1. Introduction
On 12 May 1948, a group of nine men and one woman met
in Tel Aviv to decide on the establishment of a new State. Around them, a
ferocious Civil War had been going on for the past six months. The British
mandate was to expire in two days. The ten members of the Provisional State
Council of the Jewish Agency faced a tough dilemma. The United Nations (UN)
Resolution of 29 November 1947, decreed that Palestine was to be partitioned
into a Palestinian State and a Jewish State. The Arabs and the Palestinians had
rejected this resolution, threatening to invade Palestine if the jews declared
their own State. The Palestinians – aided by irregular forces from various Arab
States – had been fighting the Jews since late 1947. As long as the British
forces were in Palestine, there was a semblance of a Government. Now that they
were about to leave, it seemed necessary to somehow fill this vacuum.
The inclination of the Jewish leaders was to proclaim
the formation of the Jewish State. But that would bring about an invasion by
the Armies of the Arab States. On the table for consideration was an American
proposal to delay the declaration of independence, accept an armistice, and
allow for a mediation process by the international community in an effort to
find a mutually acceptable solution to the Palestine problem. The
representatives of the Security organs of the Yishuv – the preState institutions
– presented a bleak assessment of the coming War. They expected at least three
and as many as seven Arab States to send Armies into Palestine. The Jewish
population, numbering some 650,000 people, was being mobilised. By May 1948, the
newly established Army of the Jewish organisations amounted to some 80,000
recruits (Ostfeld 1994, 54). However, they were poorly equipped and required
considerable training before they could be sent to the front. The military
commanders anticipated as many as 120,000 Arab soldiers equipped with armor,
airplanes, and artillery to participate in the invasion of Palestine (Ostfeld
1994, 23-24). The military commanders estimated the chance of survival of the
Jewish State as even at best (Sharef 1959, 83-84; Shlaim 2000, 33).
With the support of six members against four opposed,
the Provisional Council decided to proclaim a Jewish State and call it the
State of Israel. The Provisional Council would henceforth become the
provisional Government of Israel, until such time that elections could
determine the permanent Government.
As David Ben-Gurion, the interim Prime Minister, had
anticipated, on 14 May 1948, a combined invasion of a jordanian and egyptian
Army started. The syrian and the lebanese Armies engaged in a token effort but
did not stage a major attack on the Jewish State. Other States sent volunteers,
but the combined strength of the arab Armies and the irregular forces fighting
the jewish State was far less than anticipated. The balance of Forces in terms
of military personnel was in favour of the israeli Army (Golani 2002, 158-68).
Initially the Jews had far less advanced military equipment than the arab
Armies, but this changed quickly when Israel signed a weapons deal with
Czechoslovakia. Other weapons deals through private sources also enabled the
new State to tilt the balance of hardware in its favour (Ilan 1996, 181-200).
After nearly seven months of fighting (interrupted by two UN-decreed truces),
Israel defeated decisively all the arab States, crushed the Palestinian
resistance, and signed a series of armistice agreements with all of its arab
neighbours.
The War of Independence exacted a heavy toll on the
jewish State. A total of sixtyfive hundred soldiers and civilians died in the
war, 1 percent of the entire Jewish population. The Economy of the new State
was in extremely bad shape, having been totally mobilised for the War effort. While
the war was raging, thousands of Jewish refugees were flowing into the country.
They needed food, homes, work, Language training, and other social benefits.
But the end of the War brought a great deal of hope and Optimisme to the new
State. Many Israelis believed that the armistice agreements would soon be
converted into peace treaties that would stabilise and legitimise the new
State’s boundaries (Segev 1984; Yaniv 1995, 37-38, 1987a, 38). Ben-Gurion
thought otherwise. He believed that the Arab rejection of Israel was
fundamental and irrevocable. They were defeated in the first round, but there
would be other rounds of warfare. Next time, the Arabs would be better
prepared, better equipped, and – with the memory of the humiliating 1948 defeat
in their minds – possibly better motivated. Israel had to be ready to fight
again (Ben-Gurion 1969, 480-92).
Ben-Gurion was right about the need to fight again,
but he probably did not expect his prophecy to be fulfilled to such an
overwhelming extent. Over the fiftyfive year period between 1948 and 2004,
Israel fought 6 interState Wars, fought 2 (some say three) Civil Wars, and
engaged in over 144 dyadic militarised interState disputes (MIDs) that involved
the threat, the display, or the use of military force against another State.
(1) Israel
is by far the most conflict-prone State in modern History. It has averaged
nearly 4 MIDs every year. It has fought an interState War every nine years.
Israel appears on top of the list of the most intense international rivalries
in the last two-hundred year period (Maoz 2004a).
Fifty-five years after its independence and after
Peace treaties with two of its most bitter enemies, Israel still lives by its
sword. One out of ten Israelis in the age group of fifteen to forty-nine wears
an Army uniform on a daily basis. One out of every eight dollars that Israelis
produce goes to defence every year. (2) As this book goes to press, Israel
continues to fight a bitter Civil War with the Palestinians, the end of which
is nowhere to be seen.
One could claim – indeed, many already have – that a
fundamentally hostile environment, one that has yet to accept the Jewish State
into the community of nations, imposed on Israel the need to become the “Sparta
of modern times.” However, some of the factual Realities behind Israel’s
policies do not add up to a picture in which Israel plays the victim’s role. For
example, Israel signed a Peace treaty with is most powerful enemy, Egypt, in
1979. This treaty seems stable even twenty-five years later. Yet, the size and
scope of Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF), the continued high defence spending,
and its proclivity to use excessive Force have not declined. They did not
decline even after another Peace treaty was signed with Jordan in 1994. Israel continues
to maintain and – quite probably – continues to expand its nuclear capability, clinging
to the policy of “nuclear ambiguity.” Israel and foreign strategists
repeatedly claim that Israel is quantitatively and qualitatively superior to
any combination of enemies in the region (e.g. Cordesman 2004, 2002; Gordon
2003). Yet, Israel keeps building and exercising its military Power on a
regular basis. The frequent use of massive air Power and armored Force in an
attempt to quash the Palestinian uprising during the last four years is a vivid
example of Israel’s proclivity to amass and use excessive military Force
despite diminishing threats. It also suggests how futile this policy may be.
Is Israel forced to live by its sword, or does it
want to live that way? Is the militarisation of Israeli Society a fact imposed
by its hostile environment? Or is it a device by which its elite mobilises the
Society to confront the domestic challenges that Israeli Society has faced
since its inception? Have Israel’s military strategy and diplomacy responded to
the challenge of survival in a highly complex, often hostile, and always
challenging international environment? Or have these strategies been determined
by internal considerations, structures, and people driven by personal and
collective ambitions and drives?
Those who are looking for a single and elegant
explanation and for clear answers to these questions would do best to turn to
another book. I do not intend to provide direct answers to these questions,
although some ideas could be gleaned from this study. Instead of trying to
explain what made Israel the Sparta of modern times, I examine the goals its leaders
set for the country’s Foreign and Security Policy. I investigate whether and to
what extent the policies Israel has pursued over the years helped accomplish
these goals. And – most important – I evaluate the central policies and
strategies that Israel has applied over time and explain how they came about
and why they succeeded and failed.
The observations offered by the present study about
Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy are neither simple nor elegant. Many of
them are quite controversial. This book is primarily an attempt to evaluate
these policies, by asking a simple set of questions that connect goals to
policy and policies to outcomes. Specifically, I examine the following
questions:
1.
What were the – explicit and hidden – goals of
decision makers in key Foreign and Security matters?
2.
How were the policies selected by decision
makers supposed to accomplish these goals?
3.
Were these goals accomplished?
4.
If they were, how was the policy related to the
outcomes?
5.
If these goals were not accomplished, why not?
6.
Did various policies have side effects, that is,
outcomes that were not intended or were not foreseen by the policymakers?
7.
If so, to what extent were these side effects in
accordance with, or in contradiction to, the broader goals of Israel’s Security,
Foreign, and Domestic Policy?
In the present chapter, I outline the goals of the
study, its scope, its structure and approach, and the key themes that emerge in
the coming chapters. Before going into these matter, however, we must outline
the fundamental building blocks of Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy. In the
next section, I present the basic assumptions underlying Israel’s Security and
Foreign Policy since 1948. On the basis of these assumptions I present the
principal tenets of Israel’s Security conception and the derivative Foreign
Policy. I emphasise the notion of a derivative
Foreign Policy because – as I will document in the following chapters –
Israel’s Foreign Policy has always been a servant of Israel’s Security Policy.
The third section provides a brief overview of the
scholarship on Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy. This overview is
necessarily general and superficial. It is intended only as a broad outline of
various strands of thought in the study of Israeli History and Security matters.
Much of this Literature will be used extensively in the chapters that follow.
In the fourth section, I discuss the theoretical and methodological principles
that guide this study. The fifth section lays out the structure of this study
and the key theme it invokes.
2. The Building blocks of
Israel’s national Security Policy
The foundations of Israel’s national Security
conceptions were laid down by David Ben-Gurion in the late 1940s and the early
1950s. Many Israeli strategists view these doctrinal foundations to be valid at
present as well (Ben Israel 2001, 269-71; Tal 2000, vi). Ben-Gurion’s ideas not
only are widely accepted among the members of the Israeli Security community
but are widely shared by the Israeli public (Arian 1995, 65-66, 173-86,
254-71). I present these principal ideas and discuss them very briefly here. (3)
In subsequent chapters I examine many of these ideas in a more critical
fashion.
Israel’s Security Policy is based on a set of
assumptions about Israel’s regional and international environment. These
assumptions define the basic threat perception that Israel is said to have
experienced over the years.
i) The Arab world is
fundamentally hostile toward Israel. It would attempt to destroy the jewish
State given the right chance.
The Arabs – Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians, or even
more remote people such as the Algerians, Libyans, or Iraqis – have never
accepted the formation of a Jewish State in Palestine. They might accept it as
a (possibly temporary) fact, but they have never internalised the fact that
Jews have the right to a national homeland in the Middle East. Therefore, the
Arabs harbour a permanent and powerful motivation to annihilate the Jewish
State. The only thing that prevents them from doing so is their awareness of
the futility of this mission and/or their awareness that the price of such an
attempt would be exorbitant. The implication is that Israel is destined to live for a long time
under an existential threat. [WoodyAllen. DavidCronenberg.] In the short term
(the short term being the foreseeable future) its policies and actions can only
affect the Arab cost-benefit Calculus; they cannot affect Arab motivation. In
the long run this motivation may change, but this is not certain, and the long
run may be very long indeed.
ii) Fundamental
asymmetries exist between Israel and the Arab world.
