Israeli Foreign Policy: A People Shall Not Dwell Alone by Uri Bialer (review)

"[A] people that dwells alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations," Balaam's description of an encampment of ancient Israelites (Numbers 23:9), has been taken by many as a biblical prophecy that is being fulfilled by the modern state of Israel. By negating this verse in the subtitle of his new book, Uri Bialer sets out to show that this does not necessarily have to be so.

Like others before him, Bialer sees survival and acceptance as the two main goals of Israeli foreign policy.¹ He devotes four opening chapters to the "Historical Legacy," showing how knowledge of patterns and attitudes adopted by Jews in earlier periods is a prerequisite to understanding the options and constraints that faced the Jewish state after 1948. Israel's War of Independence (1947–49) is portrayed as a "lasting legacy," experienced at the time— and remembered until today—as the life-or-death struggle of 650,000 Jews facing twice as many Arabs inside post-Holocaust Palestine, suffering heavy losses in a wider war whose outcome was not a foregone conclusion. Once the last of four armistice agreements was signed in July 1949, Israel held firm to those armistice lines, refusing to contemplate talks based on the November 1947 UN map that had been nullified, in the Israeli view, by the Arab states' resort to war to prevent partition.

As successful as Israel was in winning that war and gaining membership in the United Nations, leaders of the new government in Jerusalem "could not fail to recognize what it had not achieved: Arab acquiescence of Israel's existence and the acquiescence of most UN members to the boundaries determined by the war" (p. 56). Chapter 5 examines Israel's quest for recognition. Nonacceptance and the perceived threat of another war with the Arab states created a foreign policy orientation that placed security and defense capability above all else. As Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion explained to the dovish head of the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldmann:

Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. . . . So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out

(quoted pp. 61–62).

After security and acceptance, Bialer addresses a third goal of Israeli foreign policy: the quest for energy self-sufficiency. Chapter 6, less readable than the others, takes us into the labyrinthine world of oil, pipelines, and Iranian-Israeli commercial relations—secret dealings facilitated by overlapping short-term interests, winks, nods, and bribery. In this as well as other chapters, Bialer adds much to our knowledge about Israel's often unorthodox methods of circumventing blockade and boycott through covert diplomacy, "minority alliances," and a "periphery" strategy.²

A fourth goal studied by Bialer is the fostering of 'aliya ("ascent," referring to Jewish immigration to Israel), continuing Zionism's original mission to ingather Jews—offering safe haven to those living under threat in dispersion while building up the country's Jewish population and resource pool. Chapter 7 examines Israel's complex efforts to facilitate the migration of Jews to Israel from Poland, Romania, Iraq, Turkey, Morocco, Ethiopia, and the Soviet Union—operations often carried out in coordination with diaspora Jews and organizations.

Bialer's case study of Franco-Israeli relations discusses successful bilateral cooperation based on Israel's arms purchases, intelligence-sharing, and nuclear development, despite political and diplomatic frictions. Chapter 9 focuses on Israel's ultimate failure to establish lasting relations with newly independent states in sub-Saharan Africa, despite many years when those countries quietly enjoyed the benefits of Israeli arms sales, agricultural and other technology, and training. Chapter 10, focusing on American-Israeli relations, highlights Israel's remarkable success in fending off the United States' attempts to...