Israel Studies Review

In November 2009, I announced my intention of retiring from my position at the Israel Studies Forum at the end of this volume, aft er serving for a decade as its Editor-in-Chief. Th e President of the Association for Israel Studies followed this announcement by forming a search committee to identify my successor and at the time of writing the search is moving toward a successful conclusion.

Alan Zuckerman, Professor of Political Science at Brown University for almost forty years, passed away 20 August 2009. Zuckerman was an exemplary scholar—intellectual, passionate, curious, creative, relentless, and demanding. He was a true comparativist, who not only used the comparative method but defined and refined the analytical principles of comparative politics.

Pro-Israel advocacy in the United States has come under a great deal of critical scrutiny in recent years. Denunciations of the excessive influence of the “Israel Lobby” on US foreign policymaking toward the Middle East, allegations of espionage leveled against high-ranking employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and arguments over whether pro-Israel organizations adequately represent American Jewish opinion have all served to put the pro-Israel lobby in the public spotlight.

The influence of the pro-Israel lobby in US foreign policymaking toward the Middle East has been a subject of great interest and fierce controversy in recent years. Yet, despite being the object of a massive amount of critical scrutiny, the pro-Israel lobby remains poorly understood. All too often it is depicted as a highly organized, cohesive political actor pursuing an agenda in line with, and even determined by, Israel's right-wing Likud party. By undertaking a detailed empirical survey of the pro-Israel community in the United States, this article shows that such a view is grossly inaccurate. The pro-Israel community is neither monolithic nor a unitary actor. It is fragmented into a number of different groups, many of which disagree sharply over their understanding of Israel's real interests. In lobbying the US government for what they believe is in Israel's interests, therefore, the pro-Israel community rarely, if ever, speaks with a single voice.

Contrary to many claims, the 'pro-Israel' factor is not the dominant constraint on any US effort to impose a comprehensive peace settlement. Nor did the pro-Israel lobby play a decisive role in the failure to reach a comprehensive peace in the 1990s. The most significant effect of the pro-Israel factor in the United States is to give Israel the benefit of the doubt by putting the onus on the Arab side to demonstrate its sincerity concerning peace. When Arab leaders have done this, they have greatly reduced the lobby's ability to constrain US diplomacy. However, the greatest constraint on America relates to the balance of interests between the United States and the parties to the conflict themselves. For the parties the details of any agreement are of much greater importance than they are for the United States, hence they are willing to pay greater costs than the latter is willing to impose on any confrontation. Consequently, under most conceivable circumstances the United States cannot impose a comprehensive settlement.

John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

This article investigates the debates on expatriation policies after the establishment of Israel as an independent state in 1948. It shows that citizenship is a contingent political construction rather than an intrinsic national tradition. During the first years of its existence, the exact formulation of the type of citizenship in Israel was not fully established. Although scholars of the Israeli state claim that ethnicity dictated the formulation of Israeli rule, it was the desire to build a modern and democratic state that was the basis for naturalization and expatriation in Israel. The article argues that the resolution to allow multiple citizenships was pragmatic rather than ideological. It shows that in Israel, this policy was not derived from a post-national ideology but from the need to recruit more Jewish immigrants from affluent countries.

The issue of control over the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif is perhaps the most difficult of all the issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to solve. After presenting an analysis of the history of the conflict over the site—holy to both Jews and Moslems—this article argues that only the internationalization of the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif, an idea first suggested by David Ben-Gurion in 1937, will remove the issue as an element in the Israel-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts. Otherwise, "holier than thou" politics, particularly in the Arab world, will keep the conflict alive.

Martin Indyk, Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009).

Daniel Kurtzer and Scott Lasensky, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2008).

Aaron David Miller, The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (New York: Bantam Dell, 2008).

Sergio Catignani, Israeli Counter-Insurgency and the Intifadas Review by Avi Kober

Majid Al-Haj and Rosemarie Mielke, eds., Cultural Diversity and the Empowerment of Minorities: Perspectives from Israel & Germany Review by Nicole Dehan

Jonathan B. Isacoff, Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Pragmatism and Historical Inquiry Review by Motti Golani

Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, From Empathy to Denial, Arab Responses to the Holocaust Review by Shlomo Aronson

Kobi Michael, Between Militarism and Statesmanship in Israel: Military Influence on the Transition Process from War to Peace Review by Eyal Ben-Ari

Rory Miller, ed., Ireland and the Middle East: Trade, Society and Peace Review by Jeffrey K. Sosland

Benny Morris, ed., Making Israel Review by Neil Caplan

Roby Nathanson and Stephen Stetter, eds., The Middle East under Fire? EU-Israel Relations in a Region Between War and Conflict Resolution Review by Tamir Libel

Benjamin Orbach, Live from Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey through the Middle East Review by Chaim Noy

Dina Porat, Israeli Society, the Holocaust and Its Survivors Roni Stauber, The Holocaust in Israeli Public Debate in the 1950s Reviews by Esther Jilovsky

Zohar Segev, From Ethnic Politicians to National Leaders—American Zionist Leadership, the Holocaust and the Establishment of Israel Review by Ariel Feldestein

Sandy Sufian and Mark LeVine, eds., Reapproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel-Palestine Review by Itamar Radai

Shifra Shvarts, Health and Zionism: Th e Israeli Health Care System, 1948–1960 Review by Judith T. Shuval