu and Ladakh. Particularly, the Hindu majority of Jammu and the large Buddhist community of Ladakh did not share Abdullah’s vision of an independent Jammu and Kashmir dominated by the Muslim majority. In 1953, Abdullah was dismissed and imprisoned on charges of conspiring with Pakistan to separate Jammu and Kashmir from India, and make it an independent state. He spent most of the following eleven years in detention. In 1955, Abdullah’s deputy Mirza Mohammad Afzal Beg founded the All Jammu and Kashmir Plebiscite Front. Carried out under the patronage of Abdullah, the Plebiscite Front became the principal opposition to the state government, now headed by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad. The movement called for a referendum, to be held under the auspices of the United Nations, to determine the future sovereignty of Jammu and Kashmir. It also called for a boycott of the state elections and thereby strengthened the National Conference, which the Indian government supported. By the end of the 1960s, the small-scale acts of sabotage carried out by the Plebiscite Front against the Indian police authorities in Kashmir escalated into armed resistance waged by secessionist organizations like Al-Fatah, and later the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). Led by Ghulam Rasool Zehgeer, Al-Fatah was one of the pioneers of indigenous Kashmiri guerilla warfare in Kashmir, but it was quickly suppressed by the Indian forces. The JKLF, founded in England in 1977, called for a sovereign Kashmir, liberated from both India and Pakistan. The separatist organization stood for an independent, secular and democratic Kashmir that would include all Kashmiris, irrespective of their religious affiliation.

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In February 1988, Ishaq Majid Wani, Yasin Malik, Hamid Sheikh and Javed Mir reestablished the JKLF in Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir, and gained the support of the Pakistani ISI, which had begun training militants and establishing terror cells in Kashmir.20 However, in the early 1990s, the JKLF started to weaken. Indian counterinsurgency removed much of its leadership, wiping out its central control. At the same time, Pakistan started to shift its support from the pro-independence front to the more radical pro-Pakistani insurgent groups, which were encouraged to target members of the JKLF. Serious schisms within the leadership of JKLF ensued. In May 1994, Yasin Malik decided to renounce violence and conduct a peaceful liberation struggle.21 As a result, the organization split into two groups: Amanullah Khan led a group that favored violent resistance, while Malik headed a group that opted for the path of non-violence. By the early 1970s, leaders of the Plebiscite Front had begun to rethink their confrontational stance toward India. Pakistan’s defeat in the Bangladesh War of 1971, and its subsequent division, strengthened the regional status of India. Sheikh Abdullah came to realize that Kashmir was in no position to demand self-determination. There was also no significant and binding alliance between him and Pakistan, beyond sharing ideas on Kashmir’s secession. In 1974, he signed the Kashmir Accord with India’s Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. The Indira-Sheikh agreement confirmed the support of the Plebiscite Front for Indian sovereignty over Kashmir, thereby quelling the demand for a referendum and renewing Kashmir’s autonomy under Article 370. The ongoing controversy in Indian politics regarding the Kashmir issue, and the conflict with Pakistan in general, has corresponded with differences in views on Indian identity. Hindu nationalists have taken a more hostile stance toward Pakistan in comparison to Congress nationalists, and have accused Congress governments of appeasement towards minorities. Such appeasement, they allege, weakens Indian nationhood. The main organizational force leading the Hindu nationalist struggle is the RSS, which introduced a paramilitary organization emphasizing military values in the Hindu-Muslim conflict.22 Though it has not offered candidates for elections, the RSS has been closely aligned with right-wing political parties that do compete in elections. Indeed, the RSS became the parent organization of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Indian People’s Party, adhering to Hindu nationalism and advocating the principles of Hindutva. In 1951, Syama Prasad Mukherjee resigned from the Hindu Mahasabha and founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, known as the Jan Sangh party. Mukherjee, a former minister of commerce and industry in Nehru’s government, sought to introduce a “nationalistic alternative” to the Indian Congress.



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The new party became the political arm of the militant RSS, which continued to sponsor extra-parliamentary organizations, such as Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) that worked to unify the diverse sects of the Hindu nation. In 1977, the Jan Sangh merged with several other parties and formed the Janata party, in opposition to the Congress and the state of emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, when the Congress restricted civil liberties and persecuted political dissidents. That year saw a momentous political upheaval in India, with the Janata Party defeating the Congress in the general elections and its leader, Morarji Desai, becoming the first non-Congress prime minister in the history of the independent state. Indeed, cracks began to appear in the Congress after Nehru’s death in 1964, and the party later split under his daughter, Indira Gandhi. During her first term as prime minister (1966–1977), mass support for the Congress gradually waned, especially after the 1975–1977 state of emergency she imposed. The political upheaval of 1977 opened a new era in Indian politics, marked by the rise of right-wing parties and changes in public discourse. Hindutva became a major notion in political agendas in the 1980s, challenging “Nehruvian” secularism.23 The strengthening of the Janata faction, which split and re-formed in 1980 as the BJP, reflected the Hindu nationalist movement’s development into a powerful phenomenon that changed the religious and political atmosphere in India. Adhering to Hindu nationalism, the BJP offered a new interpretation of secularism, upon which India was founded. Unlike western secularism, Indian secularism, according to the BJP, is not independent of religion, but sees all the citizens of the state equally, regardless of their religion. Over the next decades, the BJP grew into the largest political party in the national parliament and state assemblies.24 Developments in Kashmir, especially the outbreak of the 1989 insurgency, certainly contributed to these changes in the Indian discourse and agenda, in the context of inter-communal relations in general and the conflict with Pakistan in particular. The increasing unrest in Kashmir in the 1980s, stemming not only from growing support for a national separatist ideology but also from an internal political crisis, marked a new phase in the conflict agenda. In 1984, the National Conference government of Farooq Abdullah, the son and heir of Sheikh Abdullah, was ousted. In 1986, Farooq signed an agreement with Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, which restored him as Kashmir’s chief minister and outlined a roadmap for stabilizing the state in cooperation with the central government. This muddling in Kashmir’s politics tainted the National Conference, whose leaders lost their credibility; they were seen as collaborators by the Kashmiris. Thus, the Rajiv-Farooq accord, along with allegations of widespread rigging in the subsequent assembly elections of 1987, marked a watershed in the state’s history. It raised resentment among

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young Kashmiris and bred despair vis-à-vis the political process in the state under Indian rule. All this played a part in instigating the violent insurgency that flooded Kashmir in years to come.25 India responded to the large-scale Kashmir insurgency with severe repression. The tough military crackdown succeeded in diminishing the rebellion but not in eliminating it. Moreover, the fierce counterterrorism policy increased the Kashmiris’ frustration and strengthened their support of the separatist struggle. Previous demands for autonomy transformed into demands for azadi, freedom from the Indian Union. In this vein, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) was formed in Kashmir in 1993 as an umbrella organization for the separatist cause, consisting of twenty-six political organizations and parties with various aims. Designed to represent the wishes and aspirations of the Kashmiri people, the Hurriyat brought together supporters of Jammu and Kashmir’s independence and advocates of making the state part of Pakistan. While most of the groups within the Hurriyat were linked to a militant outfit, the organization sought to be the political face of the militant movement and demanded Kashmiri representation at any talks between India and Pakistan on Kashmir. The growing demand for separatism in Kashmir was also reflected in Indian national politics in increased support for Hindu nationalism, represented by the BJP. To a large extent, Kashmir’s separatist struggle reinforced the Hindu nationalists’ communal perception, and their misgivings about the loyalty of Muslim citizens to the Indian state. To be sure, Kashmiri separatism undermined the idea of an all-Indian civic nationalism, promoted by the Congress. Nonetheless, it is important to underscore the fact that the Indian governments headed by the Congress Party and those led by the BJP have shared similar views on the Kashmir dispute. Throughout the years of conflict, India has offered a variety of strategies in the Kashmir issue, including extensive autonomy and a promised plebiscite in the early years, followed by increased interference in internal Kashmiri politics, and strict repression in the face of the insurgency in recent decades. The BJP offered a stricter approach to the rebellion in Kashmir, and preferred to repeal Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted the state a special autonomous status. However, all Indian governments remained committed to keeping Jammu and Kashmir in the fold. As the Indo-Pakistani rivalry became deeply embedded in India’s political discourse, with the vast majority of its people perceiving Kashmir to be part of the Indian Union, territorial concessions on Kashmir became politically indefensible for any government. Interestingly enough, it was Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, leader of the BJP, who signed the historic Lahore Declaration with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan, and later initiated comprehensive peace talks



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with President Musharraf. His government also modified India’s strategy towards the Kashmir militancy. In 2000, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government engaged in talks with the indigenous Kashmiri Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, not before conditioning the talks on the absence of any Pakistani involvement. The pro-Pakistani militant organization, for its part, made it clear that the talks were aimed to achieve a ceasefire agreement, and not to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Though the Indian government rejected demands for restoring the pre-1953 autonomy status of Kashmir, the Indian minister for home affairs, Lal Krishna Advani, proposed discussing autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian constitution. At this point, however, the Kashmiri demands were far beyond that. The Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant organization, as well as the Hurriyat political umbrella organization, argued that autonomy could not replace the right of self-determination of Jammu and Kashmir.26 Certainly, Pakistan rejected the idea as well. And yet, about a decade after the outbreak of the Kashmir insurgency, India and Pakistan engaged in a dialogue effort that continued during the terms of both the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government (1998– 2004) and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government (2004–2014). That effort, as reviewed in Chapter 4, included the remarkable Lahore Declaration, the Agra summit and the subsequent composite dialogue that started under Vajpayee and continued with Manmohan Singh. However, a series of military confrontations, including nuclear tests by both India and Pakistan in 1998, the Kargil War in 1999 and major terrorist attacks launched by Pakistani-based organizations against Indian targets in 2001 and 2008, hindered the most significant period of dialogue the two countries have ever known. Although Prime Minister Singh restrained India’s military response to the terrorist assaults in Mumbai, public opinion became enraged and restricted the Indian government’s inclination to renew negotiations. In 2014, the BJP returned to power under the leadership of Narendra Modi. Upon his election, Modi invited Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his inauguration, raising hopes for a renewed policy of dialogue. However, Modi’s government has since adopted an aggressive security policy in Kashmir and hawkish attitude towards the Indo-Pakistani conflict. Islamism and the Military in Pakistan As described in Chapter 3, Pakistan was founded without having a shared national identity. For the most part, the national identity of the Muslims of India was created vis-à-vis the “other,” as generally embodied in the Hindu elite that established the Indian independence movement.27 However, the identity discourse of the Muslims was initially focused on Islamic identity,

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emphasizing the protection of Islamic values and faith within a united, Hindu-dominated India. Thus, many Muslim intellectuals did not adhere to Muslim communalism; prominent religious leaders, members of the Jamiat Ulama-e Hind actually supported the Indian Congress Party.28 Nevertheless, as the independence struggle progressed, some Muslim leaders despaired of all-Indian cooperation and gradually withdrew their support for the Congressled national liberation discourse. Fearing the loss of the Muslim minority’s political and economic status in an independent India, Muslim leaders such as Muhammad Ali Jinnah began to advance a communal discourse, underlining the conception of Muslim nationalism, as suggested earlier by intellectuals like Muhammad Iqbal and Chaudhry Rehmat Ali. The evolving Muslim national identity in turn bred the demand for separation. Muslim leaders harnessed Islamic symbols to motivate a mass movement aimed at forming a distinct national sentiment among the Muslims of the subcontinent. They utilized Islam as a unifying notion to justify the creation of a separate independent state. Thus, the political birth of Pakistan was based on religious conviction rather than historical or ethnic tradition. Yet, Muslim nationalism drew on communal identification, not necessarily on religious faith. And so, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of the nation, established Pakistan as a Muslim state, but announced that it would not be a theocratic state ruled by clerics with a divine mission.29 This was contrary to the opinion of Islamist thinkers such as Mawlana Mawdudi, who rejected the idea of a secular Pakistani state, stressing that Islam was the basic logic behind the separation from India.30 Indeed, from its birth, Pakistan has vacillated regarding the core meaning of its Muslim national identity, torn between modernist, conservative and radical interpretations of political Islam.31 After independence, Islam was employed as a solution for regional, ethnonational, linguistic and cultural divisions that threatened to undermine the integrity of the state.32 The newly forged state and nation became dependent on identity for their very legitimacy and union. Pakistan’s elites thus used Islamic political ideology to provide the framework in which the state has defined its national interests.33 At the same time, the military establishment, which soon emerged as a dominant factor in the new Pakistani state, led a security paradigm relying on the perception of an inherent conflict. Over time, the military’s dominance in foreign policy created a militaristic culture, placing the conflict with India at the top of Pakistan’s national agenda. The connection between Islamic ideology and militaristic culture soon spawned a national security strategy of jihad, which would expand and dominate Pakistan’s national discourse in decades to come.34



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In the early 1960s, the state started to align itself with religious life, seeking to enhance public support and improve its political control. However, the identity discourse that created the Pakistani state continued to challenge its integrity. Islam was indeed the framework of a common identity, yet it could not suppress separatist tendencies.35 The 1971 civil war that ripped the country apart, separating the Muslims of East and West Pakistan, proved that Islam was not enough to keep the diverse nation together. The Kashmiri demand for sovereignty certainly contributed to this troubled discourse of identity, underlining the tension between a shared Islamic affiliation and aspirations for ethnic separation. After the civil war and the separation of Bangladesh, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto sought to strengthen the Islamic identity of Pakistan, forging a new model of an Islamic state. Bhutto promoted constitutional reform to endorse Islam’s place in Pakistani statehood, with the aim that “… the Islamic ideology will be the main factor cementing the country’s national unity.”36 A decade later, General Zia ul-Haq initiated a comprehensive Islamization policy applied in various aspects of social life. Moreover, his military regime brought political patronage to the Deobandis, who until the early 1970s constituted a small minority in Pakistan. Consequently, the Deobandi sect grew in power and influence at both the local and national levels. Zia’s policy strengthened Islamist inclinations, which came to the fore in the following years. The Muslim communalist discourse was transformed into a jihadi one.37 To be sure, the rise of Islamic radicalism in the region, fostered by the Afghan War in the 1980s, inspired and reinforced this process. Before long, trends of Islamic radicalization were manifested violently, both in the domestic political arena and in the ongoing conflict with India, especially around the issue of Kashmir. In spite of the external influence, it should be noted that much of Pakistan’s Islamization process, and the subsequent rise of jihadi militancy, can be attributed to state policy. In the face of internal and regional security concerns, the state, through its military establishment, sought security in alliances with non-state militant actors. In particular, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) established close connections with jihadi movements to operate against the Shi’ites from within and India from without. As far as the external arena was concerned, Pakistan’s strategy has largely focused on keeping a balance of power versus India by nurturing anti-Indian militancy in Kashmir and seeking strategic depth by supporting Islamist groups in Afghanistan. In doing so, Pakistan has sowed the seeds of extremism: it has transformed religious conservatism into political radicalism, manifested in violent action. Before long, this strategy cultivated radical Islamic movements that later spiraled out of state control, spreading intense sectarian violence.38

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The connection between Islamism and the powerful military establishment of Pakistan added an Islamist dimension to the regional rivalry. Coinciding with the end of the Afghanistan war and the rise of Islamism in the wider Muslim world, the ISI-Islamist alignment promoted a proliferation of Islamic parties in Kashmir, most of which favored the irredentist agenda of Pakistan. In this context, the Pakistani army developed a comprehensive strategy of low-intensity conflict in which guerilla warfare, conducted by non-state actors supported by regular state forces, was employed to confront India’s advantage in conventional military capability. State support for cross-border activities in Kashmir, led by local Kashmiri organizations such as the JKLF, has been replaced by systematic operation of sectarian Pakistani and Kashmiri organizations from various streams. In effect, Pakistan has taken control of the jihad in Kashmir and restricted nationalist elements. Indeed, Pakistan has overtly advanced its strategic agenda at the expense of the Kashmiri secessionist movement’s aspiration for self-determination and independence. The Pakistani army and intelligence services thus began to support the proPakistani Hizb-ul-Mujahideen in Kashmir. Established in 1989 by Muhammad Ahsan Dar, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (the Party of Holy Warriors) was formed as the military wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami political party. Under Pakistani patronage, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen has advocated the integration of Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan and promoted the idea of Islamizing Kashmir. By 1991, the ISI had cut off aid to the JKLF and instigated splits and defections in the pro-independence camp, while building up the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen with a program of all-out support. Moreover, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen started to directly target JKLF members. Before long, the pro-Pakistani organization became the dominant group in the insurgency. At the same time, the Pakistani army also allied with non-Kashmiri militant organizations, the most prominent of which were Lashker-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad. Established in 1990 by Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT; meaning the Army of the Righteous) is based in Pakistan and most of its members are Pakistani Muslims. LeT was formed as the military wing of the Pakistani Islamic organization Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), which promotes the objectives of da’wa (preaching) and jihad, based on the Ahle-Hadith interpretation of Islam.39 Originally active in the fight against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, LeT changed its focus to the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir when the state rebelled against Indian control in the early 1990s. Since then, the organization has played a central role in recruiting and training thousands of jihadists in Pakistan. Its fight against Indian control over Kashmir is seen as part of a global struggle against the oppression of Muslims, and is aimed toward establishing Islamic rule throughout



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South Asia, as reflected in a statement made by Hafiz Saeed: “Our jihad will continue until Islam becomes the dominant religion . . . Kashmir is no more than the gateway to India, and we shall strive also for the liberation of the 200 million Indian Muslims.”40 Accordingly, LeT does not confine its objectives to Kashmir; it also operates in other arenas in India and in Afghanistan. Following U.S. pressure in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Pakistan banned LeT and other militant groups in 2002. In response, LeT announced its split from the MDI and has continued to operate under the banner of the charitable front Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Like LeT, Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM; literally the Army of Muhammad) is a non-Kashmiri Pakistani-backed organization active in Kashmir. The primary motive of this Deobandi jihadist organization, formed in 2000 by Masood Azhar, is to merge Kashmir into Pakistan. Kashmir is the focus of the sectarian organization, yet JeM maintains close relations with the Taliban and al-Qaida and is active in other arenas beyond Kashmir. While banned in Pakistan since 2002, JeM has reportedly resurfaced and continues to operate under other names. Over the years, the Pakistani army and intelligence services allied with a variety of other groups like Al-Badr, composed mostly of Kashmiris, and the Deobandi Harakat-ul-Ansar (HuA) / Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), from which the JeM split. Pakistan exerts varying degrees of control over the various organizations, sometimes very limited in scope. In 1994, the ISI formed the Muttahahida Jihad Council (MJC; meaning the United Jihad Council) as an umbrella organization of militant groups based in Pakistan-held Kashmir. The formation of MJC aimed to combine the forces and resources of leading organizations engaged in the anti-India militancy in Kashmir.41 Thus, the Islamic agenda adopted by Pakistan has had ramifications for the India-Pakistan rivalry. Vali Nasr stresses that the military-mullah alliance encouraged the Islamists to adhere to jihad to promote their ideals. Now that Pakistan became Islamic, he explains, Islamism and the regional rivalry converged, jointly defining the interests of the state.42 The adoption of Islamist views by the army enabled the consolidation of its proxy-war strategy. The enhanced asymmetric war strategy, now relying on jihadi organizations, not only added a religious dimension to the rivalry, but also affected the nature of the military confrontation in Kashmir, thereby contributing to the persistence of the conflict. Indeed, as seen in Chapter 4, the main expression of the alliance between Pakistan and Islamist movements in the 1980s was an increase in state-NSA warness, between India and Pakistani-backed militant organizations. The army’s aggressive stance towards India, notably its increasing support of the Kashmir insurgency, undermined efforts by the civilian governments

