|
Israel & the Arab World |
| Reprinted from the Middle East Studies
Association Bulletin, Summer 2002 (with changes in orthography to HTML standards). Copyright 2002 by the Middle East Studies Association of North America |
| The Elections in Israel
1996, edited by Asher Arian and Michal Shamir. 318 pages, index, endnotes, tables, graphs. Albany : State University of New York Press, 1999. $25.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-7914-4238-1 The 1996 elections in Israel marked the beginning of a new era in Israeli politics. A ‘reformed,’ controversial electoral system put in place highlighted the societal cleavages and weakened the stability of the elected government. Six years and three Prime Ministers later, the critics of this system seem to have proven their point. Set out to reduce bargaining and enhance political stability, the new electoral system clearly failed. The former party electoral system was a catalyst of convergence toward the two central large parties. Although it was constantly criticized for fostering an environment conducive for small parties to use bargaining power to their advantage, the new system turned out to be worse. Arian and Shamir’s edited volume, The Elections in Israel 1996, identifies major components of the new political landscape in Israel: group identity, party politics, and candidates’ strategy—all of which were accentuated by the changed electoral system. Voters were allowed for the first time to cast separate ballots for prime minister (PM) and parliamentary party, creating a tendency to resort to a fragmented approach—voting for a PM from one of the two central parties (Labor or Likud) and selecting a narrowly based, partisan party for the Knesset. This approach, labeled by some as ‘sophisticated voting,’ is in fact simply ignorant. By splitting their votes, voters elect a government that is paralyzed and unstable. As Doron and Cook mention (p. 80), the vote for party was authentic, while that for PM was strategic. What this means is that the new Knesset represents more realistically Israeli society and its cleavages, and considering how deep those are, it certainly did not improve stability and free the PM from party bickering and deal-making. As a consequence, party politics have taken a new meaning as well: Labor and Likud, traditionally the pillars of any coalition, have shrunk considerably. In fact, the 1996 election results marked the first time that a PM (Netanyahu) did not belong to the largest elected party (Labor). Moreover, as this volume correctly points out, the candidates running for PM have revised their campaign strategies, becoming more concerned about personal identity than party platforms. Consequently, although they must belong to a party, candidates feel less obliged to it, giving way for political bargaining and further fragmentation. The Elections in Israel 1996 is a comprehensive volume that analyzes the various aspects of the new electoral system and the immediate outcome of the 1996 elections. One of the most important points it raises concerns the fragmented nature of Israeli society. Contrary to Hazan’s conclusions (pp. 163-86) of a shift to the center, in retrospect one can see that the cleavages that exist in Israeli society were reflected in the 1996 Knesset. I argue that there was an illusion of moving toward the center, since the preceding government of PM Rabin was more visionary and to the left of the electorate. Since 1996, we have seen the true nature of Israeli society—confused, nationalist, religious, and right-wing leaning. This is a society with an identity crisis that no electoral system can solve. Ruth Ben-Artzi Columbia University Intermarriage Between Christians and Muslims: A West Bank Study, by Abe W. Ata. 112 pages, bibliography, index. Victoria, Australia: David Lovell Publishing, 2000. (Paper) ISBN 1-86355-076-3 Intermarriage Between Christians and Muslims, a write-up of a sociological survey conducted with 120 individuals from the West Bank living in inter-religious marriages, is itself a follow-up of a similar survey conducted by Ata in 1986 and published as The West Bank Palestinian Family. Being a Palestinian emigré living in Australia, Ata concentrates on the effects such marriages have on communal cohesion within West Bank communities and concerns about the religious loyalties of the external spouse and any children from the marriage. He also explores the effects of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank on the communities, and on individual respondents, and how communal attitudes towards intermarriage have changed, for better and worse. Also examined are the increase in individual choice in marriage partners versus the decline of the arranged marriage, and the changing roles and aspirations of women within Palestinian communities as their communities become less conservative and more tolerant of outside influences. More women than men, for example, convert to their spouse’s religion, meaning that fewer Muslim women marry outside their religion than Christian women. Despite the title, Ata focuses on local Christians and Church issues (such as the continuing emigration of many Christians to Western countries and the perception of local Christian communities as ‘insular’ by other Palestinians) more than Muslims. An experienced and prolific writer, Ata