The Israel Defense Forces as an epistemic authority: An intellectual challenge in the reality of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict

Abstract

The changes in the nature of warfare and its transformation toward Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) intrastate conflict have challenged the patterns of interaction between the political and the military echelons in Israel. It seems that the political echelon's superiority is maintained at the institutional and formal levels, but on the substantive level, which demands relying on knowledge and systematic staff work, the political echelon's position is weakened and loses its validity.

Introducing the military echelon in Israel as an epistemic authority regarding the violent confrontation and the main outlines of the military knowledge development process might clarify why the absence of the required dialogue between the echelons and the weakness of the intellectual effort increased the military's influence over the shaping of Israeli conflict-management strategy. The argument's validity and its explanatory power can be found relevant for other countries whose militaries are deeply involved in the management of LIC.

Key words:

• Israel
• civil-military-relations
• civil control
• epistemic-authority
• knowledge
• lic
• influence

Notes

¹A.G. Sens, ‘From Peace-keeping to Peace-building: The United Nations and the Challenge of Intrastate War,’ in Richard M. Price and Mark W. Zacher (eds.), The United Nations and Global Security (New York: Palgrave 2004), 141 – 60; Martin van Creveld, ‘The Transformation of War Revisited’, in Robert J. Bunker (ed.), Non-State Threats and Future Wars (London/Portland, OR: Frank Cass 2003).

²Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2005).

³Smith, Utility of Force, 278.

⁴Haim Fass (ed.), The Battle of the 21st Century: Democracy Fighting Terror – Discussion Forum (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute 2006), 310.

⁵Eiland in Fass, Battle of the 21st Century, 330.

⁶Eiland in Fass, Battle of the 21st Century, 331.

⁷Eiland in Fass, Battle of the 21st Century, 328.

⁸The term was first coined in 1989 by Kruglanski and will be explained in the next section.

⁹Detailed descriptions and analysis regarding LIC can be found in Shmuel Nir, ‘The Nature of the Limited Conflict’, 19 – 44 and Ido Hecht, ‘The Limited Conflict – Some General Characteristics of Unique Warfare’, 45 – 68. Both of them in Hagay Golan and Shaul Shay (eds.), The Limited Conflict, (Tel Aviv: Ma'arachot 2004, Hebrew).

¹⁰Uri Ben-Eliezer, ‘Do the Generals Rule in Israel? Military-Political Integration and the Legitimacy for War in the Nation in Arms’, in Hana Hertzog (ed.), Society in the Mirror (Ramat: Tel Aviv UP 2000).

¹¹A. Eliot A. Cohen, ‘The Unequal Dialogue: The Theory and Reality of Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force’, in Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn (eds.), Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2001).

¹²The discourse space is the organizing concept used in order to describe the interaction between the political and the military echelons. The concept was first introduced by Kobi Michael, ‘The Military's Influence on the Transition Process from War to Peace – the Israeli Case – Focused Comparison: The Peace Process with Egypt and Oslo Process’, PhD Dissertation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2004b; Kobi Michael, ‘The Dialectic Interaction between the Military and the Political Echelons During the Israeli-Palestinian Violent Conflict’, in Yaacov Bar Siman-Tov (ed.), The Israeli – Palestinian Conflict: From Peace Process to Violent Confrontation 2000 – 2005 (The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies 2005) and its essence is the exchange of information, knowledge, and insights between the echelons concerning a specific subject. The influence exercised by the echelons is a function of the inputs that each of them contributes to the discourse space.

The nature and character of the discourse can be described as having two dimensions, the dimension of content and the dimension of the political directive. These dimensions create a matrix of four main types of discourse spaces (A, B, C, D) and are determined by three independent variables: inputs of the political echelon, inputs of the military echelon and the gradients of interaction between the echelons. The interaction that takes place between the echelons in the discourse space is actually the meeting between statesmanship and military strategy and reflects the relative power of each one of the echelons and its influence on the examined context.

¹³ Ma'ariv <http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/533/421.html>, 01222007.

¹⁴Former Central Command Commander, Maj. Gen. Itzhak Eitan said, ‘We have never gotten a clear mission [from the political echelon] and things required interpretations and trials in order to understand the mission’ (Ma'ariv, 29 March 2002).

CGS (Chief of General Staff) Ya'alon said, ‘To demand the political echelon give the military echelon a clear political directive is naivety’ (in a seminar at the Operational Theory Research Institute, MALTAM, about civil-military relations in the reality of LIC, 24 Feb. 2003).

Additional examples are detailed in Michael Kobi, PhD Dissertation, 2004b.