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of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to forge agreements with India. Bhutto signed an agreement with her Indian counterpart Rajiv Gandhi on nuclear safety and Sharif signed the Lahore Declaration with his Indian counterpart, Vajpayee, but neither Pakistani prime minister could make substantial diplomatic progress on the Kashmir issue. Against this background, the launch of the Kargil war in 1999, which thwarted diplomatic efforts to ease regional tensions, reflected growing tensions between Sharif’s government and the army. The ensuing military coup led by army chief General Pervez Musharraf terminated the string of democratically elected governments in Pakistan. The new regime, led by the architect of the Kargil operation, was expected to take a hard line towards India. However, under Musharraf’s military rule, Pakistan engaged in a composite dialogue with India aimed at rapprochement and normalization. In fact, Musharraf pursued a diplomatic agenda with regard to the Kashmir conflict and went further than his democratically elected predecessors went in his pursuit of dialogue. Indeed, Musharraf presented a relatively moderate stance on the conflict with India. The policies of the preceding governments largely reflected the orthodox Pakistani view of India as an uncompromising enemy, combined with the Islamist approach that focused on the injustice inflicted on Muslims by Hindus in Kashmir. Thus, Kashmir had great symbolic value in their discourse, remaining a central part of the unfinished agenda of partition in which the disputed territory played a role in the very recognition of Pakistan’s legitimacy. Recognizing the precarious economic situation of his country, Musharraf adhered to an agenda that searched for a compromise solution that would satisfy all parties involved in the dispute, including the Kashmiris. Such a policy aimed to allow Pakistan to focus on improving the economy, while receiving support from the international community led by the United States.43 Actually, Musharraf’s stance on the conflict in Kashmir was part of a broader plan to stabilize Pakistan. Primarily, Musharraf understood that he had to limit the Pakistani Islamist movements that engage in violence at home and abroad. In his address to the nation on January 12, 2002, Musharraf underlined the supremacy of the state and the nation over any form of pan-Islamism, and advocated the de-politicization of Islam.44 His speech marked a shift in the state’s attitude towards the Pakistani identity discourse: Musharraf diverged from the Islamic discourse promoted by Mawlana Mawdudi and Zia ul-Haq and sought to uphold Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s approach, according to which Pakistan is a nation-state for the Muslims of the Indian sub-continent, but not an Islamic state. To this end, he decided to suppress radical Islamic movements and to inspect the curricula of the madrassas. Indeed, Musharraf presented a de-Islamization program,



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contrary to that promoted by ul-Haq in the 1980s. As for Kashmir, he argued that the dispute should be resolved between India and Pakistan in cooperation with the Kashmiris. In his view, the struggle for separation from India is that of the Kashmiris. He made it clear that Kashmir was not an Islamic issue and therefore sought to withdraw from the proxy policy of operating Islamist organizations against India in Kashmir (a policy to which he had been an active participant in the past). However, it was not clear whether the president had the backing of the army to implement a new approach in Kashmir, and how far he could go towards a compromise. Indeed, the military establishment did not relinquish its militant assets under Musharraf’s rule and continued to support militancy in Kashmir, despite the formal ban he declared in 2002 on organizations affiliated with terrorism. It was soon apparent that his government was continuing the dangerous policy of distinguishing between “terrorists”—that is, groups that did not serve the interests of Pakistan, and “freedom fighters”— organizations that allied with the state, mainly those that fought in Kashmir.45 Musharraf’s ouster in 2008 returned the democratic regime to Pakistan, but the internal political change did not herald a change in Pakistani positions in the conflict with neighboring India. The democratic government under the presidency of Asif Ali Zardari, and that of the re-elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, continued Musharraf’s nationalist discourse, condemning Islamic radicalization, which by now was directed against the state and led to escalating Islamist violence.46 However, both governments served in periods of high tension with India, especially in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, and showed neither political will nor competence to facilitate a breakthrough in the bilateral negotiations. Indeed, while governance in Pakistan has switched hands between parties and types of regime, the military establishment’s role in politics and the Pakistani policy of supporting the militancy in Kashmir have remained firm. Thus, the continued skirmishes between the Indian and Pakistani armies along the Line of Control in Kashmir in recent years have supported the claim that Pakistan has neither abandoned its ambition to gain control over the disputed region, nor moderated its belligerent stance towards the conflict. Scholars offer diverse explanations for Pakistan’s persistent policy of discord and aggression. Ayesha Jalal, for example, attributes the continuation of Pakistan’s defiant behavior to the asymmetric balance of power in the rivalry. According to this view, Pakistan’s fear of a stronger and larger India stands behind its attempts to disrupt and weaken India by supporting separatist movements and Islamic terrorist groups.47 T. V. Paul finds that the power asymmetry has been mitigated by Pakistan’s low-intensity strategy, its alliance with outside powers and its acquisition of nuclear arms, and argues that

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the crucial asymmetry between the two rivals lies in national identities and the role that Kashmir plays in each state’s perceptions of statehood.48 Other scholars identify the militaristic culture of Pakistan as the major source of its aggressive stance. Sumit Ganguly rejects the claim that Pakistan is a security-seeking country. Instead, he argues, Pakistan has long proven that it rejects the status quo in Kashmir and is trying to take over the disputed region through military and subversive means, regardless of whether the type of regime in power is authoritarian or democratic.49 In this vein, Christine Fair emphasizes the “revisionist” agenda of Pakistan, which she largely attributes to the connection between the systematic development of Pakistan’s doctrine of proxy warfare and its expanding nuclear umbrella.50 In any case, the central role played by the military in shaping Pakistan’s identity, goals and foreign policy is evident, therefore posing a barrier to resolving the ongoing conflict. Indeed, Pakistan’s policy on the Kashmir issue is not only a result of security concerns, but is closely related to the place that Kashmir occupies in its identity discourse. JEWS, ARABS AND PALESTINIAN ARABS The origins of Zionism and Arab nationalism differed in their circumstances, but the two movements encountered each other after World War I, creating the foundation of what would become the Arab-Israeli enduring rivalry. As discussed in Chapter 3, the formation of Jewish nationalism, embodied in Zionism, evolved among the Jews in the late nineteenth century in Europe, in the face of violent manifestations of anti-Semitism and inspired by the rising nationalism among the European peoples. Arab nationalism developed with the demand for liberation from the declining Ottoman Empire and subsequent European colonialism. Influenced by Western conceptions of nationalism, it emphasized Arab history, culture and language as distinctive traits that unified the Arab nation, separating them from the Ottoman Turks’ identity. While religious affiliations were central identity markers of Jews and Muslim Arabs, their respective nationalist movements relied mostly on secular ideologies, seeking political expression of their ethno-national identities in the form of sovereign states. The confrontation between the national aspirations of the Arabs and those of the Jews was sparked by the increasing immigration of Jews to their homeland, the Land of Israel, known as Palestine by its Arab inhabitants. The growing Jewish settlement in Palestine conflicted with promises made to Arab leaders by the European powers to establish Greater Syria, which was to include all of the area later allocated to Syria, Lebanon,



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Jordan and Israel. Moreover, Jewish immigration clashed with the interests of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs, who feared the rapidly developing Jewish community, the Yishuv. In this context, a Palestinian national movement emerged and came to compete with the Zionist movement over the same piece of land for the establishment of a sovereign state. The conflict between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, as well as the Palestinians, was accompanied by processes of identity formation among all the actors involved. Internal ideological debates and the changing roles of religion and nationalism in the identity discourses of these actors had ramifications for political agendas and for the dynamics of the regional rivalry over time. Conflicting Streams within Zionism and Political Cleavages in Israel The establishment of the Zionist movement as a response to the plight of the persecuted Jews in 19th-century Europe was a revival of an ancient collective memory of the Jewish people that required the reconstruction of a nation after many centuries of Diaspora life. Thus, from its inception, Zionism was not homogeneous. Its thinkers, leaders and parties differed greatly. The main goal of Zionism, as defined in Theodor Herzl’s book The Jewish State and adopted by the first Zionist Congress, was the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Back at the first Congress, convened in Basel in 1897, a tense discussion arose with the ultra-Orthodox, who hesitated to join the Zionist movement because of its secular character. Herzl promised at the time that Zionism would not do anything to harm the religious outlook of any stream in Judaism. Indeed, from the beginning, the Zionist movement has accommodated the complexity of Jewish identity. While the yearning for Zion drew upon a biblical promise, those who fought for its fulfillment were mainly secular, Europe-inspired nationalists. Among the supporters of the endeavor to build a Jewish state in the Land of Israel was the religious-nationalist stream in the Zionist movement, which combined Zionism and Orthodox Judaism. The main ideologue of modern religious Zionism was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who saw Zionism as part of a divine plan that would resettle the Jewish people in its homeland, and thereby bring salvation (“Geula”) for the Jews with the arrival of the Messiah. In 1902, the Mizrachi organization (a Hebrew acronym for “religious center”) was established in Vilna, at a world conference of religious Zionists. In the years to come, after Israel attained independence and notably after the Six-Day War, the religious-nationalist stream and the political parties representing it have become a central factor in shaping Israel’s political agenda and its identity discourse.51

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The death of the founder and leader of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, in 1904 created an ideological and leadership crisis in the movement, which was in the midst of a major dispute over the ways and means of realizing the Zionist cause. The Zionist movement succeeded in maintaining its unity and navigating its path forward, yet the ideological debates of its formative years shaped Israeli political cleavages for decades to come. The ideological disputes within Zionism outlined the map of political parties that would lead the State of Israel and its foreign policy in the stormy region. In 1917, Chaim Weizmann was elected president of the British Zionist Federation. Weizmann, who became the president of the World Zionist Organization in 1921, and later the first president of the State of Israel, led the stream of “synthetic Zionism,” which merged political and practical Zionism, advocating concurrent action of both diplomatic activity and practical efforts in Palestine. However, there were those in the Zionist movement who opposed his conciliatory stance vis-à-vis the British and their UN mandate in Palestine. Among Weizmann’s most prominent critics was Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who resigned from the Zionist Executive in 1923 and founded the Revisionist party two years later, demanding a firm line of action towards the British. In 1930, the Mapai party (a Hebrew acronym for “workers’ party of the Land of Israel”) was established by members of the Labor movement.52 The left oriented Mapai sided with the Weizmann camp, and became the main political rival of Jabotinsky’s right-wing Revisionist movement. The rival camps, which differed in their economic, political and security views, laid the foundations of the leading Labor and Herut (later Likud) parties in the Israeli polity.53 While insisting on the right of Jewish self-determination and on the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, the Labor party believed in the vital need to reach an understanding with the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. Therefore, it adhered to the “two states” premise that would entail a territorial compromise. In this context, Mapai endorsed the UN partition plan for Palestine, and today’s Labor party continues to support plans for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The Revisionists, on the other hand, emphasized the historic right of the Jewish people to rule over the entire “promised land” of Israel. While some of today’s Likud leaders have come to agree in principle to a two-state solution, the vision of controlling the entire Land of Israel remains the prominent political outlook of the Likud-led right-wing camp with regard to the Arab-Israeli rivalry. After the declaration of Israel’s independence in 1948, the Labor party, which dominated the Zionist movement in the preceding years, became a hegemonic party and led the newly formed state through its first three decades. However, the Likud party, the successor of the Revisionist movement, became a central factor in shaping Israeli political



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discourse, especially after it turned the tide in the political balance and came to power for the first time in 1977. The conflict between the Jewish and Arab national movements, embodied in a territorial dispute, centered on a discourse of historical rights, dispossession and legitimacy. At the core of the conflict were the competing nationalism and goals of two peoples who fought against one another for the right to maintain a sovereign political life in the disputed land. Surrounding them were the Arab states that opposed the existence of a Zionist entity in the Middle East. In this context, the 1948 war became a defining moment in the regional conflict. Toward the end of the war, a debate arose in Israel on the extent of its territorial conquests. The Israel Defense Force (IDF) was on the verge of seizing all of the territories of Mandatory Palestine, but as the Arab countries consented to armistice, Israel also agreed to end the fighting. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion stressed the importance of striving for peace for the sake of the future relations between Israel and its neighbors, and thereby set limits to the scope of Zionist expansion in the historical Land of Israel. This decision was vehemently criticized not only by the right-wing Herut opposition party, but also by members of the Mapai ruling party and the leftwing Mapam party, which accused Ben-Gurion of missing the opportunity to take control of the land in its entirety and fortify the borders of the tiny state. Ben-Gurion, in contrast, stressed that state security would be built on immigration, settlement and peace.54 Nevertheless, throughout most of his tenure in office (1948–53, 1955–63), Ben-Gurion held a hardline stance towards Israel’s Arab enemies. In the face of a grave security threat posed by the surrounding Arab countries, which denied the very right of Israel to exist in the region, Ben-Gurion posited that reconciliation required that Israel maintain superior military power. In this vein, Israel developed its strategic perception and often resorted to violent military actions to protect its interests. Indeed, beyond the ideological differences among Israeli leaders in the early years of the conflict, security and existential concerns occupied a considerable part of Israel’s agenda. Moshe Sharett, Israel’s prime minister between Ben-Gurion’s two terms, presented a moderate position towards the Arab countries, stressing that they should be seen as a people, not merely an enemy.55 However, most of the Israeli leaders of the formative generation held hardline security views in the hostile surroundings. Nevertheless, in the early years of its independence, Israel adopted a policy of preserving the regional status quo based on the armistice agreements with its Arab neighbors. That meant avoiding escalation, as well as negotiation for a full peace agreement. It was clear that negotiations would confront Israel with demands to return hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees to its territory and to relinquish parts of the Negev and the Galilee. On these matters, there was a

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wide consensus among Israeli leaders across the political spectrum that Israel should not pay such a heavy price, even if this meant harming the prospects of peace. By the mid-1950s, support for the status quo was undermined in light of the growing phenomenon of infiltration and sabotage actions by Palestinian fedayeen, countered by Israeli retaliation raids. In 1956, as the strategic status quo was threatened by Soviet-sponsored arms deals with Egypt and Syria, Israel embarked on the Sinai War. The question of how to relate towards the Arab minority that remained within the state raised tension between ideology and reality within the Mapai elite. Although most of the Palestinians who remained in Israel were granted citizenship, the state continued to view its Arab residents with suspicion.56 As a hegemonic party, Mapai contained a variety of outlooks, including a moralistic and liberal approach that advocated full equality of rights for Arabs and their integration, and a security approach that advocated control of the Arab minority by means of a military regime or even a population exchange. The secret wish was that there would be as few Arabs as possible in the Jewish state.57 The security considerations ultimately prevailed and Israel maintained a Military Governorate in the Arab communities until 1966. Israel’s takeover of vast territories and the historic unification of Jerusalem in the aftermath of the June Six-Day War marked a watershed in Israeli politics. It reawakened the right’s vision of the “Greater Land of Israel” and revived the pioneering vision that accompanied the establishment of the state. However, pioneering at this time drew on a new spirit of religious nationalism. The outcome of the war gave birth to the Orthodox Jewish, right-wing activist movement of Gush Emunim (the “Bloc of the Faithful”), which dedicated itself to establishing Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, mainly in the West Bank, also referred to by its biblical name as Judea and Samaria.58 Indeed, the deep controversy over the future of the territories split Israeli society and shaped the political discourse for decades to come. The debate between the socio-political right and left became a dispute between “hawks” and “doves,” between those who advocated Israel’s annexation of the occupied territories and extensive Jewish settlement there, and those who called for withdrawal from the territories and avoidance of prolonged control over a conquered Arab population. However, there was broad agreement that the territories would not be returned in the face of military aggression, but only within a comprehensive peace settlement. Supporters of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria at that time, it should be noted, came not only from right-wing parties, but also from the Labor movement. Unlike the Messianic vision of religious Zionists, however, the secular Zionist view of Labor members relied mostly on security concerns.59 The demand by Likud members to settle in the West Bank was also based



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on security considerations, combined with a determined claim for historical rights over these territories.60 Gush Emunim, led by charismatic rabbis headed by Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook, the son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, saw the outcome of the 1967 war as heralding the messianic redemption of the Jewish people. Thus, they committed themselves to preserving the integrity of the land under Israeli sovereignty and rejected any territorial compromise with the Palestinian inhabitants of the country. Political leaders of Gush Emunim gained dominance in the formerly moderate National Religious Party and led a passionate religious national discourse.61 They brought the future of the settlements to the center of Israel’s national agenda, making it a key obstacle to territorial compromise with the Arab neighbors. The severe results of the Yom-Kippur War of 1973 shook Israel’s selfconfidence, which had strengthened over the years with the convincing victories it had achieved in previous wars. The ouster of Mapai from power in the political upheaval of 1977, and the subsequent peace agreement signed with Egypt by an Israeli government headed by the Likud, brought about change in Israel’s political agenda. In these years, attention was still focused on the interstate conflict, more than on the Palestinian issue. Israel at this stage had not recognized the right of Palestinian self-determination. The former Mapai prime minister, Golda Meir, went even further in denying Palestinian nationhood, claiming there were no Palestinians, only Israeli Arabs.62 This extreme view of the Palestinians, which would change within two decades among most of the Israeli parties and the public, nevertheless gained a foothold among the extreme right that continues to oppose the two-nation and twostate idea. Expectedly, members of the religious-national camp opposed the Camp David Accords signed with Egypt in 1978, as they included the evacuation of Jewish settlements in Sinai. In the view of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, a member of the former Revisionist camp, the historical Land of Israel did not include Sinai, so he could relinquish it in exchange for peace with Israel’s most formidable enemy. As for the Palestinian question, Begin, unlike Golda, acknowledged the existence of the Palestinian people but persistently called them “Palestinian Arabs,” meaning Arabs who reside in Palestine, and opposed their political independence. During the peace talks with Egypt he offered cultural, economic and political autonomy for the Palestinians, which meant self-management of their lives without sovereign control over the land. After signing the peace treaty with Egypt, the political arena in Israel remained split regarding the fate of the territories in a future settlement. Almost overnight, Begin became the hero of the “peace camp,” while Gush Emunim and the settlers, his long-time supporters, became prominent protesters against him. Begin denounced his opponents from the religious national

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camp with harsh words: “Messiahs have risen before us, delusional and haughty. There are false people, even if they are very religious. We were elected to run the state, and not Gush Emunim.”63In the following years the Likud-led government did not engage Israel in further peace initiatives. The Lebanon War in 1982, which centered on the PLO and Palestinian militants in southern Lebanon, was followed in 1987 by the outbreak of the first intifada in the territories. The intifada marked a change in the focus of the conflict from an interstate Arab-Israeli confrontation to a Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Attention turned to the militarized struggle in the West Bank and Gaza, which had remained relatively calm during the first two decades of Israeli rule. By the beginning of the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War and the aftermath of the Gulf War, the United States pressured Israel and its Arab neighbors to renew regional peace negotiations. The American initiative did indeed change the atmosphere, leading to the Madrid Conference in 1991. In 1992, Israel, now under the leadership of the Labor party headed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, acceded to American mediation initiatives on the Syria track. A change in national priorities was at the core of the new government’s agenda. The Rabin government’s engagement in talks with Syria, followed by a peace process with the Palestinians and Jordan, introduced an agenda that linked security with peace. Israel’s willingness, in principle, to withdraw from the Golan Heights saliently expressed its desire to end hostilities with Syria, its bitter enemy. By the end of the year, however, Israeli-Syrian dialogue had reached an impasse. Rabin and his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, shifted their focus to the Palestinian front. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo Accords as an interim peace agreement with the Palestinians. The conception that guided the peace policy of Rabin’s government was based on the realization that the conflict with the Palestinians could not be decided militarily. Rabin sought to achieve an agreement on Palestinian self-rule. Such a settlement, he knew, would not solve the Palestinian problem, but would diminish Palestinian grievances and reduce conflict. The Israeli interest, in his view, was to engage in a political process, which entailed a dialogue with the PLO headed by Yasser Arafat. Indeed, this policy required a significant conceptual transformation by the retired General Rabin, who had long fought against Arafat’s terrorist organization. On September 13, in an address upon signing the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles in Washington, Rabin said: This signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles, here today, is not so easy neither for myself, as a soldier in Israel’s wars, nor for the people of Israel, not to the Jewish people in the Diaspora who are watching us now with great hope, mixed with apprehension . . . Let me say to you, the Palestinians: We are destined to live together on the same soil, in the same land . . . We are