No matter how widely or how narrowly we define the
boundaries of the Arab world, Israel faces enemies that are much more populous,
have vastly larger territory, possess more natural resources, and are better
networked with the outside world than is the Jewish State. Even if these
resources are not spent directly on the mission of destroying Israel, the pool
of resources at the disposal of Arab leaders creates a threat of vast
magnitude.
iii) The international
community is an unreliable ally.
Israel is dependent on the outside world to survive
economically and militarily. As an advanced Society, it also requires ties with
the outside – mostly Western – world for cultural, educational, and social
purposes. Israel is also dependent on the world because, up to the early 1990s,
most of the Jewish population resided outside of Israel. Its spiritual, social,
and economic ties to the Jewish community are an essential component of the
Israeli national community. Israel is also dependent on the outside world for
weapons. At the same time, Israel cannot rely on the outside world to ensure
its survival and defence. Ultimately, Israeli men and women will have to risk
their lives to defend their country. Nobody else will do it for them. Moreover,
both the Experiences of the [Nazi] Holocaust and the short History of the
preState and State periods suggest that the international community is an
unreliable source of political and military support. It is at times of dire
need that the international community – even Israel’s closest friends and
allies – has consistently disappointed Israel. Israel can ultimately rely on
itself to ensure its survival, not on the pledges of others, no matter how well
intentioned they may be. The concept of “a people that dwells alone” is a clear
expression of this perception of international isolation.
iv) Israel’s Geography is
a major constraint on its ability to fight.
The map of Israel (see maps
1.1 and 1.2) shows how small Israel is in relation to its neighbours and
how narrow the country’s “waist” has been in the area immediately north and
east of Tel Aviv – especially before the Occupation of the territories during
the Six Day War. This implies that an attack by one or more Arab States could split the
country into several slices almost instantly. Moreover, Israel’s population
centers are within the range of light arms fire and certainly artillery fire of
its enemy. A jet plane taking off from Syria, Jordan, and even Egypt can reach
Israel’s population centers in a matter of minutes. The Israeli civilian and
military airfields are within the range of tactical Syrian missiles and a short
flight from Egyptian bases in the Sinai and from Jordanian air base. In the era
of complex manœuvering jet fighters, Israel’s planes do not have even enough room
to circle around over Israeli airspace in order to practice or land in their
bases. For Israel, losing territory means risking its very survival.
v) The Iron Wall offers
the long-term hope for the jewish State.
The concept of an “Iron Wall,” developed in Ze’ev
Jabotinsky’s famous articles of 1923, represents a vision that entails both
short-term hardships and a long-term ray of hope. This concept was implicitly adopted
by Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky’s great political rival (Shlaim 2000, 19). The Iron
Wall theme suggests that Israel has a number of things working for it in the
long run: its staying power, the military blows it hands the Arabs every time
they try to attack it, and the development of a model Society that outperforms
Arab Societies. All these factors, along with Israel’s viability and prosperity
as a democratic and advanced Society, will work to convince the Arabs of the
futility and the illogic of their dreams. Over time, the Arabs will come to
accept the Jewish State and to make Peace with it. Initially, this would be a
Peace of realists, that is, a Peace of acceptance but not reconciliation. As
this Peace bears fruits, the Arabs will realise that they stand to benefit far
more from peaceful and open relationships with the Jewish State than from conflict
or boycott. When that happens, reconciliation would follow. It is impossible to
develop a long-term national vision on the basis of this bleak Reality. Why
should Jews come to settle in Israel so that they or their children would be
driven into the sea by a mass of Arabs bent on genocide and politicide, while
the international community stands idly by? Even the most optimistic scenario
suggests that Israel would have to live by its swords for a very long time – perhaps
several generations. The Zionist leaders had to provide a ray of hope in that
vision. The concept of the Iron Wall provides this long-term optimistic vision
and the rationale for Israeli resilience and staying Power despite the lack of
a short-term relief.
As noted,
these assumptions remained largely stable over time. Some of the more
operational contours of these assumptions may have undergone changes in
different periods. For example, the scope of the threat had originally been
limited to the Arab world. For example, the scope of the threat had originally
been limited to the Arab world. States such as Iran and Turkey were excluded
from the circle of enemies for a long time because they were not considered
“Arab.” Turkey’s status has remained unchanged in this respect. Iran, however,
has become one of the most potent enemies of Israel since the 1990s due to the
fundamental hostility of the Isalmic regime in Tehran, its long-range missiles,
and its nuclear program. The economic threat – especially that element based on
Arab oil resources – became much more prominent in the list of resources that
could be mobilised against Israel after the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Finally, the
key fear of Israeli leaders in the 1950s and 1960s was of an all-out attack by
a mass of Arab Armies. This danger may have diminished somewhat, but it is
still a significant threat. However, the new concern that takes up much of the
time of the Israeli Security community is the acquisition of weapons of mass
destruction (WMDs) – especially nuclear weapons – by one or more of Israel’s
enemies. So there is an added technological threat that has become an important
element in Israel’s list of nightmares.
The basic tenets of Israel’s security doctrine that
emerge from these assumptions reflect a set of ideas concerning the general
principles for dealing with these threats and structural constraints over the
long haul. These tenets are not listed in any particular order, as there is no
clear hierarchy among them.
i) The principle of
qualitative edge.
Israel must rely on a large margin of qualitative
advantage to offset the quantitative advantages of the Arab States. The
strength of the Jewish State lies in the quality of its manpower, in its
technological and educational capability, and in the social cohesion and
motivation of its population. This qualitative edge is expressed in both
military and nonmilitary terms. In military terms it is translated to hardware
and software. Israel must be able to develop and/or acquire far more modern and
capable weapons systems than the Arabs. The quality of manpower ensures that
Israeli pilots, sailors, tank crews, artillery gunners, and even infantry and
special operations soldiers outperform their Arab counterparts by a wide
margin. Even when the weapons systems are evenly matched in terms of their
technical specifications, the difference in manpower quality ensures that the
Israelis should always have better soldiers than the Arabs. The same applies to
military generalship; to tactical command quality; and, of course, to the
synergy among weapons systems, support systems (e.g., logistics, Communication,
intelligence), People, and mission. In terms of nonmilitary elements of Power,
Israeli Society should be able to provide the armed Forces with cohesive and
highquality human, economic, social, and political reserves. This would enable
the military along the borders to operate free of concerns as to what is going
on at the home front. Therefore, national leaders should seek – to the extent
possible – to pursue policies that rely on a high degree of public support in
matters of national Security. This implies, among other things, opting to go to
War only under circumstances of no choice. Purely aggressive Wars may erode
public support for national Security Policies and thus reduce the willingness
of Israeli Society to contribute to a long-term national Security stand
necessary to sustain the Iron Wall in the long run.
ii) A nation at arms.
Israeli Society must be fully
mobilisable in times of crisis and ready and willing to extract all of its
resources for the struggle for survival. At the same time, Israel should be
able to provide its People with welfare, freedoms, and basic rights akin to
that of any advanced democratic Society. Israeli Society must be able to function
as a “normal” Society during times of relative Peace in order to be a true
haven for the Jews around the world. Since the transition from Peace to War may
be very quick, the Society must be able to transform itself quickly into a
fully mobilised entity. This dictates a
large conscript military Force as well as a substantial reserve component that
is well trained and equipped and that can be mobilised quickly.
iii) The principle of
strategic defensive and operational offensive.
Israel’s political and strategic posture is status
quo-oriented; yet its operational doctrine is offensive. At any given point in
its History, Israel’s decision makers accepted the territorial status quo.
Therefore they always claimed that Israel had no territorial ambitions.
Nevertheless, for the reasons discussed later, Israeli political leaders
believed that Israel could not afford to fight defensive Wars. The preference
for an offensive strategy was never due to proactive political ambitions; it
was an outgrowth of structural constraints. Some of these constraints are
listed subsequently.
iv) The principle of
short wars aimed at quick decision.
Israel cannot afford to fight long and drawn-out Wars.
It has to engage in short and decisive military campaigns. The focus on short
wars is dictated by three fundamental constraints.
a. Social and economic
constraints
A fully mobilised military Force implies bringing
Israeli Economy and Society to a screeching halt. The opponents may wear Israel
out not by imposing one massive military strike but rather by overdrawing its
human and material resources beyond their breaking point. Also, defensive
strategies yield to the enemy the strategic advantage; Israel’s enemies can
decide when, where, and how to attack. This can tip Israeli Society beyond its
economic breakpoint due to the need to maintain full mobilisation. Short and
decisive Wars allow Israel to maximise its capabilities, to achieve military
decision, and then to release its reserve Forces so that its Society could
continue to function. Israel has to slice up its strategic marathon against the
Arab world into a series of one-hundred meter dashes.
b. Geographic constraints
Israel’s small territorial margins, its narrow waist,
and the small distance between the border and Israel’s population centers
prohibit defensive postures. Defending a given territory effectively must allow
the defender some room for manœuver within its own lines (Luttwak 2001, 147-57),
which Israel does not have. Therefore Israel must rely on an offensive strategy
and transfer the fighting to the enemy’s territory. This may require a
willingness to use a first-strike doctrine and to initiate preventive or
preemptive Wars. Even when the enemy launches the first strike, Israel must
strive to seize the strategic initiative by moving to an offensive and into the
enemy’s territory as quickly as possible.
c. International
constraints
The international community is likely to intervene
quickly and decisively in order to bring an end to the fighting. If Israel
wants to reach a military decision in the War for purposes of cumulative
deterrence (see later discussion), it must do so before the international
community imposes on the combatants a cease-fire or even a political agreement.
Israel’s tenuous international standing requires it to be in a position of
military and territorial strength at the start of negotiations. Thus, Israel
must be the one to determine the scope, speed, and nature of the War through
its own actions.
v) The principle of major
power support for war.
Israel must ensure the explicit and tacit support of
at least one major Power before going to War. In the past, Israel’s leaders had
to deal with the duality in their perception of the international community. On
the one hand, they recognised the basic dependence on the outside world for
both material and diplomatic support. On the other hand, they were utterly
suspicious of the willingness and ability of the international community to
support Israel during severe existential crises. The resolution of this seeming
contradiction was typically framed in the previous maxim. The support of a
major Power would ensure that Israel would, at the very least, receive enough
weapons and munitions to replenish those expended or destroyed during the War.