¹⁵A. Arian, D. Nachmias, D. Navot and D. Shani, 2003 Democracy Index (Jerusalem: The Israeli Institute for Democracy 2003). E. Ya'ar and T. Hermann, The Peace Index (Feb. 2005): ‘IDF is the entity which earns the highest trust among the Israeli Public and the common appraisal is that its influence on national policy making is appropriate… . The data indicates that the military earns the highest trust of the Jewish population: 73 percent feel full trust and 21 percent trust, total of 94 percent’ – translated from Hebrew.

¹⁶Dauber elaborates on the importance of argumentation and the advantages the military holds in this regard in the US. For further details see Cori Dauber, ‘The Practice of Argument: Reading the Condition of Civil-Military Relations’, Armed Forces & Society 24/3 (Spring 1998), 435 – 46.

¹⁷Former minister of strategic affairs Dan Meridor said: ‘sometimes the military echelon has to fill the space left by the political echelon. In most cases, the political echelon doesn't determine a position or has no position and it prefers to spend time moving from one milestone to another, thinking it is good for Israel to leave the current situation as it is’ (personal interview, 27 May 2003).

¹⁸ Ha'aretz military commentator Amir Oren wrote: ‘the politicians avoid direct and compelling formulation of their political platform and avoid using civilian tools like the National Security Council. As a consequence the IDF is pushed to decode the political echelon's intentions. In the Pentagon they first get a presidential document, “The National Security Strategy”, the MOD defines accordingly their document, “The Defense Strategy” which is passed to the military headquarters where they define the “Military Strategy”. In the IDF the process works upside down; it begins in the IDF and then it goes up for the approval of the political echelon’ (translation from Hebrew, Ha'aretz, 15 July 2005).

¹⁹Ya'ar and Hermann, Peace Index (Feb. 2005).

²⁰A.W. Kruglanski, Lay Epistemic and Human Knowledge: Cognitive and Motivational Bases (New York: Plenum 1989).

²¹Sara Mills, Michel Foucault (ed.), Libido Translation Series, trans. Ohad Zehavi (Tel Aviv: RESLING Publishing 2005), 91.

²²C.I. Hovland, I.L. Janis and H.H. Kelley, Communication and Persuasion: Psychological Studies of Opinion Change (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 1953).

²³W.J. McGuire, ‘The Nature of Attitudes and Attitude Change’, in G. and E. Aronson Lindzey (ed.), Handbook of Social Psychology (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley 1969).

²⁴R.D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster 2000).

²⁵A.W. Kruglanski, A. Raviv, D. Bar-Tal, A. Raviv, K. Sharvit, S. Ellis, R. Bar, A. Pierro and L. Manneti, ‘Says Who? Epistemic Authority Effects in Social Judgment’, in M.P. Zanna (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press 2005).

²⁶Ibid.

²⁷Daniel Bar-Tal, A. Raviv and A. Raviv, ‘The Concept of Epistemic Authority in the Process of Political Knowledge Acquisition’, Representative Research in Social Psychology 19 (1991), 1 – 14.

²⁸A.W. Kruglanski, ‘Motivated Social Cognition: Principles of the Interface’, in Social Psychology: A Handbook of Basic Principles (New York: Guilford 1996), 493 – 520.

²⁹D. Bar-Tal and E. Halperin, ‘The Fall of the Peace Camp in Israel: The Influence of Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Israeli Public Opinion, July 2000 – February 2001’, Megamot (Hebrew) (2005).

³⁰Yaacov Bar Siman-Tov (ed.), The Israeli – Palestinian Conflict: From Peace Process to Violent Confrontation 2000 – 2005 (The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies 2005).

³¹Ya'ar and Hermann, Peace Index (Feb. 2005).

³²Dauber, ‘The Practice of Argument’.

³⁴Ya'alon, personal interview.

³³Lt. Gen. Ya'alon has a major role in this process and therefore the description in this article is mostly based on comprehensive personal interview taken on 10 July 2005. Furthermore, this article is based on the personal experience of the author who was a member in the mentioned think tank and on some other references published in the IDF periodical Ma'arachot. The theoretical conception of the process can be found in S. Nave, ‘Asymmetric Conflicts Operative Critic of Hegemonic Strategies’, in H. and Shai Golan (eds.), The Limited Conflict (Tel Aviv: Ma'arachot 2004). It is important to emphasize that the process described in this section and the outcomes do not ensure that the new knowledge was necessarily right or relevant but there is no doubt that it was used as the conceptual platform during Ya'alon's years in IDF Headquarters.

³⁵About Praxis and the methodology it develops see <www.praxis.co.il>.

³⁶Ya'alon, personal interview.

³⁷Ibid.

³⁸The details in this regard can be found in the Israeli State Comptroller special report about the NSC published in Sept. 2006 <http://www.mevaker.gov.il/>.

³⁹Ya'alon, personal interview.

