affective attachments and foreign policy: israel and the

Article

European Journal of International Relations

16(4) 687–709© The Author(s) 2010

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DOI: 10.1177/1354066110366055ejt.sagepub.com

Corresponding author:Brent E. Sasley, Department of Political Science, University of Texas at Arlington, PO Box 19539, Arlington, Texas, 76019, USA.Email: [email protected]

Affective attachments and foreign policy: Israel and the 1993 Oslo Accords

Brent E. SasleyUniversity of Texas at Arlington, USA

AbstractAlthough the important role of emotions in decision-making has been highlighted in the psychology, neural science, and decision research literatures, this conclusion has not been widely adopted in foreign policy analysis and International Relations (IR). Of the work that has been done, much of it has been focused on public perceptions and the impact on foreign policy, but not on elites and the actual decisions of foreign policy. This article seeks to address this imbalance by examining the role of one element of emotion — affect — on key foreign policy decision-makers. It argues that the greater the emotional attachment a leader has to an object, the less flexible she is in foreign policy toward that object. The model is used to explain a critical puzzle in IR: Israel’s decision to pursue and sign the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Keywordsaffect, decision-making, emotion, foreign policy, Oslo Accords

Introduction

Do leaders have emotions? That is, are they subject to the same emotional processes that members of the general population are? Intuitively one would think so — after all, we are all human. In Political Science, emotions have recently been used to study public percep-tions toward political objects and events in a domestic politics context (e.g., Clarke et al., 2006; Marcus, 2000; Sniderman et al., 1991; Westen 2007). But our theoretical models in International Relations (IR) and foreign policy analysis (FPA) almost never account for such processes.1 Two of the more recent and dynamic research projects on individuals in foreign policy-making — prospect theory and poliheuristic theory — are both focused on cognitive (or rational) processes.2 In a recent textbook written for university students of FPA, less than a handful of pages discuss the role of emotions on foreign policy decision-making; and there

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are no chapters on this new field of research. Indeed, the short discussion on emotion is only part of a chapter on rationality in decision-making (see Smith et al., 2008).

There has been some preliminary work done on emotions in FPA and IR.3 Both Neta Crawford (2000) and Jonathan Mercer (2006) have called for including emotions in the study of foreign policy-making, but neither links them into a causal process. Geva and her colleagues (see Geva and Sirin, 2008) have explicitly focused on emotions and foreign policy-making, but these have generally been lab experiments conducted on university students. While useful components of a research agenda on emotions and policy, they may not be accurate reflections of ‘real-life’ leaders making decisions in all the complexity and uncertainty of world politics and so need to be complemented by studies of these leaders.

Jacques Hymans (2006) is one of the first to explicitly link specific emotions (fear and pride) to foreign policy through an examination of decision-makers working on critical issues in international relations (nuclear proliferation). In a world of incomplete informa-tion and ambiguity, emotions help guide decision-makers toward or away from a nuclear option. Hymans’ focus on elites — the actual decision-makers — is also relevant, as most of the literature even in Political Science more generally examines the emotions of the population in general. His study illustrates that it is possible to study leaders and trace the impact of their emotions on foreign policy.4

The lack of theoretical development on emotions and foreign policy-making is puz-zling on two accounts. One, emotion is now widely recognized in three key disciplines as being critically important for understanding how decisions are made: psychology, neural science, and decision research. Surely foreign policy decisions can be understood as similarly arrived at as other types of decisions. Two, IR scholars have always liked to apply concepts from psychology to their own work. Yet they have not done so with the use of emotional processes, continuing to prioritize cognitive models.

This article seeks to help fill this gap in understanding how emotions impact on the foreign policy-making process. It does so in two ways. First, it focuses, like Hymans, on decision-makers. Second, it examines the impact of a different emotion, affect. To this end, the article is organized as follows. The first section examines evidence from other fields of research, to illustrate how the role of affect in decision-making has been dem-onstrated. This section also includes an effort to define both emotion and affect, a condi-tional task at best given disagreements over such definitions. The second part applies what has been learned to foreign policy-making. Here I hypothesize that leaders who feel strongly about a foreign policy object are more likely to rely on the affect heuristic to make decisions regarding that object, which in turn limits their ability to consider new information and options. I turn next to my case study, Israel’s decision to pursue and sign the 1993 Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Here I look at exist-ing explanations for Oslo, and then through a comparison of two Israeli prime ministers demonstrate how affect can be used to explain foreign policy decisions. The conclusion discusses some of the implications of this approach.

Affect in decision-makingThe lack of attention to emotions in IR is partly due to the inability of researchers to agree on a definition of emotion; without definitions, it becomes difficult to measure

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their effects.5 Emotions are widely viewed as mental states, but beyond that there is no agreement on what they are — what should be included as an ‘emotion’ (for overviews of these disagreements see Elster [1999] and Kagan [2007]). There is also no agreement on where they come from — whether from neural-biological (Damasio, 1994), psycho-logical (Smith and Lazarus, 1993), or social contexts (Parkinson et al., 2005).

Finally, there are differences over whether emotion and cognition work hand-in-hand (Damasio, 1994; Pham, 2007), whether one precedes and drives the other (Ellis, 2005; Loewenstein et al., 2001), or whether they are completely independent of each other (see the debate between Lazarus [1984] and Zajonc [1984]). Some have even argued that instead of defining emotions, we should just identify and define the circumstances that surround an emotion (see Elster, 1999: 246–283; Parkinson et al., 2005: 3–4).

A good working definition of emotion would recognize its multifaceted nature. Michel Tuan Pham defines emotions as: ‘complex states of [an] organism characterized by changes in automatic nervous system arousal accompanied by distinct physiological expressions, specific action tendencies, and subjective feeling experiences of a certain valence’ (Pham, 2007: 156; see also Crawford, 2000: 125). If we accept that such a broad definition is necessary to do justice to the wide-ranging and complex elements that make up ‘emotions,’ then we can move on to focus on specific emotions, which in turn will help us narrow down our operational concepts.

My purpose here is to discuss one aspect of emotions: affect. As with emotions, there is some disagreement over what affect is and what purpose it serves, mostly because it is usually considered to be a very broad spectrum of feelings (see, e.g., Peters, 2006). According to one standard review of the psychology literature, affect is defined as ‘a generic term for a whole range of preferences, evaluations, moods, and emotions’ (Fiske and Taylor, 1991: 410–411). Others refer to affect as, conversely, part of the emotional experience more generally (Pham, 2007: 156). Still others distinguish between different kinds of affect: integral affect is associated with a particular stimulus, while incidental affect is associated with non-stimulus factors, but which is misattributed to those stimuli (see Bodenhausen, 1993).