Major Power support is also instrumental for fending off diplomatic attacks and
sanctions through the UN Security Council, but this is seen as secondary to
ensuring a constant source of weapons supply. The implication of this principle
is that Israel should try to avoid or delay Wars for which it cannot secure the
support of a major Power.
vi) Autonomy of action
before alliance.
Israel should prefer independence of action over
binding alliances that might limit its freedom of action. The pursuit of allies
to bolster Israel’s Security has always been an important desire of Israel’s
leaders. In practice, however, Israel has never faced a practical dilemma where
its leaders had to choose between an offer of a formal defence treaty with
another State and a prospect of losing its autonomy to act when, where, and how
it seemed fit. Nevertheless, the hypothetical possibility was often discussed
in policy circles. The prevailing view has always been that Israel is better
off keeping informal ties and defence cooperation with other nations rather
than signing a binding alliance treaty. Israeli policymakers generally
considered the liabilities of a defence pact – the constraints it would impose on
Israel’s freedom of action and the questionable reliability of even the
friendliest Sate – to outweigh the benefits of such an alliance. A defence pact
would contradict the other elements of Israel’s Security conception. Thus,
Israel is seen to be better off without such an alliance than with it.
vii) The principle of
cumulative deterrence.
Israel’s long-term Security doctrine rests on three
principles: cumulative deterrence, limited military decision, and excessive use
of Force in both limited conflict settings and general Wars. Israel cannot
impose on the Arabs a Peace through a massive and total military victory (Kober
1995); it can only hope to persuade the Arabs to accept Peace due to their War
weariness. The Arab States must come to understand that they cannot destroy
Israel and that the price of continued conflict is more than they can bear.
This implies that Israel has to brace for a protracted conflict punctuated by a
– possibly large – number of short Wars and limited encounters. The principle
by which Israel can hope to convert over time the Arab motivation to continue
the conflict into a readiness to make real Peace with it is the concept of
cumulative deterrence (Almog 2004, 1995; Bar Joseph 1998). Cumulative
deterrence means successive and effective use of Force in both limited and
massive military encounters. Such successful demonstrations of Force are
designed to convince the opponent of the futility of military Force in the long
term. Cumulative deterrence assumes frequent failures of both general and
specific deterrence. (4)
Whenever the more “conventional” form of deterrence
fails, Israel must launch a decisive military operation that would bring about
a relatively unambiguous military decision within a short time frame. In the
cases of more limited challenges of low-intensity conflict (LIC) or limited
military engagement, Israel should be able to dominate the process of
escalation and maintain the strategic initiative, so as to bring the opponent
to the point of exhaustion and defeat. The accumulation of what Almog (2004, 6)
calls “assets in a victory bank” would serve to persuade the Arabs that they
cannot win. As Lieberman (1995, 63) puts it: “Short-term deterrence failures
may be a necessary condition for long-term deterrence success.”
viii) The Samson Option.
This principle concerns ambiguous nuclear deterrence in
situations of last resort. If conventional deterrence fails and Israel finds itself in a situation wherein it might
be defeated in a major military confrontation, or if the Arabs engage in
actions that threaten the very survival of Israel (e.g., use WMDs against
population centers or basic infrastructures) [Completehypocrisy. WoodyAllen. SaulBellows.
ElieWiesel. DavidCronenberg.] Israel threatens to use its nuclear weapons. This threat
is ambiguous, however, because Israel has never openly admitted to possession
of nuclear weapons. The conception that Israel has sought to convey – through
veiled threats and signals of various kinds – is that its nuclear weapons serve
as an ultimate insurance policy designed to deter the annihilation of the State
by massive Force. Hersh’s (1991) term – the Samson Option – is an apt
characterisation of the role of nuclear deterrence in Israel’s Security Policy.
ix) Settlements as
determinant of borders.
Israeli settlements will determine Israel’s final
boundaries. This tenet does not appear in the standard list of the basic tenets
of Israel’s Security conception. It has become, however, a cornerstone of
Israeli Security conception both before the Occupation of Arab territories in
the Six Day War and even more so since 1967. Even before 1948, the leading
Zionist leaders strongly believed that the outcome of any political settlement in
Palestine would be determined by the demographic distribution of the ethnic
group residing in it. The drive to bring in Jewish immigrants and settle them
in distant areas in an effort to form Jewish population centers in all parts of
Palestine was due not only to the vision of Palestine as a Jewish homeland but
also to the wish to affect the boundaries of the Jewish State. Settlements form
a human and physical fait accompli. They show the determination of a nation to
hold on to a given territory and signal to both friends and foes that they will
be defended by Force. Thus, settlements were always seen as a pillar of
national Security.
Taken together, these nine tenets form a fairly
coherent and stable national Security conception. This conception was never
published in an official document (and even when there was an attempt to frame
it in terms of an official policy it was never approuved by the Cabinet or the
presiding Defence Minister at the time; see chap. 11). Yet, there is enough
official, semiofficial, and scholarly writing to suggest that this is the
doctrine Israel has been using all along. The principal aims of this conception
is to enable Israel to overcome the need to cope with fundamental threats to
its survival on the one hand and to develop as a “normal” Society that will
attract Jews from all over the world on the other hand.
Both the assumptions on which this doctrine rests and
the principles of which the doctrine is composed are part of a belief system shared
by politicians, experts, and laypersons. However, they are neither valid as a
description of objective Reality nor accurate characterisations of Israel’s
actual behaviour. In fact, I will show throughout this
book that many of the foundational assumptions of these conceptions have been
fairly remouved from Reality. I will also show that in many cases Israel
violated its own doctrinal principles. In other cases, the rigidity of
these doctrinal canons has been detrimental to Israel’s Security and welfare;
some of these principles may well have undermined Israel’s ability to make
Peace with its neighbours. At this point, however, my intent is to present the
elements of Israel’s Security-related belief system as shared by most Israelis.
This belief system serves as the basis for the evaluation of Israel’s policies
in the coming chapters.
3. Israeli scholarship on
national Security and Foreign Policy
This overview is intended as a way of positioning the
present study in relation to other studies on the subject. I do not claim
originality in most of what is covered in this book. Nor do I claim neutrality
and perfect objectivity with respect to the issues I study. I make explicit
observations about the wisdom, effectiveness, benefit, or even Ethical standing
of various policies. Because this is an evaluation study, I also make
descriptive points and normative judgements. Thus, it is important to be
explicit about where this book stands in relation to the large and sometimes
polarised literature on these topics.
The centrality of Security affairs in Israeli
Society, Politics, and Economics is probably unparalleled in the world,
certainly in the democratic world. Accordingly, the list of scholarly works on
these matters is extremely large. Although we do not have a precise way of
measuring it, it is plausible to assume that the number of per capita
publications by Israelis on Security and Foreign Policy far surpasses that of
any other nation in the modern world.
Another book would be
needed solely to review these publications. Therefore, I do not intend to even
start doing that here. Rather, I wish to provide a very general
characterisation of this literature. I divide the literature into four classes
of works: Ideological, historical, analytical, and prescriptive. The boundaries
among these categories are rather vague; many studies cross several classes.
Nevertheless, each work – at least those I know and cite in the coming pages –
tends to fall into one primary class or another.
3.1. The Ideological Literature
As with any Ideological work, the studies belonging
to this genre emerge primarily from a set of beliefs and seek to maximise or
realise certain norms or values. These works have a marked target – a certain
vision they seek to realise – and a marked path – a policy, position, or
strategy they consider as most suitable, Moral, or expedient for the
realisation of this vision. Typically, this Literature does not deliberate very
much on the nature of the vision – its Morality, its consistency with other
values or the values of other groups, and its internal Logic and consistency.
Nor does this Literature consider, in many cases, alternative paths to
accomplishing this vision. For the most part, this Literature focuses on
advocacy. Many of the programmatic writings of zionist thinkers – for example, Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall
essays mentioned earlier – as well as the writings of other Israeli
politicians belong to this genre. A few other works by scholars also fall into
this category. I will mention just a few representative writings. They in no
way reflect the entire spectrum, but they give the reader a general flavour of
this Literature.
Ideological writings on national Security and Foreign
Policy can be placed along a left-right (or, more accurately, along a
hawkish-dovish) spectrum. A number of important
writings of David Ben-Gurion (e.g., Ben-Gurion 1971, 1956) deal with Israel’s
Security and Foreign Policy; Moshe Sharett – Israel’s Foreign Minister under
Ben-Gurion and the second Prime Minister – also wrote an Ideological booklet.
(Sharett 1958). More recent works include Netanyahu’s (2000) hawkish vision of
Israel’s international standing and Peres’s (1993) vision of Israel in a
regional system characterised by Peace, development, and progress.
3.2. Historical studies
The vast majority of the studies of Israel’s Security
and Foreign Policy are historical. These range from accounts of distinct
episodes to broad historical surveys of long periods, from autobiographies and
biographies of political and military figures to case studies and accounts of
specific episodes in Israel’s History. The distinct characteristic of historical
studies and biographies or autobiographies is that they tell a story of a
period, an event, or an aspect thereof from the subjective perspective of the
people who participated in them. Many of these works rely on primary sources,
such as transcripts of Government sessions, diplomatic and personal
correspondence, and directives by various political and military officials to
subordinates. These are supplemented by interviews with the key players in
those episodes or secondary accounts by other scholars.
Over the last two decades, however, a growing number
of works have raised critical issues about various aspects of Israel’s History
and the political and military management of its Security. Many of these
critical studies stem from a deliberately anti-institutionalist perspective.
Many of them start out from a fundamentally different epistemological and
Ideological perspective. This alternative perspective challenges many of the
fundamental axioms of the traditional Historiography of Israel. These critical
scholars are called “new historians” or post-zionist.” Whatever their
collective label, their writings have challenged conventional wisdom about a
number of basic facts in Israel’s History. For example, they challenged the
widespread [“]myth[“] of a miraculous victory in the War of Independence. Israel, contrary to popular belief – supported by
quite a few traditional historians – was not militarily inferior to the Arab
States that had attacked it. [Mnemotechnique, “Against the odds, to put it
mildly.”] On the contrary, at almost every step of the way, Israel enjoyed a
significant advantage in both manpower and equipment (Flapan 1987; Pappé 1992).