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today giving peace a chance and saying . . . Enough. Let us pray that a day will come when we all will say: Farewell to the arms.64

From a cautious security approach, then, the Israeli government advocated a gradual political process, leaving the most controversial issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the return of Palestinian refugees, the questions of borders and settlements, and security arrangements, to a final-status agreement. However, in the mid-1990s, the optimism stirred by the ceremonious signing of peace agreements was undermined by mutual accusations of treaty violations, and ultimately died in the wake of renewed waves of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israeli cities. The disappointment stemming from the failure of the Oslo peace process altered the political discourse in Israel. The willingness of Israelis to make a territorial compromise, in the hope of settling the ongoing conflict in the form of a two-state solution, was replaced by growing hostility and suspicion. On November 4, 1995, in the midst of a stormy political debate between the left parties that supported the peace process, and the right parties that opposed it, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a zealous Jew, a supporter of the religious-national camp that had marked Rabin as a traitor. Indeed, the religious element in the Israeli identity discourse was expressed in the sacred mission of saving the completeness of the Holy Land. Nevertheless, negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians continued. The Likud’s victory in the elections that followed the assassination of Rabin did not end Israel’s policy of dialogue. In 1997, in the spirit of the Oslo Accords, the Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, signed the Hebron agreement which transferred the security control of parts of the city of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority. In 2000, in the shadow of ongoing tension and mistrust, Israel’s new Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and the Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, met at Camp David to discuss final-status issues. The discussions failed to yield progress and, in effect, further undermined trust between the two parties. Barak charged Arafat with responsibility for the failure and stated that he was not a partner for peace. The impasse in the Camp David talks was followed by the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000, which in turn contributed to a change in the Israeli stance.65 In the first stage, until the end of Barak’s term in February 2001, Israel adopted a sort of interim approach, which enabled the continuation of political negotiations while seeking to prevent the Palestinians from making political gains through violence.66 Accordingly, the Israeli government permitted a restrained military action against the Palestinian uprising. The decision to continue the dialogue amidst the ongoing violence was based on the assessment that Arafat was indeed interested in reaching an agreement. Moreover, the political and security echelons

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perceived the dialogue as an effective means of restraining, if not ending the violence. Criticism voiced by opposition parties and the public against the policy of conducting negotiations under fire, which peaked during the Taba talks in early 2001, contributed to yet another change of power in Israel. After the elections in February 2001, and in light of the failure of the political process and the surge in terror, a new political approach developed in Israel regarding the conflict. The policy of the new Likud-led government headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon relied on the premise that the Palestinians were not ready to settle the conflict. The Palestinian leadership was held solely culpable for the collapse of the peace accords, and Arafat was perceived as an obstacle to peace. It is important to note that Sharon had long opposed the Oslo process and saw it as a major threat to Israel’s security. He objected to Barak’s concessions to the Palestinians at the Camp David and Taba summits. According to Sharon’s new political approach, the Israeli government did not formally withdraw from the Oslo process, yet it assumed that the political route was dormant because of the military confrontation and the absence of a competent and genuine partner. Thus, the Israeli government officially remained committed to the two-state solution, but in fact questioned whether a peaceful arrangement could be implemented in the short or medium term. In the absence of a chance to resolve the dispute, Israel decided to focus on conflict management, with the aim of abating the violent struggle while denying the Palestinians any military or political achievement. Within a few months, this pessimistic stance became a central element in the political discourse within the political and military leadership and in Israeli public opinion.67 The persistence of violence, though diminished by IDF counter-militancy actions, engendered another change in Israel’s agenda. Distrusting cooperative conflict management, Sharon adopted a policy of unilateral measures, including the establishment of a separation wall along the Green Line as a security barrier against terrorism from the West Bank, and disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria. The unilateral disengagement plan, which entailed withdrawal from territories controlled by the IDF, met with fierce opposition from the right-wing, religious Zionist camp. The Yesha Council (a Hebrew acronym for “Judea, Samaria and Gaza Council”), a successor of Gush Emunim, led the political struggle against the withdrawal. Formed in 1980 as an umbrella organization of municipal councils of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, the Yesha Council aimed to promote and consolidate the settlement enterprise in these areas and bring them under Israeli sovereign rule. In 2005, despite the heated internal resistance to the disengagement from Gaza, and notwithstanding the Palestinian objection to Israel’s unilateral initiative, the Israeli army withdrew from the Gaza Strip and dismantled all



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Israeli settlements there. Israel continues to maintain direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over the lives of Palestinians there. The following years were a transitional period in terms of Israel’s political agenda, marked by the establishment of the Kadima party. In November 2005, Prime Minister Sharon split from the Likud and formed a new party. Kadima, literally “forward,” was positioned as a centrist party, seeking to bridge the gap between the left-wing and right-wing positions identified with the Labor and Likud parties that had headed Israeli governments until then. Just two months after founding the new party, Sharon suffered a severe stroke, fell into a coma and never regained consciousness. Ehud Olmert replaced him as party leader, and in the subsequent elections formed a new government. Indeed, Olmert had come a long way from the hard core of Israel’s right wing to embark on efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2007, after the end of the second Lebanon War, the United States initiated the Annapolis Conference in the hope of restarting the negotiating process between Israel and the Palestinians. In talks between Prime Minister Olmert and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, Olmert proposed the most far-reaching plan that any Israeli leader had offered to resolve the conflict, in terms of the scope of Israeli withdrawal from territories that would be allocated to the Palestinian state. Olmert also agreed that the “historic basin” in the Old City of Jerusalem would not be under the formal sovereignty of any state, but would be run by a consortium of Saudis, Jordanians, Israelis, Palestinians and Americans. According to his proposal, Jerusalem would be divided and serve as a capital for both countries; Israel would receive a limited number of refugees as a symbolic, humanitarian gesture, while most of the refugees would be allowed to move to the independent Palestinian state. Abbas’ rejection of the Israeli outline of peace shattered the hope of reviving the diplomatic talks. A year later, in December 2008, the IDF launched Operation Cast Lead against Hamas’ terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, and the rift between the two sides widened. After the elections in February 2009, a new government led by the Likud and headed by Benjamin Netanyahu was established in Israel. Although Netanyahu had accepted the idea of a Palestinian state, under a long list of restrictive conditions, he basically remained committed to the Greater Israel vision. In a speech at Bar-Ilan University in June 2009, Netanyahu emphasized the historical affinity of the Jewish people to its ancestral land, including Judea and Samaria. While he also referred to the Palestinian residents of the country and stressed that Israel did not wish to control them, Netanyahu did not mention their historical connection to their homeland.68 Netanyahu was elected prime minister for a fourth time in 2015 and formed a right-wing coalition, including religious-national and ultra-Orthodox

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parties, which has further heated the identity discourse in Israel’s political agenda. The government’s insistence on recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, which has implications for the Palestinian demand for the right of return of Palestinian refugees in any future settlement, led to the enactment of Basic Law: Israel—The Nation-State of the Jewish People in July 2018. The new legislation was designed to anchor the state’s Jewish character in Israel’s set of quasi-constitutional Basic Laws. It specifies the natural, cultural, religious and historical affinity of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, stressing that the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.69 Upon the demand of the religious-national Jewish Home party, the new law also defines the development of Jewish settlement as a national value that the state should encourage and promote. Indeed, the ongoing political debate surrounding the necessity and wording of the Nation-State Law exemplifies the change that has occurred in the Israeli political agenda in recent decades: The existential discourse has been replaced by a vibrant discourse of identity. More specifically, the controversial legislation reflects the transition from a civic national discourse during the state’s early years to a religious-nationalist one. Moreover, the right-wing parties, which reject any agreement of territorial compromise, have raised an agenda for the annexation of the territories to Israel. Instead of a discourse of comprehensive peace, they proposed a discourse of partial settlement that excludes the evacuation of Jewish settlements from disputed territories in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The conception of peace for now has lost its momentous role in the Israeli political agenda. Conflicting Arab Agendas and the Abandonment of the Palestinian Cause As discussed earlier, the modern national awakening of the Arab states emerged in the 19th century against the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the peoples of the region for nearly four hundred years. During most of the Ottoman rule, the Turks managed to harness all of the Muslim peoples to the shared Islamic enterprise, drawing no distinction between Arabs and Turks. This Muslim solidarity, however, gradually weakened with the decline in Ottoman power, in the context of imperial rivalry between the Turks and the European powers. Nationalist independence struggles by discontented Christian subjects of Ottoman rule in Europe ensued. Dissatisfaction then arose among the remaining Arabic-speaking provinces of the empire, catalyzing the Arab awakening. The development of Arab consciousness was expressed both in the identification with Arabic language and culture, and in



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the demand by Arabic-speaking provinces for more autonomy in the conduct of their own affairs. Unlike non-religious Christian Arabism, however, the Arabism of Muslims maintained a deep attachment to Islam.70 Indeed, the two overlapping sources of identity, nationalism and religion, would become the prominent fault line in identity discourses and political cleavages in the following decades, within the Arab countries and among them.71 Nationalism in the Arab states consists of two layers of identity. One is inclusive, regarding all of the Arabic-speaking peoples as one Arab nation (al-qawmiyya al-Arabia); the other is distinctive, differentiating between several peoples and nation-states (wataniyya) within the larger Arab nation. The former bred the supranational notions of Arabism and Arab nationalism, while the latter produced regional and local notions of state nationalism. Thinkers and activists of Arab nationalism, such as Sati’ al-Hursi and Michel Aflaq, emphasized the power of Arab unity and considered the Arab states to be an artificial creation of the imperial powers.72 The full meaning of Arab nationalism in their view was that the Arabs’ shared cultural and linguistic traits should be expressed in political unification, within a single Arab state. Indeed, in the 1920s and 1930s, identification with Arabism began to pervade in the three major Arab domains of the time—Iraq, Syria and Egypt. However, it encountered a variety of competing identities, such as tribalism, regionalism, sectarianism and single-state nationalism. As one of the earliest civilizations in the world, Egypt was the first among the Arab self-conscious entities in the Middle East. The development of its unique national identity dates to its pre-Arab and pre-Muslim Egyptian ancestors in the ancient world.73 It is therefore not surprising that in modern times the Egyptians adhered to their distinctive Egyptian orientation, and were slow to embrace the emerging idea of Arab nationalism. To most Egyptians, nationalism in the early 20th century focused on the Egyptian struggle against foreign rule. At the same time, Egypt became the central arena of confrontation between nationalism and Islamism, especially in the aftermath of the 1952 coup that ousted the Egyptian monarchy. This confrontation spread across the Arab world and well beyond. While under British rule, the nationalist and Islamist forces in Egypt cooperated against the colonial power. However, nationalism and Islamism represented completely different views on the identity of the Arab peoples. The vision of the rebirth of a supra-ethnic Muslim nation, presented by Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, two of the most important Arab theorists of Islamism, embodies the transnationalist idea of the Islamic ummah, thereby suggesting that religion, like ethnicity, can motivate a political community to construct a state of its own. In essence, al-Banna and Qutb’s pan-Islamic ideologies offered a new sense of collective political identity that can be

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classified as a form of nationalism. Brykczynski finds that the two theorists indeed constituted “a direct challenge to ethnic and territorial conceptions of nationalism” in the Arab and the Islamic worlds.74 Put differently, the notion of an “Islamic nation-state” inevitably clashed with the secular conception of state nationalism and linguistically based Arab nationalism.75 Nationalist sentiments also developed in Syria, then under French Mandate rule. Led by the National Bloc, a coalition of parties hostile to the French presence in Syria, Syrian nationalism focused on the local level, and took aim against the foreign rulers. However, the struggle for Syrian independence was promoted by groups that espoused various ideas. In 1932, Antoun Saadeh founded the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). The party posited a Syrian history and nationality, and advocated a Greater Syria throughout the Fertile Crescent that would encompass peoples with a variety of languages and religions. However, during the 1930s, a younger generation of Syrian nationalists, more radical than the National Bloc, took the initiative to incorporate the Syrian struggle for independence into a broader regional struggle against the colonial powers, thereby promoted the ideology of pan-Arab unity.76 As described above, the national movement that emerged in Palestine was largely a response to Zionism. In the face of the rapid growth of Jewish immigration and settlement, Palestinian nationalists sought the support of the Arab peoples to stem the threatening demographic change. Indeed, the Arab Revolt in Palestine (1936–1939) increased Arab popular identification with the Palestinian struggle. With the outbreak of the Palestinian general strike that heralded the Arab Revolt, anti-British and anti-Zionist demonstrations erupted in the Arab countries. The public pressure exerted on the leaderships in the Arab countries further increased in light of the British plan to partition Palestine. Notably, the Syrian support for the Palestinians drew on both pan-Arab identification and the vision of the great Syrian state designated for realization in Bilad al-Sham, uniting Syria with Lebanon, Palestine and ­Transjordan. In Egypt too, the events of the Arab Revolt marked a turning point in public sentiment, which demonstrated not only growing support for the Palestinian struggle but also a concern for the Arab lands, indicating growing identification with pan-Arab thinking. By the 1940s, Arab nationalism had gained a foothold in the Arab countries, alongside the other dominant identities and loyalties of their peoples. The Arab Revolt and the UN partition plan marked the period in history when the Arab governments, under public pressure, committed to cooperative Arab action for the Palestinian cause. In October 1944, five Arab countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, signed the Alexandria Protocol, approving the formation of a joint Arab Organization, which led to the establishment of the Arab League the following year. The Alexandria



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Protocol adopted a special resolution on Palestine, stating that it “constitutes an important part of the Arab world.”77 The Arab states called for an end to Jewish immigration and demanded the preservation of Arab lands and the granting of independence to Palestine, which they linked to peace and stability in the Arab world. The commitment to the Palestinians was then expressed in the Pact of the League of Arab States, signed in March 1945, when the Arab countries decided to accept a Palestinian delegation as a member of the organization, even though Palestine was not an independent state. Within a short time, the Arab states had to translate pledges into action. With the declaration of the State of Israel in May 1948, they fulfilled their promise to defend Palestine in a coordinated military attack on Israel. However, the Arab states’ opposition to the partition plan did not really advance the Palestinian cause. The Arab governments essentially preferred a struggle against Israel’s existence to a solution that could realize the Palestinians’ right to independence. The militarized struggle against the Zionist entity boosted the legitimacy of the Arab governments and their support by the Arab peoples, but shortsightedly contributed to the creation of the Palestinian problem. At the same time, the defeat in the war reinforced the claim that political unity was the remedy to the weakness of the Arab states. Before long, Egypt, which had long disapproved of pan-Arab ideas, took the lead in promoting Arab nationalism. By the 1950s, President Gamal Abd al-Nasser advocated the ideology of Arab unity and even brought about a brief realization of political unity between Egypt and Syria within the United Arab Republic (UAR). However, at the end of the mandate regimes in the Middle East and the independence of the Arab states, the dominant spirit among the Arab leaders leaned towards inter-Arab cooperation rather than political and territorial unity. Indeed, the formation of the Arab League was based on the premise of coordination and cooperation among sovereign Arab states, while rejecting ideas of Arab unification. In April 1950, in light of the defeat in the 1948 war, the members of the Arab League sought to reinforce their joint military defense, and signed a Collective Security and Economic Cooperation Treaty, which came into effect two years later. However, the collective security agreement proved to lack binding force. Moreover, most of the military agreements signed by Arab states in the following years were negotiated outside of the Arab League framework. The formative years of the Arab League were marked by political and ideological confrontation between an Egyptian-Saudi bloc that sought to maintain the status quo of independent Arab states, and an Iraqi-Jordanian bloc that aspired to Hashemite unity with Syria. Syria’s position in this regard varied in accordance with the frequent turnover of its governments. Fearing that the Hashemite pan-Arab aspirations would undermine its sovereignty, Lebanon

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supported the preservation of the Arab status quo. In addition, through their early years of independence, the Arab countries were divided in terms of their international ideological orientation; Jordan and Lebanon were part of a pro-Western group of Arab countries, while Egypt and Syria belonged to an anti-Western Arab camp. In any case, the Arab League led unceasing Arab political and economic activity against Israel, with the Palestinians serving as an instrument in the struggle to expel Israel from the Middle Eastern arena. As the Arab countries took command of the Palestinian issue, the Palestinians, led by the Arab Higher Committee, lost much of the control over their political fate. The Palestinian cause became subject to an inter-Arab quarrel, mainly between Egypt and Jordan, over King Abdullah’s ambitions to annex the Arab parts of Palestine to Transjordan. When the first Arab-Israeli war broke out, the Palestinian leadership was weak, incapable of exercising effective administrative or military power against its Zionist enemy. The war, which was engraved in the Palestinian collective memory as al-Nakba, a catastrophe, left the Palestinian society crushed, its leadership broken, its land under occupation. Besides the Palestinian areas Israel seized in the war, Egypt established its rule in the Gaza Strip and Jordan took control of Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem.78 In 1950, Abdullah declared the annexation of the territories to Jordan, terming them the “West Bank” of the kingdom. The ensuing inter-Arab tension over the annexation was also related to Abdullah’s secret talks with the Israeli leadership on a bilateral non-aggression pact. The crisis between Jordan and the Arab states ended in a temporary compromise, as Jordan quit negotiations with Israel, while the Arab states accepted the interim annexation of the West Bank to Jordan. Nonetheless, differences of interests and agendas continued to divide the Arab states. Among the long-term ramifications of the defeat in the ArabIsraeli war was mounting unrest directed against governments and military leaderships in many Arab countries. The war’s outcome ignited bitterness, touching upon a variety of problems including government corruption and socio-economic inefficiency. Groups of young officers promoted a revolutionary agenda and accelerated anti-Western discourse in their countries. The first officers’ revolution broke out in Syria in 1949; this was followed by a split in the revolutionary forces, which generated many further coups. In July 1952, Egyptian officers staged a revolution against King Farouk. The new regime then turned inward to focus on social reform and economic development. Two years later, however, after Gamal Abd al-Nasser took power, the Egyptian regime took a renewed interest in Arab hegemony and formed an activist foreign policy. Egypt began intervening in neighboring countries, and led an anti-Western agenda coupled with a socialist spirit and support for the Soviet Union. The Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist agenda were



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suppressed. The new Egyptian policy also included an active and more aggressive approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, expressed in increased encouragement and assistance to Palestinian infiltrators who carried out acts of sabotage in Israel. Egypt’s activist anti-Western policy gained momentum in light of the Western powers’ Convention for the Protection of the Middle East initiative, which culminated in the Baghdad Treaty signed in 1955. Egypt suspected that the treaty was intended to legitimize a renewed Western takeover of the region and opposed its anti-Soviet tone. When Egypt failed to thwart the establishment of the alliance, an inter-Arab cold war erupted, including hostility and harsh slurs. Egypt and Iraq competed in an attempt to recruit Arab states that had not yet chosen a side, primarily Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Syria allied with Egypt. Jordan also briefly supported the Egyptian-led antiWestern alliance. These were the buds of the Arab association with the Soviet Union, which accompanied the Arab-Israeli conflict throughout the global Cold War until the collapse of Soviet power. Egyptian-Syrian cooperation tightened, culminating in their political unification in the UAR between 1958 and 1961. The formation of the UAR deepened the cleavage within the Arab world and particularly affected Jordan and Lebanon. Jordan responded immediately by crafting Jordanian-Iraqi unification within a confederative framework. But the Hashemite alliance was short-lived due to the outbreak of a revolution in Iraq. Both Jordan and Lebanon then approached Britain and the U.S. for assistance in protecting their governments from revolutionary forces encouraged by Egypt and Syria. In these years, Nasserist Egypt indeed operated a wide network of activists who engaged in propaganda and subversion throughout the Arab world. After Nasser’s death in 1970, Egypt curtailed its ideological foreign policy. Its activism in the inter-Arab arena diminished. Meanwhile, the question of the status of the Palestinians and their part in the struggle for Palestine, as well as the contradiction between the Jordanian demand to preserve the West Bank as part of the kingdom and the Palestinian aspiration for independence, remained unanswered. The Palestinian discourse in the early years of the conflict emphasized the demand for justice. Drawing on the premise that the formation of the State of Israel was a result of Western imperialism, the Palestinians stressed that the destruction of Israel was the only way to correct the injustice.79 By the late 1950s, a new Palestinian awakening arose against the backdrop of dissatisfaction with the Arab countries’ handling of the Palestinian issue and rising recognition that the Palestinians should take command over their own fate. There was also growing discontent with the functioning of the All Palestine Government (APG) established by the Arab League during the first months of

