Gil Friedman, lecturer in political science at Tel Aviv University, passed away on July 16, 2009, at the age of 42 after a short bout with cancer. Much too young, and with so much promise, Gil's death was an unexpected shock to his relatives, friends, and colleagues. His loss is all the more tragic because those who knew Gil were struck by his seemingly boundless energy, his enormous intellectual curiosity, his constant stream of ideas, and his incredible work ethic—all fed by a seemingly insatiable desire to read everything (ever) written in the areas of his current interest.
With an undergraduate degree in sociology from the University of Chicago, it is no surprise that Gil's main focus was on conflict processes across a variety of levels of analysis. Both his master's thesis from the University of New Mexico (1994) and his Ph.D. dissertation from the University of South Carolina (2002) focused on the relationships between internal and external conflict, and the two-level games played between governments and societies, or elites and the masses, in the complex Middle East conflict system. Gil's main research interests were conflict theory in general and protracted conflict in particular, with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as an ongoing case for analysis. These areas, and others, were situated within an excellent grasp of philosophy of science, epistemology, and the logic of inquiry, along with international relations theory, especially realist theory.
In 1997, Gil and I co-authored a book dealing with international relations theory and the philosophy of science, Agency, Structure and International Politics: From Ontology to Empirical Inquiry (Routledge). In this work, we used the opportunity and willingness framework as a springboard to grapple with the broader debate in the literature concerning the agent-structure relationship. This was a truly collaborative project that developed from papers that Gil was writing for one of our directed readings courses. Both the agent-structure question and the opportunity and willingness framework were central to Gil's concern with two-level conflict. In the development of Agency, Structure and International Politics, Gil demonstrated a breadth of knowledge and a feel for the subtlety of political philosophy that would have been impressive for a senior scholar in this area. Gil demonstrated the same strengths in his written comprehensive exams and his orals (which his committee felt were completed with distinction), as well as his dissertation, Toward a Spatial Model of Protracted Conflict Management: The Palestinian Case.
His dissertation project on intra-Palestinian conflict over the issue of strategy toward Israel stems from the same broad concerns. In it, Gil aimed to synthesize and develop his own model for the analysis of two-level conflict. He aimed for a model that could deal with the complexities of protracted conflict and the impact of external international factors on the internal political process of coalition building. Gil demonstrated flexibility and nimbleness of intellect when he had to redesign his research after getting into the field, using multiple datasets and sources including the use of Palestinian public opinion data. His dissertation was the basis for his 2005 Journal of Conflict Resolution article, “Commercial Pacifism and Protracted Conflict: Models from the Palestinian Case,” as well as three pieces that were under review at the time of his death, “Dual-Track Strategy in Ethno-nationalist Peacemaking: Models from the Palestinian Case,” “A General Framework for the Analysis of Third-Party Effects on International and Domestic Conflict: The Case of Syria,” and “Toward a Spatial Model of the Domestic Politics of Protracted Ethnonationalist Conflict Resolution.” His article, “Coser on Rallying and Diversion,” accepted for publication at the Review of International Studies, also stemmed from his interest in the relationship between elites and followers. In addition, Gil published articles in the International Studies Review and the Journal of Strategic Studies, and several book chapters. His chapter, “Rational Counterterrorism Strategy in Asymmetric Protracted Conflicts and Its Discontents: The Israeli-Palestinian Case,” will be published in 2010 in the volume, Coping with Terrorism (SUNY Press), edited by Rafael Reuveny and William R. Thompson. Sadly, Gil was still in the process of revising a book manuscript, Liberalism, Realism, and Protracted Nationalist Conflict, before his death.
It must be noted that at the same time that he was been finishing his dissertation, Gil was also engaged in writing a series of reports and monographs for the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre, where he was a public opinion analyst from 1998 to 2001. He was also a research fellow at the Harry S Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at Hebrew University from 1998 to 2003, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at Hebrew University in 2004–05. He joined the department of political science at Tel Aviv as a lecturer in 2005.
Gil wrote the first two lines of the preface to Friedman and Starr's Agency, Structure, and International Politics: “What is it about the way back that makes it seem shorter? Most likely it is the familiarity and the increased understanding that we acquire along the way out” (xii). Gil's mind was all about “the journey”—ever restless, ever asking, ever moving, ever along “the way out.” The great tragedy is that Gil's journey was cut so very short, well before he had the opportunity to illuminate the way back.
Gil is survived by his sister Orlie Prince, his brother Ethan Friedman, and his son, Liam Macfarlane. He will be greatly missed by us all.