outlines the goals and difficulties of the survey clearly and concisely. In his introduction, Ata explains that he wants to examine the effects that these marriages had on their communities, and that community pressures had on the formation and success (or lack thereof) of inter-religious marriages. The survey sample is admittedly small (though it comprised the bulk of known available respondents). The lack of a comprehensive database or directory for the target communities hampered efforts to find respondents. Also, the emigration rate among interracial couples is greater than among those who marry within their own communities. Many potential respondents have left the country. One major weakness of Intermarriage Between Christians and Muslims is that it loses focus when discussing the data of the study. The actual questions and answers given are not quoted for the most part, appearing only in paraphrased or collated form (usually as pie charts which are difficult to read, though tables at the back replicate this information), or isolated quotes. This structure makes it difficult to form independent judgments from the evidence presented. Some conclusions seem to stretch the available data and Ata’s emphasis on Christian, over Muslim, issues and concerns indicates the presence of some bias. The foreword, preface, and endorsements on the cover indicate that the intended audience for Intermarriage Between Christians and Muslims includes religious minority leaders of communities in Australia, Palestinians living outside of Israel, and scholars of cross-cultural issues. Paula Stiles University of St. Andrews The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide, by Yair Auron. 405 pages, index. Transaction Publishers, 2000. ISBN 1-56000-412-6 Auron has tackled a subject that is delicate, complicated, and politically controversial: the Jewish reaction to, or more specifically the Jewish indifference toward, Armenian suffering. Auron should be congratulated on his scholarly courage, since most scholars have preferred not to touch this subject. The Banality of Indifference is an excellent historical work that should be on the short list of political scientists, students of ethics, and those interested in the current politics of victimhood in general. Auron’s narrative covers the history of Armenian-Jewish political interaction beginning with the rise of Zionism and Armenian nationalism in the late nineteenth century, and ending with the current politics surrounding the recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the US and Israel. New and interesting material is brought to light regarding the early interaction of the two communities in the Ottoman Empire, the views on the Armenian question of Zionist leaders, and the debates in the Jewish press in Palestine following the Armenian massacres of 1894-96 and 1909. There are also fascinating accounts of the efforts to forge a Jewish-Arab-Armenian alliance during World War I mediated by the famous British diplomat Mark Sykes. The overarching conclusion of the book is that the Jewish attitude can be explained by political necessity, which has often overwhelmed the moral imperative of empathizing with the similar tragedy of the Armenians. The Jewish community in Palestine was understandably insecure as a weak minority, reluctant to be too active in protesting against the persecution of Armenians. Nevertheless, Auron argues that some opportunistic behavior cannot be ascribed to fear alone. The examples include the support the Ottoman authorities received from the Jews of Istanbul during one of the massacres of Armenians, who were economic competitors, or the cynical statement of Theodor Herzl that criticism from Armenians would actually help him in his dealings with Sultan Abdul Hamid. Auron also presents considerable evidence of disagreement among Jewish activists, intellectuals, and organizations on the proper attitude or course of action in different periods and on different issues. Zionist leader Bernard Lazzarre, for instance, was opposed to the policy of placating the Sultan and condemned the treatment of the Armenians in harshest terms. A small underground organization that operated in Palestine in the beginning of the twentieth century, the Nili group, was also staunchly pro-Armenian. The most interesting problem in this context is the ongoing intense debate in Israel on what the proper stance on the Armenian Genocide should be. Perhaps the only weakness of this otherwise excellent book is Auron’s insistence that the Holocaust is a unique event in history, even though he argues that Armenian suffering must be recognized and commemorated properly in Israel. Like many others, Auron assumes the uniqueness of the Holocaust rather than providing a careful argument for it. Nor does he say anything about the moral consequences of that claim, which is what is at stake in the politics surrounding the issue. Overall, however, the book’s tone and message clearly run against parochial claims of exclusive victimhood and implausible assertions of moral purity where politics is involved. Arman Grigorian Columbia University The Left and Israel: Party-Policy Change and Internal Democracy, by June Edmunds. xii, 221 pages, appendices, notes and references, bibliography, index. Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press, 2000. $65.