The most effective definition of affect comes from decision researchers, and is both broad and simple. Affect can be defined simply as ‘the positive and negative feelings evoked by a stimulus’ (Betsch, 2005: 41). This covers the essence of affect: general valence feelings toward something (see also Finucane et al., 2003: 328-329; Isen, 2001; Peters, 2006: 459). Affect is thus a broad, overall mental and physiological framework an individual undergoes for long periods of time, possibly his entire life, divided into general positive or negative feelings. Affect encompasses feelings toward an object, event, or person — with feelings being defined as mental states distinct from the cogni-tive processes associated with thinking.

Affect is used in decision-making by providing a short cut from our thinking/feeling processes to a decision. Psychologists have long recognized that, given the inherent ambiguity and informational complexity in the world, the mental simplification of reality is the critical way in which individuals understand their environments. Because our capacity for rationality is ‘bounded’ (Simon, 1985), we must make simplified assump-tions about our environments in order to make it easier for us to understand our circum-stances and make decisional responses to them.


This simplification process is accomplished through our belief structures, or schemas.6 Schemas describe our situations for us, by interpreting, storing, and evaluating incoming information, by defining our contemporary situations in light of our past experiences and knowledge, as well as our beliefs, values, and attitudes (Fiske and Taylor, 1991: 99; Lau, 1986; Vertzberger, 1990). Schemas provide the link between these two time frames by opening memory storage units and recalling relevant information, synthesizing this information into representational structures that we can rely on for interpretation of our contemporary environments. Without these kinds of simplifications to define our expec-tations and frame our responses, we would have difficulty functioning since we would have to cope with what would otherwise be new situations all the time.

But even our schemas can be too complex for direct use, and it has been found that humans rely on mental heuristics as short cuts to and simple(r) representations of our sche-mas. Heuristics structure this information so that we can make decisions in a quicker, more orderly, manner (Gilovich et al., 2002; Sniderman et al., 1991; Vertzberger, 1990). Like sche-mas more generally, heuristics provide a priori assumptions and expectations about one’s contemporary environment (see Fiske and Taylor, 1991: Ch. 9; Gilovich et al., 2002).

Political psychologists have been using heuristics to explain political decisions at both the mass and elite levels for many years. In addition, there is a large literature dem-onstrating how schemas help foreign policymakers simplify their environments and guide their decisions (for some examples, see Axelrod, 1976; Jervis, 1976; Khong, 1992; Vertzberger, 1990; for a good overview, see Young and Schafer, 1998). But the focus has been on cognitive heuristics, not emotional ones.

We know today from brain research, physiological studies, and experimental evi-dence that feelings (or affect) do play an important role in the decision-making process. They do so by acting as judgmental short cuts, similar to cognitive heuristics. Instead of cognitive processes, though, an affect heuristic shapes decisions by highlighting the intu-itive or emotional meaning that objects, events, or people have for the decision-maker. Instead of appraising objects, events, or people by cognitive analysis, we simply feel what these objects, events, or people mean to us and respond accordingly.

An affect heuristic ‘tags’ all stimuli with an affective label that bestows meaning on a piece of information (Hancock et al., 2005: 165–166; Lodge and Taber, 2005; Slovic et al., 2002: 06; Tiedens and Linton, 2001). As an image or stimulus is brought before an individual’s attention, the affect heuristic is engaged and the individual produces a deci-sion based on how the heuristic tells her she feels (e.g. I don’t like bungalows therefore I will not buy that one-story house). In Zajonc’s words, ‘[w]e do not just see “a house”: we see “a handsome house,” “an ugly house,” or “a pretentious house”’ (1980: 154; empha-sis in original). Indeed, events or objects that hold emotional significance for an indi-vidual will, it is posited, be easier to recall: ‘emotion serves to make information more personally relevant’ (Szalma and Hancock, 2005: 184). Because it is automatic and immediate, given the intensity of emotions, an affect heuristic is considered by some to be a more efficient heuristic, in that reliance on affect makes for a faster, easier, and more efficient method of decision-making (Slovic et al., 2002: 398).7

We know that affect impacts on decision-making because neural science has demon-strated that the brain uses emotion as part of the decision-making process. Some brain researchers argue that we can only respond to a stimulus after first having an emotional

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reaction to it — which makes us conscious of the stimulus and, therefore, able to respond cognitively to it (see Ellis, 2005). This process is regulated by the various parts of the brain, particularly in the frontal and parietal lobes, which begin the process of making us aware of sensorimotor images that inform us about what is going on in our environments.

Several experiments conducted with patients with damage to the ventromedial sector of their prefrontal cortex have illustrated the importance of affect and emotion more generally for the decision-making process. Lesions to this area of the brain have been found to inhibit the ability of individuals to process emotional signals from objects or events by hampering the bio- and physiological effects, triggered by an emotional reac-tion, that influence decision-making. And this despite the fact that these patients have retained unhindered intelligence and cognitive capabilities (see Bar-On et al., 2003;8 Bechara, 2004; Damasio, 1994; Fellows and Farah, 2005). This is called the somatic marker hypothesis: individuals lose the ability to anticipate, where anticipation induces positive or negative feelings (eager, happy, scared, etc.) in them. These patients become unable to calculate risks and rewards in their activities. These emotional signals tell us whether we are pleased, fearful, or anxious; connected to our innate survival mecha-nisms, they help us make ‘better’ (i.e. ‘safer’) decisions by making us aware of the con-sequences (for more on the strategic nature of emotions, see Frank, 1988).

A wealth of experimental research by psychologists has buttressed this conclusion, both explicitly and implicitly. The evidence is wide-ranging: in one classic clinical study, subjects had the choice of drawing a red jelly bean from one of two bowls, in order to win a financial prize. One bowl had one red jelly bean and nine white ones, while the other had 100 jelly beans, but only a few red jelly beans, totaling between 5 and 9 percent of the total. Statistically, if subjects chose from the first bowl they had a greater chance of winning. But participants tended to choose from the bowl with greater absolute numbers. This was, they reported afterward, because even though they were aware that the first bowl gave them a greater chance of winning, they felt that choosing from the second bowl increased their winning chances (Denes-Raj and Epstein, 1994).

