*4.3. New Dynamics of Religion-Security in Israel Post-Religionization*

The discussion so far has demonstrated the high level of continuity in the role religion played in Israeli strategy before and after the Middle East's religionization. Now it is time to explore four new dynamics of this role as a consequence of Israel's changed religio-political realities, besides those already mentioned, which developed, such as Israel's 21st century alliance with the Sunni countries that was the result of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and the development of a "war of religion" between the Sunnis and the Shi'is in the 21st century.

The first new dynamic is the Evangelist revival in the US after the 1967 war, which enabled Israel to upgrade its bilateral relations with the world's greatest power into a "special relationship". It is commonly assumed that Israel had "special relations" and a strategic partnership with the US since President Truman's recognition of the new state of Israel in 1948; however, only from the administration of Lyndon Johnson did the United States and Israel begin to form a security alliance, which developed into patron-client relations in the 1970s, and assumed the form of a "special relationship" in the 1980s (Itamar Rabinovitch's preface to Johnson 2008; Freilich 2018, p. 289).

While it was the convergence of "cold" national security interests that led to the formation of the US-Israel security alliance, there were three religious elements in American political culture that elevated this security alliance to the level of a special relationship (Mead 2008). The first religious element is the major role of Hebrew history and thought in American civil religion from its outset. Many 18th century Americans supported the idea of the return of the Jews to Judea, even before there were many Jews in the United States, or even in the Land of Israel. The second element was the formation of a liberal democratic Judeo-Christian identity in the United States in the 1950s, with the growth of its highly influential middle-class Jewish population which voted for the Democrats, and which emphasized the liberal democratic character shared by Israel and the US, in contrast to the Soviet Union. The third religious element was added after the Jewish conquest of Jerusalem during the 1967 war, which the American Evangelists interpreted as a sign that the End-Time was approaching. Thereafter, the Evangelicals experienced a process of religious revivalism, which found expression in an increased political involvement in the Republican party, among other things, and created a pro-Israel key constituency in the Republican party as well. This cross-party, nearly unconditional US support for Israeli security policy, which arose in the 1980s, continues to this day. Both the Islamization of Iran and its duel hostility towards the US and Israel, and the 9.11 attacks by Al Qaeda, strengthened the American sense of a shared identity and security predicament with Israel (Cohen-Kidron 2013, p. 5).

The formation of the Israeli–American special relationship has been one of the most profound new dynamics in Israel's post-religionization era, greatly enhancing its diplomatic, military and economic resources, and Israel's freedom of action to pursue its security policies. The benefits for Israel from this special relationship went beyond the substantial security aid and diplomatic support the US has been providing Israel since the 1980s. Israel's status in the world has risen due to the power to influence US policy attributed to American Jews. This enhanced Israel's ability to influence foreign nations, including the Muslim ones with whom Israel does not have diplomatic relations, but who seek to court the US (Medem-Friedman 2018, pp. 212–14; Cohen-Kidron 2013, p. 5).

The second new dynamic in the post-religionization era was the elevation of the war on Islamic terror and extremism to the top of the West's agenda in the early 2000s. This development significantly improved the international support and cooperation Israel received for its counterterrorism policies, separate from the influence of Israel's special relationship with the US, the country leading this war on terror. Here, the fact that Palestinian terrorism in the 2000s waves the banner of a religious struggle, combined with its strong cultural animosity toward non-Muslims, played in Israel's favor. Israel felt immediately the impact of the 9/11 terror attacks, after which complaints from

the international community against Israel's counterterrorism actions ceased in one fell swoop, and the former began to respond to Israel's requests, such as stopping the flow of Islamic charitable funds from the entire Islamic world to Islamic terror organizations (Bergman 2018, p. 514). This pattern of increased international support for Israel's counterterrorism policies has continued ever since (Esposito 2007, p. 134; Sher and Yogev 2014, pp. 189–90).

The third new dynamic was the regional rise in the number, popularity and resources of jihadist networks following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. This development eliminated some action alternatives from Israel's pool of alternatives, such as toppling the Hamas regime in Gaza in the 2010s. Israel's security establishment assessed that such an action would be followed by what had occurred in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and in Syria with the outbreak of the civil war—the power vacuum left by Hamas would pull in jihadist elements even more radical than Hamas, such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Salafi jihadist organizations which have grown in Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula since 2006. Consequently, Prime Minister Netanyahu removed this action from Israel's pool of alternatives, despite domestic political pressure from right-wing members of his security cabinet, including the head of the religious-national party, not to do so (Rabinovitch and Brun 2017, pp. 93–94; Dekel 2014, pp. 13–14).

