**4. Religion in Israel's Security Policy Post-Religionization**

Overall, post-religionization, most of Israel's operational presumptions on religion and security remained the same after the religionization of the Middle East, with the exception of the perception that Islamism is preferable to secular Palestinian nationalism. There are more similarities than di fferences between the approach of modern Israel towards its new religious enemies and that of young Israel to its old enemies, the Arab countries. Most major changes in the Israeli religion-security nexus took place in the realm of what Israeli policymakers believed Israel could achieve in its religionized environment.

### *4.1. Religion Is No Longer Considered a Secondary Source of the Enemy's Hostility; However, Israel's Approach to Deterring Islamic Actors Is Similar to Its Past Approach to Deterring Arab States*

The most profound change in the Israeli assessment of the link between religion and national security occurred in the late 1980s, when Israel no longer viewed the growth of Islamism in the Gaza Strip as a positive development to its security. During the 1970s, Israeli authorities viewed favorably the growth of Islamism in the Palestinian street because they believed that it would block the PLO's national influences, and that focusing on religious studies would reduce participation in hostile activities against Israel (Iserovich 2005, p. 252–53). Therefore, the Military Governorate in the territories did not try to hinder the growth of new Islamic organizations and even supported the establishment of the Islamic University in Hebron—which would become one of the strongest centers in the struggle against the peace process and recognition of Israel (Zelkovitz 2012, pp. 86–87). Even when, during the 1987 Intifada, one of these new organizations, the Gazan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, established an armed wing called Hamas to participate in anti-Israel violence, Israel deemed Hamas as preferable to the PLO. Only after Hamas published its charter in August 1988—which declared that Jihad against Israel "is the personal responsibility of every Muslim" until Israel is annihilated—did Israel cease viewing Islamism as preferable to the PLO's nationalist agenda (Iserovich 2005, p. 263–64).

Once the Islamist Palestinian organizations were "reclassified" as security threats, however, Israel's assessment of the best way to deter them was very similar to its prior assessment of how to deter the secular Arab countries. Both before and after the religionization of its enemies, Israel judged the other side as simultaneously motivated by a genuine ideological belief and rationale. During both periods, the enemies' ideology against Israel was judged as fundamental, impossible to change through diplomacy or war and, thus, spelling a long, protracted conflict—an assumption some called "the first principle of Israeli national security doctrine" (Laish 2015, p. 8). Despite its fundamental ideology, the enemy was considered rational, and influenced by a myriad of political and social factors in its deliberations as to whether to escalate the armed struggle against Israel at a given time—factors which Israel aimed to manipulate in its deterrence e fforts. For example, aware of the importance for Hezbollah of retaining the support of the Shi'i population of south Lebanon, Israel attacked South Lebanon's civilian infrastructure during the Second Lebanon War, hoping it would pressure the Shi'i Lebanese to turn against Hezbollah, which would force it to stop the rocket fire on Israel (Montgomery and Pettyjohn 2010, p. 549).

Just as young Israel understood that the ideological hostility of Arab countries was informed by many nonreligious sources, post-1970s Israel understood that the religionization of its enemies was closely related to social variables such as socio-economic poverty. Indicators of the growing religionization among previously secular Palestinian organizations were interpreted as reflecting both the authentic religionization of their leadership and lip service, designed to retain the support of an Islamizing population (for example, Zelkovitz 2012, p. 82, and Halevi 2017). The likelihood of the Palestinian population joining the armed Palestinian groups in the violence against Israel at a given time was perceived as influenced by social, political and personal factors, no less than by an individual's level of religiosity (Ofer 2016; The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center 2017). This includes the decisions of many Palestinians to become suicide bombers during the Second Intifada. Israel's security apparatus understood their decisions to be motivated by the combination of a religious desire to die a martyr in jihad, along with secular factors such as a wish to avenge the death of someone in the suicide terrorist's immediate circle, humiliation su ffered at the hands of Israeli forces, or the loss of hope in light of the harsh economic and social situation in the PA's territories (Shay 2003, pp. 96–98). Consequently, Israel's security agencies, including the IDF, habitually recommend that the political leadership maximize the separation between Palestinian terrorism and the Palestinian population and allow the Palestinian population to carry on with a life as "regular" as possible—even during times of military clashes—in order to eliminate the social and economic reasons behind grassroots recruitment of terrorists (see, for example, Eisenkot 2018).