Some experiments found that the desire to experience pleasure (i.e. how an action will make one feel) influenced the inclination to gamble in risky situations (Mellers et al., 1999; see also Mano, 1994). Others have found that subjects who like an object are will-ing to pay more to protect it (Hsee and Kunreuther, 2000). And other experiments deter-mined that how one feels about an individual shaped how one reacted to him or her in legal and punitive situations (Kahneman et al., 1998; LaFrance and Hecht, 1995).

Studies have also shown that individuals are even willing to make decisions not in their objective best interests, if an object stimulates them appropriately. In one experi-ment, Ariely and Loewenstein (2006) found that subjects who were sexually aroused were more willing to engage in sexually-risky or morally-questionable behavior in order to procure sex. Thus, the intense affective appeal of a stimulus made individuals willing to ignore the consequences of their actions if their emotional needs were satisfied.

Affect in foreign policy-makingDespite this evidence, IR scholars have generally been reluctant to use emotions as causal variables. Even FPA, which focuses on individuals and their personal characteristics


as the central actors in foreign policy-making (see Hudson, 2005), has neglected to develop more fully our understanding of emotions and foreign policy.9

The explanation for the lack of theory development on emotion in IR is multifaceted. First, IR focuses more on group interaction. This is represented by Lake and Powell’s assertion that ‘the study of international politics would be hopelessly complicated if every international outcome had to be traced back to the goals and actions of individuals’ (1999: 13). There is little or no room for an individual leader’s emotions in such a frame-work. In addition, the dominant theoretical approaches in IR are structural: Neorealism and institutionalism focus on patterns of activity at the global level (see, e.g., Baldwin, 1993). Some constructivist approaches have followed a similar pattern, by focusing on international norms and social relations (Wendt, 1999). Even constructivist explanations that examine individual states look to collective discourses such as national identity and culture to explain state behavior (e.g. Katzenstein, 1996). In all of these approaches, individuals are subsumed under more macro structures and processes. They are dis-missed from having any causal role in the determination of state behavior.

Second, emotions are notoriously difficult to observe and measure, and without being able to do so, it is often assumed that we cannot study their effects. How does one assess chemical and neuro-electrical processes? Third, there remains a general preference in the study of international politics for what is considered reasoned, rational behavior in the pursuit of ‘good’ political decisions — that make a country safe and secure — and which emotions (viewed as irrational) are perceived to disrupt. While valid, these concerns do not automatically preclude the use of emotions to understand foreign policy decision-making.

How then does affect influence foreign policy decisions? I hypothesize that how lead-ers feel toward a particular foreign policy object — which could be another actor, an issue (such as war or globalization), a specific kind of policy (such as trade embargoes or arms sales) — will help shape the specific decisions they make regarding that object. The higher the intensity of feeling toward the object, the more likely a leader is to rely on the affect heuristic to determine a decision regarding it. And the more likely that a leader will use the affect heuristic, the less likely that leader will be open to changing decisions about that object, even in the face of new information or evidence. This is not, of course, to say that anyone who feels positively about an object will be rigid or only consider these feelings when making decisions. But as the experiments discussed above indicate, having strong feelings toward an object does increase the inability to use considerations other than this very affective feeling when making decisions about that object. Decision-makers are pushed in specific directions.

My approach builds on the literature on individuals and foreign policy-making. This literature in fact already hints at the important role emotions play in leaders’ decision-making process. The vague reference to emotion is captured in the distinction between ideological/principled and pragmatic individuals (see Hermann, 1984: 54–55, 61, 64; 1993; International Studies Review, 2001): principled leaders ‘interpret the environment through a lens that is structured by their beliefs, attitudes, motives, and passions’ (Hermann et al., 2001: 86–87; emphasis added; see also Stoessinger, 1985). But the role of such feelings is not teased out and expanded on.

We can do so by linking the affect heuristic to leaders. How leaders feel about a par-ticular foreign policy object prompts them to prioritize that object over others, and can

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make them more rigid in their policy preferences and less willing to construct new poli-cies regarding that object in light of new or contradictory information. Because emotions are not suspended in a situational vacuum — they are about things: ‘One is not simply angry … rather one is angry at someone, about something’ (Crawford et al., 1992: 33) — if an object or event has an affective impact on a decision-maker, it means that the object or event holds deep personal meaning for that decision-maker. It matters for him in a way that other policy issues do not.

Because individuals are already predisposed to a policy preference regarding that object, they are more likely to rely on the affect heuristic to make decisions about that issue. They become less sensitive to contextual situations and alternate information, either ignoring this information or bending it to fit into extant belief structures. The simplistic nature of an affect heuristic lies in its capacity to recall information more quickly and directly, due to the stronger affective appeal or repulsion that information holds for the decision-maker (Slovic et al., 2002: 414). Like analogies in general, emotion matters more in determining decisions the more one has connections to similar or analogous situations (Loewenstein et al., 2001: 271). Leaders who rely on an affect heuristic will have an existing connection of some kind to a foreign policy object, and so are more likely to be ‘emotional’ about foreign policy toward that object. If leaders feel that strongly about an object, they are more likely to make decisions on the basis of the meaning a particular foreign policy issue holds for them; that is, how they feel about that issue, not what they think about it.

Affective attachments thus order priorities for leaders. Objects that leaders are attached to will figure more centrally in their foreign policy decision-making on issues concerning that object. State leaders do not believe they need to change their state’s for-eign policies regarding an object because the contemporary ones already work fine in terms of meeting the policy objectives these leaders have set out. Quite simply, leaders, because they rely on emotion to guide their decisions about specific issues, are less likely to learn when it comes to that issue. As the experiment on sexual behavior referred to above indicates, individuals are (willingly or unwillingly) blind to the consequences of their decisions when they feel strongly enough about something. The object of activity holds such a powerful affective resonance with them that they cannot make alternate decisions. The emotional appeal is too great to overcome.

