The Israel Reserve Law: The Duality of Reservists and Transformed Military Autonomy

• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20918391
• Published date: 01 October 2021
• Author: Yonat Rein-Sapir,Eyal Ben-Ari
• Date: 01 October 2021
• Subject Matter: Special Forum: The Distinctive Characteristics and Expanding Role of Military Reserves

2021, Vol. 47(4) 710 –731

The Israel Reserve Law:

The Duality of Reservists

and Transformed

Military Autonomy

Yonat Rein-Sapir

1

and Eyal Ben-Ari

2

Abstract

Enacted in 2008, 60 years after Israel Defense Forces was established, the Israeli

Reserves Law is a striking expression of the decline of military autonomy in a

democratic country. While not aimed at reducing the military’s discretion in regard

to the training, deployment, and compensation for reservists, the formal enactment

of the Law in effect did so. The legislative process was preceded by a crisis between

reservists and the military and was led by several reservists’ organizations who tried

to improve the standing and resources allocated to the reserve forces. The article

analyzes the impact of these organizations and the coalitions they created with

politicians serving in the national parliament, the Knesset. By choosing the legislative

option to improve the conditions of service for reservists, they de facto reduced

military autonomy since the new Law mandated supervision and monitoring (by

civilian institutions) of the service of reservists and extended into the core area of

military action, the operational use of force. Thus, the actions of reservists’ orga-

nizations turned a bilateral tie between the military and its (reserve) soldiers into a

trilateral one, comprising the military, reserve soldiers, and state institutions.

Keywords

reserve component, Reserve Law, military autonomy, duality, Israel, reservists’

organizations

1

Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

2

Kinneret Academic College on the Sea of Galilee, Israel

Corresponding Author:

Yonat Rein-Sapir, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel.

Email: yonat.rein@mail.huji.ac.il

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20918391

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Article

Rein-Sapir and Ben-Ari 711

While Israel’s reserves system was established in 1948 as a central component of the

Israel Defense Forces (IDF), it was only in 2008 that a national Reserves Law was

enacted. In this article, we tackle three questions centered on this Law: its content,

the processes leading to its enactment, and its wider theoretical implications for

military autonomy. First, we describe the issues the Law covers and the new arrange-

ments the Law has put into place. Second, we analyze the political dynamics by

which a coalition of politicians and reservists’ movements lobbied to change the

relations between reservists and the armed forces. And third, we argue that

the implications of legislating the new arrangement changed the terms by which

the IDF negotiates its institutional autonomy.

To understand the importance of this case, it is important to take into account that

the Law’s enactment only occurred after a protracted crisis in the rela tionship

between reservists and the military in the 1990’s and beginning of the 2000s regard-

ing conditions of service, one necessitating an external intervention to ameliorate the

deteriorating relationship. Moreover, the crisis and the law’s enactment were part of

broader changes in society–military relationships and especially the move from the

dominance of the IDF in Israeli society to an era that could be called a post-

hegemony of the military (Ben-Eliezer, 2003; Kimmerling, 1993; Lomsky-Feder,

2003) along with increased involvement of state actors in the military sphere

(Cohen, 2006; Peri, 2001). Against this background, the stakeholders (mainly orga-

nizations of reservists, military officials, and politicians) believed that legislation

would be the appropriate solution to the ongoing problems. Hence, the law serves as

a means of regulating the reserve component and ordering the relationship between

the military and its reservists. What is important here is that internal military matters

and disputes are decided about in the civilian-state arena and not within the military

system itself. In this manner, a triangular society–military–state relationship is

formed, whereby the state is a dominant element in the new arrangement, thereby

reducing the armed forces’ institutional autonomy.

We begin by analyzing the process leading to change that was initiated and led

primarily by reservist organizations. Despite their significant role, these organiza-

tions have received scant attention in the sociological study of the armed forces. To

develop our argument, we extend previous work that has characterized reservists as

possessing a duality, being both citizens and soldiers (Griffith, 2005; Horowitz &

Lissak, 1989; Lomsky-Feder et al., 2008). We develop this insight by examining

how this built-in dualism is expressed in political action. As we show these organi-

zations created coalitions with politicians and bureaucrats in the civilian system on

the one hand, while on the other, they acted within the armed forces to push for

change through legislation. As representatives of reservists as civilian-soldiers, these

associations served as “double change agents” both within the military and in soci-

ety. Indeed, a decade after the enactment of the law, reservists continue to be active

in the civil society-state arena (i.e., lobbying, communicating, or participating in

institutional committees) while at the same timeserving in the reserve forces.

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