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-312-22605-5. Through a case study of changing attitudes toward Israel on the European left since the Second World War, Edmunds seeks to understand the broader process of programmatic change in political parties. In particular, she tries to assess the relative explanatory power of external/environmental factors and intra-party dynamics. Relying on interviews and documentary sources, the author gives a detailed account of the evolution of British Labour Party policy, though for comparative purposes she also takes a briefer look at the British Communist Party and the French Socialist and Communist Parties. The story begins with an attitude of warmth and sympathy for Israel on the part of the socialist parties (apart from a brief British ‘deviation’ in the late 1940s at the urging of Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin) and of opportunistic support by the Communist parties (despite their principled anti-Zionism). The Communists soon changed their posture in keeping with changes in Soviet policy in the Middle East, though they also moderated their ideological rejection of Zionism. The socialists sustained their sympathy for a longer period of time. It began to wane only in the late 1960s, but by the 1980s, important elements in the British and French parties were voicing extremely hostile views and advocating or pursuing hostile policies, a trend which moderated only in the 1990s. Edmunds attributes these changes to a variety of familiar causes: post-Holocaust sympathy for the Jews (coupled with a measure of guilt on the part of Europeans), ideological affinity for Israeli governments in the first three decades of the country’s existence, Israel’s post-1967 policies in the occupied territories and Lebanon, the changing ideological coloration both of Israeli governments and of European socialist parties (which became increasingly receptive to liberationist,’ ‘Third World,’ anti-Americanist, unilateralist, and other ‘loony left’ causes in the 1970s), generational change, raison d’état (the influence of being in government or in opposition), and the changing composition of domestic constituencies (especially the growing number of Muslim and other Afro-Asian voters in Britain and France). Unfortunately, but perhaps unsurprisingly, Edmunds finds it difficult to extract from this mishmash of explanatory variables a persuasive thesis about the impact of internal and external factors on policy change. As she, herself, admits, “this study confirms the view that the two interact so closely that the one cannot be prioritised over the other” (p. 171). Nor can she shed much light on the peculiarities, if any, of the European left. So while the book provides a wealth of information and documentation that will be of considerable interest to students and historians of European policy vis-ŕ-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict, it cannot give much reliable guidance for those seeking to anticipate the future orientation of European socialist and social-democratic parties, either at the national level or in the context of hopes and plans for a Common Foreign and Defense Policy further down the road. Mark A. Heller Tel Aviv University The Open Veins of Jerusalem, edited by Fouad Moughrabi and Munir Akash. 654 pages, notes. Bethesda, MD: Jusoor Books, 1998. $14.00 (Paper) ISBN 0-9652031-2-3 Written in 1997/98, The Open Veins of Jerusalem has become more and more relevant. Following the international community’s marking of Jerusalem as perhaps the most important issue pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict, few other works capture the complexity of this controversial issue. Not only does this volume include a wealth of political analysis, but it is also interspersed with personal testimonies, historical accounts, and poems written in English, Arabic, or French. Like most edited volumes, however, the material is uneven. The anthology touches on a number of timely political themes. Israel Shahak, Jan de Jong, and Ann Lantendresse discuss the relationship of Jews to Jerusalem, and the various contemporary Israeli approaches to addressing the ‘Jerusalem issue.’ Issa Al-Khoury, Fouad Moughrabi, and Issa Boullata write about their childhoods and memories of growing up in the city. Rashid Khalidi, Roger Garaudy, and Naseer Aruri write about the politics and the multicultural nature of the city. Ingrid Jaradat, R. Gustafson, and C. Mallouhi discuss Israel’s systematic policies to ‘Judaize’ the city and rid it of its Christian and Muslim inhabitants. A wealth of poetry is also included in the anthology, among which are poems by Mahmoud Darwish, Adonis, and Naomi Shehab Nye. The most developed debate in the book pertains to the various Israeli proposals to dealing with the ‘final status’ of Jerusalem. In disagreement with the commonly-held belief that all Israelis share the same position on Jerusalem, Shahak, Lantendresse, and de Jong problematize the whole notion of one Jewish or Israeli perspective in relation to Jerusalem. Shahak argues that there are two main approaches to dealing with Jerusalem in Israel: the religious approach and the secular approach. According to Shahak, however, even among the religious sector more than one view exists and some groups are more likely than others to ‘concede’ on