Pomeps Conversations

Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili talk about their new book, Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States That Host Nonstate Actors. "The inspiration for the book goes back to the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon— or Israel and Hezbollah," said Peralman. "Boaz and I both had postdoc fellowships at Harvard and we met in the aftermath of that... We're both quite intrigued by one aspect of that war, which was Israel's targeting of Lebanon as a state. Why would Israel target a weak host state— and demand it to stop non-state actors?" "We find is that in earlier years [of this policy], it's basically a trial and error kind of process. Israel has tried many different things— defensive measures, targeting civilians, etc.— and among them was what we call 'trial coercion.' So trying to target the forces of the state the military or police of the state and using that as a way to coerce the state to try to rein in the non-state actors. And when we get to the 1990s, that's where we see a shift where Israel basically