Framing and Foreign Policy—Israel's Response to the Arab Uprisings

Abstract

The eruption of the 2010 Arab uprisings has generated a great deal of academic scholarship. However, the foreign policy of Israel, a key power in the Middle East, amid the Arab uprisings, has received limited attention. Furthermore, as we demonstrate, the conventional wisdom purported by the current debate, which is that Israel adopted a “defensive, non-idealist” realist foreign policy posture (Magen 2015, 114) in the wake of the Arab uprisings, is wrong. Rather, utilizing an innovative approach linking foreign policy analysis (FPA) and the literature on framing, we demonstrate that Israel adopted a foreign policy stance of entrenchment. This posture is predicated on peace for peace not territory, reinforcing Israel's military capabilities, and granting limited autonomy to the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Thus, the article demonstrates how framing can usefully be operationalized to uncover how binary discourse does not merely reflect foreign policy but is, in fact, constitutive of it. We demonstrate that diagnostic and prognostic frames helped to create a direct connection between the images held by a leader, his/her worldview, ideas, perceptions and misperceptions, and foreign policy actions. These frames constituted action-oriented sets of beliefs and meaning that inspired and legitimated certain foreign policy options and instruments while restricting others.

Updating the Study of Foreign Policy Crisis: The Case of the Mavi Marmara Flotilla

“…The part played by traditional and social media in world affairs has been the focus of much research in IR and FPA (see Herman and Chomsky 1988;Schedufle 2000;Robinson 2011;Katz 2017;Miler, Robinson and Bakir 2017;Aran and Fleischmann 2019; see also, Sheafer and Shenhav 2009;Treisman 2016;Zeitzoff 2017;Benmelech and Klor 2018). Indeed, FPA has for long been interested in several issues related to traditional media-from its influence on diplomacy and foreign policy formulation related to humanitarian crises, to how framing techniques are deployed in foreign policymaking and government propaganda, to the impact of public opinion and the capacity of foreign policy elites to "manufacture consent" (Herman and Chomsky 1998;Robinson 2011;Katz 2017;Miler, Robinson and Bakir 2017;Aran and Fleischmann 2019). More recently, FPA and IR scholars have focused on the influence of the entertainment industry and social media platforms on various aspects of foreign policy.…”