As a result of the new reality of the 21st century, there has been a slight change in the traditional Israeli assessment that engaging with the religious ideology behind the enemy's hostility to Israel is futile at best and will backfire, at worst. Traditionally, Israeli diplomacy toward the Arab and Muslim world did not deal with "religious apologetics", and Israel's psychological warfare almost never referred to matters of religion (Ferber-Goldstein 2003; Schleifer 2010). In the late 2000s, two circumstances arose simultaneously and engendered change. Social media allowed Israeli diplomacy to engage directly with the Arab world without the mediation of the Arab media, which do not interview Israelis, and a regional divide of the Shi'i-Sunni camps created a receptivity in the Muslim world for Israeli utilization of Islamic ideas to delegitimize Iran and Hamas (Israel Government Press O ffice 2016; The Institute for National Security Studies 2019). After the Arabic-speaking spokespersons of Israel's prime minister and the IDF opened social media accounts in the early 2010s, they frequently used Islamic theology and discourse to serve Israel's strategic aims. For example, they quoted Saudi religious scholars, who banned demonstrations and sit-ins as against Islamic values, to persuade Gaza residents not to participate in the "March of Return" demonstrations that Hamas organized during 2018 on the Gaza border (Sones 2018).

Another 21st century change in the Israeli perception of which actions would bring about dividends led to the revival of young Israel's *periphery doctrine*. This doctrine was abandoned from the 1960s–2000s, because it did not bring many dividends (Freilich 2018, p. 275). However, when in the early 2000s, the Israeli leadership identified growing alarm in Sunni Arab countries from the growth in power and popularity of Iran and political Islam, it returned to Ben-Gurion's view that Israel could benefit from establishing security cooperation with Muslim actors who, while o fficially denouncing Israel, share the same existential threat. Israel's decision to establish close liaisons with the security bodies of Arab countries was not without internal opposition. Some in the Israeli security apparatus thought it was too risky to share sensitive information on the inner workings of Israeli intelligence with Israel's former enemies, with whom diplomatic relations, if they existed at all, did not go beyond a "cold peace". However, Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad at the time, saw this alliance as essential for countering the combined force of the Radical Front, and convinced the political leadership to accept his position (Bergman 2018, pp. 579–80, 607, 625). Israel's new alliances with "moderate Arab states"—a term that had not appeared in Israeli security discourse prior to this development—thoroughly transformed Israel's freedom of action in fighting the Radical Front (Voller 2015, p. 527). This became quickly evident at the onset of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, when the Arab world stood alongside Israel in blaming Hezbollah and Iran for the outbreak of the violence—an unprecedented event, and the first time in Israel's history in which it belonged to one of the regional camps (Susser 2007, p. 190).

### *4.2. Israel's Willingness to Give up Territories and Holy Sites to Ensure the Existence of a Jewish-Majority State Remained, but Was Delimited by the Religionization of the Jewish Population*

Giving up *potential* control over a sacred site, as young Israel did, is di fferent from giving up *actual* control over a sacred site. After Israel conquered the territories in 1967, it showed less readiness to give up the conquered sacred sites in order to secure the existence of Israel as a Jewish-majority state. This pattern conforms with the bias known in the field of psychology and behavioral economics as "the endowment e ffect", in which people evaluate things in their possession as more valuable than things of similar value which are not in their possession (Kahneman et al. 1991).

This willingness did not disappear altogether. Its main post-1967 expression was in Israel's decision not to exercise full sovereignty over the Temple Mount. The Levi Eshkol governmen<sup>t</sup> annexed eastern parts of Jerusalem within less than three weeks after their conquest—which it did not do for the rest of the territories. However, despite the fact the Temple Mount is unparalleled in sacredness in the Jewish faith, Eshkol's governmen<sup>t</sup> chose not to impose its sovereignty on the Mount in practice, and did not to gran<sup>t</sup> Jews access equal to that of the Muslims; it restricted the visiting times of Jews and all non-Muslims, and even forbade them from worshipping there at all (Sandler 2018, p. 116). Israel chose to leave the administration of the compound in the hands of the Muslims, to the Waqf and

