Israel Post 1973

Israeli Conflicts Post-1973 In his book Israel's Wars, 1947-93, Ahron Bregman claimed that during the 1972 Yom Kippur War Israel was surprised and not prepared for an Arab attack. While this view is widely prevalent, Bregman argued that it was Golda Meir's refusal to accept an Egyptian offer to re-open the Suez Canal if Israel withdrew from the eastern bank which was the first unseen sign of the upcoming war.

Israeli Prime Minister Meir was unable to comprehend that Egypt would go to war in a limited manner in order to recapture the canal, instead she believed that Egypt would only attack if they held overwhelming force. Secondly, Bregman argued Israel was caught off guard because of their false belief that Egypt wouldn't attack without the aid of advanced Soviet planes and missiles; something the Soviets refused to supply.

Bregman then claimed that this belief came from their misplaced faith in an Israeli spy, an Egyptian double-agent who the Israelis believed worked for them when in truth he was a loyal Egyptian the entire time.

The author asserted that it was this agent who deceived them into believing that "having long-range fighter-bombers and Scud missiles was a precondition for embarking on war, and without these weapons Egypt would not attack Israel." (Bregman 2000, p.74) While there were many signs that war was imminent, Israeli leaders refused to recognize them, did not activate military reserves until almost too late, and as a result barely withstood the initial attack.

The second Palestinian Intifada, also called the Al-Aqsa Intifada, began when Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount on September 28, 2000; sparking outrage from Palestinians. However, tensions had already been rising since the failure of the Camp David peace talks and the breakdown of the Oslo Accords in July of that year. For the next five years Israel and the Palestinians engaged in a conflict that saw the Israeli Defense Force, IDF, carrying out a military strategy that was not in accordance with the nation's political ones.

What the Israeli political leaders wanted out of the conflict was to force the Palestinians back to the negotiating table and to get them to make concessions in the peace talks. However, the IDF's increasing use of force, and the countless numbers of civilian dead, made it almost impossible for the Palestinians to return to the bargaining table. The reason for this was the Israeli military strategy, which during the Second Intifada consisted of four main phases: containment, punishment, low-intensity pro-activity, and finally full-scale invasion.

Each stage in the IDF's strategy came in response to the increasing scale of attacks by the Palestinians, who launched attacks against Israelis in the hope that they could prompt more a violent reaction. Palestinian strategy focused on "internationalizing the conflict" by the exploitation of civilian casualties. (Carmon and Feldner) However, the IDF was more concerned with tactical victory and stopping the Palestinians from launching attacks against Israelis; a strategy that proved militarily successful.

But military success did not bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, it only strengthened their resolve to continue the struggle. Therefore, by 2004 the.