Suchergebnisse

AbstractIf political circumstances are an important cause of unemployment in the Middle East, does this tend to attenuate the influence of economic infrastructure? I approach this question by building a geospatial dataset of the West Bank, an area with high unemployment arguably linked to political problems. I find Israeli army road obstacles, deployed during the Second Intifada, obstructed peri-urban Palestinian commuters from accessing commercial centers and border crossings, inflicting employment losses that were substantially offset by employment gains among their more centrally located Palestinian competitors. The findings suggest that marginal economic interventions, such as removing obstacles or paving roads, have a good chance of altering the spatial distribution of unemployment, but may struggle to reduce overall unemployment levels absent political reform.

States, in their conflicts with militant groups embedded in civilian populations, often resort to policies of collective punishment to erode civilian support for the militants. We attempt to evaluate the efficacy of such policies in the context of the Gaza Strip, where Israel's blockade and military interventions, purportedly intended to erode support for Hamas, have inflicted hardship on the civilian population. We combine Palestinian public opinion data, Palestinian labor force surveys, and Palestinian fatalities data, to understand the relationship between exposure to Israeli policies and Palestinian support for militant factions. Our baseline strategy is a difference-in-differences specification that compares the gap in public opinion between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank during periods of intense punishment with the gap during periods when punishment is eased. Consistent with previous research, we find that Palestinian fatalities are associated with Palestinian support for more militant political factions. The effect is short-lived, however, dissipating after merely one quarter. Moreover, the blockade of Gaza itself appears to be only weakly associated with support for militant factions. Overall, we find little evidence to suggest that Israeli security policies toward the Gaza Strip have any substantial lasting effect on Gazan support for militant factions, neither deterring nor provoking them relative to their West Bank counterparts. Our findings therefore call into question the logic of Israel's continued security policies toward Gaza, while prompting a wider re-examination of the efficacy of deterrence strategies in other asymmetric conflicts.

States, in their conflicts with militant groups embedded in civilian populations, often resort to policies of collective punishment to erode civilian support for the militants. We attempt to evaluate the efficacy of such policies in the context of the Gaza Strip, where Israel's blockade and military interventions, purportedly intended to erode support for Hamas, have inflicted hardship on the civilian population. We combine Palestinian public opinion data, Palestinian labor force surveys, and Palestinian fatalities data, to understand the relationship between exposure to Israeli policies and Palestinian support for militant factions. Our baseline strategy is a difference-in-differences specification that compares the gap in public opinion between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank during periods of intense punishment with the gap during periods when punishment is eased. Consistent with previous research, we find that Palestinian fatalities are associated with Palestinian support for more militant political factions. The effect is short-lived, however, dissipating after merely one quarter. Moreover, the blockade of Gaza itself appears to be only weakly associated with support for militant factions. Overall, we find little evidence to suggest that Israeli security policies toward the Gaza Strip have any substantial lasting effect on Gazan support for militant factions, neither deterring nor provoking them relative to their West Bank counterparts. Our findings therefore call into question the logic of Israel's continued security policies toward Gaza, while prompting a wider re-examination of the efficacy of deterrence strategies in other asymmetric conflicts.

States, in their conflicts with militant groups embedded in civilian populations, often resort to policies of collective punishment to erode civilian support for the militants. We attempt to evaluate the efficacy of such policies in the context of the Gaza Strip, where Israel's blockade and military interventions, purportedly intended to erode support for Hamas, have inflicted hardship on the civilian population. We combine Palestinian public opinion data, Palestinian labor force surveys, and Palestinian fatalities data, to understand the relationship between exposure to Israeli policies and Palestinian support for militant factions. Our baseline strategy is a difference-in-differences specification that compares the gap in public opinion between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank during periods of intense punishment with the gap during periods when punishment is eased. Consistent with previous research, we find that Palestinian fatalities are associated with Palestinian support for more militant political factions. The effect is short-lived, however, dissipating after merely one quarter. Moreover the blockade of Gaza itself appears to be only weakly associated with support for militant factions. Overall, we find little evidence to suggest that Israeli security policies towards the Gaza Strip have any substantial lasting effect on Gazan support for militant factions, neither deterring nor provoking them relative to their West Bank counterparts. Our findings therefore call into question the logic of Israel's continued security policies towards Gaza, while also raising the possibility more generally that populations violently targeted by state actors may exhibit greater inertia in their support for militancy (or lack thereof) than is typically theorized in standard models of deterrence.