Chapter 1 focuses on the Israeli security community’s desire to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, a sentiment that serves as the basis for the security veterans’ disproportionate support for the two-state solution. This chapter explores the assessments of the security establishment from the 1967 War to the Oslo peace process of the 1990s to the breakdown of the peace process in the 2000s. It shows that proposals for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were submitted by the IDF and intelligence services to the Eshkol government even before the conclusion of the 1967 “Six Day” War. Two decades later, the IDF top brass played an important role during the first Intifada in prodding the Rabin-led government to pursue peace talks with the PLO. During the second Intifada in the early 2000s, retired senior security establishment officials urged Prime Minister Sharon to resume peace diplomacy with the Palestinians. As this chapter shows, Israeli governments have varied in their commitment to pursuing a deal with the Palestinians based on the two-state solution, often putting them at odds with the national security community.

Chapter 3 focuses on the policy disagreements with the security community in the period following Netanyahu’s return to power in 2009, a decade after he lost his reelection to Barak. His dismissal of the two-state solution and aggressive settlement policy in the West Bank; his approach toward Hamas-led Gaza; and key aspects of his policy aimed at thwarting Iran’s nuclear program have encountered serious opposition by the security establishment and retired senior security officials. This chapter describes how civil-military tensions spiked following the formation of Netanyahu’s sixth government in December 2022 and its pursuit of its highly controversial legal overhaul.

Netanyahu’s worldview, his modus operandi, and the significant steps he has taken to keep the generals at bay are explored in Chapter 2. It is argued that he is a pragmatic hardliner – a lifelong right-wing ideologue and opponent of Palestinian statehood who nevertheless has displayed flexibility, enabling him to remain coy about his territorial vision for Israel. A master manipulator of the media, he has cultivated an image of himself as “Mr. Security” and sought, early on, to exclude the IDF generals from the decision-making process, associating them with the political left and seeing them as potential rivals. The security community, for its part, sees Netanyahu not as “Mr. Security” but, rather, as a politician who routinely places his personal and political interests ahead of national security concerns.

The aim of this chapter is to describe, and offer a critical assessment of, confederal approaches to resolving the conflict in Israel-Palestine. We review why prospects for the conventional two-state solution have declined and what other models have been advanced as alternatives. After placing confederation in historical and theoretical context, we then describe a range of confederal proposals for Israel-Palestine. We conclude by exploring process and institutional design considerations presented by confederation as a framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.