Israeli State Violence during the Second Intifada: Combining New Institutionalist and Rational Choice Approaches

In attempting to explain Israel’s retaliatory policies toward Palestinian violence, new institutionalist and rational choice theories vie for dominance. This article argues that both approaches can contribute to understanding the severity of Israel’s response if they are viewed as nested explanations appropriate to different threat levels. The article makes its case using data from 74 interviews with senior Israeli counterterrorist experts (2006–07), counts of Israeli and Palestinian fatalities due to state and collective violence (1987–2007), and a database of collective violence events during the Second Intifada (2000–05). Institutional effects are evident at low threat levels, as new institutionalists predict, but these effects are overwhelmed at high threat levels, as rational choice theorists assert. What explains Israel’s retaliatory policies toward Palestinian violence? Why does Israel sometimes respond with overwhelming force, even at the risk of provoking harsh interna-tional criticism, and at other times with measured police or military action? In reviewing the relevant literature, this article identifies two main approaches to these questions, one rooted in rational choice theory and the other in what has come to be known as the “ne