Israel after the 1973 war

Israel Military Policy Post-

Israeli Military Policy Post-1973

It was in 1973 that the nation of Israel's existence was no longer threatened by its Arab neighbors, but in establishing its statehood the infant nation still faced many difficulties. Although no longer directly threatened by the armies of the mighty Arab nations, Israel faced a "proxy war" with terrorist groups armed and supported by those very same Arab enemies who had officially accepted the existence of the state of Israel. In exchange for open combat, its Arab enemies chose to support the Palestinians in their struggle against Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. In response the Israelis adopted a policy of confrontation with the Palestinians, especially the PLO located in Lebanon. This conflict with the Palestinians in Lebanon would lead to a major split it in Israeli public opinion and a dramatic change in the public's view of the Israeli military.

The end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War saw two major developments in the relationship between Israel and its Arab neighbors: firstly there was a push for a peace by several of Israel's Arab enemies, and secondly the conflict with Israel then shifted to a war of terror with Arab support for the Palestinians. Peace between Egypt and Israel, which came in the late 1970's, precipitated the recognition of Israel as a nation by several of Israel's Arab neighbors. No longer was Israel "fighting for its very existence…," and the establishment of the nation of Israel, which began in 1948 and was continually threatened with open conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors for the next twenty-five years, was concluded. (Carver 1990, p.271) However, 1973 did not see the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict, just the movement into a new phase of the conflict in which the Arab nations supported Palestinian groups like the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in their struggle to evict the Israelis from what they viewed as Palestinian territory.

By the early 1980's the conflict with the Palestinians would ultimately draw Israel into an invasion of Lebanon as Israel's military focus became the destruction of the threat posed by the PLO. However, to the nation of Israel this conflict became what Bregman, in his book Israel's Wars, called "a traumatic experience for its armed forces and for its people as a whole." (Bregman 2000, p.95) The author's main point was while Israelis fully supported the previous wars they had been involved in, primarily because their very existence was threatened, many criticized the war in Lebanon and for the first time even refused to participate. This premise was backed up by the authors of Israel's Lebanon War who stated that the "war in Lebanon unfolded as it did because of a sharp departure from the conventions and norms of government in Israel…" (Schiff 1984, p.301) The fact that several hundred Israeli soldiers refused to fight and thousands of civilians gathered to protest against the war only confirmed the thesis that the war in Lebanon was a war which Israeli chose to start without an existential threat posed by its opponent.