Jerusalem. Lantendresse and de Jong put forth some of the proposals under consideration for dealing with the final status of Jerusalem. Both indicate that the Israeli proposals are based more or less on the same principle: participation by Palestinians in the decisionmaking process and relevant local/municipal affairs, but not control over the territory. Variation, however, does exist in terms of administration. According to de Jong, the three models being proposed can be described as shared sovereignty, split sovereignty, and divided sovereignty. These proposals are representative of the current debates in the area. Though these positions and proposals are nothing new to the seasoned regional expert, Shahak, de Jong, and Lantendress are able to break down the issues and present them in a simple and straightforward manner. Aruri and Khalidi perhaps provide the greatest contribution to this anthology by removing Jerusalem from the current diatribe of the fifty-three-year Arab-Israeli conflict and situating it in its five-thousand years of history. The city’s ongoing history of conquest, and religious significance to the three monotheistic religions, undermines all exclusive claims to the city, according to Aruri and Khalidi. To those who are familiar with the Arab-Israeli conflict, this indepth case study of Jerusalem serves as a comprehensive compilation of important source materials. To those less familiar with the conflict, the book provides a wealth of political and historical accounts, humanized by the series of personal testimonies and narratives. The Open Veins of Jerusalem is strongly recommended for anyone who wishes to enhance his/her understanding of why ‘Jerusalem’ is such an issue of controversy in today’s world of politics. Manal Jamal McGill University Muslim-Jewish Encounters: Intellectual Traditions and Modern Politics, edited by Ronald L. Nettler and Suha Taji-Farouki. (Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations) 219 pages, index. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998. $23.00 ISBN 90-5702-196-X The colonization of Palestine by Zionist settlers and its subsequent transformation from a Muslim territory to a Jewish state served, it is argued in this collection of essays, as a provocation which launched an Islamist reconsideration of the Jewish traditions (Isra’iliyat) within the Islamic corpus and a reconstruction of the image of Jews. Broadly, Muslim-Jewish Encounters establishes that the Islamists’ reaction to these events was uniformly hostile and marked by efforts to retrieve both the unadulterated Muslim and the archetypal Jew from the canon and recast the Muslim-Jewish predicament in these terms. Against these unwarranted and intentionally antagonistic stereotypes, a second, more immediate and nuanced commitment—creating an intellectual climate hospitable to the Arab-Israeli peace process—informs the essays in this volume which treat historical events and balance the analysis of explicitly polemical Islamic writing. Nettler’s article on the treatment of the Isra’iliyat by recent Islamist critics uncovers a broad disinclination towards acknowledging the well-established intertwinement of Jewish and Islamic textual sources. Working to isolate complementary traditions, Islamist authors, he contends, dwell on the imputed treacheries of Jews in the Medinan period. This conduct is elaborated on and considered paradigmatic. Galford’s reading of Sayyid Qutb’s tafsir of Surat Yusuf develops this selective interpretive position. Joseph is presented as an essentially Quranic story free of accretions, specifically any Isra’iliyat traces or inflections, which are understood as metaphors for the infiltration of contemporary Islamic life by Western and Israeli distortions. Galford is less attentive to Qutb’s invocation of Joseph as an implicit critique of Nasser’s regime. Taji-Farouki’s contribution outlines the construction of Jewish nature in the openly polemical works of Tantawi and Tabbara, the former a powerful Azharite official. By situating their work in the context of Adab al-Nakba, she makes their caricatured representations of Jews somewhat understandable. She traces the transforming effect of the real encounter, namely Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem and the establishment of dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis, to Shaykh Tantawi, who begins to support diplomatic initiatives and involves himself in inter-faith discussions with Jewish religious scholars. Kinney’s account of Islamists on trial for Sadat’s assassination is especially insightful. He suggests that the defendants were only remotely concerned with Jews and Israel—what matters is “analyzing how Jews are used rhetorically in Islamic presentations” (p. 72). Sadat, not Israel, embodied the threat to Muslim practice. Kinney is struck by the Islamist tendency to select and appropriate texts and figures from the “Quran and sunnah as if a history of interpretation did not exist” (p. 78). Pappe’s analysis of Islamic and nationalist Palestinian leaflets from the 1920s and 1990s is less convincing. He argues that Palestinians in both camps in both periods gravely mistook Zionist state-building activities for messianic, that is, principally a religious Jewish assertion. Abramson’s account of the Gush Emunim’s aggressive land settlement policy makes transparent Zionism’s commitment to acquiring and ruling land. Further, the Druze-Zionist collaboration during the 1936-39 Arab Revolt outlined by Parsons suggests Palestinians were well aware of the Zionist commitment to state-building. Nettler and several other contributors believe that serious, constructive exchange between Islamists and Jews is a moral and sensible imperative. By situating the writings of Islamists and Zionists in particular political contexts, they hope to isolate and filter out the malevolent characteristics of the contenders. Saiyid Abul Hasan Rizvi Independent Scholar Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies, by Israel Shahak. 