Second, in
contrast to the belief that the Palestinian Arabs fled from Palestine during
the War of Independence due to the urging of the Palestinian leadership, these
historians showed that Israeli official and unofficial policy had encouraged
and actually participated in driving out palestinians of the areas it occupied
during the War. Israel bears considerable responsibility – though hardly
the exclusive blame – for the Palestinian refugee problem (Morris 2004). Third, the Jewish
leadership in Palestine attempted to strike a number of deals with King
Abdullah of Transjordan in a “collusion” designed to solve the Palestinian
problem between the Jewish State and Transjordan at the expense of the
independent Palestinian State authorised by the UN Partition Resolution (Shlaim
1988). More general revisionist reviews of Israel’s History include
Shlaim’s (2000) study of Israeli-Arab relations and Morris’s (2001) and
Kimmerling and Migdal’s (2003) studies of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Clearly, these departures from conventional writings
invoked quite a few efforts to defend the institutional policies (Shapira 2003;
Gelber 2003; Karsh 1997). Beyond the name calling and the personal attacks that
these debates invariably entailed, the debate between traditional or
institutional historians and revisionist historians revived Israeli
Historiography and rendered it more relevant socially. As new archives are
being opened and new documents are being declassified, this debate is
paradoxically intensifying. Many aspects of this debate are reflected in the
coming chapter, but – as I point out in the next section – my perspective is
going to be different in terms of both Methodology and approach from both the
revisionist and the institutional perspectives.
3.3. Analytic studies
The focus of analytic studies is on the explanation
of Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy. Such studies may be very general and
cover a broad array of issues and problems, or they can be more specific –
focusing on a specific issue, policy, or episode. In this case, too, the number
of studies on Security affairs far outweighs those on Foreign Policy. The single
most comprehensive analytic study on Israel’s Foreign Policy is Brecher 1972.
Other books include Klieman’s (1990) study of Israel’s Foreign Relations and
Shaham’s (1998) survey of Israeli relations with the world. General work on
Israel’s strategic affairs includes studies by political and military decision
makers (e.g. Allon 1968; Tal 2000) or by scholars (e.g., Yaniv 1995, 1987a;
Handel 1995, 1973; Ben-Horin and Posen 1981; Levite 1989).
More specific analytic studies focus on such issues
as decision making (Brecher 1975; Brecher, with Geist, 1980; Maoz 1997a); Nuclear
Policy (Aronson, with Brosh, 1992; Evron 1994); limited use of Force (Shimshoni
1988; Kuperman 1999, 2001); public opinion and national Security (Arian 1995);
or civil-military relations (Perlmutter 1969; Ben Meir 1995).
In this area, too, much of the Literature in the past
was primarily in line with the conventional wisdom shared by Israeli
politicians and the Security community. If there was criticism, it was directed
at specific episodes or decisions. Not much of the criticism was structural. In
addition, the Literature was generally compartmentalised. Many of the studies
focused on the level of the Bureaucracy and the political elites. Not too many
empirical and analytical connexions were made between processes operating at
the bureaucratic or political levels and wider social trends.
Here, too, in the last decade a growing number of
Israeli political scientists and sociologists have started challenging
conventional views, offering more structural connexions between Security and
social processes. Traditional scholars emphasised the nation-building role of
the military in Israeli Society. The IDF was seen as the “melting pot,” a major
agent of socialisation of immigrants from all over the world into the Israeli
Society. In
the last decade, a group of sociologists provided a different perspective of
the role of the IDF. This scholarship showed that the militarisation of Israeli
Society by the leading political and economic elites served to advance economic
and political interests and to perpetuate the stratification of the Israeli
Society (Barzilai 1996; Ben-Eliezer 1998; Levy 2003). Critical studies of
Israel’s legal system have also shown how the Israeli courts – notorious in
Israel for their (sometimes excessive) Liberalisme – have actually served to
legitimise the Government’s policy on Security affairs largely at the expense
of fundamental Human Rights and personal and collective liberties (Hofnung
1996; Kertzmer 2002; Barzilai 2003).
3.4. Prescriptive studies
Prescriptive studies differ from Ideological studies
in that they do not have a specific Ideological vision and a clearly preferred
path to accomplilshing it – at least not visibly so. Rather, these studies
offer policy recommendation on the basis of a more analytic study of various
policy problems and on the basis of consideration of several options toward
redressing these problems. The prescriptive part of the study rests heavily on
the analytic part of the study. Perhaps the most persistent scholar who emphasised
prescriptive ideas is Yehezkel Dror (1989, 1998). Dror’s work emphasises both
doctrinal and structural reforms in policy-making and in institutional design.
Emmanuel Wald – a former senior officer in the IDF strategic planning branch –
has been both an ardent critic and a passionate prescriber of reforms in
military structures and doctrines and decision-making processes (1987, 1992).
Milstein (1999), a highly conservative historian, offered a hawkish Security
doctrine. Feldman (1983) proposed an overt nuclear deterrence policy for
Israel, while Evron (1994) supports continued nuclear ambiguity.
The prescriptive studies are highly analytic, but
their analysis is – for the msot part – based on rather limited examination of
historical and empirical data. Most studies have been rather narrowly focused
on one or a few issue areas, and most of them have made a fairly clear
distinction between domestic or social issues and Foreign or Security issues.
In this genre, we do not find clear revisionist alternatives to the fairly
mainstream prescriptions of much of the existing Literature.
How does the present book relate to the existing
Literature? First, it builds on all four classes of work. It considers and
employs both traditional approaches to Israel’s History and revisionist ones.
It considers both mainstream analytic studies and more critical studies. It
considers in passing Ideological works only to examine perceptions of leaders
but does not delve too much into the psychological or philosophical roots of
these writings. And it also considers some of the ideas embedded in the
prescriptive writings.
Second, the book’s approach differs from most of the
Literature on Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy in that it attempts to
provide a comprehensive and critical assessment of Israel’s national Security
and Foreign Policy. Its distinguishing characteristics are fourfold:
i) This book’s starting point is evaluative. It
attempts to examine the extent to which the goals of Israel’s Security and
Foreign Policy have been served by its doctrines, policy decisions, and
actions. It attempts to understand the Logic behind the grand strategies (to
the extent that such strategies existed) or specific policies. At the same time
I match the underlying – overt and hidden – goals of certain policies with
their implementation and with their consequences. I also apply policy
evaluation criteria to examine these policies, as well as their side effects.
ii) The book’s approach is critical. It challenges
the fundamental assumptions that have guided the Founding Fathers of Israel’s
national Security and Foreign Policy and their successors. It suggests that
these assumptions were not matched with the empirical Realities in the region.
In many cases, gloomy assumptions about Israel’s strategic environments, held
by Israeli decision makers, had self-fulfilling properties. They forced Israel
to act in a manner that exacerbated regional conflicts and raised the costs of
such conflicts both for Israel and for its opponents.
iii) The book ties together different aspects of
Israel’s Foreign and Security Policy that have not traditionally been connected
in other studies on the subject in an attempt to find an overarching Logic and
common strands across issues and policies.
iv) The book connects History, policy, theory, and
Methodology in a manner that I describe as “strategic.” This approach seeks to
integrate these fields under a common roof in order to enhance our ability to
understand processes and to evaluate them. It uses History in an attempt to
understand policies and events from the perspective of the participants. It
uses theory to put these perspectives and actions in a more general and
abstract context that looks for patterns and Logic behind seemingly unexplained
or unrelated issues. In this context, it attempts to uncover and explain basic
trends and patterns in Israeli Foreign and Security Policies. Finally, I
examine the relationship among basic assumptions, plans, policies, actions, and
outcomes from the end to the beginning. This approach allows us to assess the
quality of policies, to derive lessons, and to offer amendments to existing
policies or alternative ones.
In order to explain how I plan to integrate History,
policy, theory, and Methodology in an effort to evaluate various aspects of
Israel’s national Security and Foreign Policy-making, I discuss the general
approach and Methodology of this study in the next section. Readers who
are interested in the substance of the book may skip the next section without
significant loss.
4. Evaluating policy:
Theoretical and methodological considerations
4.1. An outline of the
evaluation Methodology
The purpose of this book is primarily evaluative. To
evaluate Israeli national Security and Foreign Policy, we must understand the
connexion between the goals of Israeli decision makers and the policies they
pursued. We need to explore the connexion between policies and their – intended
and unintended – outcomes. This would enable us to explain why some policies
succeeded while others failed. The key aim of policy evaluation is to draw
lessons from these successes and failures so that policy can be improuved. But
beyond that, a closer inspection of various policies may give us a better look
at the underlying Logic of policy-making across a large number of issues. If we
find common patterns in how policies are made across issues, we may be able to
develop a more general understanding of policy problems and pitfalls. Similar
disconnects among policy objectives, policy choices, policy implementation, and
policy outcomes suggest structural problems. If such structural problems exist,
their identification and treatment may improuve policy across a large number of
issues areas.
It is important to note at the outset that the best
process of policy evaluation is conducted as part and parcel of policy-making
and policy implementation process (Mark, Henry, and Julnes 2000; Nagel 1998).
Ideally, when a policy is planned, a program and Methodology designed to
evaluate its performance and outcomes is attached. This program is applied in
parallel to the implementation of the policy and provides policymakers an
ongoing feedback on how this policy performs with respect to their goals and
objectives. Such feedback allows decision makers to fix bugs in the policy as
it is implemented. This minimises damage to the policy, reduces expenses, and
allows policy shifts if it turns out that the policy is not the right one.
Unfortunately, a policy evaluation of this kind is not applicable in our case.
Most of the policies we examine in this book were applied a long time ago. Most
of them have never been fully evaluated; and many of them have not been
evaluated at all. What we can do is engage in second-best evaluation
strategies, those that are done in retrospect. In this section I discuss how I
intend to apply retrospective evaluation to Israeli national Security and
Foreign Policy.
Policies are designed to solve problems. Thus,
evaluating a public policy must be based first on inspecting the problem that
it is intended to solve. Once we understand the nature of the problem, it is
possible to specify the goals that the policy is designed to accomplish. In
light of these goals, it is then possible to assess the policy in terms of
whether and to what extent it was instrumental in accomplishing it started
objectives. However, the evaluation of a public policy in terms of its direct
effects on the original problems is incomplete. A policy may have side effects,
that is, consequences that were not part of the key goals of the policy but
that nevertheless were affected by its implementation (Leeuw 1995; Mohr 1995;
Nachmias 1979). Finally, as in the case of administering medicine to a patient,
it is important to assess whether the medicine does more damage than good and
whether the patient would have fared better without it than with it.
