ABSTRACT
The previous two parts of this book have argued that the development of religious social movements is a predictable response to the increasing secularization of society around the world. It has been demonstrated that violence is a product of three interacting variables: inflammatory rhetoric, covert-cell-like structure and ideological frames that promote violence as a religious duty. We have seen that these variables offer insight into the interaction between the state and its opposition, and within opposition movements themselves. The cases examined presented clear distinctions between the actions and the justification of violent and non-violent organizations. This final part will explore a religious social movement in which the distinctions have not yet been so clear. The following pages will show that the religious-settlers movement in Israel exhibits characteristics of each of the four case studies examined in previous parts, but has not segmented into distinctive violent versus non-violent organizations. It will be argued that this is because Israel has not yet irreversibly secularized and has consequently left significant room for the religious-settlers movement to operate in the political arena. However, this part will also show that the current arrangement cannot last, and that when it fails, the religioussettlers movement in Israel is primed to react much as the Christian and Muslim movements did in the United States and Egypt. This part will proceed with a history of the development of the religious-settlers movement in Israel and its symbiotic relationship with the Israeli government. It will be clear that, although the relationship between the movement and the government has never been smooth, only once was it violently adversarial. It will be shown that the Israeli government and the religious settlers have served compatible functions within the state that have forestalled more direct confrontations. In the next chapter, the discussion will turn to the three critical variables identified in the previous parts of this book. Religious-settlement organizations will be examined from rhetorical, structural and framework perspectives.