Explaining the Oslo AccordsThe model presented above is used here to explain the Israeli decision to pursue and sign the 1993 Oslo Accords. Oslo is an important case study because it presents a puzzle to scholars in three ways. First, the decision went against the official policy of every Israeli government since 1967; as such, it was a dramatic revolution in foreign policy. Second, it came at a moment of unprecedented Israeli standing in the region, as a result of the decline of the Soviet Union, the defeat of Iraq by the American-led coalition in 1991, the reduction in importance of the Palestinian intifada (uprising) to global audiences, andthe political and financial decline of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a result of its support for Saddam Hussein during the Gulf crisis. Why would Israel agree to major concessions when it was in a position to maintain the status quo in its favor? And third, relatedly, Israel negotiated directly with an organization it regarded as an enemy


dedicated to its destruction. Why would Israel agree to do so and lay the groundwork for an independent Palestinian state — particularly when this would enhance the PLO’s standing and capacity vis-a-vis Israel?

There are two alternate explanations for Oslo. The first is that the (re)distribution of power in the international system diminished the security threats posed by the Arab states. In the period of the late 1980s/early 1990s, profound regional and global changes occurred that lasted through the prime ministerships of both Yitzhak Shamir (who was prime minister before Oslo) and Yitzhak Rabin (who became prime minister and pursued Oslo) and put Israel in a far stronger position in the regional balance of power than at any time since 1967.10 These systemic changes altered Israel’s strategic calculations, provid-ing it with an opportunity to impose terms on its enemies — the PLO — that were favor-able to it while conditions lasted (see Smith, 1996: 322).

But this explanation is incomplete. The distribution of power was a constant during both prime ministerships. These external changes cannot tell us why one prime minister chose to engage in negotiation with the enemy (Rabin), while the other (Shamir) did everything he could to avoid engaging in direct negotiations with the PLO that might result in anything other than the status quo.

A second explanation focuses on shifts in Israeli national identity, public opinion, and attitudes. As the Israeli population (especially the Jewish sector) became more dovish in its views (that is, more inclined toward territorial compromise with the Palestinians), decision-makers were prompted to shift policy along a similarly dovish path. Thus, Rabin pursued Oslo because it fit with the general attitudes among the population, and this newly-dovish population elected him in 1992 over the hawkish Shamir (see Sucharov, 2005).

This explanation is also indeterminate. First, Israeli decision-making in the foreign policy arena is highly personalized and centralized, with little room for any sustained consideration of public opinion. This stems from several sources, including the increas-ing centralization of decision-making institutions both before and after the establishment of the state (see Arian et al., 2002) and the widespread belief among the population that the government has the country’s best security interests at heart and knows best how to achieve this, particularly in the context of the Arab–Israeli conflict (see Arian et al., 1988: 82). Second, the voters who elected Rabin in the 1992 general elections did not do so because he had promised to talk directly to the PLO and negotiate a Palestinian state. As Makovsky notes, ‘not once during the election did Rabin mention swapping land for peace’ (1996: 85). During a televised debate with Shamir just days before the election, Rabin specifically said there would be no Palestinian state and no return to the 1967 borders (cited in Lochery, 1997: 214). Third, relatedly, the vote for Labor was in many cases a vote against Likud by voters who switched for a variety of domestic ‘system management’ or socio-economic reasons (see Arian and Shamir, 1995) that had nothing to do with foreign policy.

Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin: From confrontation to accommodationA study of the two relevant Israeli prime ministers reveals the importance of affect in decision-making. The foreign policy object here is Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel — the

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territory that, according to the Bible, God had given to Abraham and where the Jewish people had lived for hundreds of years before finally being dispersed by the Romans in 70 CE. This territory encompasses what is today Israel proper and the West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBG). It is a foreign policy object because it is at the center of the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, which in turn is often considered to be the heart of the wider Arab–Israeli conflict. The dispute pivots on whether and how much of the WBG Israel would give up to the Palestinians for their own independent state — without which both the Arab states and the Palestinians could not make peace with Israel.

Yitzhak Shamir was emotionally attached to Eretz Israel, and this shaped his foreign policies toward the PLO and Palestinian demands for an independent state in the WBG — the two issues at the center of Israeli–Palestinian peace efforts and that were later the key elements to Oslo. He refused to consider working with the PLO or sanctioning any-thing that might hint at a Palestinian state. The affect heuristic prioritized foreign policy issues for him: the Land of Israel first, everything else second. In contrast, Yitzhak Rabin was not emotionally attached to the Land of Israel, and so he did not prioritize it on his foreign policy agenda. In fact, for Rabin the Land of Israel was expendable; that is, he could cede parts of it in order to meet his other priorities.

This section demonstrates the utility of the affect heuristic by applying it to a comparison of Shamir and Rabin. It examines their personality characteristics and activities regarding non-Oslo issues (their conceptualization of Zionism,11 the place of Israel in the international system, and American peace efforts) in order to determine how attached they were to the Land of Israel. It then applies the findings to the issues entailed in Oslo (direct talks with the PLO and the foundation of a Palestinian state). Comparing the two leaders allows us to bet-ter measure the intensity of affect each may, or may not, have felt toward the PLO and the WBG. The evidence for assessing the leader (independent variable) is therefore carefully separated from the foreign policy under consideration (dependent variable).

Yitzhak ShamirShamir is what is known in the FPA literature as an ideological individual. This stems from a very basic source: his Zionism. Shamir’s Zionism is bound up with an under-standing that Eretz Israel belongs to the Jews, by both divine mandate and historical reality. Shamir’s was a profoundly nationalist understanding of the meaning of the land and the necessity of holding on to it (Ahimeir, 2006; Ben-Aharon, 2005; Pazner, 2005). From his youth in Poland, his parents and indeed the Jews in his home town (Rujenoy) emphasized this element of Zionism, and it was the foremost objective in his mind throughout his career as an underground fighter with the Jewish pre-state paramilitary organizations Etzel, the Stern Group, and Lehi during the pre-state period, and his ten-ures as foreign minister and prime minister.12 Reflecting on the achievements of Zionism with the establishment of Israel, Shamir said:

In 1948, a Jewish state came into being which was a far cry from that of which I had dreamed: a Jewish state from which much of the Land of Israel was severed. I have done all I could, in various ways, in the intervening years to help rectify this distortion to which I can never be reconciled, and to prevent others like it. (Shamir, 1994: 26)


Herzl Makov, Shamir’s Chief of Staff in 1992, later said that ‘to him, Eretz Israel was everything. And everything else was supposed to be subordinate [to] Eretz Israel’ (Makov, 2005). When the results of the 1992 elections were announced, Shamir confessed to ‘a rush of fear for the fate of the Land of Israel’ under a Labor government (1994: 254).