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the 1948 war. The reawakening and new spirit of national activism then led to the birth of the Movement for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah.80 Formed in 1959 by Yasser Arafat, Khalil al-Wazir, Salah Khalaf and Khaled Yashruti, Fatah, literally “opening” and “victory,” advocated autonomous Palestinian decision-making, and reliance on resistance and armed struggle to restore justice and liberate Palestine. Though representing Palestinian nationalism and emphasizing self-assertion and national pride, Fatah also drew on Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Islamic discourse, as part of the Palestinian national identity.81 However, the Arab states continued to view Palestine as an all-Arab problem. Egypt reinforced its efforts to control the Palestinian struggle. In 1964, Nasser initiated the establishment of the PLO under the auspices of the Arab League, which aimed to replace the AGP in representing the Palestinian people. The Arab leaders had in fact hoped to tighten their grip over the Palestinian public and thereby prevent it from undermining the stability of the Arab regimes. Jordan, wishing to preserve its rule in the West Bank, objected to the establishment of the new organization. Nevertheless, after the defeat of the Arab states in the 1967 war, the PLO’s standing was reinforced as the “armed resistance” organizations joined the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the PLO. In February 1969, Fatah leader Arafat was elected chairman of the PLO Executive Committee. Arafat turned the PLO into the authentic representative of the Palestinian people, and led the umbrella organization until his death in 2004. In the following two decades, the Palestinian discourse of resistance was dominated by what was essentially a diaspora-based liberationist strategy adopted by the three main guerrilla groups of the national movement: Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). While Fatah defined itself as a national and non-ideological movement, other PLO organizations identified with socialist and Marxist ideas. The PFLP, formed in 1967 by George Habash as a Palestinian secular Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary socialist faction, has consistently been the second largest PLO organization after Fatah. In 1968, a faction of the PFLP broke away from the organization and formed the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). Headed by Secretary-General Nayef Hawatmeh, the DFLP members accused the leaders of their mother organization, the PFLP, of focusing exclusively on military matters. The breakaway faction sought to establish a left-wing Palestinian ideological organization. In 1968, there was another split in the ranks of the PFLP, as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command (PFLP-GC) splintered off, advocating emphasis on the tactical implementation of the armed struggle.82 Even though they were all secular,



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these nationalist Palestinian organizations employed Islamic symbols and themes to mobilize popular support for the national cause. In other words, Islam was harnessed to reinforce the Palestinian national struggle.83 The shock and humiliation from the military defeat in the 1967 war did not bring about a change in attitudes among the Arab states and the Palestinians towards Israel. Many research analyses and political polemics sought to explain the military blow the Arabs suffered. The various conclusions they offered did not include a recommendation to recognize Israel and reconcile with it. On the contrary, the results of the war deepened hostility and hatred toward Israel. The Arabs now focused on demanding the return of the territories occupied by Israel during the war. While Syria and the Palestinians stressed that the goal would be achieved only through war, Egypt and Jordan posited that a diplomatic settlement would be the way to bring about Israel’s withdrawal. The hardline stance initially prevailed. At the summit conference that took place after the war in Khartoum, Sudan, the Arab states adopted the resolution known as the “three no’s,” including the rejection of recognition of Israel, negotiations with Israel and peace with Israel. After the war, the Palestinian resistance organizations took the initiative and launched terrorist acts against Israeli targets. The high-profile armed Palestinian struggle raised international awareness about the Palestinian problem. However, the final goal of the struggle remained vague. The Palestinian leadership and the Arab states strove to establish a Palestinian “entity,” yet the question of its status, especially with regard to Jordan, remained unclear. In the meantime, the Palestinians developed independent institutions that collided with the Jordanian authorities and later threatened Lebanon’s stability.84 The Arab states continued to support the Palestinian struggle and the Palestinian organizations also received enthusiastic backing from distant countries that were not directly involved in the regional conflict, including the Gulf states and revolutionary countries such as Libya, Algeria and Iraq. As described in the previous chapter, Egypt altered its attitude to the conflict after the October 1973 war. President Sadat made the courageous choice to turn to the route of dialogue with Israel, even in the absence of any change in the public discourse in Egypt, and certainly not in the other Arab states. However, the results of the war had erased the disgrace of repeated defeats and prolonged inferiority vis-à-vis Israel. The return of Arab pride brought Egypt to a position where it could negotiate with Israel under the auspices of the United States. In his 1977 historic address to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem, Sadat declared: I have not come here for a separate agreement between Egypt and Israel… Any separate peace between Egypt and Israel, or between any Arab confrontation State and Israel, will not bring permanent peace based on justice in the entire

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region. Rather, even if peace between all the confrontation States and Israel were achieved, in the absence of a just solution to the Palestinian problem, never will there be that durable and just peace upon which the entire world insists today.85

In the end, however, Israel and Egypt signed the bilateral Camp David Accords, which were far from bringing lasting peace to the entire region. To be sure, Egypt and the United States brought the Palestinian issue to Camp David’s agenda, but eventually they complied with the Israeli vision of a Palestinian autonomy short of full statehood. Indeed, Egypt’s stance in the negotiation process enabled the breakthrough on bilateral peace while giving up on a political solution for the Palestinians.86 Syria, on the other hand, persisted in its hard line toward Israel. So did the Palestinian leadership. Expectedly, they denounced the Egyptian-Israeli peace accords. The Arab League suspended Egypt from the organization for a decade. In October 1981, President Sadat was assassinated by members of the radical Egyptian Islamic Jihad.87 Nevertheless, the Egyptian move had an enormous effect on Arab discourse. It transformed the conflict agenda from a zero-sum game of eliminating the State of Israel into a mixed-motive game focusing on competition between legitimate states over borders and control. By that time, the decline in pan-Arab solidarity, on the one hand, and the failure of PLO-led armed struggle, on the other hand, instigated a new political discourse among the Palestinians. The PLO’s failures and its expulsion to Lebanon and then to Tunisia in 1982 raised the question of its ability to represent the Palestinian cause. In this context, the outbreak of the intifada in December 1987 marked the culmination of a profound change in Palestinian society: The new generation no longer looked to the Arab countries for leadership. Frustrated by life under occupation, the younger generation became increasingly involved in grassroots communal activities aimed at changing their everyday realities and building the Palestinian community on their own initiative.88 The ensuing intifada expressed their growing frustration and anger, which were now translated into popular resistance. It also altered the balance of power within the Palestinian national movement, shifting political weight from PLO headquarters in Tunisia to the local leadership in the West Bank and Gaza. Moreover, the Islamist discourse raised throughout the Muslim world following the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979 did not skip over the Palestinian society. Organizations with a religious agenda began to rise within the Palestinian national movement. Viewing the Palestinian religious groups as a challenge to the PLO leadership, Israel looked favorably upon their increasing role in Palestinian society, which at the time focused primarily on charitable and welfare activities. Israel thus contributed to stirring up the Islamist winds



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and strengthening the religious stream, which came to play a central role in the first intifada and after. In December 1987, after the beginning of the intifada, the Hamas movement (an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement) was founded as the Palestinian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip, under the leadership of the religious teacher Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. Hamas, literally “courage” or “zeal,” formulated its ideology in rivalry with the secular national Palestinian forces within the PLO, and in an effort to refute Zionist-Israeli claims to the land. The SunniIslamic organization presented an uncompromising hostile stance toward Israel and relied on armed struggle to try to eradicate it. Like most other local Muslim Brotherhood movements in the Middle East, Hamas drew the bulk of its ideology from the teachings of Hassan al-Banna, yet applied them to the unresolved Palestinian cause. Hamas’ ideological and organizational roots in the Muslim Brotherhood entail a major emphasis on social welfare as an important part of its socio-political agenda. Thus, Hamas operates a wide network of social welfare organizations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that provide, directly or indirectly, emergency cash assistance, food and medical care, as well as educational and psychological services. This charitable work has earned Hamas considerable grassroots support among the Palestinian population. To be sure, Hamas was not the first Palestinian group to use armed resistance against Israeli occupation. However, it has undoubtedly carved out a unique niche and particular identity in the Palestinian political landscape against more established rivals such as Fatah. Hamas has accomplished this primarily by rearticulating the Palestinian project for statehood and the use of violence in the national struggle in overtly Islamic terms, in contrast to Fatah’s more secular narrative.89 Hamas largely portrays the Israeli-­ Palestinian conflict as a battle between two opposing absolutes, two rival religions, Judaism and Islam. For Hamas, the individual moral obligation of jihad is central to the fight for the Palestinian state. That is, it references the moral duty of jihad while effectively harnessing it to the Palestinian nationalist venture. Hence, an awakened and Islamized Palestinian society becomes the necessary precursor to independence. Hamas was also not the first organization to fight Israel based on a religious agenda. Back in 1979, Fathi Shaqaqi, an Islamic fundamentalist, led a group of radical Palestinian students in Egypt who had split from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip, and formed the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Although the PIJ is a Sunni organization, its ideology has been inspired by the Iranian Islamic revolution and regime, including a more extreme attitude toward Israel than that of Hamas. Largely sponsored by Iran, the Islamic Jihad is not involved in social services. Instead, it focuses

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on armed struggle and terrorist acts aimed at the destruction of Israel through jihad. Unlike Fatah or Hamas, it does not participate in the political process, let alone in any dialogue with Israel. In the aftermath of the intifada, the dynamics of the Palestinian resistance steadily shifted towards territorialism and the quest for sovereignty. The national movement was now less anchored in the diaspora and much more so in the territories. In November 1988, the Palestinian National Council signed the “Palestinian Declaration of Independence” in Algiers, catalyzing a severe crisis within the Palestinian national movement. The Algiers Declaration largely accepted UN Resolution 242 of 1967, which called for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the war, and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, in which every state would live in security. The Palestinian decision marked a shift in Palestinian discourse from an existential struggle to a conflict over territory and political rights. At the same time, the declaration reflected growing international pressure on the PLO to join the path of recognition and dialogue with Israel as a means of advancing the Palestinian cause. Yasser Arafat’s return to the West Bank following the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the territories allocated to the Palestinian autonomy regime, reinforced the transition to a local struggle, centered on a territorial discourse. The transition to autonomous Palestinian rule entailed a Jordanian renunciation of its old demand to annex the territories to the Hashemite Kingdom. Indeed, the demand for annexation has undergone many transformations since the Arab loss of territory in the 1967 war. In 1972, Jordan introduced the Federation Plan, which was followed by President Reagan’s plan for Palestinian autonomy under Jordanian rule. In 1983, King Hussein and Yasser Arafat launched the Confederation Plan, while Israeli officials explored the possibility of returning parts of the territory to Jordanian rule as part of what is known as the Jordanian Option. In 1987, Israel’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein secretly signed the London Agreement to promote this route, but ultimately none of these plans came to fruition. In 1988, fearing that the Palestinian uprising would spill over to his kingdom, King Hussein announced Jordan’s withdrawal from its claim to the West Bank territories, relinquishing them to the Palestinians. By the beginning of the next decade, the winds of change blowing in the global system had ramifications for the Middle East conflict agenda. In October 1991, the United States and Russia invited the Arab states, the Palestinians and Israel to a peace conference in Madrid. While producing a series of diplomatic contacts, including formal tracks of bilateral negotiations complemented by discreet informal ones, the Madrid Conference did



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not yield substantial results. However, it had significant symbolic value, as it marked the first time that Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and a Palestinian delegation sat at the same table to negotiate.90 Indeed, the Madrid Conference marked the beginning of a period of hope that culminated in the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords in 1993, and the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement in 1994. However, the hope that the Arab-Israeli rivalry was finally on its way to reconciliation was not shared by all the actors involved. Israeli-Palestinian hostility was soon renewed. Palestinian organizations that vehemently opposed the negotiations reacted by launching a campaign of terrorist acts intended to undermine the talks. The peace process encountered many obstacles, as central values remained in dispute. This included the demand for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, and their descendants, to the homes in Israel from which they fled in 1948. Israel’s decisive rejection of this claim stirred anger in the Palestinian public. The dispute over the future status of Jerusalem also remained unresolved. Opposition to the peace process was also expressed in a negative and suspicious attitude by large segments of the public in the Arab countries. The Rabin assassination and the subsequent rise of the Netanyahu government in Israel in 1996 brought to an end this complex period, which had generated conflicting feelings and struggles between the supporters of reconciliation and its opponents. Following a series of suicide attacks carried out by Hamas operatives in Israel, the IDF increased its struggle against Palestinian terrorism. The Palestinian Authority initiated wide-scale activity against Hamas, including the closure of the organization’s charitable institutions, mass arrests of its members and their public humiliation. This activity undermined Hamas’ prestige and sowed the seeds of deep internal Palestinian schism. Although the new Israeli government continued its contacts with the Palestinian Authority and maintained security coordination with it, the atmosphere had changed. Frustration, suspicion and stagnation once again dominated the conflict discourse on the Arab side, especially among the Palestinians. The inability of the PLO to bring about the implementation of the Oslo Accords and the improvement of life in the Palestinian Authority enabled its opponents, headed by Hamas, to undermine the legitimacy of the Palestinian leadership. Hamas emphasized the connection between the Palestinian Authority’s corruption and the unjust agreement with Israel. The negotiations had failed, concluded the Islamist organizations, and Islam was the only solution to the Palestinian problem. The rising support for Hamas among the Palestinian public in the following years reflected a shift in the Palestinian discourse. Islamist values prevailed.

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Constant armed activities by Hamas and Islamic Jihad further undermined the prospects of a diplomatic solution, and promoted the agenda of an uncompromising Islamic-inspired nationalist struggle against Israel. One expression of this trend was the “Al-Aqsa Intifada,” the hostilities that erupted at the end of September 2000, which the Palestinians framed as a struggle to protect the holy site of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Other expressions of the Islamization of the conflict agenda included the centrality of the issue of sovereignty over the Temple Mount in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at the Camp David summit in July 2000, and the violent demonstrations on the Temple Mount in recent years. After the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Hamas was the victor in the June 2006 elections, winning more than half of the seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council.91 As mediation efforts failed to reconcile fundamental issues between the contending parties, Fatah continued to maintain power without collaborating with Hamas. Anarchy spread in Gaza until Hamas carried out a coup in June 2007. The Palestinians split into two separate entities, with Egypt maintaining contacts between the rival organizations. Since then, the intra-Palestinian conflict has stalled the chances of peaceful dialogue and settlement with Israel. It is interesting to note, however, that while Hamas continues to wage a stubborn armed struggle against Israel from its controlled territory in Gaza, it is also trying to reach an arrangement with Israel that would enable it to manage the struggle under Egyptian-mediated rules of play. More radical organizations such as Islamic Jihad, are fighting against any attempt to bring about calm. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority remains in conflict with both the Israeli government and the Hamas government. In the face of recurrent failures to reach an internal Palestinian reconciliation, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority imposed economic sanctions against the Hamas government in Gaza, contributing to the worsening humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, which is under a continuous Israeli blockade. Under these circumstances, the Palestinian discourse continues to be hostile toward Israel, and its agenda lacks initiatives of Israeli-Palestinian appeasement. Developments in the agendas of the Arab states were influenced by the “Arab Spring” events, which followed three decades of Islamization processes, often termed as the “return of the sacred.”92 The protest movement that spread in the Arab countries throughout 2011 constituted a major upheaval in some of them. In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, veteran regimes were ousted. The Arab upheaval had implications for a variety of conflicts in the region, and reduced the centrality of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the Arab agenda. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood came to power for the first time in its history. In July 2013, however, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,



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commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army, toppled the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi in a military coup and managed to restore order in the country. In the following years, al-Sisi worked to protect Egyptian identity from the takeover of radical Islam. Under his rule the state has promoted a discourse of religious tolerance relying on the “seven pillars” of Egyptian identity, in which moderate Islam consists part of the nation’s complex identity. Accompanied by economic reforms, the premise of ​​seven pillars of identity is intended to contain various groups in the society and to harness the Egyptian public, especially the young, to unite the country. The wave of demonstrations spread into Syria and Jordan. In Jordan, the Islamic Movement along with popular movements and Jordanian tribes, led demonstrations against the regime. The king was compelled to accept the protest movement’s reform demands and the steps taken by his government succeeded in maintaining the regime. In Syria, riots focused on a variety of political, ideological and identity issues, and the situation deteriorated into a full-fledged civil war with the participation of a wide range of state and nonstate actors, both internal and external, which contributed to the intensification of horrific turmoil. Although Bashar al Assad has somewhat succeeded in stabilizing his rule, the internal strife persists. The war has completely changed the Syrian state, leading to its political and social disintegration. Its agenda and priorities have changed accordingly. As for the regional arena, Iran’s expanding presence in the country, in the wake of the war, has widened the rift between Syria and the other Arab states. The Palestinian problem was swiftly removed from the agenda of the Syrian regime, which is fighting for its existence. In this setting, the Syrian-Israeli frontier remains a central arena of conflict, revolving mainly around the struggle between Israel and Iran and its surrogates. The shock caused by the Arab uprising engendered change in the public and political discourse, directing the attention of Arab regimes to internal affairs. For the most part, the events of the Arab Spring elevated the issue of radical Islam in their political agenda. The conflict with Israel was pushed lower on their list of political and security priorities. Other regional threats, particularly the expansionist trends of Shi’ite Iran, on the one hand, and radical Sunni Islamism, on the other hand, have even led several countries in the region, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to see the advantage of cooperating with Israel in the face of common threats. The Palestinian issue, which has gradually lost its centrality over the past decades, has been marginalized in the Arab discourse. Criticism of Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians is still voiced by Arab governments and the public, yet Israeli actions against enemies identified with radical Islam, including Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, are quietly supported.

