“Watching and waiting” and “much ado about nothing”? Making sense of the Israeli response to the Arab uprisings

This article covers Israel’s response to the Arab uprisings. The analysis deals with the issue of both material and immaterial political actions of the Israeli political leadership. A theoretical approach based on “thin rationalism”—actors pursue strategies based on their preferences—encompassing orthodox and heterodox schools of thought of International Relations (Neo-Realism, Institutionalism, Liberalism and a Copenhagen School-inspired concept of international securitization) is developed and applied to the case. The article contributes to the solution of a research puzzle. On the one hand, Israel’s material political action followed a watching-and-waiting approach, as Israel refrained from actively interfering in the domestic affairs of Arab countries highly affected by the Arab uprisings. On the other hand, in terms of political communication, major executive branches of the Israeli state pursued a harsh policy: the “Arab Spring” was presented to the global public as a dangerous threat to Israel’s security. Major results at the empirical level are that Israel—seen through the spectacles of the three orthodox schools of thought—was never seriously threatened by the Arab uprisings, which contributes to explaining why Israel’s material policy was rather equanimous. At the same time, the harsh Israeli policy at the level of political communication is made sense of as a policy that added to Israel’s attempts to legitimize its occupation of Palestine toward the (Western-dominated) international community. At the theoretical level, further application of the securitization approach aimed at the international level is encouraged. This article is published as part of a collection on analyzing security complexes in a changing Middle East.