Shamir’s staunch Zionism is also based on his understanding of the position of the Jews and Israel in the international system — which he considers insecure in the face of a world that is at best indifferent, at worst anti-Semitic. This stems from the terrible ordeal he suf-fered as a result of the Holocaust: Rujenoy’s Jews were almost all killed by the Nazis or local collaborators, including his parents and siblings. Although the evidence indicates that the 1987–93 intifada was about socio-economic conditions and the desire for national self-determination (see Schiff and Ya’ari, 1990), Shamir believed it was a war over Israel’s right to exist (Shamir, 1994: 182). At the same time, despite the positive international changes that had taken place since the end of the Cold War, Shamir insisted that Israel still faced dangers from a hostile regional environment (Jerusalem Post, 29 March 1991: 7).

Despite heavy American pressure, Shamir resisted American efforts to allow PLO officials into a negotiations process in the late 1980s/early 1990s, stymieing such initia-tives by both the United States and by the left-wing Labor Party (Rabin’s party). He adamantly opposed any deal that would allow Palestinians from ‘outside’ the territories (a euphemism for the PLO) or living in East Jerusalem to participate in any way, arguing that the association of the PLO with peace efforts was hindering any progress (Jerusalem Post, 3 June 1990: 1) and that there was no difference between moderates and extremists within the group (Jerusalem Post, 5 June 1990: 1). When he did present an official gov-ernment blueprint for peace (on 14 May 1989), he immediately undermined it by telling the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the proposal was a public rela-tions show. Then, bowing to pressure from the more hawkish elements in his own Likud Party, he soon after announced that the Likud would never give the territories up to for-eign (that is, non-Israeli) sovereignty (Aronoff, 1993: 210; see also Arens, 1995).

Shamir’s belief structures are tied to an affective attachment to the Land of Israel, which has conditioned his understanding of Israeli foreign policy objectives. Even when circumstances changed (the end of the Cold War, the intifada, American pressure) Shamir could not ignore his emotional attachment to the Land, and therefore he was unable to change his foreign policies in light of a changing environment. During the campaign lead-ing to the 1992 general elections, he publicly maintained that if elected he would continue to hold on to the WBG, despite American pressure, and would continue to divert resources to Jewish settlement activity there. He refused to change this rhetoric even when his advi-sors told him that such proclamations were undermining his chances for re-election. He thus committed the cardinal sin of politicians: he worked for what he genuinely believed was appropriate, rather than tailoring his rhetoric to the demands of the electorate.

Shamir’s attitude toward the PLO is based on his affective belief structures and is characterized by profound suspicion. At bottom, he saw the PLO as a threat to Israel: as a terrorist organization, and, as representative of the Palestinian refugees of 1948, com-mitted to undermining the Jewish character of the state through the demand for the ‘right of return’ (Ben-Aharon, 2005). According to Avi Pazner, one of Shamir’s foreign policy advisors, Shamir believed former PLO leader Yasser Arafat was ‘not interested in co-existence with Israel’ (Pazner, 2005). When asked in a February 1990 interview if there

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was anything the PLO could do to make itself acceptable to Shamir, he responded that ‘[t]he only thing it should do is dismantle itself’ (Jerusalem Post, 23 February 1990: 5). He later wrote: ‘the only peace the PLO could produce in terms of Israel was the peace of cemetery’ (Shamir, 1994: 198). Talking to the PLO was ‘out of the question’ (Makov, 2005), since this would not achieve Israel’s top foreign policy objectives as defined by Shamir — the maintenance of Israeli sovereignty over Eretz Israel.

Regarding a Palestinian state, Shamir saw no need for a Palestinian state in the WBG. First, he often argued that the Palestinians already had a state in Jordan. In a public address in 1981, he said that ‘[t]he Palestinians have a homeland in Jordan…. There is no justification for a second Palestinian Arab state, except as a base against Israel’s existence’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1981). Instead, he argued that the non-PLO Palestinians would eventually come to accept Israeli sovereignty over the WBG, includ-ing Jewish settlements. According to his advisors, Shamir reiterated to the Americans throughout 1989 and 1990 his firm belief that Jewish settlements in the WBG would not prevent an agreement with the Palestinians (Bentsur, 2001: 23); that if Israel negotiated long enough the Palestinians would come to accept autonomy as something positive for them (Pazner, 2005); and that the Palestinians would come to appreciate it because no other occupying power had offered them similar benefits before (Ahimeir, 2006).

Second, he fully supported the right of the Jews to settle anywhere in the WBG based on their rightful inheritance of the Land of Israel. This meant there could be no Palestinian state, since that would transfer control over these areas to non-Jews, who would assuredly prevent Jewish settlement. He strongly opposed the 1978 Camp David Accords with Egypt, despite being a member of the government that negotiated the agreement, because they entailed Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula and dismantling of Jewish set-tlement in the peninsula.13 Shamir insisted on referring to ‘Palestinian Arabs,’ to reject the notion that the Palestinians constituted a distinct nation within the larger Arab nation and thus deserving of their own state. He also peppered his opening speech at the beginning of the 1991 Madrid peace process with references to Israel’s rightful claim to the Land of Israel, thus implicitly denying Palestinian claims (see Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1991). When he presented his new government in 1990, the Basic Guidelines of the Government stated explicitly that ‘[t]he eternal right of the Jewish people to Eretz Yisrael is not subject to question’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1990). This was, he believed, compatible with autonomy for the Palestinian people (Ahimeir, 2006; Makov, 2005). In short, Shamir repeatedly referred to the right of Israel to maintain control over the WBG and prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state. His affective feelings for Eretz Israel were strong enough that he refused to countenance any other possibility or option.

Yitzhak RabinIn contrast to Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin was not attached to the Land of Israel. This is not to say that he did not care about it, but he did not feel as strongly as Shamir that it was essential to the existence of Israel. In fact, he prioritized other issues as being more relevant to the continuing existence of Israel. He believed that Israel’s security was the foremost objective, and this allowed him to consider a range of ideas to help ensure this objective — including giving up control over the WBG. He was thus better able to


incorporate new information coming from a changing environment, and use that infor-mation to adopt new foreign policies toward the Land of Israel.14 We can categorize Rabin in this way by looking first at his own conception of Zionism.