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Indeed, over the years of the conflict, there has been a substantial gap between the Arab leaders’ rhetoric and action on the Palestinian issue.93 On the one hand, the commitment of the Arab states to the Palestinian cause expressed symbolic solidarity with Arab identity and the remnants of the vision of Arab unity. On the other hand, the lack of practical action on behalf of the Palestinian struggle reflected the ideological gaps within the Arab world, as well as the weakness of the Arab regimes and their concerns about domestic constraints. While the unresolved conflict between Israel and the Palestinians continues to be a barrier to comprehensive regional peace, it is no longer a source of severe conflict between the countries of the region. More than ever, it seems that the Arab states continue to pay lip service to their Arab kin in Palestine, while the Palestinians are left to their fate. A COMPARATIVE ROLE OF IDENTITIES, ACTORS AND AGENDAS Both the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts revolve around territorial disputes, and the long-standing enmity in both conflicts is also rooted in identity issues. Apart from differences in religious and national identities between the peoples of India and Pakistan, and between those of Israel and the Arab states, there are also fundamental ideological differences in the way the rival countries define themselves. India was established on principles of secular nationalism, while Pakistan was founded on religious nationalism. Like Pakistan, Israel was founded on the basis of its Jewish religious identity, but like the Indian national movement, the Zionist movement was based mainly on principles of secular nationalism. The Arab national movements also relied on civic nationalism, with their Muslim identification always a central component of their collective identity. Indeed, as this chapter has shown, civic and religious nationalism have played a role in consolidating the identities of all the countries involved in the two regional conflicts. Over time, identity discourses have changed in all these states, though to different extents and in various fascinating ways, leaving their traces on regional relations. While none of these countries were established as religious states, the significance of religion in their discourses has risen steadily in recent decades. In the South Asian conflict, this was particularly evident in significant trends of Islamization that have developed in the Pakistani state, and in the rise of Hindu-nationalist discourse in India. The holiness of the Land of Israel, and primarily the sacredness of Jerusalem for the three monotheistic religions, endowed the Middle Eastern conflict with a religious dimension from the



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outset, and this has increased over time and become particularly explosive. There was no holy hill in Punjab or Bengal, as Ayesha Jalal has remarked, nor was there any particular sanctity in Kashmir that called upon rival communities in the Indian subcontinent to come and redeem them.94 Still, the conflict over Kashmir has drawn Islamist organizations pouring religious content into the inter-communal conflict in the disputed territory. The countries involved in the two conflicts also underwent ideological changes that affected their rivalry agendas. In the democratic polities of India and Israel, the founding parties—the Indian National Congress and Mapai (Labor)—lost their dominance in politics to right-wing parties and coalitions. In fact, they both lost power for the first time in the same year, with the 1977 electoral victories of the Janata Party in India and the Likud in Israel. In both countries, the rise in the status of right-wing parties reflected a change in the national discourse, which influenced the positions of the rival states in the regional conflict. Pakistan and some of the Arab states underwent military coups throughout the years; Pakistan oscillated between military regimes and fragile democracy. For the time being, Pakistan has managed to establish a democratic regime, while the Arab states remain under authoritarian rule. However, the military establishment continues to play a major role in shaping the political agenda in Pakistan, more than in the Arab states. Nationalist ideologies, intertwined with religious sentiments, not only shaped the identity discourses in the countries involved in the two regional conflicts but were also behind the assassinations of prominent leaders in the wake of their policies in the respective inter-communal rivalries. To name the most renowned of them, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindunationalist in India, King Abdullah of Jordan was killed by a Palestinian assassin, and Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by a national-religious Jew in Israel. Anwar Sadat and Benazir Bhutto were assassinated by members of jihadist organizations in their countries, Egypt and Pakistan. Interestingly, in India and Israel it is the ruling parties of recent decades that have promoted an ethno-national identity discourse. The current Indian government led by the BJP promotes a hardline Hindu-nationalist ideology based on Hindutva; the Israeli government led by the Likud and the religious Zionist parties, promotes Jewish nationalism, as expressed in the recently enacted Basic Law: Israel—The Nation-State of the Jewish People. Conversely, in the Arab countries, notably in Egypt and Jordan, though Islamism has occupied a significant place in the identity discourse, the ruling elites adhere to non-religious nationalism and in effect fight those non-state players that promote radical Islamic agendas and challenge the stability of existing regimes. As for Pakistan, here the government’s policy toward religious politics remains ambivalent, as the state no longer preaches Islamic

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ideology and even fights radical Islamist forces at home, but at the same time it continues to support Islamist organizations operating against Indian rule in Kashmir. Other issues have evolved over the years in the agendas of the two conflicts. One of the issues that hinder progress in resolving the Israeli-­Palestinian conflict is the refugee problem. More precisely, it is the Palestinian adherence to the discourse of refugees and insistence on the right of return that impede an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. The Palestinian refugee issue, it should be noted, is unique in the world: For seventy years, the international community has not only preserved the refugee status of the Palestinians who were displaced in the 1948 war, but also recognizes their descendants as refugees. This uniqueness is also expressed in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Formed exclusively for the welfare of Palestine refugees, the UN agency provides services for the Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Arab countries. At the same time, it attests to the permanency and growth in the refugee problem: Over five million people are now registered as Palestinian refugees eligible for UNRWA services.95 Partition and consequent mass migration have been central to regional consciousness in South Asia as well. The incredible violence that accompanied the displacement of millions of Muslims who made their way to West and East Pakistan, and millions of Hindus and Sikhs who headed in the opposite direction seared a painful memory into the evolving identities of people in the Indian subcontinent. As in the Palestinian legacy, partition and displacement constituted a defining moment in the modern history of India and Pakistan. As in the Palestinian identity discourse, the horrific events continue to influence how the peoples and states perceive themselves and the other. Though the South Asian forced migration was much larger in scale and more brutal in nature than the Palestinian displacement, it has not remained a topical issue on the conflict agenda. The refugees have resettled in the new countries, India and Pakistan. Thus, though the scar remains painful and deep, it is not a tangible obstacle to settling the regional conflict. In both rivalries, there has been a proliferation of non-state actors, which emphasizes the growing centrality of separatist issues in each of them. However, development trends of the Kashmiri and Palestinian actors have differed greatly. The Kashmiri struggle against India began with a demand for a plebiscite on the future of Jammu and Kashmir. This demand developed into an assertive claim for independence led by local nationalist organizations, notably the JKLF. After leading the Kashmir insurgency in 1989, the JKLF, which previously enjoyed Pakistani support, was abandoned in favor of pro-Pakistani organizations, notably Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. Under combined



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Indian repression and Pakistani pressure, the separatist organization was defeated, leaving Hizb-ul-Mujahideen as the dominant indigenous militant group. In the mid-1990s, Pakistan augmented the Kashmiri chaos by infusing external radical movements, such as LeT and JeM, which launched insurgents from across the Pakistani side of the LoC. Thus, pro-Pakistani organizations, both local and external, took the lead in the militant struggle waged in Indian Kashmir. By the end of the decade, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen was exhausted by a fierce military struggle with the Indian security forces, while the external groups continued to launch fedayeen assaults throughout the Valley of Kashmir. The share of foreign organizations in the militancy against India increased. By the mid-2000s, the Kashmir insurgency had weakened, but anger towards Indian authority remained. With the decline of the militaristic storm, a new generation of young Kashmiris instigated demonstrations against the Indian security forces in the state. The Kashmiri stone throwers revived the local dimension of the Kashmiri struggle and with it the debate between pro-independence and pro-Pakistani forces, with their different and conflicting visions of azadi. The Palestinian organizations and their struggle have evolved in an opposite direction from that of the Kashmiris, moving from total dependency to autonomous action, and from diaspora-based to homegrown leadership. Initially, the Palestinian struggle took place under the auspices of the Arab League. After instigating Palestinian fedayeen operations against Israel in the early years of the rivalry, the Arab states established the PLO as a national organization that would represent the Palestinian cause under their watchful eyes. Soon, however, Palestinian resistance organizations, headed by Fatah, took the initiative and launched an autonomous national armed struggle. From then on, a steady trend developed in which Palestinian movements steered their own fight. While the Arab states supported the various organizations, the leadership remained in Palestinian hands. The Palestinian leadership and its quest for independence gained international recognition. The PLO was first accepted as a non-state observer in the United Nations in 1974. In November 2012, sixty-five years after the UN partition, the status of the Palestinian delegation was upgraded to that of a non-member observer state in the United Nations. The PLO delegation to the Arab League was upgraded to the status of the State of Palestine. Jammu and Kashmir, on the other hand, remained a state within the Indian Union. The Kashmiri struggle for the right of self-determination has never gained the extent of international attention and recognition that the Palestinian struggle attained. The United Nations made efforts to promote the issue of a plebiscite in the years following the partition, but when India dropped the idea from

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the conflict agenda, the future of Jammu and Kashmir was largely left as a problem for India and Pakistan to resolve. In the early years of the Palestinian armed struggle, as long as Jordan claimed possession of the West Bank, the demand for Palestinian liberation was quite vague. The liberation movement demanded the establishment of a “Palestinian entity” and over the years examined federative and confederative solutions with the Jordanian kingdom. The demand for sovereignty increased after the outbreak of the intifada and Jordan’s relinquishment of its claim to the territories. Thus, the popular uprising that broke out in late 1987 in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip marked a turning point in the Palestinian struggle, which freed itself from the grip of the Arab states and set the stage for recognition of the Palestinians’ right to an independent state. The uprising that erupted shortly thereafter in Kashmir, on the other hand, marked a different tendency in which Pakistan took over the Kashmiri struggle, infusing external, non-Kashmiri organizations that raised the demand to merge with Pakistan. Indeed, external non-Palestinian groups, mainly Shi’ite Hezbollah, have joined in the conflict against Israel, operating from across the Lebanese border in the name of Iran. However, the center of gravity has certainly moved inward to Palestinian armed struggle taking place within the West Bank and Gaza. The non-state actors that have emerged in the two rivalries, and the power struggles that have evolved between various groups in each region, reflect change in agendas and identity discourses. Like the countries involved in the Indo-Pakistani and Arab-Israeli conflicts, the liberation organizations that arose in both regional rivalries originally promoted civic national agendas. To be sure, the identity discourses that took place within the early Kashmiri and Palestinian liberation movements touched upon their Muslim identity, yet they did not focus on religious conflict. The Islamization trend in the discourse and the militancy reached the two remote arenas in an era when radical Islam was rising in the broader Muslim world. By the 1990s, the militancy and terror activities against Indian and Israeli rule, which had been initiated by secular Kashmiri and Palestinian organizations, were painted in the bright colors of a religious war. The bitter rivalry between Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and the JKLF in Kashmir and between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestinian Authority represents not only political power struggles between groups and leaders, but also changes in national agendas. Fatah, the leading organization in the PLO, succeeded in establishing itself as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, both among the Palestinians and in the international community, notably in the Arab states and Israel. The growing support for Hamas in recent years, mainly in Gaza, has surely undermined Fatah’s status but has not defeated

Identity Discourse

India was founded on civic nationalism; Pakistan on Muslim nationalism and communalism. Over time, there was a rise of Hindu nationalism in Indian politics, and Islamism in Pakistani politics. The role of Islamism in the Kashmiri discourse is evident in the struggle between Islamist groups and nonreligious national movements. Pakistan’s identity discourse has implications for conflict persistence; India’s identity less so.

Territorial and identity conflict. Kashmir remains at the core of the conflict agenda. Pakistan holds a militaristic standpoint to defy the status quo in Kashmir; India seeks to preserve it. The Kashmiri militancy is dominated by Pakistani-supported organizations, demanding merger with Pakistan. Different visions of liberation among proPakistan and pro-independence forces. Pakistan has increased its support of external non-Kashmiri groups fighting in Kashmir.

Conflict Agenda

Non-State Actors

India-Pakistan (IP)

Attributes

Major Trends

(continued)

Territorial and identity conflict; the agenda Instrumental change in IP: willingness to negotiate, with no significant change in the positions of transformed from challenges to Israel’s either India or Pakistan. Substantive change right to exist to negotiations over borders in AI: from zero-sum thinking to processes of and security. Palestinian independence resolution. rose to the top of the conflict agenda. A proliferation of NSAs in both rivalries. The The Palestinian struggle is dominated by Kashmiri militancy is largely influenced by autonomous indigenous Palestinian Pakistan; the Arab countries have become less organizations, demanding independence. involved in the Palestinian struggle. An internal Palestinian political conflict, Inter-NSA disputes in both rivalries. The Palestinian yet the parties share the goal of full actors and their demand for self-determination Palestinian independence. have gained much greater international Iran supports external non-Palestinian forces recognition than the Kashmiri actors and fighting against Israel. demands do. A rising role of religion in identity discourses The Arab states were founded on local in both regions. The rise of Islamism was nationalism, corresponding with Islamic encouraged by the Pakistani state, but became identity; Israel was founded on civic a threat to the Arab regimes. Pan-Arabism gave nationalism, corresponding with Jewish way to local nationalism in the Arab states. identity. Over time, there was a rise Right-wing parties increased their power in India of Islamism in the Arab countries, and and Israel. religious Zionism in Israel. Religious nationalism plays a role in both rivalries. The role of Islamism in the Palestinian Pakistani Islamization is linked to increased discourse is evident in the struggle proxy war waged by Islamist groups. Israeli between Islamist groups and non-religious religious nationalist discourse hinders territorial national organizations. compromise. Israel’s identity discourse has implications The issue of holy places makes religion central to for conflict persistence; the Arab the AI rivalry more than in the IP one. countries’ identity less so (following the decline of pan-Arabism).

Arab-Israel (AI)

Table 5.1.  Actors and Agendas in the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli Rivalries

India-Pakistan (IP)

The large-scale violent forced migration Migration following the partition of India was a and Refugee momentous event defining Indian and Discourse Pakistani collective memory and their partition discourse.

Attributes

Table 5.1.  (Continued)

Forced migration following the 1948 war (al-Nakba) was a momentous event in defining Palestinian collective memory. Palestinian refugees remain part of the current political agenda and discourse.

Arab-Israel (AI)

The issue of Palestinian refugees plays a central role in the Palestinian agenda; the demand for their “right of return” impedes conflict resolution. The post-partition refugees issue is not on the IndoPakistani conflict agenda.

Major Trends



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it. The JKLF, on the other hand, had not succeeded to establish itself as the authorized leader of the Kashmir struggle when Pakistan and its supporters, led by Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, began targeting it. Thus, the Islamist organizations involved in the Kashmir militancy have prevailed. Meanwhile, the Kashmiri and Palestinian peoples remain hostages at the hands of political and armed organizations that are leading their national struggles and setting the tone in their conflict agendas. Frustration and hostility in Kashmir and the Palestinian Authority stem from harsh economic, political and security realities, which are linked both to the conflict with India and Israel, respectively, and to internal contentions. In both arenas, the public is divided between conflicting ideologies and loyalties, remaining united only by hostility towards the countries from which they wish to separate. The India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli rivalries, then, are marked by trends of change in ideologies and identity discourse, as well as in the development of parties and non-state actors that have shaped political agendas and positions toward the conflict. As we have seen, these changes correspond to trends of interstate and state-NSA warness discussed in the previous chapter. Table 5.1 summarizes and compares major characteristics of actors and agendas involved in the two conflicts. In all, it appears that changes in the Arab-Israeli conflict have been more profound than the changes in the India-Pakistani one. A discourse of existence in the Middle East was replaced by a discourse of borders and political rights. Some of the rival countries have transitioned from war to peace, and the Palestinian non-state players have taken over the leadership of their struggle for independence. The South Asian rivalry has undergone instrumental changes, with the rival countries holding positions that are not significantly different from those they held at the beginning of the conflict. The Kashmiri non-state actors have largely served as a tool in the hands of the contending countries, and no significant change has developed in the conflict agenda toward Kashmiri independence. So far, however, none of the changes in either rivalry have led to conflict resolution and comprehensive peace. NOTES   1. Oran R. Young, “The Actors in World Politics,” in James N. Rosenau, Vincent Davis and Maurice East (eds.), The Analysis of International Politics, (New York: The Free Press, 1972); Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr. (eds.), Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).   2. See for example James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence (Glenview: Scott

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Foresman, 1989); Meredith Reid Sarkees, Frank Wayman and J. David Singer, “Inter-State, Intra-State, and Extra-State Wars: A Comprehensive Look at Their Distribution over Time, 1816–1997,” International Studies Quarterly 47, 1 (2003), 49–70.   3. Hemda Ben-Yehuda and Meirav Mishali-Ram, “Protracted Conflicts, Crises and Ethnicity: The Arab-Israeli and India-Pakistan Conflicts, 1947–2005,” The Journal of Conflict Studies 26, 1 (2006), 75–100.   4. On the formation of Hindu nationalism, see: Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s (London: Penguin Books, 1996).   5. Richard Gordon, “The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926,” Modern Asian Studies 9, 2 (1975), 150–51; Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, 1885–1947 (Delhi: Macmillan India, 1983), 235.  6. The Khilafat movement advocated resistance to the British in the name of pan-Islamism and loyalty to the Ottoman emperor, who was professed to be the Caliph, the supreme religious and political leader of all Muslims. See Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 65–110.   7. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Essentials of Hindutva (Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1st edition 1923). In 1928, the book was retitled: Hindutva; Who Is a Hindu?; Arvind Harma, “On Hindu, Hindustan, Hinduism and Hindutva,” Numen 49, 1 (2002), 1–36.   8. Dina Nath Mishra, RSS: Myth and Reality (Uttar Pradesh: Vikas Publishing House, 1980).  9.  Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee, Sucheta Mahajan and K.N. Panikkar, India’s Struggle for Independence (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1989), 4. 10. Kristina Jonsson and Catarina Kinnvall, Globalization and Democratization in Asia: The Construction of Identity (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2003), 175. 11. S. Gopal and Uma Iyengar (eds.), The Essential Writings of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 1 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 194–95. 12. Gopal and Iyengar, The Essential Writings of Jawaharlal Nehru, 186. 13. Gopal and Iyengar, The Essential Writings of Jawaharlal Nehru, 186. 14. Chowdhary Rekha, Jammu and Kashmir: Politics of Identity and Separatism (London: Routledge, 2015), 7–8. 15. Navnita Chadha Behera, Demystifying Kashmir (New Delhi: Pearson Education, 2007). 16. In the 1990s, in the wake of the Kashmir insurgency, Muslim extremists persecuted Hindu Kashmiris and forced most of the (Hindu) Pandit population to leave Kashmir, thereby tipping the scales to full Muslim demographic control in the Kashmir Valley. 17. Stephen M. Saideman, “At the Heart of the Conflict: Irredentism and Kashmir,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 212.



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18. Jammu Muslims and Kashmiri Muslims differ in their linguistic characters and their religious traditions and rituals. See: Navnita, Demystifying Kashmir, 105–7. 19. Ashutosh Varshney, “India, Pakistan, and Kashmir: Antinomies of Nationalism,” Asian Survey 31, 11 (1991), 999–1000. 20. Amar Cheema, The Crimson Chinar: The Kashmir Conflict, A Politico Military Perspective (India: Lancer Publishers, 2014), 404. 21. Luv Puri, Across the Line of Control: Inside Pakistan-Administered Kashmir (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 101. 22. Arun R. Swamy, “Hindu Nationalism: What’s Religion Got to Do with It?” Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, March 2003, at: https://apcss.org/ Publications/Ocasional%20Papers/OPHinduNationalism.pdf. 23. Deepa Mary Ollapally, The Politics of Extremism in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 48. 24. Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 3. 25.  Rekha Chowdhary, “Understanding Political Alienation in Kashmir,” The Indian Journal of Political Science 62, 2 (2001), 159–60. 26. Naeem Ahmed, “India’s Changing Policy on Kashmir,” Pakistan Horizon 53, 4 (2000), 35–36. 27. Hassan Khan, “Comparative Strategic Culture: The Case of Pakistan,” Strategic Insight 4, 10 (2005), 1–12. 28. Vali Nasr, “National Identities and the India-Pakistan Conflict,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 179–80. 29. Abdus Sattar Ghazali, Islamic Pakistan: Illusions and Reality (Islamabad: National Book Club, 1996), 9. 30. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 31. On the highly diverse identities in Pakistan, including the various forms of Islam, and the debates on what constitutes real Islam and the proper role of religion in the state’s ideology, see Robert Rozehnal, “Faqir of Faker?: The Pakpattan Tragedy and the Politics of Sufism in Pakistan,” Religion 36, 1 (2006), 29–47. 32.  Christophe Jaffrelot, “Pakistan: Nationalism Without A Nation: Pakistan Searching for Its Identity,” in Christophe Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan: Nationalism Without A Nation (London: Zed Books, 2002). 33. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 159. 34. Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), 3. 35. From its inception, Pakistan has faced separatist demands based on ethnic and regional nationalism, such as those claimed by Bengali, Baloch and Sindhi nationalists.