The fourth and final permanent new dynamic is the adoption of "religious warfare" by Israel's enemies, and especially by Palestinian terror. The appearance of Palestinian religious warfare greatly delimited Israeli military strategy in the territories, created new challenges to the work of Mossad and the Israeli Security Agency (ISA), and frequently constituted a diplomatic landmine for Israel. Israel's security system had to undergo a long process of learning how to contend with this "religious warfare". First, Israel's security agencies found it more di fficult to infiltrate religion-motivated terror groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard (Peri 1999, p. 231; Amidror 2002, p. 126; Byman 2011, pp. 339–40; Bergman 2018, pp. 579–80). Second, when Palestinian clergy participated in the struggle against Israel, it had to be more cautious in countering them. For example, Israel postponed the targeted assassination of Sheikh Yassin, Hamas' founder and its religious leader, several times during the Second Intifada, fearing that the assassination of a religious figure would cause more Palestinians to join the uprising (Byman 2011, p. 831).

Third, when Jewish sacred sites in the 1967 territories became constant targets of Palestinian terror, larger security forces were required to guard them, especially during Jewish holy times, when the greater numbers of Jewish celebrants increased friction with the Palestinian populations in the areas (Bergman 2018, p. 523; State of Israel 2015, pp. 51–52; Lehrs 2012, p. 242). As to non-Jewish sacred sites, the abundance of churches and mosques in the territories constituted a special challenge for Israel in the Second Intifada and onward, because Palestinian terrorists frequently used them for military purposes. The terrorists knew that the IDF would not enter them, and that the entry of the ISA into mosques required the authorization of the minister of security. In most instances, this was not given, as the entry of Israeli security forces into a house of prayer—in uniform or in plainclothes—could ignite a conflagration (Peri 1999, p. 165). This strategy of the enemy dragged Israel into several international entanglements during the Second Intifada and Operation Cast Lead when, for the first time, Israel bombed mosques in the Gaza Strip from which Hamas was launching rockets into Israel. These diplomatic international entanglements pressured the Israeli governmen<sup>t</sup> to make concessions to the Palestinians that it would not have made initially, and forced the IDF to change its military strategy in order to reduce the possibility of similar diplomatic crises (Harel and Issacharo ff 2004, pp. 248–49; Shalom 2009, p. 84; State of Israel 2009, pp. 56–61, 88–89, 144–45; State of Israel 2015, p. 167).

Finally, it should be noted that there has been a decrease in the IDF's use of the Old Testament as a means of imbuing a fighting spirit, but not for religious reasons. In the years following the first two decades of Israel's existence, the majority of IDF recruits have been native-born Israelis who are emotionally connected to the State of Israel and indoctrinated from childhood with stories of IDF heroism garnered from the state's modern military history. The IDF no longer needs the world of the Bible and ancient Jewish history to cultivate Israeli soldiers' readiness to fight.

### *4.4. In Summary of Religion's Involvement in Shaping Israel's National Security Policy Post-Religionization*

When surveying religion's involvement in shaping Israel's security policy post-religionization, we find many changes, but many continuities as well. As to its operational beliefs, Israel moved from perceiving Palestinian Islamic actors as preferable to secular Palestinian actors to considering them the most dangerous group in the Palestinian camp.

At the same time, Israel's deterrence policy toward Islamic actors continues to be the overall approach of the Israeli policy towards secular actors: assuming the rationality of the other side and focusing on the manipulation of social and political elements. Israel's readiness to relinquish control over sacred sites for the sake of a more secure state also remains, and is most evident in the self-imposed restrictions on visits by Jews to the Temple Mount which Israel adopted post-1967. However, such exercises of caution have been gnawed away at since the rise of religionization and nationalistic tendencies in the Israeli public. The influence of internal religious groups on security policies certainly grew after 1967, but this influence shaped only the margins of the Israeli security policy, and mostly in regard to the territories' sacred sites.

The most profound changes are found in the realm of what Israel believed could be achieved in light of changing religious circumstances. On the one hand, the adoption of "religious warfare" by Israel's enemies and the regional rise of jihadism in the Middle East after the US invasion of Iraq constituted a constant limiting factor to Israel's freedom of action. It also became far more di fficult to prevent violence on the Temple Mount, due to the increased volatility of the issue of Jerusalem among Palestinians and Israeli Jews alike. Consequently, Israel placed even greater emphasis on preventing religious insurgency among the Palestinians in the territories by, for instance, easing travel and trade restrictions for Palestinians living under the PA during Muslim holidays, enabling them to visit their families, go on outings and visit the Al-Aqsa mosque (Kelner et al. 2014). On the other hand, Israel enjoyed greater international cooperation due to the religious-political transformation of the American Evangelists after 1967, the 2000s global war on Islamic terror and the "war of religion" between the Shi'i and Sunni camps. Regarding the latter regional change, Israel responded by following its pre-religionization principle of cooperating with actors who may object ideologically to Israel but see a greater threat in a shared enemy, demonstrating once again the impact of habit on the formation of national security policy.

### **5. What Can We Learn from the History of Religion in Israel's National-Security Making? A Model of Religion in National Security Policies**

From a review of how religion was involved in shaping Israel's security policies before and after the religionization of the state's regional and global environment, religion's e ffect on national-security making can be perceived as having three tiers: (1) enduring operational beliefs on the link between the state's security and religious factors; (2) religion's influence on the ever-changing conditions of choice; and (3) the utilization of religion for the realization of national-security goals.
