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The Israeli Army in Politics: The Persistence of the Civilian Over the Military

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Amos Perlmutter
Amos Perlmutter
Affiliation:
University of California
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The 1967 lightning victory of Zahal, the Israel Defense Forces, was the result of a philosophy that had considered military effort as an instrument of nation-building from the very beginning of the Zionist movement in Palestine. In 1948, the Israeli War of Liberation thrust the army into prominence, and from then on army leaders have been influential in the governmental and economic elites committed to rapid modernization. The Sinai victory in 1956 and the third military success in Sinai, Jordan, and Syria in 1967 further enhanced Zahal's reputation. Although Israel's standing army is no larger than 80,000 men, one-seventh of the country's total Jewish population of 2.5 million is on active military reserve. Given these conditions, it is natural to wonder what impact the army has had on the political life of Israel.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , July 1968 , pp. 606 - 643
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1968

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References

1 Zahal is the popular abbreviation for Zva Ha-Haganah Le-Israel.

2 For complete details on the politics that led to the formation of a national unity cabinet and the appointment of General Dayan as Defense Minister, see S. Nakdimon, “The Drama That Preceded the Formation of the National Unity Government,” Yediot Aharonot (Tel-Aviv), October 18, 20, 25, and 27, 1967; Zeev Shiff, “The Three Weeks That Preceded the War,” Ha-Aretz (Tel-Aviv), October 4, 1967, 33–34, 43; “Interview With Prime Minister Levi Eshkol,” Ma-Ariv (Tel-Aviv), October 4, 1967, 9–13. To corroborate the newspaper accounts, during the month of October 1967 in Israel, we interviewed members of die national unity cabinet (especially General Yigal Allon), members of parliament, and members of the high command of Zahal.

3 Andrzejewski, Stanislaw (now Andreski), Military Organization and Society (London 1954), 33–34Google Scholar.

4 Huntington, Samuel P., The Soldier and the State (New York 1964), 97Google Scholar.

5 Mosca, Gaetano, The Ruling Class (New York 1939), 241Google Scholar. See also Rapoport, David C., “A Comparative Theory of Military and Political Types,” in Samuel Huntington, P., ed., Changing Patterns of Military Politics (Glencoe 1962), 85–86Google Scholar.

6 P. 242.

7 A brief almanac-type description of the Israeli army is Pearlman's, MosheThe Army of Israel (New York 1950)Google Scholar. See also Halpern, Ben, “The Role of the Military in Israel”, in Johnson, John J., ed., The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries (Princeton 1962), 317–58Google Scholar; and Hurewitz, J. C., “The Role of the Military in Society and Government in Israel,” in Fisher, S. N., ed., The Military in the Middle East (Columbus 1963), 89–104Google Scholar. Etzioni, Amitai, “The Israeli Army: The Human Factor”, Jewish Frontier, XXVI (November 1959), 4–9Google Scholar, concentrates on cohesion within the Israeli army.

8 In Hebrew, no single study of the Israeli army exists. However, abundant historical, biographical, bibliographical, and oral material deals with events, personalities, and structures of the pre-1948 underground organizations that were the predecessors of the Israeli army. Moreover, the literature of the 1948 War of Liberation, the Sinai campaign of 1956, and the 1967 war is proliferating. The best historical analysis in Hebrew is Bauer's, YehudaDiplomacy and Underground in Zionism 1939–1945 (Merchavia 1966)Google Scholar. In English, a chapter of Bauer's book appeared in Middle Eastern Studies, 11 (April 1966), 182–210Google Scholar. Original sources and documents on the Israeli army since its official formation in February 1948 are on the whole not available. What is available has limited usefulness. For our analysis we are thus dependent on personal experience, on friends and associates in the Israeli army, on our five years' association with the Defense Ministry, and on interviews with more than one hundred senior officers who have served in the army during the period from 1948 to the present. Special appreciation is due to Professor Moshe Lissak of the Department of Sociology of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Thanks are also due to two Israeli journalists (whose names are deliberately omitted here) who were of great help by making available to us their notes and diaries, material not published because of the authors' discretion or editorial and governmental censorship. This material was invaluable.

9 “House of Labor” is used to denote all the efforts, organizational and institutional structures, and ideology of the Socialist-Zionist movement in Palestine.

10 See Perlmutter, Amos, “Ideology and Organization: The Politics of Socialist Parties in Israel 1897–1957,” unpubl. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1957, 147–58Google Scholar, for a detailed analysis of Socialist-Zionism.

11 See Katznelson, Berl, Works, in Hebrew, 13 vols. (Tel-Aviv 1951–1955)Google Scholar. For an interpretation and analysis of Katznelson's ideology, see Perlmutter, 135–39.