208 pages, index. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 1997. $18.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-7453-1152-2 In the five parts (or rather five independent articles) of Open Secrets, we discover Shahak’s strong belief that Israel wanted to dominate politically, militarily, and economically all countries in the Middle East from Iran in the east to Morocco in the west. In the introduction, Shahak defines the book’s purpose as “add[ing] detailed knowledge for those of whatever nation (including Jews) who don’t like the prospect of an Israeli hegemony being established over the Middle East” (p. 8). He continues in the second part, “Israel’s Strategic Aims and Nuclear Weapons,” by stating: “what I consider to be the real aims of the Israeli policies: establishing a hegemony over the entire Middle East, ‘stabilizing’ the regimes which do not disturb too much the Israeli progress toward that aim and a possible use of nuclear weapons for this purpose” (p. 31). The first part of the book is dedicated to Israel’s security censorship—“The Struggle Against Military Censorship and the Quality of the Army.” Shahak has a problem. If indeed it is the Jewish conspiracy to completely dominate the Middle East, how does one explain the fact that no one but himself advances this claim? Accordingly, Shahak contends that Israel had imposed the most severe censorship in order to hide its policies and intentions. Military censorship in Israel is based on the “Emergency Regulations” (of 1945) that had served the British Government to fight the Jewish underground. Shahak himself admits that while these regulations are formally in effect to this very day, they have not been enforced since 1951 (just two years after the state’s establishment). Instead, a written ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ between the military and the Israeli Editors’ Committee alleviated the problem for the press, and pursuant to a decision by the President of Israel’s Supreme Court (in 1989), military censorship in Israel is almost non-existent. I have serious doubts if Open Secrets can serve as a source of information for anyone interested in the Middle East or in the Arab-Israeli conflict. I see no sense to argue with the author or with his writings. I do not agree with Christopher Hitchens (in his introduction to the book) referring to “the hatred, which he attracts from the certified [Israeli] peaceniks” (p. x). Shahak (a Professor of Organic Chemistry) was not hated by them. They considered him to be a bizarre person with bizarre opinions. Personally, I did not know Shahak. I read his critical columns, once in a while, in the Hebrew press. But I have discovered the depth of his political thinking only from his book. I have known Israel intimately for the past seventy years, and I had the privilege of serving in key positions which involved me, almost from the first days of statehood, in the country’s political and security decisionmaking. Upon reading Open Secrets, I asked myself if the two of us had been living in the same country. Shlomo Gazit Tel Aviv University Ambiguity, Coping, and Governance: Israeli Experience in Politics, Religion, and Policymaking, by Ira Sharkansky. 203 pages, notes, bibliography, index. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1999. $59.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-275-96718-2 Ambiguity, Coping, and Governance was in press when Israel went to the polls in 1999 and gave Ehud Barak a landslide victory. While reading this interesting and well-written book, the first thought that came to my mind was: I am sure that Prime Minister Barak did not read it before he went to Camp David in July 2000. Indeed, Sharkansky asserts in it that Israeli policymakers succeeded in managing many of the Jewish state’s difficult problems precisely because they did not adopt a mechanical approach to solving complex problems. The three case studies the author analyzes are: religion and politics, Jerusalem, and the peace process. It was precisely in these three areas that Barak tried to reach a comprehensive solution according to the so-called rational decisionmaking model, and failed. His main shortcoming was that he apparently did not comprehend, as Sharkansky argues, that even though politics supersedes rational decisionmaking, this fact does not imply that politics is irrational. To be sure, future historians may reach the conclusion that Prime Minister Barak contributed to the future of the state of Israel significantly by revealing the real aspirations of Chairman Arafat and the limits of the Oslo process in solving fully the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. At