Methodologically, the preferred design for policy
evaluation is the comparative interrupted time-series design wherein two groups
are compared over time: a “control” group and an “experimental” group. Both
groups are identical in all aspects but one. The control group is one on which
the policy (or treatment) is not administered, whereas the experimental group
is the one on which the policy is administered. Each group is examined prior to
the implementation of the policy, during the implementation process, and after
it is implemented. The impact of the policy on the experimental groups is
assessed both in terms of a before-after comparison and in terms of comparison
to the control group.
In strategic affairs (in contrast to Domestic Policy
areas), the evaluation of policies – certainly grand strategic undertakings –
is a difficult task. One of the key problems concerns the difficulty in
examining the impact of an alternative – counterfactual – policy on a given
historical process (Mohr 1995, chap. 1). (5) Clearly, this evaluation design is
irrelevant here. However, other evaluation schemes can be applied. For example,
we can use an (interrupted time-series) analysis that entails a comparison of the
problem before the policy was implemented to the situation after the policy was
applied (Mohr 1995; Nachmias 1979; Nagel 1998). This design uses the goals of
the policy as the guiding evaluation standard. It looks at the characteristics
of the problem – for example, the magnitude, the frequency with which the
problem occurs, or the costs due to the policy problem – before the policy is
implemented. It then treats the implementation of the policy as the
“interruption” due to treatment. Finally, it examines the outcomes of the
policy – both the direct outcomes and the side effects. It then compares the
postpolicy features of the problem to the prepolicy features.
While it is impossible to tell from this kind of
analysis whether the policy what was actually applied was the “super optimal”
one (Nagel 1998, 10-12), other – quite significant – observations can be made.
First, it is possible to say whether and to what extent the policy that was
applied accomplished its goals. Second, it is possible to evaluate the extent
to which the postpolicy features of the problems were reduced in comparison to
the prepolicy features. Third, the analysis of side effects can tell us a great
deal about the extent of the decision makers’ foresight and about other
outcomes of the policy that can serve as additional – exogenous – criteria for
evaluating the policy.
We cannot say what would have happened to the problem
if no policy or an alternative policy had been implemented. But we can glean
from these observations other conclusions about the quality of the policy.
First, we know that there is something problematic about the policy if it did
not accomplish its objectives. If the magnitude, severity, frequency, or costs
of the problem after the implementation of the policy are similar to or higher
than the same features of the problem before the policy was implemented, then
we can reasonably argue that the policy was problematic. Finally, even if the
policy remedied some aspects of the original problem but - at the same time – generated adverse side
effects, then the policy is problematic. Thus, the direct benefits of a given
policy must be analysed in relation to its side effects.
When a policy accomplished its professed goals, and
when some or all of the features of the problem are redressed by the policy, a
positive evaluation cannot be ruled out even if they may be a more efficient
and effective alternative policy. Thus, in both cases – when the policy seems
to have accomplished its objectives and when it did not – it is possible to
make at least a limited assessment of the value of the policy.
So when looking at an event – such as a War – or a
policy – such as Nuclear Policy or Peace diplomacy – from an evaluative
perspective, we need to identify several elements.
i) The nature of the
problem and its features.
What were the key problems that the decision makers
faced? Answering this question not only requires examining how the decision
makers perceived the problem (as one would attempt if one wanted to conduct
historical or analytical research that attempts to explain how a policy was
selected) but also requires exploring the “objective” features of the problem.
Sometimes there may be a gap between the decision maker’s understanding of the
problem and the actual parameters of the policy dilemma. Problematic policies
may be selected because decision makers think they want to resolve a problem
whose features are rather different from the ones they need to address. Such
gaps often results in adverse side effects of the policy that is eventually
selected. Understanding the problem requires examining its key parameters. How
severe was the problem? With what frequency did it occur? What kind of damage
or what extent of cost did it inflict on the decision makers (or, in our case,
on the State of Israel)? What were the expected implications of the problem if
it were not addressed?
In the realm of Politics in general, and in Foreign
and Security Policy-making in particular, understanding problems strictly in
terms of what decision makers say they are may be misleading. Very often
decision makers frame problems in ways that are convenient for them, hiding
features of the problem that they do not feel comfortable verbalising. For
example, decision makers very rarely admit that they applied public policies to
address domestic political problems (such as slippage in polls and pressure
from interest groups). So, the problem identification stage must go beyond the
decision maker’s account; we must probe deeper into the context in which the
policy arises and apply objective criteria to evaluate policy problems.
ii) The objectives of the
decision makers.
Beyond the stated objectives of a given policy, we
need to go below the verbal surface to identify hidden goals and agendas that
affect policy selection. The policy objectives are clearly the benchmark
against which the outcomes of the policy must be evaluated. Therefore, hidden
objectives are important parameters that need to be identified. Sometimes
decision makers may continue to pursue policies that do not appear to resolve
the publicly stated problems and that do not accomplish their professed goals.
They might do it because the policy seems to be effective in addressing hidden
goals and to resolve unstated problems.
iii) The Logic connecting
the specific policy to the – stated and unstated – objectives.
We must understand just how the policy was supposed
to accomplish the – explicit and hidden – objectives set forth by the decision
makers. If we cannot stipulate a logical connexion between a given policy and
stated objectives, it is possible that this policy was supposed to address
hidden objectives. The opposite, however, is not necessarily true. There may be
a straightforward logical connexion between a policy and a set of explicitly
stated goals. This does not preclude the presence of a hidden agenda.
Therefore, we must be careful to articulate all possible connexions between the
policy and the objectives of the decision makers. This allows us to trace
decision makers’ expectations from a given policy. This should help us connect
the policy to its intended and unintended outcomes. Policy outcomes that are
not in line with these expectations are treated as side effects.
iv) The process of policy
implementation.
Very often there exist gaps between the intended and
actual implementation of policies, even at the most crucial moments in a
nation’s life (Allison and Zelikow 1999, 158-60). The road to the public policy
hell may be paved with particularly good intentions, much more so than in other
areas. Therefore, it is important to separate poor policy planning and policy
design from poor policy implementation. In strategic studies, the Clausewitzian
concept of “friction” refers to factors operating beyond the control of the
decision makers, which may affect the outcome of the decision. A good policy
takes friction into account, but no matter how well a policy is designed it
cannot foresee or take account of all friction-related problems. Thus, it is
important to separate policy problems that result from unanticipated friction
from problems that result from poor planning or poor implementation.
It is also important to separate policy problems from
paradoxes (Maoz 1990b, 9-21). In a policy context, a paradox is defined as “a
causally-induced contradiction between expectations and the consequences of
behaviour resulting from them” (13). This means that a policy that is tailored
to generate outcomes that are in line with a set of expectations produces
contradictory results. The key feature of paradoxes is that they are typically
unsolvable; decision makers cannot afford to pursue different policies even if
they know that the consequences of the policies they do pursue are the opposite
of those they want to accomplish. To avoid paradoxes, decision makers need to
revise the entire logical system upon which a policy relies – including
reassessment of their objectives, the underlying assumptions, and the logical
connexions between goals and policies. Implementations of a policy that is
paradoxical in nature would yield adverse results almost by definition.
Identifying a paradoxical policy is therefore an important issue in evaluating
it.
v) Analysis of direct
outcomes and side effects.
Identifying the outcomes of the policy is probably
the most important operation of the evaluation process. Part of this step is
straightforward: policy outcomes are defined in terms of the parameters of the
problem that the policy was designed to solve and in terms of the policy
objectives. Did the policy reduce the manifestation of the problem, its
magnitude, severity, or frequency? Did the policy accomplish the goals it was
designed to achieve? This, in essence, is the before-after comparison. Positive
results – that is, the parameters of the problem after the implementation of
the policy are less severe than before – suggest that the policy was not a bad
one. It may not have been the best policy (because we did not compare its
results to the results of other policies that have not been applied), but it
certainly is not a deficient policy. Likewise, if the before-after comparison
yields negative results – the policy did not accomplish its objectives or the
parameters of the problem did not change for the better or have ever gotten
worse – then the policy is problematic. This is so even though it may have been
a better policy than any conceivable alternative.
Side effects are more difficult to identify and
evaluate. It is more difficult to establish a direct connexion between a given
outcome and a policy if this outcome was not part of the problem that the
policy was supposed to address. Likewise, if a given outcome is not a direct
part of the intended policy objectives, it is not immediately obvious that it
was affected by the policy. Nevertheless, in many situations it is possible to
identify a causal link between a policy and an outcome, even if it had not been
intended. This is so if policymakers or scholars who study the policy establish
such a link in their statements and writings. In this case, the evaluation is
done in terms of the effect this outcome has on the general goals of the
decision makers. An outcome may be termed good or bad not in terms of the
direct objectives assigned to the policy (otherwise it would not be identified
as a side effect); rather, it may be evaluated in terms of more general
objectives, such as Security, Peace, Welfare, and economic stability.
The key problem in this analysis of outcomes concerns
possible discrepancies between the direct outcomes of the policy and its side
effects. If the direct outcomes and the side effects of the policy point to the
same direction (both are positive and both are negative), then this problem of
evaluating this policy does not arise. Yet, in many cases, a policy may have
positive results, in that it accomplishes its goals and/or remedies the problem
it was designed to solve. At the same time it generates side effects that are
negative. Conversely, a policy may have negative results in terms of the
problems it was designed to solve, but it has positive side effects. How do we
evaluate the outcomes of this policy? There is no simple answer to that
question. Any physician who prescribes a medicine that has side effects needs
to grapple with this kind of dilemma. The rule of thumb in this kind of
situation is to prescribe the less damaging treatment overall. If the direct
outcomes of a policy were more substantial in terms of their impact on the
goals of the decision makers than the side effects, then the direct outcomes
offset the side effects. And if the side effects were more substantial than the
direct outcomes, then the side effects offset the direct outcomes. The idea
then is to subtract the value of the side effects from the value of the direct
results of the policy. Net evaluation therefore is based on this difference
between direct and indirect policy outcomes (weighted – of course – by the
relative importance of each of the policy outcomes.)
vi) Assessment of general
tendencies and trends.
Since I am concerned here with several policy issues,
I identify common denominators across different policies. While the evaluation
is done with respect to each policy taken in isolation, I identify common
patterns across policies. If such common denominators exist, and if they are
related to common policy problems, then we may well be dealing with structural
policy hazards. A remedy for a given policy would probably not be effective as
a systemic corrective Mechanism; the system as a whole must be somehow
reformed. If, however, no general trend exists, then each set of problems on a
given policy requires a specific solution that is custom tailored to the
specific issue area in which they arise.