Where Shamir was born outside of Palestine, Yitzhak Rabin was born in the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine. The differing circumstances of their birth and upbring-ing had a profound impact on their belief systems. Rabin’s experience of growing up in Palestine was the most complete Zionist experience one could have; his emphasis was subsequently not on visions of the Land of Israel but on practical measures to strengthen the Jewish community and achieve statehood, including agricultural work and military training. As he wrote in his memoirs, ‘the needs of the Jewish people led me on the path that had me spend much of my life dealing with the security of Israel’ (Rabin, 1994: II; emphasis added). The prominence of security is abundantly clear throughout Rabin’s memoirs and his public statements. His presentation of the government in July 1992 asserted his priorities in this way: ‘national security and personal security; peace; the prevention of war’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1992b). If he instead had felt as strongly attached as Shamir to the Land of Israel, it is reasonable to argue that he would have referred to it as much as Shamir did in his public speeches and statements.

On Israel’s position in the international system, Rabin believed that although Israel might once have been faced with an overly hostile world, this was no longer the case. Rabin did share with all Israeli leaders an inherent mistrust of the Gentile world’s support (Inbar, 1999: 8–12), but he did not share with Shamir an unmitigated suspicion. The developments that Shamir saw as having no effect on Israel’s relations with the non-Jewish world Rabin saw as improving Israel’s position enough that it could afford more generous concessions toward the Palestinians. In his address presenting his government to the Knesset in July 1992, he noted, in obvious contrast to Shamir’s thinking, that:

[n]o longer are we necessarily ‘a people that dwells alone,’ and no longer is it true that ‘the whole world is against us.’ We must overcome the sense of isolation that has held us in its thrall for almost half a century. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1992a)

By this same token, he saw the intifada not as a struggle over Israel’s existence but over Palestinian national aspirations. It was in this sense a political issue and involved satisfy-ing Palestinian political needs in some form (see Slater, 1996: 418–422).

Rabin’s attitude also conditioned his response to US attempts at creating a peace dia-logue between Israel and the Palestinians. We cannot of course know what Rabin would have done had he been prime minister at the time. But we can derive some conclusions from his stated positions. Underlying his stance was his advocacy of the long-standing Labor policy based on territorial compromise. He was willing to consider options that would lead to concessions on land, and for this reason he was not opposed to engaging the Palestinians in a serious political dialogue (Avner, 2006; Pattir, 2006). In contrast to Shamir’s position that American efforts were threatening to Israel, Rabin believed they were reasonable.

Regarding Rabin’s views toward the PLO and a Palestinian state, we can better under-stand them by tracing the learning process Rabin underwent toward them. Opposed to either direct talks with the PLO and a Palestinian state during his first prime ministership (1974–7), Rabin later came to understand that both of these positions had to be modified in

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light of changing circumstances, to allow Israel to more effectively meet its foreign pol-icy objectives as he conceptualized them.

During his first prime ministership and until the 1990s, Rabin’s position was similar to Shamir’s: opposition to any direct talks with the PLO. In January 1976, he said in an interview that ‘We cannot sit down and negotiate with a terrorist organization whose fundamental political position is in direct opposition to the very existence of Israel’ (cited in Slater, 1977: 238). According to Dan Pattir, a close colleague of Rabin during his first prime ministership, Rabin never trusted Yasser Arafat, which prevented him from con-sidering any negotiations between Israel and the PLO (Pattir, 2006). In May 1990, Rabin criticized those in the Labor Party for spreading the impression that peace was impossi-ble without a dialogue with the PLO (cited in Aronoff, 1993: 224). Shimon Peres notes that he twice (in August 1992 and in January 1993) raised the issue of direct talks with the PLO, but both times Rabin rejected the idea (Peres, 1995: 280). At the Labor Party conference in November 1991, a debate was resolved when the party officially discarded its opposition to negotiation with the PLO, but Rabin did not support this change, main-taining that the PLO was a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction.

But during this later period he had begun to acknowledge that some form of PLO involvement was impossible to prevent. Where Shamir struggled to keep the PLO out of any negotiating framework set up by the Americans, Rabin was willing to chance its involvement. He was aware that his contacts with West Bank Palestinians included behind-the-scenes guidance by the PLO, and he did not actively oppose ‘outside’ Palestinians participating in a peace delegation, even though he was well aware that this would leave a back door open for PLO influence (Pattir, 2006).

By the 1980s, Rabin’s views had begun to shift. Yehuda Avner, a close advisor to Rabin during his first term as prime minister and a long-time friend, reports that he had the feeling that Rabin’s ‘heart was never really in it [the Oslo process]’ because of how he felt about the PLO (Avner, 2006). But the fact that Rabin did go through with the Oslo process, even in the face of growing public discontent with it, highlights his feelings toward the WBG. He continued to advocate concessions on the Land of Israel because he was not emotionally attached to it; it was not his priority to hold on to it.

Rabin was able to incorporate new information coming from surrounding environ-mental conditions and react on the basis of flexibility. The intifada itself and subsequent developments convinced Rabin that the PLO would have to be engaged more directly. King Hussein’s renunciation of Jordan’s claim to the West Bank in July 1988 removed the Jordanian option from Rabin’s tactical arsenal.15 The failure of the Washington talks pushed him further toward the PLO. According to Eitan Haber, Rabin’s closest aide, Rabin was simply acknowledging an unavoidable fact: ‘he heard during the Madrid con-vention [that the Palestinian delegation] called Tunisia to get orders every two minutes. So he said if they are doing it, why do we have to negotiate with them, let’s negotiate with the PLO’ (Haber, 2005). Beyond this, Rabin’s meetings in 1991 and 1992 with ‘local’ Palestinians also raised the potential of negotiations with the PLO — the WBG leaders he spoke with all informed him that they could not engage in any substantial talks without the PLO (Haber, 2005; Pattir, 2006).

