THE CASES

This book's central case studies are Serbia's 1992–93 campaign against non-Serbs in Bosnia, and Israel's 1988 efforts to put down the first Palestinian uprising, popularly known as the first Intifada.^[2] In these periods, both Serbia and Israel were overtly nationalistic states that felt compelled to use violence to defend the security of their national communities, narrowly defined. In each case, however, agents of the state used quite different methods. Serbia responded to Bosnia's 1992 demands for independence with acute violence aimed chiefly at forcing non-Serbs to flee. In

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1988, by contrast, Israel responded to similar Palestinian claims with ethnic policing, a pernicious but less destructive policy. Although Serbia and Israel were similar in important respects, their repertoires of violence in these two instances varied dramatically. In explaining this divergence, I draw on the work of organizational and political sociologists, as well as theorists of international norms.

I test and elaborate my argument by studying variations within each case. Serbia did not use ethnic cleansing against minorities in territories that it fully controlled, while Israeli violence in Lebanon, an area beyond Israel's firm and legal control, was far more destructive than in Palestine. The book thus proceeds along two comparative tracks, studying divergent repertoires between Serbia and Israel on the one hand, and among different regions within each case, on the other.