Power of the Words: Securitisation of the ‘Other’
in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict1
Bezen Balamir Coskun
Introduction
After the end of the Cold War, security studies broadened their perspective through a more
constructivist analysis of security. This includes the Copenhagen School’s securitization
theory, which argues that for a full pledged understanding of ‘security’ what is needed is an
understanding of the cultural process of securitization, by which actors construct issues as
threats to security.
As experienced in the Israeli-Palestinian case, if the defence of ‘self’ becomes a security
discourse, securitisation would bring the definition of ‘us’ and ‘them’, maintaining ‘our
identity’ as opposed to ‘their identity’. The objective of this article is to examine some
overarching securitisations that have developed throughout the respective nation-building
processes of the Palestinians and the Israelis. Here it is argued that any attempt to understand
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires a careful investigation of the competing/conflicting
discourses and claims which have evolved though mutual interaction. This understanding is
also crucial in terms of assessing the parameters of reconciliation.
1
This paper was presented as part of the ‘Perspectives on Power’ Conference run by Quest and
sponsored by the AHRC. This article is from Issue 4 of Quest which contains the proceedings of the
conference. It, and the other papers presented at the conference can be downloaded from
http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/QUEST/JournalIssues/
1
Securitisation Theory
Securitisation theory is developed by scholars from the Copenhagen School. It is argued that
threats and security are not objective matters; rather ‘security is a practice, a specific way of
framing an issue. Security discourse is characterized by dramatizing an issue as having
absolute priority. Something is presented as an absolute threat…’ (Wæver, 1996:108)
For the Copenhagen School, today’s security is deeply related to the politicization of an
issue. Security politics is not just about underlining pre-existing threats; but also a
performative activity that makes certain issues visible as a threat. Within this context,
security refers to a concept that is more about how a society or any group of people
designates something as a threat. This view brings the concept of ‘securitization’. Thus,
securitization is defined as ‘the discursive process through which an intersubjective
understanding is constructed within a political community to treat something as an existential
threat to a valued referent object, and to enable a call for urgent and exceptional measures to
deal with the threat.’ (Buzan and Wæver, 2003:491)
Buzan and Wæver define a security issue as is ‘posited (by a securitizing actor) as a threat to
the survival of some referent object (nation, state, the liberal international economic order,
rain forests), which is claimed to have a right to survive. (Buzan and Wæver, 2003:71)Since
it is a question of survival for the particular referent object the securitizing actor claims its
right to use extraordinary means for reasons of security.
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Moreover, the threat can be used to legitimize the political action. Positing an issue as an
existential threat requires a move from normal politics to emergency politics. It means this
particular security issue necessitates priority over others. Thus, the theory of securitization
underlined the logic within security discourse: the claim about existential threats and
legitimization of extraordinary measures.
1948 – 1967: One’s Independence as the Other’s Catastrophe
Until the World Zionist Organisation’s Basel Congress in 1897, Arab and Jewish people of
the Palestine were living side by side peacefully. With the introduction of the Zionism, a
political philosophy that demanded for Jews’ right to have a state in Palestine, the native
Palestinian population began to feel threatened. Particularly during the British Mandate
period Palestinian Arabs were alienated and marginalized as a result of Mandate
Administration’s discriminatory policies in favour of the Zionists.
In May 1948, following the British withdrawal from the Palestine, the State of Israel was
declared. The Israeli proclamation claims explicit international recognition of the historic
connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and their right to reconstitute their National
Home. As a lip service, a full and equal citizenship for the Arab inhabitants of Palestine was
offered in the Declaration document. However, Palestinian Arabs did not recognize the State
of Israel as the legitimate ruler of Palestine as was stated in the Palestinian National Charter
(1968): ‘… the establishment of the state of Israel [is] entirely illegal, regardless of the
passage of time, because [it was] contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their
natural right in their homeland…’
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A few days after the state of Israel was proclaimed, six Arab states launched attacks on the
State of Israel to destroy the newly-formed Jewish state. The war is remembered by the two
sides under different names: Israelis refer to it as the War of Independence, for Palestinian
Arabs the war marked the beginning of the events referred to as the Catastrophe. After the
end of the war in 1949 Palestinian Arabs transferred out of the villages, towns and cities,
which had come under Israeli control. Thousands of Palestinians were exiled and continued
their lives in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan and elsewhere. This made it
impossible for Palestinians to acknowledge the State of Israel and to make a compromise
between their claims and those of Israeli settlers. This was clearly expressed in Palestinian
Liberation Movement’s (PLO) documents and its leaders’ statements: ‘…with Zionism there
cannot be peaceful co-existence…When the very existence of your people is the question,
there cannot be peaceful co-existence. Self-defence becomes over-riding and paramount.’