Jordan, even though, after 1967, Jordan's sovereignty ended at the Jordan River, far from Jerusalem (Biger et al. 2009, p. 17). Behind this decision, pushed forward by the defense minister at the time, Moshe Dayan, was the long-held belief of Israel's security establishment, inherited from Ben-Gurion's era, that if an Israeli desecration—real or intentional—of the sanctity of Islam, would have tremendous power to "inflame the entire Middle East" (as usually referred to in the discourse of Israel's security circles), then an Israeli desecration of the sanctity of the Haram-al Sharif would inflame the whole world. Not only would the entire Muslim world join the protest against Israel, but the Christian world would as well, including Israel's closest ally, the US (Ramon 1997, pp. 4–8; Reiter 2016, pp. 17–18, 64, 105–6).

Ever since, all Israeli governments have exhibited the same willingness to limit Israeli control over the Temple Mount in order to prevent anti-Israel terror, especially after it became clear during the 1990s that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict had turned into a religious one, at the heart of which stood the claims of both sides to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. As a result, the Israeli governments of the 2000s imposed even greater restrictions on the Israeli presence on the Temple Mount. When the Second Intifada broke out after a visit of MP Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, the governmen<sup>t</sup> of Ehud Barak, and then of Sharon himself, allowed the Waqf to close the Temple Mount to non-Muslim visitors for two years. When Sharon opened the Mount again to non-Muslims in August 2003, he placed their visits under even harsher restrictions. Visiting hours for non-Muslims were reduced to only four hours a day, and never during times of prayer in the Mount's mosques. Jews were no longer permitted to enter the mosques or visit the Mount on Sabbaths or holidays, nor to bear Jewish ritual articles during the visit. Visits to the Mount by those having a religious Jewish appearance were limited to supervised groups accompanied by Waqf guards and Israeli police (Spector Ben-Ari 2014, pp. 7–8; Reiter 2016, p. 73). Not only did no subsequent governmen<sup>t</sup> attempt to lift Sharon's harsher, added restrictions, but in 2015, for the first time, Israel formally affirmed that its official policy was that non-Muslims, and Jews in particular, were not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, but only to visit (Tatarsky 2015, p. 3).

While the growing religionization of the Palestinian side in the Israeli–Arab conflict has increased the motivation of the Israeli leadership to limit Israel's presence on the Temple Mount, Israel's own growing religionization has decreased the efficacy of such a measure to prevent outbreaks of terror around the Temple Mount. A three-month wave of terror attacks in 2014, and a six-month wave that followed in 2015 occurred, inter alia, because of the latest development in the conflict's religionization on the Israeli side: a change in the position of the national-religious sector regarding visits of Jews in the Temple Mount. Until the 2010s, the Israeli rabbinical establishment, both national-religious and ultra-orthodox, supported the governmental policy of restricting Jews from entering the Temple Mount on the basis of Jewish religious law. In modern times, there is uncertainty as to the location of the Holy of Holies of the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount—an area so sacred that only the High Priest of the Temple was permitted to enter it, and then only once a year, on Yom Kippur. Because of this uncertainty, and because most Jews do not strictly observe the rules of purification required by Jewish law when visiting the Temple Mount, the religious establishment maintained a position largely prohibiting Jews from visiting there at all. This hampered criticism by the Israeli right that Israel's Temple Mount policy desecrated its sovereignty over Jerusalem and the natural right of Jews to exercise their religious beliefs (Biger et al. 2009, p. 17).

The right's ability to push against this policy was particularly limited because of the support of the national-religious party for the policy restricting Jewish visits to Temple Mount. The national-religious community and the right have been political allies since the Six Days War, when the national-religious public began voting for the right as a bloc, and the national-religious party transferred its political allegiance from leftist Labor, the traditional ruling party, to the right-wing Likud (for more on the political transformation of the national-religious community after 1967, see Elman 2008, p. 90). However, during the late 2000s, many among Israel's national-religious orthodoxy withdrew their opposition to Jews visiting the Temple Mount. This change in the position of the national-religious community is attributable partly to the rise of the Al-Aqsa narrative in the Palestinian resistance discourse and