⁴⁰The difference between EOS and intelligence assessments is that EOS is an analysis of the situation with an emphasis on the operational moves available to the actor performing the analysis, while intelligence assessments examine current information in light of the enemy's moves. That the two operations began to complement each other is proof of the diffusion of new EOS techniques and methodology into military intelligence.

⁴¹Ya'alon, personal interview.

⁴²Y. Vagman, ‘The “Limited Conflict” – The Failure’, in Shaul H. and Shay S. Golan (eds.), The Limited Conflict (Tel Aviv: Ma'arachot 2004), 252 – 3.

⁴³Ya'alon, personal interview.

⁴⁴Ibid.

⁴⁵Michael, ‘The Military's Influence on the Transition Process from War to Peace’; Michael, ‘The Dialectic Interaction between the Military and the Political Echelons During the Israeli – Palestinian Violent Conflict’.

⁴⁶John Allen Williams, ‘The Military and Modern Society: Civilian-Military Relations in Post-Cold War’, America, World and I 14/9 (1999), 306.

⁴⁷Cohen, ‘The Unequal Dialogue’.

⁴⁸Yehoshaft Harkabi , War and Strategy, 4th ed. (Tel Aviv: Ma'arachot 1994), 526.

⁴⁹Bar-Tal and Halperin, ‘The Fall of the Peace Camp in Israel’;Ben-Eliezer, ‘Do the Generals Rule in Israel?’

⁵⁰Ya'alon, personal interview.

⁵¹Zeev Schiff, Ha'aretz, 13 May 2005. Similar examples about Ya'alon's moderate positions can be found in: Alex Fishman, Interview with Ya'alon, Yediot Ahronoth, 25 Dec. 2003, Ben Caspit, Ma'ariv 14 Nov. 2003, Amos Harel, Ha'aretz, 22 April 2005.

⁵²A. Harel, Ha'aretz, 22 April 2005.

⁵³‘I have no doubt that with historical perspective, people will say that the War of Independence was the most important event in our national history, and this war was the second most important one… . The Palestinians returned us to the War of Independence.’ Ari Shavit, Interview with the CGS, Ha'aretz, 29 Aug. 2002.

⁵⁴The updated IDF premises claimed that Arafat does not accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state; that he perceives the violent confrontation as the main means to promote his political goals; that he is a terrorist, that the PA is a terrorist entity and the conflict is the ‘war for a home’. For additional details see Yaacov Bar Siman-Tov, As the Generals See It.

⁵⁵‘The key point here is the Israeli society's hardening … this is what the campaign is about. Because here it is a matter of existential threat.’ Ari Shavit, Interview with the CGS, Ha'aretz, 29 Aug. 2002.

⁵⁶Ya'alon, personal interview.

⁵⁷Amir Oren, Ha'aretz, 15 July 2005.

⁵⁹Ibid.

⁵⁸Ya'alon, personal interview.

⁶⁰Ibid.

⁶¹Douglas L. Bland, ‘A Unified Theory of Civil-Military Relations’, Armed Forces & Society 26/1 (Fall 1999), 7 – 25.

⁶²Harkabi, War and Strategy.

⁶⁴Ya'alon, personal interview. Similar things were said by Maj. Gen. Eiland, the Head of the Strategic Planning Directorate in the MALTAM conference 24 Feb. 2003. For additional details see Michael, ‘The End of the Deterministic Distinction’, 226.

⁶³Kobi Michael, ‘The End of the Deterministic Distinction – the Low Intensity War Era as a Paradigmic Challenge for Civil-Military Relations in the Democratic State’, in Shaul Hagay and Shay Golan (eds.), The Limited Conflict (Tel Aviv: Ma'arachot 2004a), 226.

⁶⁵Ya'alon, personal interview.

⁶⁶‘officers speak about the crucial importance of international legitimacy … . Washington, said a senior officer is maybe the most important actor in the disengagement operation. Indeed, the IDF in 2005 has flanked the Foreign Affairs Ministry from the left, trying to strengthen Abu-Mazen and the internal Hamas’. Amir Oren, Ha'aretz, 15 July 2005.

⁶⁷Ya'alon, personal interview.

⁶⁸Ibid.

⁶⁹Ibid.

⁷⁰In Dec. 2004, following the Rubenstien Committee's recommendations regarding the improvement of civil control over the military in Israel, Member of the Knesset Yossi Sarid said, ‘Indeed, the implementation of the committee's recommendations will improve the current control of the Knesset over the military, but even these recommendations will not prevent the Knesset from being carried away by the security consensus … the recommendations do not ensure that the Knesset will hear alternative positions’. Gidon Alon, Ha'aretz, 29 Dec. 2004.

⁷¹Mills, Michel Foucault, 83.

⁷²Michel Foucault, ‘Prison Talk’, in C. Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge (Brighton: Harvester 1980d), 52.