(Shukeiri 1958) 2
Basically, during the early years of the State of Israel the Palestinian Arab entity was not
accepted as a distinct entity by Zionists. In return, Zionist denial of the existence of
Palestinian Arabs as a national entity was interpreted as part of the Zionist imperialistic plot
by Palestinian leadership.
1967 – 1987: Israel as Benign Occupier?
2
In his statements during the 13th Session (1958) of the UN General Assembly Ahmad Shukeiri
underlined the illegitimacy of the State of Israel on the eyes of Palestinian Arabs by saying that ‘[a] state that
can only maintain its security by the denial of the right of the people to their homeland is not worthy of
survival…not worthy of statehood.’
4
The six day war in 1967 was a watershed event for both sides. After the defeat of Arab
coalition in their second war against Israel, Israel gained control over the West Bank, East
Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Israel was determined to be a very different occupying power.
Within this context, Israel initiated policies to integrate the occupied territories into Israel’s
security system and infrastructure. As was underlined in Article 8 of the Fatah Constitution,
(1969) Israel’s attempts to integrate the territories were considered as mere affirmations of
the Zionist colonial project: ‘The Israeli existence in Palestine is a Zionist invasion with a
colonial expansive base, and it is a natural ally to colonialism and international imperialism.’
According to the same discourse, the Palestinian struggle was claimed to be part of the
world-wide struggle against colonialism and international imperialism. Therefore, the
Palestinians had the right to use all possible means, including terrorist attacks, to resist Israeli
colonialism and liberate their fatherland.
Israel’s control over the Palestinian territories paved the way for the development of a
liberation discourse, which was identified with Yasser Arafat. At every opportunity Yasser
Arafat, Chairman of the PLO, underlined the threat posed by the Zionist State of Israel to the
existence of the Palestinian Arabs in their homeland. The Israeli occupation was securitized
and the PLO leaders called for armed struggle against Israel:
… to create and maintain an atmosphere of strain and anxiety that will force the Zionists to realize that it
is impossible for them to live in Israel… The goal of the terrorist activity was to prevent immigration
and encourage emigration, …to destroy tourism, to prevent immigrants becoming attached to the land, to
weaken the Israeli economy and to divert [the] greater part of it to security requirements. (Arafat as
quoted by Rubin and Rubin, 2003:41)
During late 1960s and early 1970s, in the occupied territories a Palestinian resistance against
occupation had been triggered and spread throughout the occupied territories. Outside the
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occupied territories, terrorist acts against Israelis were committed by radical PLO groups,
including the attack at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Both terrorist attacks and the growing
resistance movement in the West Bank and Gaza paved the way for the revival of the
‘security trauma’ in Israel. The Palestinian terrorism was securitised as the incarnation of the
threat to the Jewish State. Thus, the Israeli government claimed its right to use extraordinary
means to guarantee the security and the survival of the Jewish people in Israel as was stated
by PM Golda Meir in 1972:
Our war against the Arab terrorists is a vital mission demanding devotion and concentration…We have
no choice but to strike at the terrorist organizations wherever we can reach them. That is our obligation
to ourselves and to peace. We shall fulfil that obligation undauntedly.
As a result, throughout the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, Israel underlined its
preference for a ‘Jordanian Palestinian state’ but it rejected a third, purely Palestinian, state in
the area because of the Palestinian determination to destroy the State of Israel.
1988-2002: Give Peace a Chance?
In 1987 the first Intifada had started. The first Intifada was a non-violent resistance inspired
by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who succeeded in their struggle against
colonialist/imperialist powers. It was assumed that employment of non-violent methods
would help to neutralize the destructive power of the State of Israel. (Awad, 1984:24) In this
sense the Intifada was very successful. Moreover, the Intifada made the Palestinian
declaration of independence possible. In 15 November 1988 the PLO declared an
independent Palestine on occupied lands.
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Following the declaration of independence the PLO stated their willingness to consider
negotiations with Israel, which meant a dramatic change from Palestinian total rejection of
Israel. With his statement at the19th session of the Palestine National Council (December
1988) Arafat offered an olive branch to Israel:
Our statehood provides salvation to the Palestinians and peace to both Palestinians and Israelis. Selfdetermination means survival for the Palestinians. And our survival does not destroy the survival of the
Israelis as their rulers claim.
Arafat’s olive branch was accepted by Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin. He declared Israel’s
readiness to start negotiations and called upon the Palestinians to give peace a chance and to
cease all violent and terrorist activity for the duration of the negotiations on autonomy.
This rhetoric change in favour of peace brought Israel and Palestine to the negotiation table.