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36. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan Times (Lahore), April 13, 1972, cited in Peter Topychkanov, “Islam and the Paths of Pakistan’s Political Development,” Carnegie Moscow Center’s Briefing 11, 2 (2009), 5. 37. Nasr, “National Identities,” 185–86. 38. Syed Mujawar Hussain Shah, Religion and Politics in Pakistan, 1972–1988 (Islamabad: Quaid-i-Azam University, 1996), 320. On the internal sectarian struggle waged by Sunni movements against the Shiite minority, see Mariam Abou Zahab and Oliver Roy, Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 23. 39. Abou Zahab and Roy, Islamist Networks, 32–33. 40. Abou Zahab and Roy, Islamist Networks, 35. 41. Rajat Ganguly, “India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Insurgency: Causes, Dynamics and Prospects for Resolution,” Asian Studies Review 25, 3 (2001), 310–11. 42. Vali Nasr, “National Identities,” 186. 43.  Owen Bennett-Jones, “Musharraf’s Kashmir Policy,” Asian Affairs 38, 3 (2007). 44. Abou Zahab and Roy, Islamist Networks, 79. 45. Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, 2. 46. Following Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007, her husband, Zardari, made his son, Bilawal, chairman of the Pakistan People Party (PPP) and placed himself as the party’s co-chairman. In 2008 he led the PPP to victory in the general elections, and in 2009 he became president yet remained very influential on the PPP-led government. 47. Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014). 48. T. V. Paul, “Causes of the India-Pakistan Enduring Rivalry,” in T. V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 5–6, 11–12. 49. Sumit Ganguly, Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of the New Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 122. See also Pankaj Dodh, “India-Pakistan Relations: A Sociopolitical Perspective,” World Affairs 21, 4 (2017), 126–37. 50. Christine Fair, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 259–61. 51. Though Israel’s religious parties have historically won a relatively small percentage of Knesset seats, they have been a significant political force required to form a parliamentary majority for the coalition governments led by the leading secular parties, Labor and Likud. 52. On Ha’poel Ha’tzair and Ahdut Ha’avoda, the two parties that established Mapai, see Yaacov N. Goldstein, “Labor and Likud: Roots of Their Ideological-Political Struggle for Hegemony Over Zionism, 1925–35,” in Efraim Karsh (ed.), Israel: The First Hundred Years, Volume III—Israeli Politics and Society Since 1948, Problems of Collective Identity (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2002), 79–90.



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53. The Herut Movement, literally “freedom,” continued the Revisionist way in the State of Israel and was the core of the alliance of parties that established the Likud, literally “the consolidation,” in 1973. See: Yehi’am Vaits, “The Road to the ‘Upheaval’: A Capsule History of the Herut Movement, 1948–1977,” Israel Studies 10, 3 (2005), 54–86.  54. Tzvi Tzameret and Hannah Yablonka, The First Decade: 1948–1958 (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1997), 12–13 (in Hebrew). 55. Michael Brecher, Dynamics of the Arab-Israel Conflict: Past and Present, Intellectual Odyssey II (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 43–47. 56. Yehudith Auerbach, “National Narratives in a Conflict of Identity,” in Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov (ed.), Barriers to Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 2010), 99–134. 57. Tzameret and Yablonka, The First Decade, 162. 58. Joel Peters, “Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” in Joel Peters and David Newman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013), 2–3. 59. Yitzhak Reiter, “Religion as a Barrier to Compromise in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” in Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov (ed.), Barriers to Peace in the IsraeliPalestinian Conflict (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 2010), 228–63. 60. Giora Goldberg,“Gush Emunim New Settlements in the West Bank: From Social Movement to Regional Interest Group,” in Efraim Ben-Zadok (ed.), Local Communities and the Israeli Polity: Conflict of Values and Interests (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 189–208. 61. Yehezkel Landau, “Religion,” in Joel Peters and David Newman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013), 163–64. 62. Brecher, Dynamics of the Arab-Israel Conflict, 48. 63. Hagai Segal, Land for Dreams: A National Diary from 1948 to the Present (Tel Aviv: Miskal Publishing, 2013), 22 (in Hebrew). 64. “Address by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin upon signing the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles Washington, D.C. September 13, 1993.” Rabin Center, http://www.rabincenter.org.il/Items/01100/signingoftheDeclarationof​ Principles.pdf. 65. Daniel Bar-Tal and Keren Sharvit, “The Influence of the Threatening Transitional Context on Israeli Jews’ Reactions to Al Aqsa Intifada,” in Victoria M. Esses and Richard A. Vernon (eds.), Explaining the Breakdown of Ethnic Relations: Why Neighbors Kill (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 147–70. 66. Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, Ephraim Lavie, Kobi Michael and Daniel Bar-Tal, The Israeli-Palestinian Violent Confrontation 2000–2004: From Conflict Resolution to Conflict Management (Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 2005). 67. Bar-Siman-Tov et al., The Israeli-Palestinian Violent Confrontation, 31.

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68. Daniel Bar-Tal, Eran Halperin and Neta Oren, “Socio–Psychological Barriers to Peace Making: The Case of the Israeli Jewish Society,” Social Issues and Policy Review 4, 1 (2010), 79. 69. Basic Law: Israel—The Nation-State of the Jewish People, at: https://knesset​ .gov.il/laws/special/eng/BasicLawNationState.pdf. 70. Ernest C. Dawn, “The Origins of Arab Nationalism,” in Rashid Khalidi, Lisa Anderson, Muhammad Muslih and Reeva S. Simon (eds.), The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). 71. Fawaz A. Gerges, Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash That Shaped the Middle East (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2018). 72. Adeed Dawish, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 1–3. 73. Brecher, Dynamics of the Arab-Israel Conflict, 35. 74. Paul Brykczynski, “Radical Islam and the Nation: The Relationship between Religion and Nationalism in the Political Thought of Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb,” History of Intellectual Culture 5, 1 (2005), 14–15. 75. Dawish, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 83. 76. Dawish, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 79–80. 77. P.R. Kumaraswamy, “The Arab World,” in Joel Peters and David Newman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013). 78. Jordan had conquered these territories at the end of the British Mandate, and recaptured them in the subsequent Arab-Israeli war. 79. Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel (New York: Transaction Publishers, 1974). 80. Fatah is the reversed Arabic acronym of “The Movement for the Liberation of Palestine.” 81. Ahmed Samish Khalidi, “The Palestinian National Movement: From SelfRule to Statehood,” in Joel Peters and David Newman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013), 20–30. 82. Rashmi Singh, “The Discourse and Practice of ‘Heroic Resistance’ in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Case of Hamas,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 13, 4 (2012), 529–45. 83. Meir Litvak, “The Islamization of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: The Case of Hamas,” Middle Eastern Studies 34, 1 (1998), 148–50. On the historical evolution of Islamic thought in Palestine, see Tristan Dunning, “Islam and Resistance: Hamas, Ideology and Islamic Values in Palestine,” Critical Studies on Terrorism 8, 2 (2015), 285–305. 84. On the bloody events between the Palestinians and the Jordanian army in 1970, the subsequent migration of Palestinian operatives to Lebanon and their role in undermining its stability, see the discussion on the state-NSA dimension of warness in the Arab-Israeli conflict in Chapter 4.



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85. The Knesset, “Address of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the Knesset, November 20, 1977,” https://knesset.gov.il/description/eng/doc/Speech_sadat _1977_eng.htm. 86. Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 190–92. 87. The assassination of Sadat took place against the backdrop of an Islamist uprising and following a fatwa issued by the Egyptian sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman that defined Sadat as a heretic for refusing to accept Sharia as the basis of Egyptian law. 88. Rami Nasrallah, “The First and Second Palestinian Intifadas,” in Joel Peters and David Newman (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2013), 56–58; Fraser, The Arab-Israeli Conflict, 136–37. 89. Rashmi Singh, “The Discourse and Practice of ‘Heroic Resistance,’” 532–33. 90. Officially, the Palestinians were part of the Jordanian delegation. 91. Litvak, “The Islamization of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,” 149. 92. Oliver Roy, “The Transformation of the Arab World,” in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (eds.), Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 15–18. See also Jason Brownlee, Tarek Masoud and Andrew Reynolds, The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 93. Aaron David Miller, The Arab States and the Palestine Question: Between Ideology and Self-Interest (New York: Praeger, 1986), 2–5. 94. Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan, 11. 95.  UNRWA, “UNRWA in Figures, 2017,” at: https://www.unrwa.org/sites/​ default/files/content/resources/unrwa_in_figures_2017_english.pdf.

Chapter Six

Conflict Change and Prospects of Peace

Encompassing multifarious dimensions, enduring rivalries are complex settings and there may not be a simple answer to explain their persistence. The comparison between the India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli conflicts sheds light on change dynamics throughout the two ongoing rivalries and on characteristics that have contributed to their endurance. The comparison, however, requires caution. The two regions have different historical, cultural and political backgrounds. Despite many shared components, the regional rivalries differ in their scope, structure and dynamics. Notably, the South Asian conflict is bilateral, while its Middle Eastern equivalent has a multilateral configuration. The complexity of the Arab-Israeli rivalry, in terms of the actors and issues involved, should have ostensibly made it more difficult for dialogue and settlement. Arab alliances confronting Israel, along with intricate interArab relations that combine fluctuating cooperation and enmity, seemed like major obstacles to negotiation. Reconciliation seemed unimaginable. However, peace negotiations in the Middle East, which began in 1977 with the historic visit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Jerusalem, changed the conflict dramatically. President Sadat’s diplomatic initiative, which abruptly terminated three decades of bloody Egyptian-Israeli conflict, managed to break established conventions in the Arab camp and promote a bilateral peace agreement within the multi-sided rivalry. The peace accord between the two major foes then paved the way to additional agreements, signed between Israel and Jordan, and between Israel and the Palestinians, in the following years. While the Middle Eastern peace process has encountered many difficulties along the way, and though the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have ran aground in recent years, it is evident that trends of dialogue and settlement have gone much further in the Middle East region than in the South Asian 195

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scene. While warness has transformed into peace between two of the rivaling dyads in the Arab-Israeli rivalry, so far India and Pakistan have shown no sign that they are prepared for such a change in their conflict. Another difference observed between the two rivalries pertains to superpower involvement and the role played by the Cold War in the two sets of conflictual relations. Both the United States and the Soviet Union have engaged in alliances with the countries in South Asia and the Middle East, yet Cold War dynamics had much greater ramifications for the Arab-Israeli rivalry than for the Indo-Pakistani one. The demise of the Soviet Union left the Arab states without patronage, which entailed the loss of the economic, diplomatic and military aid they had received from the Soviet power throughout the Cold War. In fact, Egypt recognized the advantages of an alliance with the United States back in the mid-1970s, when Sadat sought to strengthen his country through American economic and military aid. In light of these changing priorities, Egypt turned to a peace process with Israel. In the aftermath of the Cold War, as the Soviet Union lost ground in the Middle East, and the United States became eager to promote a peace settlement in the region, the rivaling parties engaged in a multilateral peace conference. Though the Madrid Conference did not yield peace agreements, it precipitated processes that eventually matured into the Oslo Accords. Indeed, the global Cold War division was also incorporated in the India-Pakistan rivalry, with the United States and the Soviet Union making strategic alliances with Pakistan and India, respectively. However, the scope of superpower involvement in the Indo-Pakistani conflict was less prominent than in the Arab-Israeli one. Thus, the end of the global rivalry did not entail substantial ramifications for the South Asian conflict. Nevertheless, the end of the Cold War affected interests and alliances all over the world. India, which like the Arab states had enjoyed Soviet military aid, now sought closer ties with the United States. In this spirit, India warmed relations with Israel, which had been cold for over four decades.1 In 1992, India announced the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel for the first time since their independence. These relations were further promoted by the BJP government led by Narendra Modi, who in 2017 held the first visit of an Indian prime minister to Israel. Indeed, India’s traditional support of the Arab side in the Middle East conflict has changed in the spirit of the times and circumstances. Among other things, the similar challenges of popular uprising and armed militancy faced by India and Israel bred military and economic cooperation between the two remote states. The India-Pakistan and Arab-Israeli rivalries differ in the nature of the liberation struggles that still stand at the heart of both conflicts. The Kashmir dispute has remained mainly irredentist, while the Palestinian struggle



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has become entirely secessionist. To be sure, both the Indian-Kashmiri and Israeli-Palestinian disputes have drawn intensive intervention of the neighboring countries, including economic, political and military assistance that Pakistan and the Arab states have provided to the peoples struggling for liberation. There is also no doubt that these intervening countries were motivated not only by the commitments to protect their sovereignty-seeking allies, but also by the quest to promote their own strategic interests. However, Pakistan, which continues to claim control over the disputed region of Kashmir, has been more actively involved in the struggle against India than the Arab states have been engaged in the Palestinian struggle against Israel. The Arab states have had their own disputes with the State of Israel. The loss of Arab territories in the Six-Day War of 1967—including the Golan Heights, the Sinai and Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem—generated a direct territorial interest in the conflict for Syria, Egypt and Jordan. This substantial interest was not strictly related to the Palestinian issue. The Israeli-Egyptian peace accord resolved the territorial dispute between the two states, leaving the Gaza Strip, a pre-1967 Egyptian territory, under Israeli control. Similarly, the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement resolved the dyadic interstate territorial dispute, without transferring the West Bank and East Jerusalem back to the Hashemite Kingdom. Egypt and Jordan thus relinquished territories that had belonged to their countries prior to the war. The territories they ceded were inhabited by a Palestinian population. In their disengagement from these territories, Egypt and Jordan distanced themselves from the Palestinian problem, leaving it for Israel to handle. Henceforth, their support for the Palestinian cause shifted mainly to the political arena, while continuing to uphold the framework of the peace agreements with Israel. Syria, which still claims the Golan Heights, did not reach a peace settlement with Israel and remains actively involved in conflict with it. A territorial dispute also still exists between Lebanon and Israel. As described, despite the declarative connection to the Palestinian question, these territorial disputes and the continued interstate conflict are not directly related to the struggle waged by the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Pakistan’s interests in Kashmir, on the other hand, are highly entangled with the Kashmiri struggle against India, even though Pakistan’s sponsorship has been somewhat imposed on those Kashmiris who prefer independence rather than joining the Pakistani state. Indeed, Pakistan, unlike the Arab states, has not diminished, let alone abandoned, its determined effort to gain sovereignty over the disputed region in Kashmir. The introduction of nuclear weapons into both regions affected the dynamics of the two rivalries differently. The acquisition of nuclear capability by both of the rivals in the South Asian conflict reduced India’s power advantage

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over Pakistan, enabling Pakistan to increase its militancy strategy under the cover of a nuclear umbrella. In the Middle East, Israel’s nuclear arsenal has increased its strategic advantage vis-à-vis the Arab states. Indeed, trends of change in both conflict arenas have stemmed from a variety of causes, including the acquisition of nuclear weaponry, changes in the global system and superpower involvement in the region. In this book, however, I chose to focus on two significant processes that occurred within the parties in each conflict: the emergence of powerful non-state actors and variations in identity discourse. As we saw in Chapter 3, both rivalries erupted in the wake of political shocks generated by the geographical division of the Indian subcontinent and Mandatory Palestine, which in turn led to an outbreak of full-scale wars.2 Since their inception, the two rivalries have experienced other political shocks; however, contrary to theoretical expectations, these shocks did not bring an end to the ongoing conflicts.3 Nevertheless, the political shocks of the Bangladesh War in 1971 and the Six-Day War in 1967 accelerated change processes, creating new dynamics in both conflict arenas. In South Asia, Pakistan embraced its Islamic character, seeking to reinforce the one identity marker designed to unite the Pakistani nation. The Islamization program adopted after the war, combined with an enhanced militancy strategy, created a change in the pattern of Indo-Pakistani warness. Direct militarized interstate disputes were largely replaced by state-NSA confrontations. In the Middle East, Islamist trends swept over the Arab states as well, yet the regimes of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon remained essentially secular. However, Islamic radicalization, which was expressed in the growth of non-state actors of religious nature, was not only directed against Israel but also influenced the intra-Arab arena, posing a threat to the Arab regimes. In fact, radicalization of the religious discourse in Pakistan also stirred increasing internal violence in the name of Islam, becoming a threat to the stability of the Pakistani regime. As we saw in Chapter 4, changes in the character of actors and the political discourse were reflected in warness variation in the two rivalries. Interstate warness in the India-Pakistan conflict has varied from hot war to cold war, with manifestations of détente. Trends of interstate Arab-Israeli warness diverged, with transitions from hot war to peace in Israel-Egypt and IsraelJordan relations, and persisting cold war relations with intermittent outbreaks of violent hostilities in the Israel-Syria and Israel-Lebanon rivalries. At the same time, warness in both regions transformed from mainly interstate disputes to primarily state-NSA confrontations. While both the Indian-Pakistani and Arab-Israeli conflicts have undergone change over time, the essence of change is different in the two settings. In both arenas, we saw the emergence of powerful non-state actors and an increase in



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religious-national discourses, which radicalized and toughened the positions of the opposing sides regarding the settlement of the conflict. However, it appears that the Middle Eastern rivalry has changed more profoundly in comparison to its counterpart in South Asia. The Arab-Israeli rivalry has come a long way from the “three no’s” policy of the Khartoum summit that rejected peace, recognition and negotiations with Israel. The interstate dimension of the rivalry now focuses on the conflict between Israel and Syria, which, beyond the long-standing territorial dispute between them, also entails ideological animosity. Syria has continuously adhered to the traditional power struggle against Israel, today conducted with the military backing of players from outside the framework of the Arab-Israeli conflict, namely the Shi’ite axis of Iran and Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the Israeli-­Palestinian dimension of the conflict has gained increasing prominence in the regional rivalry. Here too, the main contention has largely shifted from denying each other’s legitimate rights to a discussion over sovereign boundaries. It is mainly the failure to reach understandings on this front that hinders broader Arab-Israeli reconciliation and regional normalization. Seventy years after its outbreak, change in the India-Pakistan rivalry seems mainly instrumental. Kashmir, which beyond its geo-strategic and economic importance has symbolic value, remains in dispute between the two countries. Neither country has shown significant shifts in its positions, despite the turnover of governments and passage of time. The decline in militarized interstate confrontations has been replaced by Pakistani-backed militancy carried out by non-state organizations. Peace talks have managed to improve the tense atmosphere and expand normalization measures between the South Asian neighbors. So far, however, the negotiations have only attested to the parties’ willingness to engage in dialogue and avoid war, and have not indicated readiness for any substantive compromise on the core of their conflict in Kashmir. REPUDIATING THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION The territorial partitions of India and Palestine were designed to solve the rivalries between competing communities by giving a sovereign state to each of them. However, it soon became clear that partition left parties unsatisfied, catalyzing prolonged national struggles and territorial disputes in both of the conflict arenas. The partition of India led to mass migration, accompanied by violence and bloodshed. Nevertheless, it realized the vision of creating two states for two peoples in the subcontinent, based on their religious affiliations. After the partition, there were Indian leaders who thought that Pakistan, divided into eastern and western wings that lacked territorial contiguity,

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would see the mutual benefits of joining India in a loose federative or confederative state. However, the idea never took shape as both countries adhered to their independent existence. Two and a half decades later, the Bangladesh War, leading to division between East and West Pakistan and the creation of a third state in the subcontinent—independent Bangladesh—marked the demise of the two-nation theory in the region. To begin with, Islam, which underpinned the idea of Pakistan, proved insufficient to keep the state united. Moreover, the conjunction of the Pakistani civil war with the ensuing IndianPakistani war created a Hindu-Muslim (Indian-Bengali) alliance against Muslim Pakistan. Thus, the civil war largely undermined identification with Muslim nationalism and emphasized the validity of ethno-national identities. In this vein, Bengali separatism gave greater cogency to Kashmiri separatist aspirations and their claims of azadi in demanding full independence for Kashmir. The initial promise of a plebiscite on the future of Kashmir was gone, but not forgotten. Kashmiri calls for azadi have been directed against both Indian and Pakistani rule. The uprising that broke out in Kashmir in 1989 expressed Kashmiris’ alienation from the Indian state. In the following years, India managed to curb and reduce the violent resistance in the Kashmir Valley, but the Kashmiri people have continued to see Indian rule as oppressive, and remained hostile to India’s political and military grip on their society. Determined to maintain its claim on the disputed territory, Pakistan, on its part, has deepened its involvement in the Kashmir separatist struggle. Many Kashmiris, however, still prefer independence rather than accession to Pakistan.4 Nonetheless, the demand for Kashmiri independence, which means creating a fourth state in the Indian subcontinent, is not on the agenda of either of the countries that continue to fight for their claim to annex Kashmir. In Palestine, unlike India, the two-state idea never materialized. Since the UN decision to partition the land, the question of a Palestinian state has undergone many transformations. First, Jordan annexed most of the territories designated for the Palestinian state in the West Bank, and Egypt held the Gaza Strip—until losing these territories to Israel in the Six-Day War. In the following years, as Jordan still demanded control over the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, Israel and Jordan began to discuss options of restoring Jordanian rule there, excluding Jerusalem, which Israel soon separated ideologically from the rest of the West Bank. Among these options was the idea of a confederation with the Hashemite kingdom, where the majority of the population is of Palestinian origin. Indeed, only after the first intifada broke out and Jordan renounced its claim to the territories did Israel and the Palestinian leadership embark on mutual recognition and direct dialogue. The Oslo peace process brought the idea of an independent Palestinian state to the



