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A new Israeli military Order no. 1650 regarding the Prevention of Infiltration took effect on April 2010. Human-rights organizations expressed alarm at the new powers Israeli military forces will have in dealing with Palestinians who do not hold 'lawful documents' of stay in the occupied Palestinian territory. The objective of this paper is to investigate how this new order fits within a legal system Israel has set up in the West Bank and Gaza Strip through hundreds of military declarations and orders. Three aspects will be analyzed: first, the way residency status is regulated determining which residents are legal and which illegal; second, the regulation for border crossings and the movement of Palestinians within the occupied Palestinian territory and abroad; third, family unification of Palestinians in the occupied territory. These examples will show how this new order is part of an overarching policy that has been in crescendo since 1967: maximizing Israeli control of (Palestinian) land and minimizing the number of (Palestinian) people. The fact that this policy is targeting a specific national group and the fact that it is accompanied by a persistent settlement policy in the occupied Palestinian territories renders these policies, not only discriminatory, but also racist and colonial.

The relationship between bureaucracy and democracy in modern nations has gained the attention of scholars and experts worldwide. This article uses the allegory of a tango dance to illuminate core pandemics of the bureaucracy–democracy interface. First, we propose a theoretical model that relates these arenas in the public realm. The model is then tested empirically based on four in-depth field studies of Israeli public sector organisations (in the fields of public energy, healthcare, policing and local governance). The studies were conducted simultaneously and were based on both qualitative and quantitative data collected in the intra-organisational and extra-organisational arenas. Respondents were 159 public sector personnel and 158 citizens who received services from the same organisations. Data were analysed with a structural equation modelling (SEM) technique. The findings reconfirmed a solid positive relationship between elements of an effective bureaucracy and segments of an active democracy. Moreover, strongest support was found for a mediating model where perceived performance mediated the bureaucratic–democratic relationship. Implications of the findings are discussed in both the intra- and extra-organisational context.

This article studies the transformations of the narrative of 'the Vision of the New Middle East' as a political myth in Israel from its conception in the early 1990s to this date. Borrowing its analytic framework from Georges Sorel's concept of political myth, the article opens by offering a narrative analysis of the paradigmatic vision, as formulated by Shimon Peres (then Israel's Foreign Minister). The article goes on to trace the reception of this narrative and the uses made of it in two of the main arenas of the Israeli political and public spheres: the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) and the mainstream Hebrew press. The article argues that, while 'the New Middle East' has become an idiomatic phrase synonymous to peace, a closer look at its appearances in the Israeli public and political spheres suggests that the uses and transformations of 'the New Middle East' in effect signal its failure to become a politically mobilizing myth or image. Instead, this notion has become an icon of a utopian, abstract, and rather apolitical notion of peace in the Middle East. This case study thus suggests an interesting lesson as to the potential and limitations of using peace as a mobilizing political myth.

BACKGROUND: Different forms of public/private mix have become a central mode of the privatization of healthcare, in both financing and provision. The present article compares the processes of these public/private amalgams in healthcare in Spain and Israel in order to better understand current developments in the privatization of healthcare. MAIN TEXT: While in both Spain and Israel combinations between the public and the private sectors have become the main forms of privatization, the concrete institutional forms differ. In Spain, these institutional forms maintain relatively clear boundaries between the private and the public sectors. In Israel, the main forms of public/private mix have blurred such boundaries: nonprofit health funds sell private insurance; public nonprofit health funds own private for-profit hospitals; and public hospitals sell private services. CONCLUSIONS: Comparison of the processes of privatization of healthcare in Spain and Israel shows their variegated characters. It reveals the active role played by national and regional state apparatuses as initiators and supporters of healthcare reforms that have adopted different forms of public/private mix. While in Israel, until recently, these processes have been perceived as mainly technical, in Spain they have created deep political rifts within both the medical community and the public. The present article contains lessons each country can learn from the other, to be adapted in each one's local context: The failure of the Alzira model in Spain warns us of the problems of for-profit HMOs and the Israeli private private/public mix shows the risk of eroding trust in the public system, thus reinforcing market failures and inefficient medical systems.

The Albatross of Decisive Victory: War and Policy Between Egypt and Israel in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars by George W. Gawrych is reviewed.

