Proportionality and Self-Interest

This paper offers a justification of the principle of military proportionality that is based in considerations of self-interest. By offering such a justification, I hope to vindicate the principle on the basis of the least controversial argument available. The war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 is used as a case study. Part 1 surveys recent work on military proportionality and suggests that the importance of this principle has increased in the age of asymmetrical warfare. Part 2 considers and rejects the traditional realist concerns about proportionality. Part 3 offers a realist rationale for adhering to the principle.     

Italian Involvement in the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–1939

Italian involvement in the Arab Revolt in Palestine (1936–1939) was perhaps the most explicit example of Rome's attempt to destabilize London's position in the Middle East, prior to Italy's entry to the Second World War. This article examines the mechanisms of Fascist Italy's assistance to the rebels in Palestine, focusing on the secret contacts between Italian officials and the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni. It describes the financial support given by Italy as well as the attempts to smuggle arms to Palestine. The article also analyses Rome's diplomatic manoeuvres in connection with Palestine and its pro-Arab propaganda. It is argued that Italian policy in Palestine was governed by, and subordinate to, wider considerations of Italian policy such as imperial competition with Great Britain and a desire to increase Italy's influence in the Middle East. In fact, Fascist involvement in the ‘first Intifada’ teaches us more about Italian foreign policy than it does on the course of events in Palestine during the Arab rebellion.     

Social Agency, Spatial Practices, and Power: The Micro-foundations of Fragmented Sovereignty in the Occupied Territories

The study of the relationships among social agency, spatial practices, and political power opens new directions for empirical inquiry and theorization of current modalities of sovereignty. Yet, recent research has overemphasized external variables, such as globalization and international forces, as conditioners of sovereignty and state power, with diminished attention on national and local realms. In the following article, I investigate state power beyond the limits of its official boundaries, by examining how intruder states produce, manage, and sustain effective authority over occupied territories and populations. I use the example of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank to demonstrate how such cases of political authority are based on fragmented sovereignty: comprised of multiple, localized, and relatively autonomous cores of power, instead of an all-encompassing structural and centralized modality of control. I propose that fragmented sovereignty is shaped and operated through the increasing autonomous power of ground level state agents and in the ways spatial perceptions and practices are interwoven into localized political processes.