the Temple Mount becoming a focus of violent riots, and partly because of the years-long lobbying of "Temple movements", organizations of national-religious activists dedicated to the re-establishment of a Jewish temple in the Temple Mount (Reiter 2016, pp. 57–61). As a result, in the early 2010s, there was a marked increase in the number of national-religious Israelis visiting the Temple Mount, accompanied by a similar increase of non-religious right-wing political figures, ministers, Knesset members, who went so far as to visit even parts of the Dome of the Rock, which Temple movement activists previously refrained from approaching, because it is believed to be the location of the Holy of Holies of the Jewish Temple. In the Knesset plenum, these politicians have proposed resolutions changing the status quo of the Temple Mount to permit worship and equal access for all religions. In 2013, the Knesset's Interior Committee, headed by Likud MK Miri Regev, dealt at length with the possibility of permitting full access to the Temple Mount to Jews. All this led to grea<sup>t</sup> unrest in the Muslim world and to the outbreak of extreme acts of terror around the issue of the Temple Mount in 2014–2015, hampering the governments' e fforts to prevent Islamic insurgency over Jerusalem (Reiter 2016, pp. 74–77).

The political pressure of the alliance between the Likud and the national-religious sector did not deter Benjamin Netanyahu's rightist governmen<sup>t</sup> in its e fforts to preserve the status quo in Jerusalem. Did it influence Israel national security policy elsewhere? It is impossible to form a coalition in Israel's multiparty political system without at least one Jewish religious party. This political reality has grea<sup>t</sup> influence on Israel's domestic religion policy, but less impact on its national security policy. The religious parties *have* prevented some withdrawals from the 1967-acquired sacred sites. The pressure of the ultra-orthodox and national-religious sectors made Rabin's leftist governmen<sup>t</sup> insist, during the Oslo negotiations, on retaining an Israeli presence at Joseph's Tomb and Rachel's Tomb and, in 2003, made Sharon's rightist governmen<sup>t</sup> alter the original route of the security fence to include Rachel's Tomb inside Israel (Lehrs 2012, pp. 236–37, 241). It is said that the political pressure of the religious parties and voters has contributed to Netanyahu's firm opposition to turning over any parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians—unlike Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, who o ffered concessions on Jerusalem in their negotiations with the Palestinians (Lehrs 2013, pp. 73–75; Caspit 2017, p. 113).

On the other hand, Israeli prime ministers know that the religious sector will agree to compromises on sites less important than the Temple Mount. One example is the message the Israeli Chief Rabbis conveyed to Prime Minister Barak on the eve of the 2000 Camp David Summit, when they hinted that, unlike their firm opposition to Israel conceding sovereignty over the Temple Mount, they would not oppose transferring control of Rachel's Tomb, Joseph's Tomb or even the Cave of the Patriarchs to the Palestinians, if access to Jews, worship and security at these sites were maintained (Lehrs 2012, p. 240). Another example is the fact that since Prime Minister Ehud Barak withdrew the IDF from Joseph's Tomb at the beginning of the Second Intifada, none of the religious parties have made its return a central issue in their negotiations with the ruling parties.

To conclude the discussion on the impact of "religious" political pressure on the formulation of Israeli national security policies, one should note that Israel's security policy was not delimited by Jewish *Halacha* (law), which prohibits giving up Israeli control over parts of Israel that were included in the ancient Kingdom of Israel. All four of the Israeli prime ministers who parted with territories acquired in the Six Day War had at least one religious party in their coalition government: Menachem Begin who conceded the Sinai in 1979, Yitzhak Rabin who conceded parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank in the Oslo agreements, Netanyahu who conceded parts of Hebron in 1997, and Ariel Sharon who conceded all of Gaza Strip in 2005. Begin, Netanyahu and Sharon were also right-wing and, thus, relied on a large religious constituency. However, the ultra-orthodox parties have not acted politically on this theological law, as was seen in the lack of firm objection by the Shas party (the Sephardic ultra-orthodox party) in the Oslo agreemen<sup>t</sup> and the Hebron agreemen<sup>t</sup> (Elman 2008, pp. 82, 86; Sandler 2018, p. 134; Caspit 2017, p. 131). The national-religious parties, which do act politically on it, have been unable to stop prime ministers from conceding territories even while being part of their coalitions. They have, however, sometimes managed to convince prime ministers to reject external pressures to freeze the construction of Jewish settlements in the territories (Elman 2008, pp. 90–91; Sandler 2018, p. 137; Rynhold and Waxman 2008).