This approach could be applied systematically if a
policy is in place for a long time and if it is applied in a fairly consistent
manner. Several policies that are discussed in this book render themselves to a
more analytic application of such an evaluation: Israel’s Nuclear Policy, Israel’s
use of limited Force, Israel’s Peace diplomacy, and Israel’s covert
intervention in Arab affairs. In other cases a more limited evaluation will be
attempted, because policies have been more ad hoc in nature and their results
differed from one case to another. Nevertheless, the general approach outlined
previously will be applied to all policies and events discussed in this book.
In some cases – for example, in the case of Israeli covert diplomacy of
intervention in the internal affairs of Arab States or in the case of Israel’s
Peace diplomacy – I will offer specific evaluation criteria as I discuss these
policies.
4.2. The Strategic
perspective versus the historical perspective
I have already mentioned briefly the differences
between the strategic perspective and the historical perspective, but it is
important to elaborate on the general approach I take in this study. We must
differentiate the strategic approach I take in this study. We must
differentiate the strategic approach from the historical perspective that many
analysts have used, even when their studies attempted explanation rather than
description. The strategic approach that I employ in this study uses History in
a somewhat roundabout and perhaps devious manner. Historians attempt to
understand what happened in terms of the perspective of the participants in the
events and processes they study. In a manner of speaking, a good historian
identifies with his or her characters. The better the ability to identify and
“enter into the mind” of one’s characters, the more accurate and genuine the
historical account. For a historian there is no counterfactual Reality (except
if the characters had considered alternative Realities in their discussions and
writings); he or she sees only what the characters taking part in the events
saw.
A good historian does not judge his or her
characters; he or she must understand them. This is so even if the values,
visions, aspirations, and beliefs of the characters are fundamentally different
from those of the historian. A good historical analysis is not only one in
which the cast of characters is authentic; it is one that captures the “spirit
of the time,” the mood, the mentality, the way of thinking, and the social
atmosphere that engulfs the characters. In a manner of speaking, a good
historian creates both authentic characters and authentic scenes. It is
typically not acceptable to judge characters in terms of values, principles,
and standards that are not part of the period or of the environment in which
they lived and operated. A good historical analysis may be critical of the
characters included in it. However, this criticism must be based on an
understanding of the beliefs, values, and information available to the
characters and on the spirit of the time. The principal goal of the historian
is to understand what happened and why.
In contrast, the principal goal of the strategist is
to derive lessons from what has happened in the past in order to improuve or
change behaviour in the future. The strategist plays the role of a monday
morning quarterback or of a coach who looks at a video of a football game to
learn the mistakes of the teams. The strategist attempts to understand not only
what the cast of characters knew, believed, thought, and wanted and how these
things were translated into action. He or she must also understand what it was
they should have known, how they should have considered their Reality, and how
they should have acted. The strategist must impose the wisdom of hindsight to
derive lessons, thus constantly criticising, judging, and evaluating the actual
behaviour of the characters.
The historian’s insights can extend only as far as
the documents allow him or her to go. He or she is not supposed to make
inferences on the basis of things that were not said or written. The strategist
cannot work without written or verbal documentation of events, but he or she is
not bound by them. Strategic analysis requires moving beyond the available
documentation; it requires making inferences on the basis of the evidence that
goes beyond the evidence. The strategist must figure out not only what happened
but also what did not happen and what should or could have happened had people
acted differently. The historian cannot be diverted by counterfactuals; the
strategist cannot do without them. Clearly, the task of the strategist is far
more complicated and tricky than that of the historian, because the strategist
must impose some basic assumptions in the analysis that the historians need not
use. For example, strategic analysis must rely on the assumption of
rationality. This does not mean that strategists assume that political and
military decision makers are invariably rational. Rather, strategists must
assume that rationality is a normative benchmark for evaluating actual
behaviour (Maoz 1990b, 5-6, 327-29). Examining actual behaviour in terms of
whether and to what extent it deviated from what should have been the rational
behaviour helps the strategist in the task of policy evaluation. It serves as a
foundation for policy prescriptions that are based on the analysis of
historical events and processes.
Finally, for the historian time moves in a linear
sequence, from the more remote past to the more recent past (and in some cases
to the present). The timeline of the historical narrative is an important
element in the explanation of events; the order of things is a key determinant
of cause and effect. For the strategist, the order of things may sometimes be
reversed. Very often, the last event is the first thing that the strategist
examines, because this tends to be the outcome, just as the end of the game is
the starting point of the coach’s or the analyst’s examination. The strategist
often works backward, from the last to the first event. The portrayal of
events, the linkages between them, and the outcomes to which they lead may
often be used by the strategist to uncover unseen patterns, goals,
considerations, and complex – sometimes paradoxical – relationships between
intentions and outcomes. In some of the chapters, I challenge the more
conventional explanations of certain historical events by using this kind of
approach. I show that it is unlikely that decision makers pursued certain goals
or strategies – typically attributed to them in historical anlysis – given the
kind of behaviour they displayed. Starting from these discrepancies, I
reconstruct different goals or strategies that make more sense given the
observed behaviour, and I show a better consistency between these hidden goals
or agendas and behavioural patterns.
Embedding an evaluative perspective within a
strategic conception make this study particularly complex and controversial. I
evaluate several things that are bound to raise questions. First, I question
the goals of the decision makers. Historians that rely solely on available
documentation may miss some hidden goals because they are not expressed in
writing or in oral addresses. The strategic approach and the assumption of some
level of rationality – at least in the sense that decision makers consistently
try to match policy with some objectives – establish some logical grounds by
which I can challenge expressed motives and goals in a way that historians
might find it difficult to do. Second, I question the notion of uniqueness of
explanations. The fact that a given behaviour has a good explanation in terms
of the prevailing circumstances and the ad hoc Calculus of decision makers does
not make this explanation sufficient or even best. If a pattern of behaviour is
repeated across issue areas and circumstances, then a more general explanation
is required. Of course, not all behaviour assumes generalisable patterns. And
even things that may appear to be part of a pattern may be just a random set of
discrete events. But there is reason to suggest that patterns are observed due
to some more general processes and considerations. In trying to trace patterns
and explain them in more general terms I depart from the historical analysis
yet again by building bridges across events, issue areas, policy domains, and
time periods. These bridges allow me to make some general observations about
the structure and process of Israel’s national Security and Foreign Policy.
Hopefully, these observations, even if they turn out to be controversial, may
inspire debate and discussion among both interested observers and professional
participants.
A word about data sources is essential. The study
relies on a number of data sets that were compiled by the project Quantitative History of the
Arab-Israeli Conflict (QHAIC), which I developed when I served as head
of the Jaffee Center
of Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Additional data that I have
used are referenced by their sources. Much of the actual material I use and
most of the discussion in the book are based on historical material, primary
and secondary sources. The nature of the issues I discuss in this book is such
that the analysis is necessarily case based and qualitative. In some instances,
however, I rely on quantitative data. These data help shed more systematic
light on the substantive points that are based on a more traditional
qualitative analysis. More sophisticated analyses of some of the policies
discussed in this book will appear in journal articles.
A final methodological note concerns objectivity.
Readers of the following chapters will undoubtedly discover that Israeli
policies are sharply criticised. Evidence of both
deliberate aggressive designs and deficient policies that are due to
incompetence and folly is amply provided in the following pagees. Since
much of the book is centered on the Arab-Israeli conflict, one may justly ask,
What about the Arabs? Isn’t it possible that, however problematic Israel’s
policies have been, much of what happened over the course of the Arab-Israeli
conflict is due to far more incompetent, aggressive, and short-sighted policies
of the Arab States and the Palestinians? It is impossible to provide a truly
objective evaluation of Israel’s policies without addressing the interactions
between these policies and the policies employed by the Arab States and the
Palestinians. A book that evaluates just Israeli policies without attempting to
evaluate the other side is not only unfair; it is scientifically suspicious
because it provides a one-sided picture of Reality.
There is no question – at least in my mind – that the
Arabs have been far more incompetent, short sighted, and malicious than have
been the Israelis. In fact, I repeatedly make this argument throughout the
book. In chapter 13, I show the effect of the malice, folly, and incompetence
of Arab leaders on Arab States and Societies and argue that much of Israel’s
success in State building was due to Arab folly and incompetence. This,
however, does not diminish the responsibility of Israel for its own policies.
On the contrary, it makes Israel’s mistakes more pronounced. It is one thing to
make bad Security policy when you confront a highly competent and resourceful
adversary. In such cases, at least some of the blame can be attributed not to
your incompetence but to the adversary’s behaviour. But
if policies are bad in the face of incompetent adversaries, then there is
something seriously wrong with them. Playing against a strong and
competent football team with a strong defence would cause even a highly skilled
offence to fumble the ball or be intercepted. A good offence on the opponent
side would penetrate even a competent defensive side. Yet, fumbling the ball
and throwing interceptions against a weak defence or letting a weak offensive
rival gain significant yardage suggests significant problems in one’s game,
even if our side won.
More important, Arab mistakes do not explain why
Israeli policies were deficient across so many issue areas and why these
deficient policies are not fixed and thus recur despite clearly adverse
results. I will come back to these points towards the end of the book. At this
point, however, it is important to acknowledge the limitation of this analysis
– due to its focus on Israeli policies and its limited treatment of Arab
policies. It is also imperative that we make it clear that Arab folly cannot
absolve Israeli decision makers from responsibility for their mistakes and for
repeating these mistakes so many times and across so many issues.
5. An Overview of the book
This book focuses on several key questions that
address various aspects of Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy.
i) What are the key characteristics of the Israeli
use of - massive and limited – force? What
were the objectives underlying the policies of military force? What functions
did various strategies of using Force serve? have the objectives of various
strategies of high-intensity conflict and LIC been accomplished? What accounts
for the pattern and outcome of Israeli strategies of using military Force?
ii) What were the goals of Israel’s Nuclear Policy? What
was the underlying strategic Logic behind the development of Israel’s nuclear
weapons and the policy of nuclear ambiguity? To what extent where these goals
accomplished? What are the – intended and unintended – strategic implications
of this policy?
iii) What is the pattern of Israeli covert and overt
intervention in the internal affairs of the Arab States and the Palestinians?