Im Vorfeld zur Knesset-Wahl 2021 werben jüdische Parteien aktiv um die Stimmen der israe­lischen Araber, die 17 Prozent der wahlberechtigten Israelis stellen. Zugleich äußern arabische Israelis verstärkt das Bedürfnis nach einer Politik, die zur Verbesserung ihrer Lebensumstände beiträgt und ihnen mehr politische Beteiligung er­mög­licht. Während das arabische Parteienbündnis Vereinte Liste seinen traditionellen Op­posi­tionskurs beibehält und dabei die Abspaltung ihres Mitglieds Islamische Bewe­gung (Ra'am) in Kauf nahm, treten im Wahlkampf neue Akteure auf, die eine prag­ma­tischere arabische Poli­tik betreiben und auf Zusammenarbeit mit jüdi­schen Partei­en setzen. Der Konflikt und die Iden­ti­tät des jüdischen Staates Israel spielen für sie allen­falls eine Nebenrolle. Ähn­lich sieht es in der israelischen Kommunalpolitik aus. Dort wird eine interessens­basierte jüdisch-arabische Kooperation bereits praktiziert. (Autorenreferat)

In the past few decades, planned contact interventions between groups in conflict have played an important role in attempts at improving intergroup relations and achieving peace and reconciliation. This article focuses on such reconciliation-aimed intergroup encounters between Israeli Jews and Palestinians that seek to reduce hostility and increase understanding and cooperation between the two nationalities. Like other contact interventions conducted in settings of intergroup conflict, encounters between Israeli Jews and Palestinians represent a paradoxical project: this is a project that aspires to generate equality and cooperation between groups that are embedded in a protracted asymmetrical conflict. Though existing research teaches us valuable lessons on the effectiveness of contact conducted under optimal conditions, little is said about contact between groups involved in asymmetrical protracted dispute. The goal of this analysis is to examine the evolution of reconciliation-aimed contact interventions between Israeli Jews and Palestinians in the past 20 years. The research method is qualitative, relying on ethnographic data assembled during the relevant period of time. The findings identify and trace the evolution of four major models of Jewish—Palestinian planned encounters: the Coexistence Model, the Joint Projects Model, the Confrontational Model, and the Narrative-Story-Telling Model. The strengths and limitations of each model in transforming intergroup attitudes in asymmetric conflict are discussed.

On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American college student from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer while attempting to prevent, with her own body, the Israeli demolition of a Palestinian doctor's home in the Occupied Territories. Photos of blond and petite Corrie, taken during the incident by fellow twenty-something nonviolent activists in the "International Solidarity Movement" (ISM), which Corrie had joined for her work in Palestine, showed her standing high on a pile of dirt in front of the American-made Caterpillar bulldozer. A small figure in a fluorescent jacket holding a bullhorn, she sat down momentarily to stop the bulldozer and then stood high on the dirt pile and looked the bulldozer's driver in the eye. The bulldozer didn't stop. It ran her over, pinning her under the mound of dirt; it then reversed without lifting its blade and ran over her again. ISM volunteers quickly surrounded the crushed and bleeding Corrie, who gasped, according to 21-year-old fellow ISM activist Joe from Iowa, "They broke my back." Shortly after Palestinian ambulance drivers transported Corrie to a local hospital, she died from a crushed chest and skull, joining the hundreds of young Palestinians and scores of young Israelis killed throughout the Israeli military and settler occupation that she and other ISMers had come to challenge.

The military service of combat soldiers may pose many threats to their well being and often take a toll on body and mind, influencing the physical and emotional make-up of combatants and veterans. The current study aims to enhance our knowledge about the combat experiences and the challenges that female soldiers face both during and after their service. The study is based on qualitative methods and narrative analysis of in-depth semi-structured personal interviews with twenty military veterans. It aims to analyze the narratives of American and Israeli female combat soldiers regarding their military service, with emphasis on the soldiers' descriptions, in their own words, about their difficulties, challenges, coping and successes during their service and transition to civilian life. A recurring theme in the interviews with the veterans of both militaries was the need to be heard and the fact that societies, therapists, and military institutions do not always truly listen to female veterans' experiences and are not really interested in what actually ails them. Our research suggests that conventional methods used in research relating to veterans might at times be inadequate, because the inherent categorization might abstract, pathologize, and fragment a wide array of soldiers' modes of post-combat being. Moreover, female veterans' voices will not be fully heard unless we allow them to be active participants in generating knowledge about themselves.

The primary aim of this article is to bring together questions of both the gender representation (notions of femininity & masculinity) & the gender order (existing social relations & power structures) of Palestinian suicide bombing, & thereby to offer a rather unusual perspective on a sensitive topic within what is generally an overanalyzed conflict. It is based on the way female suicide bombers have been represented in the media in the first half of 2002, supplemented by publications in 2003/04. Print & online articles constitute the main basis of interpretation that aims to bring gender as an analytical tool into the continuing debate on suicide bombing. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines the content of and justification for a new "ethical code" designed for the Israeli army to take into account the "fight against terror. " It argues that the code contains two innovations: it includes acts aimed exclusively at military targets in its definition of "terrorism," and it contains a principle of distinction that prioritizes the lives of citizen combatants over those of noncitizen noncombatants, contrary to centuries of theorizing about the morality of war as well as international humanitarian law. The article suggests that the principle of distinction played a direct role in Israel's offensive in Gaza in winter 2008––2009, as demonstrated by a preponderance of testimony indicating that Israeli military commanders explicitly instructed soldiers to give priority to their own lives over those of Palestinian noncombatants.