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top of the conflict agenda. Granting autonomy to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and establishing the Palestinian Authority there in 1994 were the first steps toward its implementation. However, the Oslo Accords have since run aground. The Palestinian leadership became divided, with the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority ruling in the West Bank and the Hamas government controlling the Gaza Strip. The political rivalry between the two Palestinian camps, accompanied by cultural diversity and geographic fragmentation between the West Bank and Gaza, has become a major obstacle to implementing the two-state solution. Seventy years after the Arab-Israeli rivalry erupted, negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians remain stuck, as are the attempts to settle the conflict between the two Palestinian camps. Feeling disillusioned from both the armed struggle led by Hamas and the political dialogue pursued by the PLO in recent decades, some Palestinians advocate establishing a single state in Palestine, jointly with the State of Israel, to which the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and all their descendants would be allowed to return. Some Israelis also favor solutions that would prevent the division of the land. They are primarily religious Zionists who seek to annex all of Judea and Samaria to the State of Israel. The solution of a common state, possibly within a confederative setting, has also gained ground among the radical left in Israel. But the one-state solution is incompatible with the vision of a Jewish and democratic state. A common state with equal rights for Jews and Palestinian Arabs, as proposed by the radical left, would negate the Jewish identity of the State of Israel. The annexation of the Palestinian territories and population to the State of Israel without granting full equality, as suggested by the annexation plans of the radical right, would negate Israel’s democratic identity. Though Israel and the Palestinian Authority are formally sticking to the two-state solution, it becomes more complicated to achieve as time passes. In the absence of an agreed political solution, the two political entities—the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority—are becoming increasingly intertwined, with expanding Jewish settlement in the West Bank and a growing Arab minority living in Israel. While the lack of preparedness to promote negotiations and seek a peace agreement is depicted as a continuation of the status quo, the reality on the ground continues to change. These trends point to a gradual process leading towards the formation of a single state that would not meet the fundamental goals of either side. At the same time, there are few who imagine that the deep and ongoing rift between the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza will be perpetuated in a future Israeli-Palestinian separation agreement, resulting in the formation of three states for the two peoples competing for the land of Israel

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and Palestine. Such a solution is undesirable for Israel and the Palestinians. More importantly, it would be highly unviable to maintain separate independent entities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Thus, of all these schemes, none of which seems feasible in the near future, the two-state idea remains the official and most practical option at hand. Then again, in the general elections of 2019, none of the coalition parties that make up the Israeli government, nor their main rival—the new center party Blue and White—openly endorsed the two-state solution. Clearly, peace with the Palestinians, which entails territorial concessions, has dramatically lost its appeal in Israeli public opinion. India and Israel, which control the disputed territories of Kashmir and the West Bank and Gaza, respectively, thus tend to favor the preservation of the current reality over reaching agreements that would require significant territorial concessions. India has adhered to the status quo from the beginning of the conflict. In the past, Israel has demonstrated readiness for compromise when it signed peace agreements that included the return of territories it captured in war. However, given the present impasse vis-à-vis the Palestinians and threats from Syria and Hezbollah, Israel no longer shows enthusiastic support for changing the status of the rivalry, preferring instead to manage the conflict and control the security threats it poses. Pakistan and the Arab states, on the other hand, oppose the continuation of the territorial status quo in their respective regions. Pakistan is particularly active in efforts to alter the present reality in Kashmir. Understandably, the Kashmiri and Palestinian nationalist movements, left without states of their own, are the most revisionist elements in the two enduring rivalries. CHANGE AND PERSISTENCE: CONCLUDING WORDS This book examines conflict persistence through the notion of change. More specifically, it examines change in actors and agendas throughout enduring rivalries and underlines its association with conflict variation and persistence. The comparative examination of the rivalries in South Asia and the Middle East shows that both have indeed undergone multiple changes over time. Notably, this study illuminates the rise of religious-national discourses and agendas, and the proliferation of non-state actors in both conflict zones. As scholarly works show, religiously motivated conflicts tend to be more severe than non-religious ones, and less likely to be pragmatically managed.5 The scholarly literature on conflict also tells us that the involvement of nonstate actors in interstate disputes is likely to aggravate their confrontations and impede conflict resolution.6 To be sure, as this book elucidates, there are manifold sources for the persistence of these two complex rivalries. The fact



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that territorial disputes stand at the core of the rivalries is surely one explanation for their endurance.7 The increasing role of non-state actors and religious creed in the two regions is certainly another major factor that impedes resolution and peace. Indeed, radical forces gained momentum in both regional arenas. Hostility also spilled into the regional conflicts from the global arena, while the great powers remained largely unwilling, or unable, to reconcile between the rival sides in South Asia and the Middle East. These are difficult barriers. Valiant leadership, as demonstrated in breakthroughs achieved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, can overcome them. Such leadership also needs to cultivate major changes in the political discourse and agenda in order to mobilize public support for adopting new and bold policies towards the conflict. NOTES 1. On India-Israel relations see Rajendra Abhyankar, The Evolution and Future of India-Israel Relations (Tel Aviv: The S. Daniel Abraham Center for International and Regional Studies, 2012). 2. Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl, “The Initiation and Termination of Enduring Rivalries: The Impact of Political Shocks,” American Journal of Political Science 39, 1 (1995). 3. On theoretical frameworks of enduring rivalries and the punctuated equilibrium model, as discussed in Chapter 2, see Goertz and Diehl, “The Initiation and Termination of Enduring Rivalries,” 30–52; Paul F. Diehl and Gary Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). 4. See Reuters, “Majority in Kashmir Valley Want Independence: Poll,” World News, August 13, 2007, at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kashmir-poll/ majority-in-kashmir-valley-want-independence-poll-idusdel29179620070813. 5. See for example Isak Svensson, “Fighting with Faith: Religion and Conflict Resolution in Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, 6 (2007), 930–49. 6. See for example Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, “Dialectic between Conflict Management and Conflict Resolution,” in Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov (ed.), The IsraeliPalestinian Conflict: From Conflict Resolution to Conflict Management (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 7. See John Vasquez and Christopher S. Leskiw, “The Origins and War Proneness of Interstate Rivalries,” Annual Review of Political Science 4, 1 (2001).

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Index

Page references for figures and tables are italicized

Abbas, Chaudhry Ghulam, 143–4 Abbas, Mahmoud, 116–7, 165 Abdullah, Crown Prince, 110 Abdullah, Farooq, 147 Abdullah, King, 45, 50, 123, 170, 181; Abdullah, Sheikh Mohammed, 87–8, 92, 143–4, 146–7 Advani, Lal Krishna, 92, 149 Afghanistan War, 7, 36, 90, 152 Aflaq, Michel, 167 Agra summit, 85, 149 Ahdut Ha’avoda, 190n52 Al-Aqsa: intifada. See intifada, the second; Martyrs Brigades, 127; Mosque, 50, 115, 178 Al-Badr, 91, 130, 153 Al-Bark, 91 Al-Fatah in Jammu and Kashmir, 89, 145 Al-Jam’iyat al-Islamiyyah al-Masihiyyah, 40 Al-Muntada al-Adabi, 40 Al-Nadi al-Arabi, 40 al-Naqba, 61, 111, 124, 170, 186 Al-Qaida, 125, 153 al-qawmiyya al-Arabia, 38, 58, 66, 167 Alexander II, Tsar, 38

Alexandria Protocol, 43, 163 All India Khilafat Conference, 30; See also Khilafat movement All India Mahasabha, 141–2 All India Muslim League, 2, 28–31, 55 All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, 143 All Jammu and Kashmir Plebiscite Front. See Plebiscite Front All Palestine Government (APG), 171 All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), 65, 92, 127, 134n41, 148–9 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, 40 Annapolis Conference, 165 anti-Semitism, 3, 37, 64, 156 Arab Congress, 40 Arab Executive, 40–1 Arab Higher Committee, 42–4, 106, 170 Arab League, 7, 43–5, 51, 108, 111,   168–72, 174, 183; Collective Security and Economic   Cooperation Treaty of the, 169; Council, 106, 110; summit, 99, 106, 113. See also Alexandria Protocol Arab Liberation Army (ALA), 44, 111 219

220

Arab nationalism, 5, 10n8, 38–9, 156,  167–9. See also al-qawmiyya al-Arabia;  wataniyya Arab peace initiative, 110 the Arab Revolt, 42–3, 168 the Arab Spring, 178–9 Arab unity, 38, 40, 46–7, 51, 99, 167–9, 180 Arafat, Yasser, 7, 45, 108–9, 113, 115–6, 130, 163–4, 172, 176 Armed Conflict dataset, xiv, 21, 76 armistice agreements, Arab-Israeli,   45–5, 98, 124, 159; and the Green Line, 61; and the demilitarized zone   (DMZ), 98 Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, 88, 90, 92, 144, 146, 148 Arya Samaj, 141 Assad, Bashar al-, 22, 53, 125, 179 Assad, Hafez al-, 48, 101 Auto-Emancipation, 37 Awami League, 79 Azad Kashmir, 17, 33,89 azadi, 148, 183, 200 Azhar, Masood, 153 Banna, Hassan al-, 59, 167, 175 Ba’th party: the Iraqi Regional Branch of t he, 47; the Syrian Regional Branch of the,  47–8 Baghdad Pact, 50, 98, 171; Convention for the Protection of the   Middle East and the, 171 Balfour, Arthur, 38 Balfour Declaration, 3, 38–9, 41, 43 Bangladesh: civil war, 9, 60, 78–9, 89, 95, 151,  200; War, 35–6, 79, 83, 89–90, 94–5,   126, 146, 198, 200 Barak, Ehud, 163–4

Index

Basic Law: Israel—The Nation-State of the Jewish People, 166, 181 Basic Principle Committee, 34 Battle of Plassey, 28 Beg, Mirza Mohammad Afzal, 145 Begin, Menachem, 107, 161 Ben-Gurion, David, 51, 159 Bengal Legislative Assembly, 32 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 6,   133n21, 146–9, 181, 196. See also National Democratic   Alliance (NDA) Bharatiya Jana Sangh, 145–7 See also Bharatiya Janata Party  (BJP) Bhutto, Benazir, 80, 84, 154, 181, 190n46 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 79, 1514 BILU, 37 bin Ali, Hussein, 39 Black September, 49, 51, 113, 130 Blue and White party, 202 Board of Islamic Learning, 34 British Mandate: in Palestine, 3, 39, 45, 66, 96; in Egypt, 167. See also League of Nations British Raj, 28, 34, 63, 67; struggle against the, 30, 140–1, 143. See also Indian Independence  Movement British rule in India. See British Raj in India British Zionist Federation, 38 Camp David: accords, 51, 61, 105, 108, 121, 161,   174, 197. See also normalization, Israeli Egyptian; summit, 109, 163–4, 178 Carter, Jimmy, 107 Cave of the Patriarchs, Hebron massacre in the, 115 Chelmsford, Lord, 29



Index 221

Constituent Assembly: India’s constitution adopted by the, 34; of Jammu and Kashmir, 144; Jinnah’s address to the Pakistani, 31 Chamoun, Camille, 49 Churchill, Winston, 41 civil disobedience, non-violent. See satyagraha cold peace, 8, 18, 20, 75, 121. See also warness situations cold war, 3, 8, 18–20, 75, 93, 95–6,   120, 122–3, 127, 128, 198. See also warness situations; the global, 35–6, 43, 50, 53, 65, 108,   139, 162, 171, 196; inter-Arab, 171 composite dialogue, 85–6, 95, 149 Congress Party. See Indian National Congress Correlates of War (COW) dataset, xiv, 12, 21, 132n1 Czech arms deal: with Egypt and Syria, 48, 53, 98; with Israel, 53 Dar, Muhammad Ahsan, 152 declaration of independence: Israeli, 3, 57, 96; Palestinian, 108, 176 Declaration of Principles: Israeli-Palestinian, 162; Syrian proposed, 108 Deir ez-Zor nuclear reactor, Israeli airstrike on, 104 Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), 172 Deobandi: organizations, 153; sect, 151 Desai, Morarji, 147 détente, 3, 14, 18, 20, 93, 95, 122–4,  127, 128, 198. See also warness situations

diaspora: Jewish, 55, 57, 157, 162; Palestinian, 172, 176, 183. See also refugees, Palestinian Direct Action Day, 32 dispute density, 8, 19, 76, 78–81, 94,  96, 99, 101–2, 104, 125–6, 128–9; approach, 12 East India Company, 28 Eban, Aubrey (Abba), 44 Elizabeth I, Queen, 28 enduring conflicts. See enduring rivalries enduring rivalry(ies) (ER), xiii, 1–2, 4,  8–9, 9n1, 11–18, 27, 54–5, 75–6, 93, 139, 195; the Arab Israeli, 96, 98, 104–5, 107,   110, 120, 125; basic rivalry level (BRL) in, 14, 18,   81, 94, 125; the India Pakistani, 81, 87, 92, 94; the school of, 12–4, 18; territorial disputes in, 15–17, 32–3,  48, 60–4, 66–7, 100, 107, 176, 180, 185, 203 Etzel, 42, 111 Faisal, King, 40 Farouk, King, 170 Fatah, 7, 62, 65, 112–3, 116, 118, 124,   127, 172, 175–6, 183, 192n80; confrontation with Hamas, 62,   136n76, 178, 184. Tanzim, 127. See also Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades fedayeen: Kashmiri, 183; Palestinian, 45, 51, 65, 111–2, 124,   160, 183. See also terrorist attack Free Officers Revolt, 48 French Mandate in Syria and Lebanon, 39, 47, 168

222

Index

Gandhi, Indira, 79, 84, 92, 146–7 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 30, 32, 62, 64, 140–2, 144, 181 Gandhi, Rajiv, 84, 147, 154 the Gaza Strip: dispute in, 7, 21, 111, 117; Egypt’s rule in, 61, 124, 170, 200; Hamas in, 7, 62, 114–5, 117, 122,   175, 201. See also Great March of Return;  Operation Brother’s Keeper; Operation Cast Lead; Operation Pillar of Defense; intifada in. See the Palestinian  territories, intifada in; Iran’s involvement in, 52; Israel’s disengagement from,   136n76, 164, 178; Israel’s occupation of, 61, 111; the Muslim Brothers in, 175; refugee camps in, 101, 162, 182 Gaza War, 117–8 General Union of Palestinian Students, 112 Geneva Conference, 107 Gilani, Yousuf Raza, 86 Godse, Nathuram, 142 Government of India Act: of 1858, 28; of 1935, 34 the Great Arab Rebellion. See the Arab Revolt the Great Calcutta Killing, 31 the Great March of Return, 117. See also refugees, right of return   of Palestinian Greater Syria, 38, 40, 58, 156, 168 the Green Line, the separation wall   along, 164. See also armistice agreements,  Arab-Israeli Gulf War, 51, 103, 114, 162 Gush Emunim, 160–2, 164 Habash, George, 172

Haganah, 42, 111 Hamas, 7–8, 45, 65, 114–7, 122,124,   127, 175–8. See also Great March of Return;   Izz ed-Din al-Qassam Brigades; confrontation with Fatah, 62,   136n76, 184, 201; government in Gaza, 17, 62; and the intifada, 114–6, 124; and the Muslim Brotherhood, 8,   114, 175 Ha’poel Ha’tzair, 190n52 Haraqat-ul-Ansar (HuA), 91, 153 Haraqat-ul-Mujahideen (AuM), 91, 130, 153 Hari Singh. See the maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir Hawatmeh, Nayef, 172 Hebron Agreement, 109, 163 Hedgewar, Keshav, 141 Herut, 158, 191n53 Herzl, Theodor, 6, 38, 157–8; the Jewish State of, 158 Hezbollah, 22, 65, 104, 114, 116–7, 202; Shi’ite axis between Iran, Syria and,   52–3, 120, 125, 179, 184, 199. See also Islamic Revolutionary   Guard Corps Hibat Zion, 37 Hindu Rashtra, 142 Hindu Sabhas, 141 Hindu sangathan, 141 Hindutva, 6, 141–2, 146–7, 181. See also Hindu sangathan;   nationalism, Hindu historic basin in the Old City of Jerusalem, 165 Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, 90–1, 131, 149,   152, 182–4, 187. See also Pakistan’s support for   Kashmir militancy the Holy Land, 37, 57, 163, 180 Hope-Simpson Commission, 41 Horowitz, David, 44



Index 223

hostility level, 8, 19, 81, 82, 94, 96, 105, 125–6, 128 hot war, 3, 8, 18–9, 75, 93, 95, 119–24,  127, 128, 198. See also warness situations Hula drainage project, 98 Hume, Allan Octavian, 28 Hurriyat Congress. See All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) Hursi, Sati’ al-, 167 Hussein, King, 50, 103, 109, 113, 123, 176 Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, 39 Husseini, Amin al-, 41–2 Husseinis. See notable families (a’yan) identity discourse, 4–5, 139; in the Arab-Israeli conflict, 5–7, 17,   157, 163, 166–7, 181–2, 184–5; in the India-Pakistan conflict, 5–7,  17, 142, 149, 151, 154, 156, 181–2, 184–5 Indian Councils Act, 29 Indian Independence Act, 32, 66 Indian Independence Movement, 2, 28, 140–1, 149 Indian National Congress (INC), 2, 6,   28–30, 140–3, 146–150, 181. See also Indian Independence  Movement; United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Indus Water Treaty, 83 Instrument of Accession of Kashmir,   32–3, 77. See also Kashmir, accession of inter-communal strife, 2; Arab-Jewish, 3, 37, 41–2, 57; Hindu-Muslim, 27, 29, 31, 56, 60,   140–1, 147, 181 Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), 90–1, 146, 151–3 Interim Agreement, Israeli-Palestinian. See Oslo II

interstate hostilities, xiii, xiv, 3, 8, 12–3, 19–22, 45, 54, 66–7, 75–82, 92–99, 101–5, 118–9, 123, 125–31, 198–9 International Crisis Behavior (ICB) project, 12–3, 21 intifada: the first, 108, 110–1, 114–5, 124,   162, 174–6, 184, 200; the Knife, 117; the second, 111, 115–6, 124, 163, 178 intractable conflict, xiii, 1, 15 Iqbal, Muhammad, 30, 59, 150 the Irgun. See Etzel Islamic Jihad: the Egyptian, 174; the Palestinian, 115–6, 124, 175, 178 Iran’s: Islamic revolution, 52, 174–5; Islamic Revolutionary Guard   Corps, 52 Islamic State organization, 122, 125 Islamism, 5, 59, 149, 152–3, 167, 179,  181, 185. See also jihad; ummah, the Islamic Islamization program, 5, 90, 154, 198 Israeli-Egyptian peace accords. See Camp David Accords Israeli-Jordanian peace accords, 51, 61,   105, 109, 177, 195, 197. See also the Jordanian Option;  London Agreement; normalization, Israeli-Jordanian Israeli-Lebanese security agreement, 103 Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. See Oslo Accords Izz ed-Din al-Qassam Brigades, 115 Jabotinsky, Ze’ev, 42, 158 Jadid, Salah, 48 Jaish-e-Muhammad, 65, 91–2, 130, 152–3 Jamaat-e-Islami, 152 Jamaat-ud-Dawa, 153 Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, 91 Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, 150

