Party and Policy in Israel: The Battle Between Hawks and Doves by Samuel J. Roberts

Author:Samuel J. Roberts [Roberts, Samuel J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Middle Eastern, Social Science, Political Science, World, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781000276329
Google: wq2bDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 52178781
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1990-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Political and Policy Consequences of the Yom Kippur War

The Yom Kippur War had a profound impact on Israeli politics and foreign policy. The war reshaped the country’s psycho-intellectual environment--and hence the derivative climate of opinion, which plays a highly important role in influencing the direction and momentum of internal politics, and in giving impetus to certain policies, while militating against others.

To begin with, the surprise Arab attack, the initial reverses suffered by the IDF, and the heavy loss of life and equipment stunned the nation and shocked the political leadership and the officer corps. As the war progressed, fundamental national assumptions were annihilated. The historic ability of the IDF to wage short, successful, cheap wars was terminated, and the illusion of Israeli impregnability behind the Bar-Lev Line was shattered. Confidence that the qualitative superiority of the IDF would ineluctably compensate for the quantitative advantage enjoyed by the Arabs was undermined. The surprisingly good battlefield performance of the despised Arab soldier disconcerted both the IDF and the Israeli public. Conversely, the fighting abilities and efficiency of the IDF fell far short of expectations. For the first time, the overall judgment and competency of the high command appeared questionable. Most significantly the war and its aftermath devastated the general, if never fully accepted or clearly articulated belief that time was on Israel’s side.

The trauma of the early days of the war has never been entirely overcome; Israeli self-confidence has still not recovered fully. The postwar shock deepened in the months after the war as the magnitude of high level disarray, confusion, and vacillation became more widely known. A pervasive sense of unease grew as the totality of Israel’s dependence on the US, the deficiencies of Israel’s most revered leaders and institutions, and the closeness of the brush with disaster became better known. The latter was the most jolting of all, coming as it did only six years after Israel’s overwhelming victory had swept away all previous self-doubt about Israel’s ability to survive through her own efforts.

The Yom Kippur War’s blow to Israeli self-confidence, and to pride in its autonomy, was a hard one. Although the resultant anxiety was partially repressed in subsequent years as Israel apparently returned to normal, it has not been fully eradicated to this day. It remains a potent, if subterranean force in the Israeli psyche. This latent national apprehension has generated contradictory impulses, producing a desperate determination to hold fast against any concessions in some, and engendering an equally intense anxiety to begin negotiations in order to resolve peacefully the Palestinian/West Bank issue, even at the cost of sweeping concessions in others.

The immediate political consequences of the war redounded to the disadvantage of the Labor Party which was universally blamed for the failures of the war. The party’s two most illustrious figures, Dayan and Meir, received the lion’s share of the blame. Meir was held responsible for the overall state of affairs, given her prime ministerial position. However, her generally effective performance once the war began, together with

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