Social convertibility and militarism: Evaluations of the development of military-society relations in israel in the early 2000s

Circular relations exist between militarism and the social power that groups acquire owing to militarism, mainly military service. The case of Israel exemplifies this circularity in the form of three cycles. The cycle of militarization (1920s -1970s) was accompanied by the accruement of benefits by the groups who bore the military burden of the Arab-Israeli conflict, mainly the Western-Ashkenazi groups. Increasing the military burden to a degree where it was no longer symmetrical with the rewards that accrue to the dominant Ashkenazi groups energized a cycle of demilitarization (1970s-1990s, with the Oslo Accords at the center). Cyclically, demilitarization prompted the third cycle, remilitarization in the peripheral part of the society, beginning in the late 1990s that clearly manifested itself in the 2000- 2002 conflict with the Palestinian Authority. Remilitarization is the weapon wielded by peripheral groups that continue to espouse military service in order to legitimate their demand to recognize it as a source for rewards. Nevertheless, since demilitarization is still the dominant groups' optional track, peripheral groups struggle for a status in a military losing its social centrality. Thus, it is likely that the military will gradually become an arena of intergroup conflicts.