The possible renewal of the Israel-Palestine peace talks raises concerns about the extent to which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will follow the civilians' orders to evacuate Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Critical here is the clash between the reality that has been created in the West Bank with the growing number of Jewish settlements and the increasing reliance of the IDF on religious and settler soldiers whose ideological commitment is to the entrenchment of the settlement project, not to peace making.

It is argued that these constraints on the military result from the IDF's deviation from two constitutive principles of the modern military: the distancing of the military from domestic policing and the creation of relatively impermeable boundaries between the military and society. Consequently, Israel's ability to implement painful political decisions involving the dismantling of Jewish settlements has been circumscribed. With the hobbling of the military, the opportunity for peace may once again slip away, while Israel may promote the pursuit of peace agreements that do not require the dismantling of settlements.

The first section of this paper presents the theoretical concepts underlying this argument. The second traces the historical background of the IDF's relations with religious enlistees, and the third and fourth sections describe the structure of the military deployment in the West Bank and the level of its deviation from the two constitutive principles of the modern military. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the constraints on the military.