Rabin confirmed this at every opportunity: ‘[d]uring the course of the negotiations with the Palestinian-Jordanian delegation in Washington, it became truthfully clear over


time that the one and only address for decisions was PLO headquarters in Tunis’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1993b). In an interview with IDF Radio in October 1993, at a time of growing concern over the activities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, when asked if he expected the PLO to at least condemn terrorist attacks on Israelis, Rabin replied that ‘at this phase, I do not expect them to demonstrate such heroism. We know with whom we are dealing,’ but he also noted that the difference between the PLO and Hamas is that the former was, with Oslo, no longer opposed to Israel’s existence (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1993a). Rabin’s attitude toward Arafat himself best captures his pragmatism: of the handshake on the White House lawn in September 1992, Rabin wrote that:

I knew that the hand outstretched to me … was the same hand that held the knife, that held the gun, the hand that gave the order to shoot, to kill. Of all the hands in the world, it was not the hand that I wanted or dreamed of touching. (Rabin, 1994: II–III)

Yet he did just that.Regarding a Palestinian state, in his early years in politics Rabin also explicitly

opposed a Palestinian state (Rabin, 1994: 216, 230, 232), calling this an ‘extremist’ posi-tion offered by the PLO (Rabin, 1994: 260) and preferring the Jordanian option popular among Labor leaders. He was ‘genuinely, sincerely’ opposed to a Palestinian state (Avner, 2006) because it represented for him, as for Shamir, a threat to Israel. His presen-tation of the government’s principles to the Knesset in June 1974 also noted, as Shamir did later, that the Palestinians have a state in Jordan and that ‘Israel rejects the establish-ment of a further separate Arab State west of the Jordan’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1974a). When asked directly, in a September 1974 interview with the now-defunct news-paper Davar, whether he objected to a Palestinian state, Rabin replied that it ‘would be the biggest mistake Israel could make’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1974b).

But in the end, because for Rabin the issue was not Israeli sovereignty over the WBG but the impact a Palestinian entity would have on Israel’s security, he was — as with negotiations with the PLO — willing to chance such an outcome because he came to believe it would be better for Israel’s security. Oslo negotiators Yair Hirschfeld, Ron Pundak, Joel Singer, and Uri Savir have said that all participants (and including their political masters) in the Oslo negotiations were well aware that the ultimate outcome, beyond Oslo as an interim agree-ment, would have to be an independent Palestinian state, even though it remained an unspo-ken element of their discussions (Hirschfeld, 2005; Pundak, 2005; Savir, 2006; Singer, 2005). Eitan Haber adds that despite the fact that he refused to use the words ‘Palestinian state,’ Rabin knew this would be the final outcome (Haber, 2005). In presenting to the Knesset, in October 1995, a third agreement worked out with the Palestinians, he specified that:

We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1995; emphasis added)

His careful use of the word ‘most’ of the area of historical/biblical Israel indicates that while he may have had certain preferences, he knew there was a good chance they would not be

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fully realized. The extensive provisions for self-government and physical jurisdictions pro-vided for in the Oslo Accords (and in the later agreements signed by the Rabin government) set Israeli–Palestinian negotiations on a path that could not lead anywhere else but a Palestinian state. Joel Singer says that during the preparation for one of Rabin’s speeches to the Knesset, when one speechwriter proposed to Rabin that he include the sentence ‘there will never be a Palestinian state,’ Rabin refused; he would not say there would be a Palestinian state, but he would also not say there would not be one (Singer, 2005).

This comparison of the two leaders indicates the critical relevance of individuals and affect in explaining foreign policy. Because external conditions remained unchanged under both Shamir and Rabin, we can identify the differences between the two as the variable that explains the Oslo Accords. These differences explain the differences in policy. At every opportunity Shamir spoke of the importance of the Land of Israel to the Jews and of his attachment to it. Rabin did not, emphasizing instead the importance of advancing the security of Israelis. The intense attachment Shamir felt toward the Land prevented him from considering policy options involving the removal of Israeli control over the WBG; in contrast, Rabin actively pursued this very option in the Oslo process.

ConclusionBy including emotions in the foreign policy-making process, we can account for foreign policy decisions that larger structures and discourses cannot. If emotions do matter in decision- making regarding jelly beans, there is no reason to assume they should not also matter in foreign policy decision-making. Given the large and growing body of evidence on the importance of emotions in the psychology, neural science, and decision research litera-tures, it is imperative that IR begin to take a closer look as well at this variable. This article has sought to do so by focusing on one element of emotion, affect, and demonstrating how it can be used to explain Israel’s 1993 decision to pursue and sign the Oslo Accords.

There are two main scholarly implications and one important policy implication that flow from the use of such a model. First, it enhances the study of individuals in foreign policy-making. Although the Israeli–Palestinian peace process is at the moment of writ-ing stalled, conditions between the two peoples have been changed irrevocably, and many of the contemporary developments stem directly from the changes resulting from the Oslo process. Perhaps most importantly, the idea that there will be two independent states (Palestine and Israel) is now embedded in the discourse about Israeli–Palestinian relations. This would not have been possible without Oslo. We therefore cannot under-stand this development without reference to the individual leaders who did or did not engage in this process. This article thus answers the call to advance our understanding of the role of individuals in IR (Byman and Pollack, 2001), particularly in areas within the traditional IR purview, such as conflict and security.

Second, in the few studies where emotion is utilized, it is mostly through a quantita-tive analysis of large groups (e.g. experimental research under laboratory conditions or survey research in society). Far less attention is given to elites, and particularly individ-ual leaders, struggling to make critical decisions in the complex, uncertain environment of world politics. Yet the foreign policy decisions of individual leaders are a critical dependent variable of analysis, particularly when studying foreign policy variation.


Major foreign policy change can have dramatic effects on regional and global politics. The difference in foreign policies between American Presidents Clinton and Bush; between Russian Presidents Yeltsin and Putin; between German Chancellors Kohl and Schroeder; and between Iranian Presidents Khatami and Ahmadinejad are all examples of the profound impacts that result from changes in individual leaders’ foreign policies.

In policy terms, understanding the decisions behind Oslo can provide a better under-standing of conflict resolution in protracted conflicts. This can help us understand the per-sonal motivations and decisions of leaders involved in these types of conflict. The actions of Protestant, Catholic, and British leaders in the conflict in Northern Ireland; the insurgencies in both Sri Lanka and Iraq; and the various low-intensity conflicts throughout south-east Asia could all be more effectively dealt with if we can better understand the actions of the individual leaders and, therefore, what it would take to resolve these prolonged disputes.

Finally, this study suggests a number of potential directions for future research on the role of affect and on emotions more generally in leaders’ foreign policy-making. Many decisions, for example, are made in the context of group interaction. How important is affect in a situation of several individuals, where these individuals feel differing degrees of attachment to a given foreign policy issue? How do such feelings become untangled from group dynamics? Another avenue for exploration is the role of affect (or other rel-evant emotions) in policymakers’ presentations of decisions to the public more generally. As noted above, studies have indicated the important role emotions play in the percep-tions of society. What role does affect (or another emotion) play in the interaction between individual leaders and the public, where the two have different feelings about a particular foreign policy issue? All these are questions worth considering in future study. This article presents a first step toward such considerations.

