Defending the Holy Land : a critical analysis of Israel’s security & foreign policy : with a new preface and afterword

743 Pages·2009·8.2 MB·English

by  Zeev Maoz

DEFENDING
THE HOLY LAND

DEFENDING
HOLY LAND
THE
A Critical Analysis of
Israel’s Security & Foreign Policy
ZEEV MAOZ
With a New Preface and Afterword
the university of michigan press
Ann Arbor
First paperback edition 2009
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2006
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
cPrinted on acid-free paper
2012 2011 2010 2009 5 4 3 2
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise,
without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Maoz, Zeev.
Defending the Holy Land : a critical analysis of Israel’s security
and foreign policy / Zeev Maoz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-472-11540-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-472-11540-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Israel—Foreign relations. 2. National security—Israel.
3. Arab-Israeli conflict. I. Title.
ds119.6.m32 2006
327.5694009'045—dc22 2005030218
isbn-13: 978-0-472-03341-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-472-03341-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
In memory of
AVNER YANIV

Preface to the Paperback Edition
Thomas L. Friedman’s ‹rst rule of Middle East reporting is “Never lead
your story out of Lebanon, Gaza, or Iraq with a cease-‹re; it will
always be over by the time the next morning’s paper is out.”1 This rule
applies not only to journalists who write about things as they happen; it
applies not only to cease-‹re reporting; it is equally valid advice for schol-
ars who write about the more general aspects of Middle East politics.
Events in the Middle East have a tendency to overtake those who write
about them—including those who study general patterns rather than
speci‹c episodes. Even the history of the region—or rather our under-
standing of that history— evolves and changes over time. Naturally, this
requires authors to revisit their research as time passes.
The research and writing of Defending the Holy Land were completed
in the summer of 2004. I did a number of limited revisions in the winter
of 2005, including limited references to what appeared to be then an
Israeli plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and dismantle the Jewish set-
tlements in this area. The book itself was published in May 2006. Two
months later, Israel initiated yet another war against Lebanon in retalia-
tion to a Hizballah kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. During the war I
appeared in a number of media venues and wrote a number of op-ed
pieces criticizing Israeli conduct of the war on moral, political, and strate-
gic grounds.2At the outset, I realized that this war was going to become a
1.Thomas L. Friedman, “Ballots and Boycotts,” New York Times, January 13, 2005, A35.
2.The articles can be read on my Web site: http://psfaculty.ucdavis.edu/zmaoz/recent_op.htm.
Some of the articles were widely cited (“Morality Is Not on Our Side,” published in Ha’aretzon
July 25, has over 2,700 hits on Google and was translated into more than twenty languages).
Prveifiaice to thDe PEaFpEeNrbDacIkN EGdi tTioHnE HOLviYii LAND
‹asco, but my warnings, like those of other—rather few—Israeli experts,
fell on deaf ears. The same applies to writings about the Israeli conduct
(or rather misconduct) of the Intifada, the continued building of illegal
settlements in the West Bank, and the persistent dominance of security
concerns and the security establishment over Israel’s foreign policy and
diplomacy. One can say similar things about the shortsightedness, folly,
and recklessness of Israel’s enemies—principally the Palestinians and
Hizballah. But this too is not an excuse for the continued malfunctions in
Israel’s diplomacy and military strategy.
Unfortunately, the events over the last two years since the book was
published vindicated most of the arguments I had made in the book.
There is very little that required revising. In fact, the recommendations
of the Vinograd Inquiry Commission that the Israeli government
appointed to investigate the political and military conduct of the Second
Lebanon War read a lot like chapter 11 of Defending the Holy Land. It is
important, however, to cover very brie›y the Second Lebanon War and
the continued conduct of the Intifada. Also, the continued WMD esca-
lation in the region requires some discussion. Accordingly, I have added
a brief afterword that discusses these events. A more extensive study of
these processes will be published subsequently, but the general themes
that I have emphasized in the original version of the book have not
changed. Perhaps it is naive to expect they would. Nevertheless, the
events of the last two years indicate that an alternative approach to
Israel’s security and foreign policy is urgently needed before another cat-
astrophe takes place.
Preface
This book has been brewing in my mind for nearly three decades. I
have closely followed Israel’s national security and foreign policy
over the years. Like for many other Israelis—scholars and laypersons—
who followed these policies, this was not a detached and distant scrutiny.
It was an anthropological process of participating observation. I have
both taken part and had major stakes in many of the events and processes
that are discussed in this book. As a soldier I participated in three of the
wars that are discussed herein: I served as a young soldier in the War of
Attrition, ‹ghting in the northern section of the Suez Canal. As a reserve
of‹cer I participated in the Yom Kippur War and the Lebanon War. I also
did numerous tours of duty (in both my standing army career and my
reserve duty) in the occupied territories. In the early 1990s I had a brief
stint on a team advising Yitzhak Rabin on strategic affairs.
For the most part, this process of observation was rather depressing;
only a few years during this period offered rays of hope. What bothered
me more than speci‹c episodes of ineptitude, folly, and deception—and
there were many of these over the years—were two aspects of policy-mak-
ing that have not received suf‹cient attention. First, I was concerned by
the persistent failure of the policy community to learn from Israel’s mis-
takes. This lack of self-inspection applied not only to politicians and
bureaucrats but also to a signi‹cant portion of the scholarly community in
Israel, the Israeli media, and—of course—public opinion. In too many
areas of policy, Israel has experienced persistent and repeated failures.
Yet, many of these failures were explained away or covered up as some-