The Defense of Israel Presentations at Herzliya

The Defense of Israel
Presentations at Herzliya: A Hard Look at New Realities

A Special Report on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs

Dr. Eran Lerman
Director Israel/Middle East Office
American Jewish Committee

The Fourth Annual Herzliya Conference on Israeli National Security-organized by Dr. Uzi Arad of the Interdisciplinary Center and cosponsored by the American Jewish Committee, among others-drew a great deal of attention in recent days because of the internal rifts within the Likud Party over policy and the tense expectation of a major statement by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Yet there was much more to this conference, which tries annually to assess Israeli "national resilience," than this narrow focus on Palestinian issues.

Large parts of the conference were devoted to the deeper questions of the social order, the educational system, and their impact on our national cohesion-issues that merit a separate report. In this paper, however, the focus will be on the general security environment-or as the IDF planners call it, "the challenge"-and the effort to redefine the doctrine and structure of the Israeli defense establishment-"the response"-as presented on the first day of the conference.

The mood was quite somber, and the statistics about Israeli public opinion were distinctly less happy than last year. This is paradoxical, as Finance Minster Binyamin Netanyahu pointed out a day later: In real terms, the situation is better than it was in December 2002, whichever way you look at it. The level of losses from terror attacks has gone down, and more than 10 weeks have passed since the last successful attack inside Israel. Saddam Hussein has been defeated and captured by U.S.-led forces. Israeli society has remained largely resilient. Economically, we have returned to growth (if only at a snail's pace); the stock market has rallied with some vigor (70 percent gain this year); and the price of government borrowing-the interest rate on long-term bonds-dropped sharply from 12 percent to 8 percent in one year. With a nod to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ("We have nothing to fear but fear itself"), Netanyahu called for an end to the counsels of despair.

And yet Israeli attitudes are not shaped merely by objective facts. For many, the comparison is not with 2002, but with the hopes for a much better future generated by the Aqaba Summit and the launch of the Road Map process, and then disappointingly dashed by the collapse of the hudna and of Mahmoud Abbas's government. It is against this background that the head of the Shin Bet (Israeli Security Service), Avi Dichter, made a strikingly honest statement about this failure: "We have not given the people in Israel the protective gear they deserve."

Dichter, who rarely speaks in public (in the past, only Israelis "in the know"-about half the country-whispered the names of the Shin Bet and Mossad chiefs), drew up a list of four threats and challenges:

Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, caught lying and hiding terrorists as early as his moment of entry into Gaza in 1994, (he was sitting, physically, on top of one of Israel's most wanted men; only direct pressure from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin led to the fugitive's deportation back to Egypt), has done nothing to stop the wave of terror. The present remission is misleading. Two dozen suicide attacks were stopped in the last few weeks-"one blast of a lull"-and therefore, the fence must be built-and should have been built long ago-as fast as possible. It saves lives by preventing penetration from Gaza, and has already saved lives by making entry from Northern Samaria more difficult. On the other hand, there are Palestinian leaders who truly understand the needs of their people and can be real partners for progress. (Figures such as Salam Fayyad and even Jibril Rajoub were not mentioned by name, but their good relations with the present Israeli establishment are well known.)
Among Israeli Arabs, only a small minority has been tempted by the terrorists; greater efforts to enhance the integration of the Arab minority into Israeli life would be a major contribution to our security (a point made again later by Netanyahu, but in a much more controversial fashion, when he spoke about the demographic problem). Still, Iran and a number of terrorist organizations are actively working to recruit the dangerous potential of Israeli Arab citizens, who are free to go as they please and could be used for deadly operations. (With rare exceptions, they have been used only in support roles-as drivers or providers of shelter-until now.)
Iran, in this context, emerges as the most active threat to any progress toward peace and to our very existence. A special session later in the day indeed dealt with the Iranian threat and the various ways of countering it, with MK Efraim Sneh of the Labor Party, the most vocal "Iran watcher" in Israeli politics, hinting heavily that Israel might be obliged to act against the Iranian nuclear program, if U.S. and Western are not sufficiently serious.
Last, but quite ominous, on Dichter's list were Jewish terrorists-the small but highly dangerous group that the Shin Bet is still hunting down for the murder of several innocent Palestinians earlier in the conflict. There are elements among them that might become unhinged by Sharon's moves toward partition and "relocation" of settlements-and, if they succeed in targeting the Temple Mount, Dichter warned, they could throw Israel, quite deliberately, into an existential conflict with more than a billion Muslims.

As if this were not enough, Major General Giora Eiland-the head of IDF Planning (G-5) and soon to be the national security adviser and coordinator of implementation of Sharon's vision-spoke about the highly complex nature of the conflict Israel is now fighting with the Palestinians (and the U.S. is fighting worldwide, particularly in Iraq). These are, almost by definition, situations involving low-intensity warfare in densely populated areas, where the remarkable capabilities of the IDF, or any other modern military force, cannot be brought to bear as easily as they have been against large conventional forces. Everything is murky: the identity of the enemy; the morality of warfare; the struggle for international legitimacy, which is as important as the fighting itself; the definition of aims and purposes; the meaning of the time factor; the resilience of Israeli society and its response to losses. Amidst all this, Israel faces a vicious terror campaign and a steady drain on our economic viability, as well as challenges to the legitimacy, not only of our response, but even of our right to exist.

On the other hand-here, finally, is the good news-the Arab world is still largely dominated by pragmatists. (This was said even before the least pragmatic of all rulers, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, decided to change his spots and join their ranks.) Israel's deterrent posture at all levels does work, and no large-scale Arab offensive is in sight. Above all, the special relationship with the United States is at its all-time high-water mark, at least when it comes to a profound understanding of Israel's defense needs. Thus, our future will be largely shaped by the success of the U.S. effort in Iraq, as well as by developments in our own Israeli-Palestinian corner.

The chief of staff of the IDF, General Moshe "Boogey" Ya'alon, made it very clear that, while the present overall balance may be more fragile and brittle than it seems, most Arab states seek peace, though their political and intellectual climate is poisoned, and others, such as Iran and Syria, use terror as a weapon and seek non-conventional capabilities. Given the existential nature of the issues left open, and the potential for change in the global balance of power, Israel's peace will continue to be an armed peace for the foreseeable future-based on sustained superiority in intelligence, command and control, precision-guided weapons, and unmanned platforms.

Hence the need, as two teams of experts at the Herzliya Conference pointed out, to maintain:

The IDF budget, at roughly NIS 35 billion ($8 billion) and not $7 billion, as suggested by the Treasury-given that thousands of IDF personnel have been laid off already;
The industrial base of defense production, which is also presently also a major source of exported goods for Israel.
By absolute necessity, a close working relationship with the U.S. defense establishment.