Acknowledgments

For research support, I would like to thank the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba, the Research Group in International Security (McGill University/Université de Montréal), Canadian Friends of Hebrew University, the Inter-University Consortium for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (McGill University), the Centre for Defence and Security Studies (University of Manitoba), and the University of Winnipeg Dean of Social Science. Parts of the article have been read and comments given by Steve Saideman, Rachel Brickner, Bill Wieninger, Brian Greene, Mira Sucharov, and Yehudit Auerbach. Jon Isacoff, Chris Anderson, Dan Levine, and Victoria Farrar-Myers provided valuable observations on the whole manuscript. I am grateful for all their comments.

Notes

1. There are many good existing psycho-biographies of state leaders that incorporate individu-als’ emotions into their analyses of these leaders and their foreign policies. But these are descriptive single studies, and emotion is not treated in any theoretically rigorous manner. They cannot be applied — as I am trying to do here — to an understanding of international relations more generally.

2. On prospect theory, see McDermott (2004). On poliheuristic theory, see Mintz and Geva (1997).

3. Some of the early literature on suboptimal group decision-making and on deterrence, crises, and bargaining in international politics referred obliquely to emotions, in terms of ‘anxiety’

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and ‘motivational bias’ (see, for example, Janis and Mann, 1977; Jervis et al., 1985). But in all of these studies, emotions were not considered as separate, causal variables on their own, and instead were viewed as part of the cognitive process.

4. To underline the point, reviews of Hymans in various IR journals tend to overlook the theo-retical importance of including emotions in his book, either mentioning only briefly this aspect of his study or ignoring its implications altogether. See, for example, Lantis (2006).

5. For a fuller discussion of the problem of assessment, see Nielsen and Kaszniak (2007). 6. There are other psychological models that are not schema-based, but there is wide consensus

among researchers on the appropriateness of studying schemas. 7. In this context, research has found that less politically sophisticated (that is, knowledgeable)

people rely more heavily on affect heuristics — or at least use emotion more frequently and easily (Slovic et al., 2002). For instance, an unsophisticated voter might think, I like liberals, therefore I will not vote for conservative candidates, while a sophisticated voter might exam-ine a candidate’s stance on various issues before deciding how to cast her ballot.

8. This study also looked at lesions to the amygdala and the right insular cortices. 9. Since this article was written, there has been a tiny handful of additional good studies on emo-

tions and foreign policy, which focus on elites as decision-makers. See, e.g., Lowenheim and Heimann (2008); see also Saurette (2006).

10. This included: the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent emergence of unchal-lenged American dominance; the loss of a superpower patron for Israel’s primary enemies in the region (especially Syria); the defeat of Iraq, which meant an end to one of the more serious military threats to Israel; and the precipitous financial and political decline of the PLO. At the same time, the shock value of the intifada was tapering off among international audiences because the violence had dragged on for so long, and Israelis and Palestinians were already negotiating with each other through the Madrid process. Finally, Israel established diplomatic relations with key states such as Russia, India, and China in this period.

11. The Jewish national movement that demanded the return of the Jews to their historical and biblical ancestral home.

12. Shamir’s beliefs about the WBG in his early years is best encapsulated in the commitment he made to the Stern Group, an extremist underground paramilitary group that fought the British in Mandatory Palestine. The organization relied on the Bible rather than the Mandate or any other structure to determine what the boundaries of the Jewish state should be. This was reflected in the ‘Eighteen Principles’ that members of the Group had to pledge to uphold, including the injunction from Genesis 15:18: ‘To your seed, I have given this Land from the River of Egypt [presumably the Nile] to the great River, the River Euphrates.’

13. Shamir reports he was ‘thunderstruck’ when he heard about Camp David, and believed it undermined ‘the abiding Jewish claim to the Land of Israel’ and set a ‘disastrous precedent’ of Israel’s willingness to withdraw from its historic lands (Shamir, 1994: 104). He abstained from the vote on the Accords in the Knesset (parliament) rather than vote against his own government.

14. Although not the head of the Labor Party until 1991, he was one of its key leaders and its prime minister after the 1992 election.

15. The Jordanian option was Labor’s long-standing policy regarding the West Bank. It called for some territorial concessions toward the Arabs and a federation between parts of the West Bank and Jordan.


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Interviews

Ahimeir Y (2006) Advisor, spokesman, and Chief of Staff to Yitzhak Shamir. Interview by author. 14 February. Tel Aviv, Israel.

Avner Y (2006) Advisor and speechwriter to Yitzhak Rabin. Interview by author. 12 February. Jerusalem, Israel.

Ben-Aharon Y (2005) Director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office under Yitzhak Shamir. Interview by author. 23 May. Jerusalem, Israel.

Haber E (2005) Senior aide to Yitzhak Rabin. Interview by author. 24 May. Tel Aviv, Israel.Hirschfeld Y (2005) Israeli representative to the Oslo Accords negotiations. Interview by author.

19 May. Tel Aviv, Israel.Makov H (2005) Chief of Staff to Yitzhak Shamir. Interview by author. 31 May. Jerusalem, Israel.Pattir D (2006) Media advisor and spokesman to Yitzhak Rabin. Interview by author. 8 February.

Tel Aviv, Israel.Pazner A (2005) Senior foreign policy advisor to Yitzhak Shamir. Interview by author. 30 May.

Jerusalem, Israel.Pundak R (2005) Israeli representative to the Oslo Accords negotiations. Interview by author. 15

May. Tel Aviv, Israel.Savir U (2006) Israeli representative to the Oslo Accords negotiations. Personal communication.

27 February.Singer J (2005) Israeli representative to the Oslo Accords negotiations. Telephone interview by

author. 21 November.

Newspapers

Jerusalem Post, 1990–1.

Biographical note

Brent E. Sasley is Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he teaches Middle East politics. His research focuses on identity as a determinant of state behavior and on the relevance of emotions in the foreign policy decision-making pro-cess. He is currently working on a project on ethnic communities and their influence on Canadian foreign policy-making.

affective attachments and foreign policy: israel and the

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