What functions were these interventions intended to serve? Did they accomplish
their intended objectives?
iv) What are the principal characteristics of
Israel’s Peace diplomacy over time? Has Israel – as its leaders claimed –
persistently extended its hand for Peace only to be repeatedly rejected by the
Arabs? Has
Israel been as daring in its Peace diplomacy as it has been in its military
strategy, or has Israel been risk averse when it comes to negotiating Peace
agreements that entail Security risks? What factors account for the
principal characteristics of Israel’s policy?
v) Are there structural similarities across different
areas of policy? Are the key patterns of the Israeli use of Force and their
underlying reasons similar to those that characterise Israel’s overt and covert
diplomacy? Are there structural factors that explain similar patterns of behaviour
in different areas of policy? If so, what are these factors?
vi) If significant problems are identified in
Israel’s national Security and Foreign Policy, how can we account for Israel’s
successful performance in military, economic, and social affairs despite
enormous Security challenges?
vii) What are the implications of these patterns in
Israel’s national Security and Foreign Policy for the future of the Middle East
and for Israel’s place in the region?
The book is divided into five parts that address
these questions. Part I – the present chapter – lays out the foundations of the
analysis. What follows is a brief outline of the contents and key themes of
this book.
5.1. Part II: The Use of
force
Part II discusses the Logic,
pattern, process, and implications of the Israeli use of Force over time. The major theme is
that most of the Wars in which Israel was involved were the result of
deliberate Israeli aggressive design, flawed decision making, or flawed
conflict management strategies or were avoidable. Israel’s War Experience is
a story of folly, recklessness, and selfmade traps. None of the Wars – with a possible
exception of the 1948 War of Independence – was what Israel refers to as
Milhemet ein Brerah (“war of necessity”). They were all Wars of choice or Wars
of folly. Israel’s limited use of Force strategy emphasised
escalation dominance and excessive Force. This policy was also largely
ineffective. In some cases it caused major escalation, while in other cases it
did not prevent Terrorism or LIC. Despite this tragic Experience, no
self-inspection took place in Israeli Security Policy. Many cases of both
high-intensity conflict and LIC were due to mismanagement at both the military
and the political level, reflected lack of proper political oversight over the
actions of the IDF, and avoided a sober assessment of the benefits and
liabilities of the excessive reliance on military Force to manage the conflict
with the Arabs.
Chapter 2 examines the
origins of the 1956 Sinai War. This War was the result of the persistent
drive of Ben-Gurion and Dayan to a second confrontation with the Arabs. The Sinai
War was unavoidable because Israel sought every avenue to start a War. Domestic
opposition – principally Moshe Sharett – prevented the initiation of a War
sooner. Once Sharett was remouved from office, there was no domestic opposition
to the War coalition in the Cabinet and the IDF. Nasser helped Israel by
providing it with both a strategic pretext (i.e., the Egyptian-Soviet weapons
deal of September 1955) and a diplomatic pretext (i.e., the nationalisation of
the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956) that enabled the collusion with France and
Britain. The aim of the War was none of the official reasons given by Israel.
Rather, it had been the overthrow of Nasser and the rearrangement of the Middle
East. In this regard, the operation backfired.
Chapter 3 focuses on the
causes and course of the Six Day War of 1967. It discusses three
“conventional” explanations of the outbreak of the Six Day War. The domestic
Politics explanation focuses on internal determinants of the israeli, syrian,
and egyptian policies that brought about the crisis and led to its escalation.
The inadvertent War explanation focuses on the dynamics of mutual deterrence
and crisis management that have been applied to avoid War but have backfired. The
psychological slippery slope explanation focuses on the emotional and cognitive
aspects of crisis decision making in Cairo and in Jerusalem, arguing that
stress, wishful thinking, and misperception drove the parties into a War nobody
wanted. In contrast to these explanations, I argue that the origins of the War
can be found in Israeli adventurist policy vis-à-vis Syria, the lack of proper
political control over the military, and domestic political competition in
Israel. These same factors put enormous pressure on the Government during the
crisis and the War itself, bringing about a process of unwanted escalation and
expansion of the War beyond the original intentions of the political elites.
The implications of these events have been far reaching in terms of the
Arab-Israeli conflict to the very day.
Chapter 4 examines the
War of Attrition of 1969-70. It traces the origins of the War to two
principal factors: the Israeli decision to deploy its forces on, and prohibit
shipping in, the Suez Canal and the lack of interest in a political settlement
following the Arab summit in Khartoum. Despite the fact that Nasser did plan
for and consciously decided on a War of attrition by mid-1968, Israel’s
deployment along the canal and its excessive use of Force caused this War to
exact heavy costs from both Israel and Egypt and brought Israel to a head-on
collision with Soviet soldiers, eventually driving it to an uneasy cease-fire.
In this chapter I also evaluate the Israeli policy of deep penetration bombing
in the context of the prevalent tendency of Israeli strategy to overreact to
uses of Force by the Arabs. I argue that this approach was especially
self-deceiving. Not only did it cause major escalation of the War, but it also
generated a false sense that this campaign compelled Egypt into accepting the
cease-fire, thereby enhancing Israeli deterrence. In fact, it caused just the
opposite.
Chapter 5 examines the
1973 Yom Kippur War. [The day of atonement.] If there was an unnecessary
and avoidable War in the Middle East, the Yom Kippur War was it. This is a
prime example of where a little bit of diplomatic foresight and a little less
political and military arrogance could have prevented the most severe War in
the Middle East since 1948. This chapter does not discuss the diplomatic fiasco
in failing to prevent the War (this is discussed in chap. 10). Rather, it focuses
on the confusion and mismanagement of Israeli military strategy after the War
of Attrition. The leading theme in the extant literature on the War is that the
key folly in this War, from an Israeli perspective, was a major intelligence
failure. In contrast, I argue that the key Israeli faults were in trying to
fight the old War under entirely different strategic, topographic, and
political conditions. The IDF failed in understanding the doctrine of the
egyptians and syrians, failed to apply its own operational plans, and misused
its air Force during the first few days of the War. Had it not been for major
political blunders by the egyptian and syrian leaders and for the support of
the United States, Israel would have suffered a humiliating defeat. Even so, the
costs of War were far higher than they should have been had Israel used its
strategy properly and its forces effectively.
Chapter 6 focuses on
Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon and the long-term Occupation of parts of this
country over the 1982-2000 period. This War was the outgrowth of a grand
design of Ariel Sharon that sought to kill four birds with one War: first, to
destroy the political and military capacity of the [] (PLO) so as to kill
nationalist Palestinian sentiments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; second, to
humiliate and defeat the syrian Forces in Lebanon and to drive them out of that
country; third, to create a christian-dominated State in Lebanon that would,
forth, sign a Peace treaty with Israel. I trace the evolution of the grand
scheme from its beginning to the tragic conclusion of the unilateral Israeli
withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. I examine the manner in which Sharon
manipulated the Cabinet as well as the entire Israeli Society into a deep and
long-lasting trap. I analyse the process of entrapment in the lebanese swamp
and the establishment of the Security zone in southern Lebanon. This process of
entrapment was facilitated by the evolution of an Ideology led by the IDF
regarding the strategic importance of the Security zone. Finally, I discuss how
a process started by a nonpartisan group of Knesset members, as well as a small
pressure group of several women, brought about a withdrawal from Lebanon
despite the resistance of the IDF. I examine why the political and social
systems of oversight and control failed to save Israel from the long-term
proceess of entrapment and the repeated military failures in Lebanon.
Chapter 7 examines the
strategic and tactical Logic of (Israel’s) neverending struggle against
terrorists and guerillas. [It’s a part of imperialmentality that it doesn’t
fucking register.] It focuses on several facets of this policy: limited
military actions against Arab States, LIC in a context of guerilla War, the
struggle against Terrorism, and strategies for dealing with mass protests by
Palestinians. I first discuss the evolution Israel’s limited conflict
strategies over time. On the basis of this discussion the chapter offers a
critical examination of the effectiveness of these policies and their
political, Moral, and strategic ramifications. I argue that many of these
policies have been notoriously unsuccessful yet most of them continue to be
employed by force of inertia. The most effective measures were the least
popular ones, and the most popular measures, which entailed excessive use of
Force and punishment, turned out to be the least effective ones. I examine the
different functions of limited use of Force policies, arguing that in many
cases limited Force strategies were used to foster escalation and to bring
about high-intensity shooting Wars. In other cases, the mismanagement of limited
engagements resulted in inadvertent escalation to full-blown Wars. The factors
that motivated Israeli uses of limited Force were varied, and many of them
involved domestic political and social considerations.
5.2. Part III: Israel’s
nuclear policy
Chapter 8 evaluates
Israeli Nuclear Policy from its inception to the present. Most students
of this policy rated it as an unqualified strategic success. Specifically, the
policy is is said to have effectively deterred an all-out Arab attack, while
the posture of nuclear ambiguity allowed Israel to maintain strong strategic
ties with the United States and to fend off pressures for joining the [] (NPT)
regime. In addition, the policy is said to have generated two positive side
effects. First, it is thought to have effected a shift in Arab operational
planning from general to limited war scenarios. Second, it is considered to
have been instrumental in bringing the Arab States to direct negotiations and
to Peace agreements with Israel.
My analysis suggests that the
evidence upon which these arguments rely is tenuous at best. Israel’s Nuclear
Policy did not deter the Arabs from attacking it; nor is there evidence that it
imposed limitations on Arab operational planning. Finally, both Israel’s
cumulative conventional deterrence and – more important – increased Israeli
flexibility following the Yom Kippur War were far more significant factors in
the Arab-Israeli Peace process than Israel’s Nuclear Policy. On the other hand,
Israel’s Nuclear Policy had several adverse side effects. First, it was a major
factor in accelerating a conventional arms race and in igniting a
nonconventional arms race in the Middle East. Second, the regime of secrecy
surrounding it prevents an open and reasoned debate about its stabilising and
destabilising features. In sum, the balance sheet of Israel’s Nuclear Policy
appears to be negative rather than positive. In light of this evidence I argue
that Israel should use its Nuclear Policy as an important bargaining chip in
bringing about a weapons of mass destruction free zome (WMDFZ) in the Middle
East, in the context of a comprehensive regional security regime.