12 Dinour, Ben Zion and others, eds., History of the Haganah, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1956). Vol. I, Part II, 425–51Google Scholar; Habas, Bracha and Schohet, Eliezer, The Book of the Second Immigration, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1947)Google Scholar; Patterson, John H., With the Judeans in the Palestine Campaign (London 1922)Google Scholar; Gurion, David Ben, Works, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1949), Vol. IGoogle Scholar.

13 See Dinour and others, 517–20, 535, 549.

14 Hurewitz, J. C., The Struggle for Palestine (New York 1950), 55–60Google Scholar.

15 Braslavsky, Moshe, The Palestine Labor Movement, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1955), Vol. I, 227–31Google Scholar. See also Dinour and others, 639–67.

16 Historical Branch of Zahal, The History of the War of Liberation, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1959), 13Google Scholar. See also Gurion, David Ben, In the Battle, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1955). Vol. I, 473–510Google Scholar; Burstein, M., History of the Labor Movement in Palestine, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1955), Vol. I; and BraslavskyGoogle Scholar.

17 Yehuda Bauer, “Riots or Revolt,” Ha-Aretz, April 15, 1966, 9, 12.

18 This is not the place to analyze in detail the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement. To date there are no full-length, serious studies of this aspect of Arab nationalism. For an outline, see Hurewitz, Struggle for Palestine, 51–80, 112–123; for an Arab nationalist interpretation, see Antonius, George, The Arab Awakening (New York 1946), 387–412Google Scholar; for a Jewish interpretation, see Assaf, Michael, The Arab Awakening and Departure, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1967), 123–53Google Scholar. Two outstanding essays are Bauer, “Riots or Revolt,” and Shimoni, Ya'aqov, “The Arabs and the Approaching War With Israel,” Hamizrah Hehadash (Jerusalem), No. 47 (1962), 189–211Google Scholar, English summary, i–ix. The Afro-Asian Institute of the University of Tel-Aviv is now engaged in a large-scale study of the Palestine Arab nationalist movement.

19 Even the militant Jabotinsky was at that time willing to accept some modus vivendi with the Mandatory and supported restraint.

20 Bauer, Diplomacy and Underground, 95–105.

21 Dinour and others, Vol. II, Part I (Tel-Aviv 1959), 574, 585, Vol. II, Part II (Tel-Aviv 1964), 1053–72; Niv, David, Battle for Freedom, in Hebrew, Vol. II (Tel- Aviv 1965), 74–119Google Scholar, Vol. III (Tel-Aviv 1967), 43–52, 161–82.

22 On Stern and the National Military Organization, see Begin, Menachem, The Revolt (New York 1954)Google Scholar; Niv, , Battle for Freedom; Ya'aqov Banai, Unknown Soldiers, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1958)Google Scholar; Friedman-Yellin, Nathan and Eldad, Israel, eds., The History of Lehi, 2 vols., in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1962)Google Scholar.

23 See also Bauer, Diplomacy and Underground, 265–83. Only Stern's group refused to join in the declaration of war. In fact, they tried to make contact with the Axis powers, according to former Stern leader Friedman-Yellin, in an interview in 1965.

24 “Deeds and Determination,” in Gilad, Zrubavel, ed., The Book of the Palmach, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1955), Vol. I, 248–49Google Scholar.

25 For the historical development of the Palmach, see, in addition to The Book of the Palmach, Gilad, Zrubavel, ed., Hidden Shield: The Secret Military Effort of the Yishuv During the War, 1939–1945, in Hebrew (Jerusalem 1952), 14–20, 74–166Google Scholar.

26 In 1942, forty-one percent of the Palmach were from die United Kibbutz, which particularly dominated the Palmach headquarters: the commander, his deputy, and the entire General Staff except for two officers all came from the United Kibbutz movement. Out of the twenty-eight Palmach bases, seventeen belonged to die movement. See Bauer, Diplomacy and Underground, 160–61, 260–64.

27 The first program for training an officer corps for the Haganah had actually been the special night squads organized and led by the British officer Captain Orde Wingate. Wingate, an adventurer of the same stripe as “Chinese” Gordon and Lawrence of Arabia, conceived of himself as something of a modern Gideon. Although serving die Mandatory, he urged the case for a Jewish army under Zionist leadership. After great hesitation, some official of the Mandatory accepted die idea. Wingate met with Haganah intelligence officers and proposed the formation of die night squads, whose function would be to train Palestinian youth to destroy centers of Arab terrorism and to create the nucleus of a future Israeli army. His recruits came chiefly from the agrarian collectives.

