Israel's Warlords
How the Military Rules in War and Peace
Article Summary and Author Biography
Two new books lament the outsized role of the military in Israeli national security decisionmaking, blaming the generals for favoring force over diplomacy. But the military has sometimes been a force for peace and moderation, and in truth the persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the result of far more than just Israel's bureaucratic politics.
ALUF BENN is Editor in Chief of Haaretz. Follow him on Twitter @alufbenn.
Former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion speaks with Israeli Major General Ariel Sharon in January, 1971. (Lucy Nicholson / Courtesy Reuters)
Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country -- and Why They Can't Make Peace
BY PATRICK TYLER. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012, 576 pp. $35.00.
Zion's Dilemmas: How Israel Makes National Security Policy
BY CHARLES D. FREILICH. Cornell University Press, 2012, 336 pp. $49.95.
In the early afternoon of November 14, 2012, an Israeli drone hovered over the Gaza Strip and zeroed in on its target: Ahmed al-Jabari, the military leader of Hamas. A precise missile strike blew up his car, leaving him and his fellow passenger dead. The assassination, which followed two Palestinian cross-border attacks in the previous days, marked the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense, an intense weeklong campaign of Israeli air strikes on Gaza. Those were matched by a barrage of some 1,500 rockets that Hamas and other Palestinian organizations fired on Israeli cities.
Several hours before his fateful road trip, Jabari had received the final draft of a proposal for a long-term cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, mediated by an Israeli peace activist with ties to Hamas and Egyptian intelligence officials. Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak (and possibly also its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu), was aware of the back-channel talks that had led to the offer. But rather than wait for Hamas' response, the leaders instead opted to kill their Palestinian interlocutor and launch a large-scale military operation, believing -- as most of their predecessors had -- that reprisals were the surest way to restore Israel's deterrence and calm the border...
This is a premium article
You must be a logged in Foreign Affairs subscriber to continue reading. If you wish to continue reading this article please subscribe , or activate your online account to get full online access.