224

Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front  (JKLF), 65, 89–91, 131, 145–6, 152, 182, 184, 187. See also National Liberation  Army (NLA); Pakistan’s support for Kashmir militancy; Kashmir separatist movements Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, 143 Jammu Praja Parishad, 88, 145 Jarring, Gunnar, 107 Jerusalem: East, 100, 170, 197; the status of, 44, 109–10, 127, 160,   163, 165, 177 Jewish Home party, 166 Jewish immigration to Palestine, 3, 38,   41–4, 57, 70n33, 156–7, 168–9. See also Hope-Simpson  Commission; Shaw Report; the White Paper of 1939 jihad: in the Arab-Israeli conflict, 115–6,   122, 175–6. in the India-Pakistan conflict, 7, 87,   90–1, 133n31, 150–3. See also Muttahahida Jihad Council   (MJC); Tehrik-i-Jihad; transnational, 87, 90–91, 122, 125. See also al-Qaida; Islamic State  organization Jinnah, Muhammad Ali, 29–32, 59, 62–4, 150, 154 Johnson, Lyndon, 54 the Jordanian Option, 109, 176 Judea and Samaria, 7, 160, 165, 201. See also the West Bank Kadima party, 165 Karachi Agreement, 82 Kargil War, 80–1, 85, 149, 154 Kashmir, xiii, 21, 32–3, 60–1, 66–7,  77–9, 87–9, 134nn37,39, 140, 143–5, 148, 154, 156, 181, 183, 185, 197;

Index



accession of, 33, 83, 88, 143–4; Accord, 92, 146. See also Kashmir, negotiations over; ceasefire agreement in, 33, 78,  81–2; insurgency, 84–5, 89–93, 95, 147–9,   151, 153, 155, 183–4, 200; irredentist claims in, 17, 131, 196. See also Pakistan’s support for   Kashmir militancy; linguistic differences in, 189n18; negotiations over, 83–87, 92, 127,  149; Pandit population of, 188n16; plebiscite in, 33, 77, 82–3, 86–8,   143, 183, 200. See also All Jammu and Kashmir   Plebiscite Front; Resolution 47; secessionist claims in. See Kashmir   separatist movements; status quo in, 35, 83, 85, 156, 185,  202; war in, 77–8, 80–81, 83, 87–8. See also Kargil War; separatist movements in, 1, 17, 33,   92, 127, 131, 134n39, 148, 200. See also Jammu and Kashmir   Liberation Front (JKLF) Khalaf, Salah, 172 Khan, Amanullah, 89, 146 Khan, Ayub, 78 Khan, Sir Sayed Ahmad, 30 Khan, Yahya, 95 Khartoum Declaration. See three no’s of Khartoum Khilafat movement, 29–30, 141, 188n6 Kimche, Jon, 44 Kissinger, Henry, 107 Kosygin, Aleksey, 83 Labor: movement, 158, 160; party, 158, 162, 165 Lahore Declaration, 85, 148–9, 154 Land Day. See Yom al-Ard



Lashker-e-Taiba, 65, 91–2, 130, 152. See also Jamaat-ud-Dawa Lausanne Conference, 106 Law of Return, 46 League of Nations, 40 Lebanon civil war, 49, 102, 113, 130 Lebanon War: the first, 103–5, 113–4, 121; Sabra and Shatila massacre and   the, 130; the second, 135n58, 165 Lehi, 42, 111 Likud, 158, 160–5, 181 Line of Control (LoC), 33, 60, 65, 79–80, 85, 87, 90–1, 130, 155, 183. See also Kashmir, ceasefire   agreement in London Agreement, 109, 176 low-intensity conflict, 87, 90, 103, 152, 155 Lucknow Pact, 29 Madrid Conference, 108, 162, 176–7, 196 the maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, 33, 79, 87, 143–4 Mahatma Gandhi. See Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand Malik, Yasin, 146 Mapai, 158–61, 181, 190n52 Mapam, 159 Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), 152 Mawdudi, Mawlana, 59, 72n85, 150, 154 McMahon, Henry, 39 Meir, Golda, 161 Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID),   xiii–xiv, 12–3, 19, 21, 75; in the Arab-Israeli conflict, 96–7,   101–5, 126, 198; in the India-Pakistan conflict, 76–7,   81–2, 93, 95, 126, 198 Military Governorate, 160 Minto, Lord, 29

Index 225

Mir, Javed, 146 Mizrachi movement, 6, 157 Modi, Narendra, 86–7, 149, 196 Mohammad, Bakshi Ghulam, 145 Montagu, Edwin Samuel, 29 Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, 29 Morley, John, 29 Morley-Minto reforms, 29 Morrison-Grady Committee, 44 Morsi, Mohammed, 122, 179 Mountbatten, Louis, 31, 33, 87 Movement for the Liberation of Palestine. See Fatah Mubarak, Hosni, 121 Mukherjee, Syama Prasad, 146 Musharraf, Perves, 85–6, 149, 154–5 Muslim Brotherhood, 120, 170, 178–9 Muslim-Christian Association. See al-Jam’iyat al-Islamiyyah al-Masihiyyah Muslim League. See All India Muslim League Muslim Mughal Empire, 28 Muttahahida Jihad Council (MJC), 91, 153 Mutual Defense Assistance agreement, American-Pakistani, 35 Nashashibis. See notable families (a’yan) Nasser, Gamal Abd al-, 5, 7, 47–8, 50, 99–101, 113, 169–71 National Democratic Alliance (NDA), 149 National Liberation Army (NLA), 89 National Liberation Front (NLF), 89 National Religious Party, 161 National Volunteer Organization. See Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) National Water Carrier project, 99 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 30, 64, 88, 141–4,  146–7; Nehruvian socialism and, 35,   69n126, 147

226

Index

Netanyahu, Benjamin, 163, 165, 177 Non-Cooperation Movement, 29–30, 141 non-state actors (NSAs), xiii, 1, 3, 8,   12–3, 16, 19, 22, 139, 184, 203; in the Arab-Israeli conflict, 54, 65,   67, 108, 118, 122–4, 127, 130, 185, 198; in the India-Pakistan conflict, 37, 65,   67, 89–90, 93, 127, 130, 152, 185, 187. See also state-NSA hostilities normalization: India-Pakistani, 84, 86, 93,   154, 199; Israeli-Egyptian, 120–1, 130; Israeli-Jordanian, 120–2, 130 notable families (a’yan), 40–1, 43. See also al-Jam’iyat al-Islamiyyah al-Masihiyyah; al-Muntada al-Adabi; al-Nadi al-Arabi nuclear: deterrence,13, 35, 80, 93, 96; non-attack agreements, 82, 84–5, 154; tests, 35, 80, 85, 90, 149; weapons in the Arab-Israeli conflict,   2, 11, 51–2, 95, 105, 121, 197–8; weapons in the India-Pakistan  conflict, 2, 11, 36–7, 81, 155–6, 197–8 Objective Resolution, Pakistan’s, 34 October War. See Yom-Kippur War older politicians, Palestinian. See notable families (a’yan) Olmert, Ehud, 165 open bridges policy, 123 operation: Accountability, 114; Brass Tacks, 80; Brother’s Keeper, 117; Cast Lead, 117, 165; Defensive Shield, 116; Desert Hawk, 78; Gibraltar, 78, 88;



Grapes of Wrath, 114; Karameh, 113; Litani, 102, 113; Meghadoot, 79; Peace for the Galilee. See Lebanon   War, the first; Pillar of Defense, 117; Protective Edge. See Gaza War; the Smiling Buddha, 35. See also nuclear tests Oslo Accords, 108–10, 114–6, 123–4,   162–3, 176–7, 196, 201; II, 109 Ottoman rule in Palestine, 3, 37, 40, 69 the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, 29, 38–40, 52, 58–9, 64, 156, 166, 188n6 Pact of the League of Arab States, 169 Pakistan civil war. See Bangladesh civil war Pakistan’s support for Kashmir militancy, 7, 84–5, 87–8, 90–1, 95, 130–1, 151–3, 155, 183, 197 Palestine civil war, 45, 66, 98, 111 Palestine Liberation Army, 113 Palestine Liberation Organization  (PLO), 7–8, 43, 45, 65, 113, 115, 118, 120, 127, 130, 162, 172, 174, 176, 183, 201. See also Democratic Front for the  Liberation of Palestine (DFLP); Palestine Liberation Army; Palestinian National Council; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); and the Black September events, 51,   102, 113; Executive Committee, 172; Fatah takeover of the, 45, 113; and the intifada, 114–6, 162, 174; and the Lebanon War, 103, 113–4,  162; and the Oslo Accords, 62, 110, 114; and the Palestinian Authority, 62



Index 227

Palestinian armed struggle, 7,110, 184; Fatah/PLO-led, 112, 127, 172, 183; Hamas-led, 175–6, 178, 201 Palestinian Authority (PA), 17, 58, 62,   67, 109, 115–7, 124, 163, 165, 184, 187, 201; Legislative Council of the, 178 the Palestinian issue, 2, 44, 52, 106, 108–9, 112, 121, 129–30, 161–2, 169–71, 173–4, 179–80, 199 Palestinian National Council, 172, 176; Declaration of Independence by the,   108, 176 Palestinian national movement, 3, 7, 39–40, 45, 57–8, 115, 123, 157, 172, 174, 176 Palestinian National Party, 41 the Palestinian problem. See the Palestinian issue the Palestinian territories: dispute over, xiii, 17, 21, 62, 115. See also Judea and Samaria; the   Gaza Strip; the West Bank; intifada in, 114, 116, 118, 162, 174,   182, 184; Israeli annexation of, 160, 166, 201; Israeli withdrawal from, 106–7, 110,   160, 164–5, 176; Jordanian annexation of, 62, 170,   176, 200; Jordan’s claim to, 109–10, 170, 172,   176, 184, 192n78, 197, 200 pan-Arabism, 5, 39, 47–50, 58–9, 168– 9, 174, 185 pan-Islamism, 5–6, 39, 59, 154, 167, 188n6 partition of India, 1–3, 8–9, 27–8, 30–2,   55, 60, 63–4, 76, 143–4; forced migration following the, 55,   62, 64, 182, 186; Bangladesh and the, 32, 79, 141; the two-state solution and the, 9, 199. See also Indian Independence Act partition of Palestine, 1, 3, 8–9, 61, 64,   66–7, 111, 158, 168;

Anglo-American Committee of   Inquiry on the, 43–4; the two-state solution and the, 158,  200; UN plan for the, 40, 42, 45–6, 168; UN vote on the, 3, 44. See also Morrison-Grady  Committee; Peel Commission; Resolution 181; United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP); Woodhead Commission Peel Commission, 42, 43 Peres, Shimon, 109–10, 162, 176 Pinsker, Leo, 37 Plebiscite Front, 88–9, 145–6. See also National Liberation Front (NLF) Pokhran-I. See operation, the Smiling Buddha Popular Front for the Liberation of  Palestine: (PFLP), 65, 172; General Command (PFLP-GC), 172 the Promised Land. See the Holy Land Protracted Conflict (PC) school, 12–5 proxy-war strategy: Arab countries’, 54, 111, 185; Pakistan’s, 7, 37, 67, 90–1, 93, 95,   130, 153, 156, 185. See also Pakistan’s support for   Kashmir militancy punctuated equilibrium: model, 14, 17, 81, 104. See also, enduring rivalries; political shocks in, 14, 27, 66, 94,   126, 198 Punjab: the division of, 31–2, 64; Sikh guerrillas in, 80; war scare, 78–80, 84 Qasim, Mohammad ibn, 28 Qawuqji, Fawzi al-, 45, 111 Quit India movement, 143

228

Index

Quit Kashmir movement, 143 Qutb, Sayyid, 59, 167, 175 Quwatly, Shukri al-, 47 Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, 6, 157, 161 Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, 161 Rabin, Yitzhak, 108–9, 121, 162–3, 177, 181 Rann of Kutch, dispute over the, 61, 78, 83 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), 6, 141–2, 145–7 Reagan, Ronald, 54, 176 Red-Line agreement, 102 refugees, 27; Bengali, 79; Hindu and Muslim, 182; Jewish, 43; Palestinian, 49–51, 66, 106, 109,   135n67, 137n90, 182; right of return of Palestinian, 62,  110–1, 117, 159, 163, 165–6, 177, 182, 186, 201. See also United Nations Relief  and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA); Rehmat Ali, Chaudhry, 30, 59, 150 religious nationalism, 185; Hindu, 5–6, 140–1, 145–8, 185,  188n4. See also Hindutva; Islamic, 2, 33, 180–1. See also Islamism; Jewish, 60. See also Zionism, religious Resolution 47, UN Security Council, 87 Resolution 181, UN Security Council, 44, 66, 98 Resolution 242, UN Security Council, 106–7, 115, 176 Resolution 338, UN Security Council, 107 Resolution 1701, UN Security Council, 117

return to Zion, 3, 37. See also BILU; Hibat Zion; Zionism Revisionist movement, 158 road map for peace, 109 Saadeh, Antoun, 168 Sabra and Shatila massacre, 130 Sadat, Anwar, 101–2, 107–8, 120–1, 173–4, 181, 193n87, 195–6 Saeed, Hafiz Mohammed, 152 Samuel, Herbert, 40 Sanatana Dharma Sabhas, 141 satyagraha, 140–1. See also Non-Cooperation  Movement Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar (Veer), 141–2 Sayeed, Rubiya, 91 security zone in southern Lebanon, 103 self-determination: Bengali, 89; Jewish, 55, 158, 166; Kashmiri, 144–6, 149, 152, 183,   185; Pakistani, 55; Palestinian, 127, 161, 185 Seven pillars of Egyptian identity, 179 Shaqaqi, Fathi, 175 Shamir, Yitzhak, 109 Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, 86 Sharett, Moshe, 159 sharia law, 5, 193n87 Sharif, Nawaz, 85–6, 148–9, 154–5 Sharm el-Sheik: Memorandum, 109; summit, 116 Sharon, Ariel, 115–6, 164–5 Shaw Report, 41 Shebaa Farms, 120, 136n79 Sheikh, Hamid, 146 Shihab, Fuad, 49 Shuqairy, Ahmad, 113 Siachen Glacier, dispute over the, 79, 84, 61



Index 229

Simla Agreement, 79, 83 Sinai Interim Agreement, 107 Singh, Manmohan, 86, 149 Sir Creek, dispute over, 61, 84 Sisi, Abdel Fattah al-, 122, 178–9 Six-Day War, 7, 21, 48, 50–1, 53–4, 59, 61, 99–100, 105–6, 119, 126, 157, 197–8, 200 South Asian Association for Regional   Cooperation (SAARC): summit in Islamabad, 86–7 summit in Thimbu, 86 state-NSA hostilities, xiv, 3, 7–8, 13, 16–7, 19–22, 45, 52, 54, 67, 76, 87–9, 91–5, 102–5, 109–20, 124, 126, 129–31, 192n84, 198 status-quo: in the Arab-Israeli conflict, 159–60,   169–70, 201–2; in the India-Pakistan conflict, 35,   83, 85, 156, 185, 202 Strategic Cooperation Agreement, American-Israeli, 54 Suez: Canal, 99–100; crisis, 48; War, 21, 105, 112 Supreme Muslim Council, 41 Swadeshi movement, 141 Sykes-Picot Agreement, 39 Syria civil war, 22, 53, 104, 120, 124, 179 Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), 168 Taba talks, 109, 164 Tashkent Agreement, 78, 83 Taliban: Afghan, 153 Pakistani. See Tehrik-i-Taliban   Pakistan (TTP) Tehrik-i-Jihad, 91 Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), 21–2 Tel al-Zaatar massacre, 130

Temple Mount, 115, 117, 178. See also Al-Aqsa intifada terrorist attack: El-Samu, 112; Ganga Airlines, 89; Gaza, 111; Indian parliament, 81, 85, 92; Kaluchak, 81; Karameh, 112; Mumbai, 81, 92, 149, 155; Qalqilya, 111; Uri, 87, 92; 9/11, 36, 153 Thant, U, 107 three no’s of Khartoum, 110,   173, 199. See also Arab League, summits Tulbul water dispute. See Wullar water dispute the two-state solution, 9, 199; Arab-Israeli conflict and, 7, 158,   161, 163–4, 200–2; India-Pakistan conflict and, 9, 27,   63, 199–200; PLO endorsement of, 115 ul-Haq, Zia Muhammad, 5, 56, 84, 90, 151, 154 Umayyad Caliphate, 28 ummah, the Islamic, 5, 39, 167. See also sharia law, 5, 193n87 unilateral disengagement, 164 United Arab Republic (UAR), 47–8, 99, 169, 171 United Nations: Commission for India and Pakistan   (UNCIP), 182; Conciliation Commission for   Palestine (UNCCP), 106; Emergency Force (UNEF) in Sinai,  99–100; Interim Force in Lebanon   (UNIFIL), 102; Office for the Coordination of  Humanitarian Affairs in the

230

Index

Palestinian Territories (OCHA), 118; Relief and Works Agency for  Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), 182; Special Committee on Palestine   (UNSCOP), 44 United Progressive Alliance (UPA), 149 Vajpayee, Atal Bihari, 85–6, 133n21, 148–9, 154 Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), 147 Wani, Ishaq Majid, 146 warm peace, 8, 18, 20, 75, 121, 123. See also warness situations War of Attrition, 100, 105, 135n56; state-NSA, 117 war on terror, Pakistan’s involvement in the U.S.-led, 36, 131 warness, 3–4, 11, 19–20, 75–6; Arab-Israeli variation of, 71n52, 96,   102–3, 105, 118–9, 121–5; a comparison of, 125–7, 128–9,   130–1; 196, 198; India-Pakistani variation of, 81–2,  91–3, 94–5; situations, 10n10, 19–20; variation, 3–4, 8, 12, 18, 20–2 wataniyya, 58, 66, 167 Wazir, Khalil al-, 172 Weizmann, Chaim, 38, 158 the West Bank: dispute over, 7, 9, 21, 50, 115, 162,   184, 201–2. See also Judea and Samaria; intifada in. See the Palestinian  territories, intifada in; Israel’s occupation of, 7, 51, 61,  100; Israeli settlements in, 160, 164,   166, 201; Jordanian annexation of. See the  Palestinian territories, Jordanian annexation of;

open bridges between Jordan and,  123; Palestinian Authority in, 62, 109,   115, 176, 201; refugee camps in, 182 Western Wall riots, 41, 115 the White Paper: of 1922, 41; of 1930, 41; of 1939, 43 Woodhead Commission, 43 World War: I, 29, 39–40, 49, 67, 156; II, 43, 48, 63 World Zionist Organization (WZO), 6, 38, 158 Wullar water dispute, 84 Wye River Plantation Agreement, 109 Yashruti, Khaled, 172 Yassin, Ahmad, 175 Yemen civil war, 99, 124 Yesha Council, 164 Yom al-Ard, 117, 136n77 Yom-Kippur War, 53–4, 104–5, 107, 119, 161 younger politicians, Palestinian. See notable families (a’yan) Za’im, Husni, 47 Zardari, Asif Ali, 155 Zehgeer, Ghulam Rasool, 145 Zionism, 3, 6, 37–9, 55–7, 66, 120,   156–8, 168; religious, 5–7, 157, 160, 185, 201. See also Mizrachi Organization; revisionist, 42; Synthetic, 158 Zionist: Congress, 38, 70n33, 157; Movement, 3, 37, 57, 61, 66. See also British Zionist Federation;  World Zionist Organization (WZO); Zionism

About the Author

Meirav Mishali-Ram is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University. She received her Ph.D. from Bar Ilan University and did her Post-Doctorate at the University of Maryland. Her dissertation focused on international crises in the Arab-Israeli and the India-Pakistan protracted conflicts. She has been a research fellow in the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), in Herzliya, and a research associate of the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project. She is an author of several journal articles and book chapters in international relations, and her main fields of interest are ethnic and sectarian conflict, regional studies and civil war, applied in worldwide conflicts, mainly in South Asia and the Middle East.

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