the same time, had he adopted one insight of this book—namely, that coping and “not to seek to solve problems once and for all time”(p. 5) is human as well as inevitable—his government would not have collapsed after less than two years. Ironically, it is Prime Minister Sharon that has learned the hard way, in Lebanon, the limits of a comprehensive solution to complex problems, and his first year in office could be defined as one of coping and his plan to end terror as guided by ambiguity. Sharkansky’s approach to policymaking has been debated for a while in Israel, and the academic that represented the opposite approach was Yehezkel Dror, also from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. With time, some of the solution-oriented-approach adherents also modified their perception and accepted that in Israeli politics their normative orientation would not always be fruitful. Indeed, when the book touches also upon other cases like the Taiwan problem, or compares the religious problem with the author’s experience in Utah, the picture becomes broader and more persuasive. The book is most convincing when it deals with the problems of Jerusalem, a city where any clear-cut solution is doomed to failure. It is here that the religious-secular divide and Israeli-Palestinian ethno-national conflict merge. Ambiguity, Coping, and Governance should be read by policymakers and scholars not only in Israel but also in the Arab world surrounding the Jewish state. First, they would learn to understand Israel better. They would learn how to cope with a state that not only faces the most profound problems but also seemed to be doing well by not trying to achieve ultimate solutions but rather by improvising when necessary. But most important, they would also better comprehend what exactly took place in the summer of 2000 when a major break-through in the Arab-Israeli conflict was supposed to have happened. Shmuel Sandler Bar Ilan University National Security: The Israeli Experience, by Israel Tal. Translated by Martin Kett. 249 pages, index. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000. $55.00 ISBN 0-275-96812-X The author, a retired Major General, has been one of the more respected and influential senior officers of the Israel Defense Force (IDF), reaching the position of Deputy Chief of Staff. Moreover, he designed the Israeli-made Merkava tank, the main platform for the IDF’s ground forces, and developed the doctrine for its use. His elevated status in the Israeli defense establishment lends his analysis of the ‘oral’ Israeli national security doctrine an authoritative mantle. Indeed, the 1996 Hebrew version of National Security became the quasi-official definitive commentary on the development of Israel’s strategic thinking, and its translation into English is a welcome step to better understanding the Israeli mindset. Tal’s analysis and prognosis is mainstream within the ongoing debate over the strategic course to be taken by Israel in light of enduring security dilemmas in the conflict-ridden and violent Middle East. Tal’s systematic account of the incremental development of Israeli strategic thinking in the first part of the book makes good reading, despite the fact that most of the story has been told before by Israeli academics and practitioners. He presents the geographic, demographic, economic, and military asymmetries that molded Israel’s strategic thinking, leading to an emphasis on deterrence, early warning, preemptive strikes, and quick annihilation wars. He discusses the structure of the military forces and the potential war aims if the IDF is to be employed. Tal also reviews succinctly Israel’s wars, showing that its military doctrine, while its basics were correct, lost some of its balance after the significant victory of the June 1967 war. He mentions specifically the tensions between strategic depth and settlement activity, the temporary neglect of firepower, and early warning capabilities. Precisely because he thinks that a stable peace based upon widespread Arab acceptance of Israel is not within easy reach, he deplores the loss of national consensus. Tal’s comments on the post-Gulf War period reflect the Israeli national security debate. He claims that changes in military technology allowing attacks from great distance, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction coupled with the political uncertainties in the Middle East, require a reformulation in Israel’s strategic thinking. Nevertheless, he advocates continuing current trends in force structure and in strategic posture. Tal emphasizes a long-range deterrent arm no longer based solely on the air force, alluding to a land- and sea-based missile force. He also suggests expanding the meaning of strategic depth to include the sea and space. He opposes any cuts in the defense budget to allow for substantial research and development and for maintaining a large army that in any case will be small in terms of the challenges it has to meet. Tal advocates defensive borders giving priority to demographic considerations and to ways to minimize the risk of war. As other strategists in Israel, Tal emphasizes the social dimension of sustaining a war-making machine: the nurturing of the Zionist ethos. Efraim Inbar Bar-Ilan University |
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