But fedayeen groups operating in the occupied territories challenged the PLO’s peace offers
to Israel. In August 1988 Hamas published its covenant and rejected the legitimacy of the
PLO as the sole leader of the Palestinian people. In its covenant, Hamas returned to the
previous uncompromising Palestinian discourse of the destruction of Zionism: ‘Our struggle
against the Jews is very great and very serious… until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's
victory is realised. (The Covenant of the Hamas,1988)
In the late 1990s, despite the efforts of the Palestinian leadership to keep Palestinians focused
on the gains and prospects of Oslo, the divergence between promise and reality of Oslo
triggered the fedayeen groups’ attacks against Israeli civilians. The bombings inside Israel
were widely interpreted as a proof of the untrustworthiness of the Palestinian people and the
incapacity of the Palestinian leadership to stop the terrorist activities of the fedayeen groups.
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Consequently, the Likud Party, then the government, stressed that peace should not be sought
at the expense of security. What Israel needed was less peace and more security. The Likud
government under PM Binyamin Netanyahu brought the terrorist attack issue to the top of the
agenda and repeated that ‘security’ was the precondition for ‘peace’, thus the terrorist attacks
were securitized to justify the measures taken against ‘terrorists’:
Following the failure of the peace process, the second Intifada started. The second Intifada is
identified with bloody, suicide bomber attacks, followed by aggressive Israeli responses
throughout 2001 and 2002. As a result of the Intifada the Israeli government gave up hope of
a negotiated settlement to the conflict and pursued a unilateral policy of physically separating
Israel from Palestinian communities by constructing a separation wall. Israel has claimed that
such a barrier is necessary to prevent Palestinian attackers from entering Israeli cities. Israeli
security measures have been seen by Palestinians as draconian measures. As a result of the
separation wall Palestinians have defined Gaza as ‘a single huge prison’ and the West Bank
as being divided into dozens of wards. On the other hand, Israel claims that these measures
are merely ‘defensive actions’ aimed at preventing Palestinian ‘terror’.
Conclusion
Since the beginning of their meeting in the land of Palestine, Israelis and Palestinian Arabs
have entrapped themselves in a vicious cycle of violence. The actions of the Israelis have
reinforced the Palestinian view of Israelis as occupier, colonial state threaten their communal
and national survival. On the other hand, the discourses and actions of the Palestinians and
the Palestinian fedayeen groups have served to reinforce the Israeli perception of Palestinians
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as uncompromised terrorists who threaten the existence of the State of Israel. The
delegitimisation was vital for both sides as it enabled them to believe the distinctiveness of
their claims.
For a long time, both sides posited the ‘other’ as a threat to the survival of ‘self’ and in order
to protect themselves, both sides have used all possible extraordinary means. Since it was a
question of survival, the securitising actors (leaders of Palestinian and Israeli society) have
claimed their right to use extraordinary means to protect the survival of their societies:
Palestinian attacks on Israeli settlements, bomb attacks in major Israeli cities and in return
Israel’s destructions of Arab settlements, targeted killings, construction of separation wall,
check points and road blocks.
References
Books and Articles
Awad, Mubarak (1984) ‘Non Violent Resistance: A Strategy for the Occupied Territories’,
Journal of Palestine Studies, 52, pp.22-36
Buzan B. and Wæver O. (2003) Regions and Powers: The Structure of International
Security, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
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Buzan B. and Weaver O. (1997) ‘Slippery? Contradictory? Sociologically Untenable? The
Copenhagen School Replies’ Review of International Studies, 23, pp. 241 - 250
Rubin, B. and Rubin, J.C. (2003) Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, London: Continuum
Wæver O. (1996) ‘European Security Identities’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 34:1,
pp.103-132
Official Documents and Statements
Ahmad Shukeiri’s Statements during the 13th Session of the UN General Assembly (1958):
http://www.ahmadalshukairy.org/speeches/download/Statements%20made%20during%20the%2013th%20session%20of%20the%20United%20Nations%20General%20A
ssembly.pdf
The Covenant of the Hamas (18 August 1988):
www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideat/hamas.htm
The Fatah Constitution (1969):
http://www.fateh.net/e_public/constitution.htm
The Palestinian National Charter: Resolutions of the Palestine National Council (1968):
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/plocov.htm
Statement to the Knesset by Prime Minister Golda Meir, (16 October 1972):
http://www.israelmfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign+Relations/Israels+Foreign+Relations+since+1947/19471974/39+Statement+to+the+Knesset+by+Prime+Minister+Meir.htm
Yasser Arafat’s Statement at the19th session of the Palestine National Council (14
December 1988):
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign%20Relations/Israels%20Foreign%20Relations%20since%201947/19841988/419%20Statement%20by%20Yasser%20Arafat-%2014%20December%201988
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