From the burning Middle East

["jonatan Peled" <peled_j at maabarot.org.il>]

From the burning Middle East

Since long time I didn't send you any material about the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and about the two societies. Dozens of e-mail
groupsspread over information and political opinions to millions of people
all over the world, therefore i didn't see any use to be just one more of
this flood. However from time to time, when I believe that it can have some
added value to the general debate about this issue - I still send you
interesting material.

The attached article is a brilliand analization, that gives a sudden
insight to one of the more important aspects of this horrible conflict. I
believe that you will agree with me.

Jonatan Peled




Back to the barracks

Aviad Kleinberg

Haaretz, 27 Sept. 2002

Is there really no one to talk to and do the Arabs really only want to
throw us into the sea? An internal Egyptian army document from 1973 makes
possible an examination of Israel's security-minded policy.

A top secret Egyptian document, which contains instructions that president
Anwar Sadat gave the Egyptian army on October 1, 1973, provides a
perspective on the Egyptians' intentions and on the way they saw Israel.
The document, which was not intended for propaganda purposes but rather for
a very restricted group of decision-makers, also makes possible an
examination of several of the basic assumptions of Israeli
security-mindedness.

In the first section of the order, Sadat enumerates the repeated Egyptian
attempts to arrive at an agreement with Israel, among them the Egyptian
initiative in 1971 for a phased withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, which
would end in a peace agreement. "All of these efforts have been to no
avail. They failed totally or were put off" (by Israel), wrote Sadat.

In the second section, the Israeli strategy as Sadat saw it is discussed:
"The Israeli enemy has chosen a policy that is based on instilling fear, on
the pretension to a superiority that the Arabs will never have a hope of
blocking. The central point in the Israeli security philosophy is to
convince the Egyptians and the Arab nation that there is no point in
challenging Israel and that we have no alternative but to accept Israel's
conditions even if they involve blows to our national sovereignty."

In the third section, Sadat defines the Egyptian policy: "To undermine the
Israeli security philosophy by carrying out a military action in accordance
with the possibilities of the armed forces with the aim of inflicting the
heaviest losses on the enemy and convincing it that its continued
occupation of our lands exacts too high a price, and that its security
philosophy - as it is based on instilling psychological, diplomatic and
military fear - is not a shield of steel that cannot be punctured and can
protect it now and in the future."

In the order there is nothing about wanting to throw the Zionist enemy into
the sea, and the liberation of the occupied territories is mentioned almost
incidentally. The prevailing tone is one of rationalism vis-a-vis Israel's
blind conceptual insensitivity. The limited military move is aimed at
bringing about, according to the order for the action, "an honorable
solution of the Middle East crisis."

The Yom Kippur War should have made Israeli citizens a bit skeptical
concerning the good judgment of the country's leaders. At the tactical
level, the Israeli public did learn to demand an accounting and an
investigation of every operational failure. Bereaved families, journalists
and ordinary citizens want to know why people get killed and do not easily
buy the excuses that are produced by the army. At the strategic level,
however, the Israeli public remains surprisingly and dangerously credulous.
From the moment a leader, even someone from the despised Labor Party, takes
up the reins of government, we respond willingly to every tug on the bit in
our mouth. This people, that is so suspicious and casts doubt on
everything, trusts that its leaders, both civilian and military, know where
they are leading it and that they have a plan of action and not just gut
reactions.

But what should concern us more than the level of maintenance of the
emergency storehouses is the procedure for taking decisions and the
judgment of the ruling elite in Israel. The problem with the Agranat
commission was not just that it refrained from punishing the governing
echelon, but that it refrained from examining the problematic relationship
between the military people and the statesmen with respect to making policy
and military decisions.

Field of action

Israel's security doctrine was shaped in the 1950s and has not changed
significantly even in the wake of the Yom Kippur War and the Lebanon War.
It is based on the assumption that no matter what their open declarations
are, our neighbors are interested in destroying us. Therefore Israel must
maintain a large army that will serve as a deterrent and, in the event of
an attack, will rapidly transfer the fighting into the enemy's territory,
to create a security zone. Israel's huge army is a mechanism that wants to
find a field of action for itself. There is not a self-aware policy here,
but rather a "natural" tendency. Consider, for example, the decisive role
played in 1967 by the GOC Northern Command, David Elazar, to conquer the
Golan Heights from the Syrians. The war with the Syrians was not inevitable
and it was not planned. This was the exploitation of a tactical
opportunity, but also a handy war for an ambitious general who without it
would not have had a chance in the race to the top.

An army has a tendency to see things in black and white. When it does not
relate to the enemy with total disdain, it takes the bleakest view - both
to cover its posterior and to get budgetary funding. The army encourages
military activity because without it, its heads would lose prestige. In a
state where there are good checks and balances, the bleak and nationalist
view taken by the generals is reined in by the politicians. From time to
time it will happen that even a popular general like Douglass MacArthur is
fired by the president. Not in Israel. In Israel, where the generals are
politicians and the politicians that are not generals feel insecure and
lacking in the tools to cope, security-mindedness dictates the agenda. The
state is always in existential danger; the threats are greatly inflated,
legal or illegal military actions (from liquidations and the taking of
hostages to reprisal actions and wars) are presented as existential
necessities. Civilian aspects of national strength (social solidarity,
economic strength, equality, the quality of life) are pushed to the margins
and the enemy undergoes a process of demonization, the aim of which is to
explain why there is no one to talk to and why violence is the only
solution. These assumptions are not subjected to empirical testing. The
success of actions is never measured against the long-term national
interest, conciliatory declarations by the enemy are rejected as lies,
attempts to downsize the army are defined as a threat to the country's
security and economic and social failures are depicted as the necessary
price of security.

The State of Israel tried to follow a different policy toward the
Palestinians, in part because their military strength is almost nil;
however, when this policy encountered difficulties, the defense
establishment hastened to depict the Palestinians as an existential threat
(according to the Chief of Staff Israel is a small state bravely fighting
its war of independence against the huge Palestinian nation that wants to
destroy it). Again we are trying to force an agreement on them by
"instilling psychological, diplomatic and military fear," as Sadat put it.

Anything that threatens this conception (the Arab peace initiative;
conciliatory voices from the Palestinian side; severe and justified
criticism of us) is ignored. Also ignored is the danger that is inherent in
too great a victory that will force it to live alongside a people whose
honor and hope have been taken away from it. Israel's supreme interest is
not breaking the Palestinians, but living honorably alongside them. The war
is not the continuation of the policy, but its failure. Peace ensures our
existence more than any number of Pyrrhic victories and in a democratic
state the place of the army, as Theodor Herzl envisioned, is in the
barracks and not at the helm of government.