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11 chapter one Constraints and Players The External Environment, Proportional Representation System, and National Security Establishment The messiah arrived, gathered in Israel’s exiles, triumphed over all the peoples around, conquered the Land of Israel . . . and then had to take a seat in a coalition. —An intimate of Ben-Gurion on the reasons for his resignation from the premiership Israel is a nation without a memory. Memory, for most of us, is a luxury of societies that have the time to study their past, because their present is not pressing and their future is assured. Our history is written in the weekend newspaper magazines and goes to sleep with the fishes on Sunday morning. —Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah, Israeli journalists Everything in Israel is political. —Minister Silvan Shalom National security decision making in Israel takes place within the context of a uniquely harsh external environment, a proportional representation (PR) electoral system in which the entire country comprises one national constituency, and the structure of the national security establishment. These three factors, the independent variables presented in the Introduction, are set out in detail in the following. This chapter is divided into three sections to more fully explore each of these variables. The first presents the basic characteristics of Israel’s external environment, including extreme danger, the extraordinary rate and breadth of change, and an unusual degree of complexity and uncertainty. The second section discusses the primary characteristics of the PR system, including a fractious Knesset and cabinet, coalition-cabinet governance, and chronic instability . The final section sets out the formal structure of the organs involved CONSTRAINTS AND PLAYERS 12 in national security affairs. Together, the three parts serve as the basis for the overall characterization of the Israeli DMP developed in Chapter 2. Israel’s National Security Environment existential decision making From the pre-state days to the present, Israel’s national security policy has been predicated on the assumption that the nation faces a realistic threat of both politicide (destruction of a state) and even genocide. Six wars, numerous major confrontations, and ongoing violence, from low-level terrorism to massive rocket attacks, have been basic features of Israel’s external environment . A sense of nearly unremitting Arab enmity prevails, of a conflict of unlimited hostility and objectives. With multiple threats at any one time, the external environment is one of perpetual tension, punctuated by brief outbreaks of hostilities and a need for constant vigilance. Each war, and in the past every battle, was viewed as one of survival: Israel had to be prepared to fight and to win every time.1 The dangers posed to Israel’s national security have few analogues in either magnitude or persistence.2 Few states have faced, as Israel has, repeated wars and ongoing lower-level hostilities for decades. Although many states have faced threats of politicide, few, if any, have perceived a concrete threat of genocide. A nuclear holocaust could have erupted during the Cold War, but this was never intended and the actors avidly sought to avert it. In these circumstances, national security issues in Israel are commonly addressed in existential terms. Defense Minister Dayan’s infamous warning, during the bleak early days of the Yom Kippur War, regarding the possible “end of the Third Temple” is the most extreme expression of this deepseated fear, but it has been manifested often, even when the dangers were far more limited, such as in the two Gulf wars. During the 2006 Lebanon War, Mossad Director Dagan went so far as to say that “if we do not win this war, the hourglass of our existence will start running (out).”3 Iran is widely thought to pose an existential threat, and other players, such as Syria, Hezbollah , and Hamas, are also assumed to seek Israel’s destruction, capability permitting. Experience has further demonstrated that national security decisions contain the potential to fundamentally transform the nation’s course, even when they do not threaten its destruction, as happened following the Six-Day War and the Oslo Agreement. Decision making in Israel is thus uniquely critical and fateful. In recent decades the threat of all-out conventional warfare has receded and Israel’s overall strategic posture has improved greatly, although Iran CONSTRAINTS AND PLAYERS 13 and others potentially in pursuit of nuclear weaponry do represent a severe threat. This improvement notwithstanding, a “Masada Complex,” or “Holocaust Syndrome,” continue to color the perceptions of both leaders and the public alike. Public statements, even by younger, native-born...

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