Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel’s Security & Foreign Policy

Description

Defending the Holy Land is the most comprehensive analysis to date of Israel's national security and foreign policy, from the inception of the State of Israel to the present. Author Zeev Maoz's unique double perspective, as both an expert on the Israeli security establishment and esteemed scholar of Mideast politics, enables him to describe in harrowing detail the tragic recklessness and self-made traps that pervade the history of Israeli security operations and foreign policy. Most of the wars in which Israel was involved, Maoz shows, were entirely avoidable, the result of deliberate Israeli aggression, flawed decision-making, and misguided conflict management strategies. None, with the possible exception of the 1948 War of Independence, were what Israelis call "wars of necessity." They were all wars of choice-or, worse, folly. Demonstrating that Israel's national security policy rested on the shaky pairing of a trigger-happy approach to the use of force with a hesitant and reactive peace diplomacy, Defending the Holy Land recounts in minute-by-minute detail how the ascendancy of Israel's security establishment over its foreign policy apparatus led to unnecessary wars and missed opportunites for peace. A scathing and brilliant revisionist history, Defending the Holy Land calls for sweeping reform of Israel's foreign policy and national security establishments. This book will fundamentally transform the way readers think about Israel's troubled history. PART I. FOUNDATIONS 1. The Israeli Security Puzzle: Conceptions, Approaches, Paradoxes PART II. THE USE OF FORCE 2. The Sinai War: The Making of the Second Round 3. The Six Day War: Playing with Fire 4. The War of Attrition: The First Payment for Arrogance 5. The Yom Kippur War: The War That Shouldn’t Have Been 6. The Lebanese Swamp, 1981–2000 7. The Unlimited Use of the Limited Use of Force: Israel and Low-Intensity Warfare PART III. ISRAEL’S NUCLEAR POLICY 8. The Mixed Blessing of Israel’s Nuclear Policy PART IV. FOREIGN POLICY: SHADOW AND OPEN DIPLOMACY 9. Israeli Intervention in Intra-Arab Affairs 10. Never Missing an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity: The Israeli Nonpolicy of Peace in the Middle East PART V. CAUSES AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE MISMANAGEMENT OF NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN POLICY 11. The Structure and Process of National Security and Foreign Policy in Israel 12. Principal Findings and Lessons 13. If So Bad, Why So Good? Explaining the Paradox of the Israeli Success Story 14. Paths to the Future: Scenarios and Prescriptions Afterword: The Second Lebanon Fiasco and the Never-Ending Intifada Notes Glossary References Author Index Subject Index