28 Of the twelve brigadier generals on the General Staff during the War of Liberation, three were from the Palmach: Allon, Ratner, and Sadeh. Out of some forty-five colonels of that period, twenty were Palmach officers. More than forty percent of die majors and lieutenant colonels were Palmach officers. Since 1948, three Palmach generals have become Chief of Staff: Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, and Chaim Barlev. Eleven of the eighteen General Staff officers in the 1967 campaign were former Palmach officers, as were the three key front commanders: Generals Narkiss, Gavishj and Elazar.

29 The Ha-Apala was to grow into a large-scale network illegally bringing shiploads of immigrants to Palestine between 1945 and 1948.

30 The Palmach grew from about 900 members in 1942 to over 2,000 by 1945.

31 Many of the materials offered here which deal with the Israeli army since its formation in 1948 are of a nondocumentary nature. Two important factors have hampered research: first, the unavailability of documents deposited with the Ministry of Defense and still sealed from researchers, as mentioned earlier (fn. 8); second, David Ben Gurion. This political figure was the central architect of Israel's defense and army policy from 1947 to 1963. Neither he nor his biographers have revealed the innermost decision-making processes and factors in important defense issues. The key, of course, is Ben Gurion himself, not his biographers. He has written a great deal on these issues in the press and in Mapai, Haganah, and Ministry journals and publications and has issued public statements as well. Yet he has not attempted a fully detailed account of factors and motives affecting important security decisions. Most of Ben Gurion's explanations have been offered during controversy and under pressure, which has produced fragmentary, inaccurate, cloudy statements that have often been misconstrued. Ben Gurion's own archives at Sdeh-Boker are available only with his permission.

32 In the Battle, Vol. V, 135–37.

33 Bauer, Diplomacy and Underground, 260–63.

34 The Jewish Agency and the majority of the HOL leaders—among them David Ben Gurion and Moshe Sharett, the leaders of Mapai—felt that NMO-Stern terrorism endangered the chances of Jewish statehood and independence. The Haganah established a special force to combat the “terrorists,” with the help of the Mandatory.

35 Had an internal war occurred—and the “Altalena” affair could have turned into one—it would have curtailed the immense defense effort necessary to win against the Arabs. Menachem Begin, facing some opposition from other NMO leaders, played a key role in bringing about the NMO's acceptance of the national authority of the Jewish Agency. Recent literature modifies the actual threat presented by the “Altalena.” See Lankin, Eliahu, The Story of the “Altalena,” in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1967)Google Scholar. General Yigael Yadin considers the fall of the Old City of Jerusalem and other military failures to have been caused by independent NMO activities in 1948 in Jerusalem. See the “War of Liberation” interview in Ma-Ariv, May 14, 1967, 9–11.

36 Debate on the Defense Service Bill of 1949 in Divrey Ha-Knesset, in Hebrew, Parliamentary Debates, 68th Meeting, August 15, 1949, 1336–41.

37 See Eisenstadt, S. N., “Israel,” in Rose, Harold M., ed., The Institutions of Advanced Societies (Minneapolis 1958), 417–30Google Scholar.

38 We are indebted to Eliezer Rosenstein for some of these ideas. See his “Social Change in the Israeli Society,” Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley (1965), 3. See also Eisenstadt, 422.

39 Debate on Defense Service Bill, 1338.

40 See Lissak, Moshe, “Modernization and Role-Expansion of the Military in Developing Countries: A Comparative Analysis”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, IX (April 1967), 233–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Bamachane, February 15, 1951, 16.

42 Ibid., July 20, 1950, 7–8.

43 Ibid., October 29, 1966, 10.

44 For the views of General Yadin and others on the controversy, see Bamachane, February 28, 1952, 3, 16. Also see especially the issues of Ha-Aretz for this period.

45 Bamachane, May 5, 1955. In 1966, Nahal organized its first industrial cadre to work in the newly built Negev city, Arad. On the relations between the army and the youth movements, see Etzioni, 6–7. Zionist movements often began as youth movements in the Diaspora. In Palestine both Socialist-Zionists and Revisionist Zionists established elaborate youth movements. These youth movements served as reservoirs for Palmach and NMO recruits.

46 “The Structure and Ways of Zahal,” in Gurion, Ben, Vision and Ways, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1951), Vol. I, 306Google Scholar. See also Debate on Defense Service Bill.

47 “Israel's Border and Security Problem”, Foreign Affairs, XXXII (January 1955), 250–63Google Scholar.

48 An analysis of this period is found in Peres, Shimon, The Next Phase, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1965), esp. 9–15Google Scholar.