5.3. Part IV: Foreign
Policy: Shadow and open diplomacy
Chapter 9 examines
Israeli intervention in intra-Arab affairs. Israeli intervention in the
internal affairs of other Arab States and the Palestinians has been quite
frequent and has taken on many forms over the years. Yet this policy has not
been systematically explored within the more general context of this nation’s
Security Policy. The chapter reviews the Logic underlying the policy of
clandestine and overt intervention in the internal affairs of Arab States. It
examines the History of these efforts since the 1953-54 “mishap” – the
activation of a spy network in Egypt in an effort to sabotage the British
intention to pull its forces from Egypt – to the efforts to suppress Hamas
following the Oslo Accords (1993-2000). I review the underlying Logic of action
in each of these cases and the implications of interventionist policies for
Israeli-Arab relations and for Israel’s Security. The argument is that this
interventionist policy was pursued persistently despite the fact that noe one
instance contributed significantly to Israel’s Security. On the contrary, in
most cases the policy of intervention backfired, damaging Israeli-Arab relations,
and even resulted in unintended consequences directly opposite to those
intended. The implications of these arguments for Israel’s future Security
policy are examined in the concluding section.
Chapter 10 examines
Israeli Peace diplomacy as a series of missed opportunities. I argue
that over time Israel was as responsible for the lack of Peace with Arab States
as were the Arabs themselves. In the process, Israel has been gradually been
forced to accept agreements that it could have accepted at lower cost and under
better terms than it did eventually. I review a number of Peace-related
opportunities ranging from the Zionist-Hashemite collusion in 1947 through the
collapse of the Oslo process in 2000. In all those cases I find that Israeli
decision makers – who had been willing to embark upon bold and daring military
adventures – were extremely reluctant to make even the smallest concessions for
peace, sometimes insisting on minor and insignificant issues to the point where
such stubborn positions brought about the collapse of carefully designed Peace
processes. I also find that in many cases Israel was engaged in systematic
violations of agreements and tacit understandings between itself and its
neighbours. The factors that are responsible for those missed opportunities are
largely the same as those responsible for those missed opportunities are
largely the same as those responsible for all other aspects of Israeli
policies: structural barriers that accord to military considerations a
significant priority over diplomatic ones, fundamental psychological barriers
that cause both leaders and the public to vacillate between paranoia and
arrogance, improvisation at the expense of strategic thinking, lack of
political control over military strategy, and the excessive influence of
Militarisme on Israeli diplomatic thinking.
5.4. Part V: Causes and
implications of the mismanagement of national Security and Foreign Policy
Chapter 11 analyses the
structural aspects of Foreign and Security Policy-making in Israel as one of
the central explanations of the patterns of Israeli policymaking in national
Security and Foreign affairs. I focus on the effect of formal and
informal structural factors on the making of Israel’s policy. Security Policy
has consistently dominated Foreign Policy. In virtually every major decision
process, Security considerations superseded diplomatic considerations. The only
organisation with a discipline of staff work is the IDF. All other organisation
with a discipline of staff work is the IDF. All other organisations involved in
the making of Foreign and Security Policy – the Foreign Ministry, the Defence
Minsitry, and even the Treasury (which has a very effective staff on every
subject except defence matters) – have traditionally relied on the IDF staff
work. I examine the formal and informal Mechanisms that are supposed to oversee
and evaluate national Security Policy, including the Knesset, the judiciary,
and the National Security Council (NSC), and find that they have consistently
failed in their mission.
The dominance of the Security establishment in
Israeli political affairs is reviewed through the analysis of the excessive
involvement of former military personnel in almost every aspect of Israeli
political, social, and economic life. An “old boys’ network’ was formed within
the Israeli political elite, composed of former Generals who have entered
political life across the entire left-right continuum. Despite the significant
political and Ideological differences among its members, this network is
characterised by a shared set of basic political and military beliefs – which
largely follow Ben-Gurion’s strategic Philosophy. Most of them accept the
important role of the IDF in Israeli Society; they generally support a fairly
free hand to the IDF on budgetary and [] (R&D) matters, as well as on
matters of deterrence and the development and acquisition of WMDs. Efforts at
establishing informal institutions that would oversee Security and Foreign
Policy, or that would offer an alternative public discourse of these policies,
have been largely unsuccessful. This chapter sums up the structural implications
of the empirical analyses in parts II-IV of the book and concludes that the
basic rigidity of Israeli Security and Foreign Policy will continue as long as
no fundamental shift takes place in the formal and informal structure of the
machinery that produces such policies.
Chapter 12 reviews the
findings of the study. It examines how plausible the axioms were that
form the basis of Israel’s Security doctrine and the basic tenets of this
doctrine that were outlined in this present chapter. It examines how plausible
the axioms were that form the basis of Israel’s Security doctrine and the basic
tenets of this doctrine that were outlined in this present chapter. It lays out
the key problems we have uncovered in Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy. On
the basis of these findings, the chapter concludes by discussing possible
reforms in the structure, process, and substance of Israeli Foreign and
Security regime that may move Israel toward a more rational and adaptive
future.
Chapter 13 examines a key
puzzle that emerges from this critical analysis of Israel’s national Security
and Foreign Policy. An objective view of basic data concerning Israel
would almost certainly describe the country as an unqualified success story: It
started out as a Society of about 650.000 jews and was born into a War that
killed 1 percent of its Jewish population. Over time, however, Israel increased
its population tenfold and was converted into a modern democratic, economically
prosperous, militarily powerful, and technologically sophisticated Society.
Israel won four major Wars against considerably more powerful enemies. Its per
capita income is four times the average per capita income in the Middle East.
Its armed Forces are considered to be among the most efficient and powerful of
all the world’s Armies. And it was able to maintain an open, democratic, and
pluralistic political community in spite of the external threats. Yet the book’s
argument is that Israeli Security and Foreign Policy has had numerous problems,
that it has been run by many incompetent individuals and rigid organisations,
and that this rigid structure has been responsible for quite a few fiascos and
has generated many unintended results that carried significant ramifications.
If that is the case, then how can we account for the Israeli success story?
The answer to this question is threefold. First,
despite numerous blunders, Israel was able to flourish because its opponents
were far less competent – or far more incompetent and corrupt – than the
Israeli elite. While the Israeli elite used the Arab-Israeli conflict as a
Mechanism for State building and social integration within a democratic system,
Arab elites used the Arab-Israeli conflict as a Mechanism for maintaining
authoritarian control and for perpetuating social and economic
underdevelopment. Even the more progressive and daring Arab leaders in terms of
Arab-Israeli Peace (e.g., Sadat, Hassan of Morocco, King Hussein of Jordan, and
Yasir Arafat) have maintained a closed, highly hierarchical, and largely
corrupt political and economic system, thus preventing it from properly reaping
the economic and social fruits of Peace. This duality has exacerbated the political
and economic problems of the Arab regimes, thus rendering the Israeli success
story especially spectacular in comparison to the Poverty, Corruption,
underdevelopment, and lack of political and social Freedom in the Arab world.
Second, for much of Israel’s History, continued
conflict with the Arabs had important benefits for the development of the
country. It enabled the ruling elite to use – and even to cultivate – the state
of continued conflict as a Mechanism for forging a fairly unified Society and to
use the IDF as a basic Mechanism for socialisation and politicisation of the
Israeli public. It also allowed this elite to shove under the rug a large
number of social, economic, and ethnic problems that arose from the immigrant
and multiethnic structure of the Society. The continued state of conflict
allowed the elite to extract extremely high material and human resources for
national goals from the population and to justify policies of exploitation on
the one hand and of selective Preferentialism on thhe other. However, when the
costs of conflict became too high to absorb, the elites shifted toward more
peaceful policies. Once the Peace process started, many underlying social and
political tensions began to surface. With the economic benefits of Peace came
the social, economic, and political calls for Equality among different Israeli
sectors as well as among Arab Jews.
Third, a deeper examination of the “Israeli success
story” reveals not only that Israel’s economic, social, and educational
performance was suboptimal but that it deteriorated over time. Israel’s
economic growth is slow compared to both most advanced industrialised Societies
and comparable Societies that also live under a severe Security threat – such
as Taiwan, south Korea, and Singapore. Israel’s educational system is rapidly
deteriorating at the elementary and secondary school levels. Israel’s
infrastructure is also in a state of rapid decay. While there is clearly no
direct effect of conflict on these processes of relative decline, the indirect
effects are significant and increasing. This chapter explores the
interrelationships between Security Policy and Social Policy in Israel and
discusses the implications of the tensions between the two.
Chapter 14 concludes this
study by offering an analysis of where Israel may be going in the future.
It outlines four scenarios. These scenarios are neither mutually exclusive nor
do they exhaust all possible worlds. The future may also entail sequential
movement from one scenario to the other(s).
i) Escalation scenario
This scenario envisions a possible escalation and expansion
of Israeli-Palestinian or Israeli-Syrian conflicts, the militarisation of
conflicts between Israel and outer-ring States such as Iran, or the emergence
of radical islamic regimes in one or more Israel’s immediate neighbours. A
possible evolution of this kind would entail the outbreak of regional Wars and
the possible use of WMDs. This scenario carries major adverse military,
economic, social, and political consequences for States in the region and for
the international community as a whole.
ii) Conflict unending
scenario
This scenario envisions a
continued state of conflict between Israel and its neighbours but one that
simmers rather than explodes. Crises and possibly limited Wars may continue to
erupt sporadically, with growing costs to both sides. Repeated clashes raise
basic dilemmas and risks to all actors in the region, as well as to Europe, the
United States, and east Asia, yet international efforts at resolving the conflict
are unsuccessful.
iii) Cold Peace scenario
This scenario envisions limited and partial
settlements between Israel and the Palestinians and/or between Israel and Syria
and Lebanon. However, significant issues or other conflicts are not resolved.
Other regional problems such as economic underdevelopment, demographic
pressure, environmental decay (particularly water), regime stability, and arms
control and regional Security agreements are not addressed. Each one of these
issues may give rise to new conflicts that may either reopen underlying
tensions or reverse previous Peace efforts.
iv) Regional Peace
scenario
A comprehensive process of regional, bilateral, and
domestic change takes place in the Middle East. This process entails resolution
of most or all outstanding international conflict in the region. Regional and
extraregional actors engage in a process of establishing a set of regional
institutions designed to foster cooperation and joint problem solving on
security, economic, social, and environmental affairs.
This chapter outlines the main characteristics of
these scenarios, the conditions leading to each, and their implications for the
region and for the international community. It also discusses the implications
of each scenario for Israel’s Security and economic well-being. This chapter
concludes by addressing how Israel could help avoid the more dangerous
scenarios and increase the probability of the more favourable scenarios and
identifies avenues of future research on Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy.
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