49 Shiff, Zeev, “Lack of Balance Between Zahal and the Ministry of Defense”, Htx-Aretz, August 12, 1966, 3Google Scholar.

50 This judgment of Dayan's views on civilian control is based on interviews with most members of Dayan's General Staff of the years 1953–1958; these interviews have convinced us of Dayan's clear understanding of the line between military and civilian responsibilities.

51 Between 1948 and 1967, the army had seven chiefs of staff; all but two were less than forty years old when appointed. Among senior officers the mobility was similar, and the average ages proportionately low: 40–44 years old, for brigadier generals; 35–40, for colonels; and 30–35, for lieutenant colonels. These averages are as of 1966.

52 It is interesting to observe that three former chiefs of staff—Yadin, Makleff, and Laskov—while in office advocated the enlargement of Zahal's budget. Since their retirement, they have held no political office.

53 For sources, see Ha-Aretz, June-September 1955 and June 1960-April 1961; Ma-Ariv and Davar (Tel-Aviv), the Histadrut-Mapai daily, of the same periods; Ben Gurion's statement in Ha-Aretz, January 13, 1961; and Lavon's Histadrut farewell speech, Ha-Aretz and Davar, February 5, 1961. Interviews with Lavon and his colleagues and with members of the Ministry of Defense who prefer to remain unnamed provided us with further material. Information from friends among senior Zahal reserve officers has also been used. See also three controversial volumes on the affair: Ben Gurion's apologetic Things As They Are, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1965); Y. Arieli's The Intrigue, in Hebrew (Tel-Aviv 1965), written in defense of Lavon; and Hagi Eshed's article “The Affair,” Ha-Aretz, February 19, 1965, written in defense of Ben Gurion. For a general description and analysis of the 1954 affair, see E. Hasin and D. Hurvitz, The Affair (Tel-Aviv 1961).

54 March 18, 1961, 3–4.

55 Ha-Aretz, January 13, 1961, 1, 2, 6, and 12.

56 On the average, the tenure of Zahal's chiefs of staff has been three to five years. Yadin resigned after two years, Makleff after one year, and Laskov just when his third year of tenure had expired.

57 Our investigation into die reign of Eshkol as Defense Minister (1963–1967) leads us to conclude that, in fact, Zahal was aggrandized considerably during his regime. The high command secured the best and most expensive weapons in Zahal's history. Even allowing for general weapons development and the Egyptian military buildup, it is clear that Eshkol complied with most budgetary requests of his chiefs of staff. On the other hand, when Ben Gurion served as Defense Minister, he encountered opposition from the then Finance Minister, Eshkol, when requesting higher budgets for Zahal. Moreover, Dayan recently admitted to some members of die high command that he intends to cut the “lavish” expenditures on defense. It is also well known mat Ben Gurion opposed the 1967 war, fearing Russian intervention and Israel's political isolation. Eshkol, on the other hand, who openly admits that he is no military expert, in die end supported die war, accepting the judgment of the army's chief intelligence officer that the Soviets would not directly help the Egyptians.

58 Eisenstadt, 427–29.

59 We are now designing a study of the political ideology of die Israeli army officers. See also Alan Arian, “Ideological Change in Israel: A Study of Legislators, Civil Servants, and University Students,” unpubl. diss., Michigan State University, 1965.

60 We have initiated a further study of the absorptive and integrative capabilities of the Israeli economy and bureaucracy as they relate to Zahal's elite. This study of the absorption of Zahal veterans of all ranks, but especially of noncommissioned officers, indicates successful efforts to integrate the trainees of military technical schools. Zahal's armored divisions prepare technicians so they later can be integrated into private or public industry. In particular, the large-scale armament, air, and electronic industries under the control of the Ministry of Defense absorb skilled Zahal veterans. The Atomic Energy Commission, also under the Ministry's supervision, is engaged in programs of integrating Zahal's skilled technicians into Israel's atomic industries and firms.

61 Perlmutter, Amos, “The Praetorian State and the Praetorian Army: Toward a Taxonomy of Civil-Military Relations,” Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley (1967)Google Scholar.

62 See Huntington, Samuel P., “Political Development and Political Decay”, World Politics, XVII (April 1965), 394Google Scholar; and Perlmutter, “Praetorian State.”

63 Shiff, Zeev, “The Young Officers of Zahal: Education and Political Consciousness”, Ha-Arelz, January 23, 1963Google Scholar. We plan to investigate Shiff's assumptions.

64 Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 1–19.

65 With Professor Lissak, we are now studying the mechanism of officer rotation in Zahal.

66 Andrzejewski, 75–116.

67 Huntington, The Soldier and the State, esp. 97.