ISRAEL: THE LEBANESE WAR - LOOKING BACK

...The shortest respite between Israeli wars came after the '67 war, the most decisive victory Israel ever had...

...He tried to adopt a more moderate approach than his party's official line, and he brought into his cabinet such people as Dayan, Yadin, Weizmann, who all were associated with the old tradition...

...Yet the new strategic concept remained ambiguous except as a justification for the war in Lebanon...

...This sort of violence was not a threat to Israel's existence—not an existential threat, but a threat to the welfare of the population—assuming that a degree of security is a matter of public welfare...

...And, mainly for internal political reasons (with which I shall deal later), Israel did not start the war with the Syrians on the first day but waited until the second or third day, even though it was apparently assumed in advance that there would be a confrontation with the Syrians...

...a victorious war wins acceptance even from people who initially had hesitations...

...To think in terms of Greater Israel meant that there would be no repartition of Palestine, no return of most of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to Arab sovereignty, and hence a much greater emphasis than before on the Palestinian issue...

...This burden alone is sufficient reason to avoid war whenever possible...

...Of course, from a democratic point of view, there is nothing 94 wrong in starting a war that is supported by a majority, even if it is a narrow majority...

...Meanwhile, the Syrians, with Russian help, have greatly increased their strength...

...there is no authoritative Lebanese government, but there is a new president who is closer to Israel...

...Operationally it had to be offensive for military reasons: the need to end the fighting in a short time, the advantages of attack over defense, the need to 92 carry the war into the enemy's territory, particularly with the vulnerable pre-'67 borders...

...Wars of choice are only added to wars of no choice...

...When the government's spokesmen talk about the war, they ask, "What were the objectives...

...What I mean by a strategically offensive doctrine is the initiation of military operations that aim at changing the status quo in the Arab-Israeli conflict...

...This was possible because of the partition of Palestine, and because most of the Arabs who had lived in the territory that became Israel either left or were driven out of this territory...

...The burden on the reserves has increased considerably, and people are serving 60 days and more a year instead of 30 days...

...Moreover—and this wasn't understood by everyone, certainly not by Begin—there is no proof that Israeli victories deter the enemy from attacking and that military successes postpone the next confrontation...

...This transformation was associated with a certain concept of security, which distinguished between basic security and immediate or current security...

...And when the Israeli army did fight, an effort was made to control the process of escalation...

...And under such conditions, opposition to the war would never become a major factor...

...In this way, Israel may reduce the number of wars its army has to fight and the extra burden resulting from such wars...

...But this consideration was ignored by Sharon and Eitan...

...Some ambiguity regarding the circumstances in which the doctrine would be implemented was, of course, unavoidable, but the basic strategy was clear: Israel would go to war only when it was threatened, when it felt it was in a position of basic or immediate vulnerability...

...For example: the assumption that once you expose the weaknesses of the Syrians and the limitations of Soviet arms, the Soviet and Syrian reaction would be to go along—as if the Soviets were to say: "Well, we have to be realistic and accept the fact that our weapons are ineffective," and as if the Syrians would now seek a compromise, look for new connections in the West to replace the Soviet link...

...But by occupying territory where a large part of the Palestinians live, Israel introduced into the area under its control the old intercommunal issue...

...This change, though publicly advocated by Begin, was never formally adopted...

...Ben Gurion's main contribution to Israeli political discourse was to get us to think in state terms rather than communal terms...

...First, the cost of wars...

...The army cannot train because most of the military units and some of the armor units of the regular army are engaged in Lebanon...

...This was the reason for all the deceptions during the war...

...communal conflict again became a problem...

...The problem is whether it doesn't undermine the basic trust of large segments of the people and weaken their will to fight...

...It was a kind of revival of the old prestatehood, intercommunal conflict between Israelis and Palestinians—the conflict over what Israelis call "the Land of Israel...

...it has continued now for more than a year...

...The assumption was that there would be fewer than 100 soldiers killed...

...It is also necessary to consider the war's indirect and unanticipated costs...

...The real change took place only after the '81 elections...

...Begin and Sharon didn't emphasize, in the beginning, their primary objective—which was to destroy the Palestinian political center in Beirut so as to strengthen their control of the West Bank...

...The basic doctrine, then, was strategically defensive and operationally offensive...

...the undermining of Israeli morale...

...Since at least '56, Israel's strategy was basically defensive...

...How does the war look a year after it was begun...

...This attempt to deceive—some people say to deceive even the cabinet, certainly to deceive the people, to deceive the opposition, to deceive the United States, to deceive world public opinion—this attempt had a negative effect on the planning of the war...

...Begin too expressed his preference for wars of choice...

...How do you know that deterrence has failed and that it is time for putting your operational capacity into action...

...it could not admit, at the first stage at least, the adoption of the new strategic doctrine...

...The artillery was removed from South Lebanon...

...It came about mainly because of the personal influence of a few people, particularly Sharon and Eitan...

...However, they obviously believed that the war would be successful and that success would restore the consensus within the country...

...When Begin came to power in 1977, there was no immediate change in strategic concepts...

...Since I am an indifferent interviewer and he is a wonderful talker, I have in this transcript simply let him talk and cut out my own interventions...

...There was little understanding of the broader war objectives in the country and no consensus on the extent of the war...

...Now let me say something about that limited success...

...How could anyone ignore the fact that control of Lebanon would be a serious problem for a country with an army composed mostly of reserves...

...it was not a concept easy to sell to the Israeli public and was presented only at the moment when the war seemed successful...

...the Palestinians can still carry out terrorist activities or wage guerrilla warfare, but they have no significant paramilitary infrastructure...

...The problem of consensus came to the surface mainly as a result of the limited success of the war...

...All these costs overshadow the limited benefits...

...It will increase the security burden, the economic burden, the lack of consensus...

...the Labor party as a whole adopted the formula of territorial compromise, which meant a repartition of the West Bank that would leave most of the Arab population outside the territory of Israel...

...According to the new strategic concept of Begin, Sharon, and ex-Chief of Staff Eitan, Israel should go to war precisely under the opposite conditions—when it is strong...

...In terms of Israeli objectives, all IsraeliArab wars are thus limited wars...

...Until after the 1967 War everyone agreed that basic security should be the main concern of Israel, of the army, of defense thinking...

...And the Israeli army was sensitive to the lack of consensus, more than other armies would be: it is a matter of social structure...

...The opposition, which represents almost half the country, was against any advance beyond a 40-kilometer limit, in accordance with the idea of removing PLO artillery from within firing range of Israel's borders...

...They preferred to refer to the security problem in the Galilee, with its defensive connotation, and to present the war's extension as a consequence of developments within the war itself...

...the PLO lost some of its prestige and became more dependent on Syria...

...This contradicts the common belief that victories deter...

...Thus it would have been reasonable to assume that in the end there will be a new arms race that will force Israel to invest more in its weapons systems...

...These too are part of the calculation of the war's costs and benefits...

...The assumption was that the campaign would take four to five days...

...What was achieved and what was not achieved...

...Sometimes, perhaps, wars may bring marginal political gains for Israel, but Israel can't bring about the capitulation of the Arabs because of the size and population of the Arab world and the likely intervention of world powers...

...we preferred the threat of violence to the exercise of violence...

...The left wing thought about a return to the pre-'67 borders...

...Current security has to do with terrorism, border clashes, all kinds of small problems mainly associated with the Palestinians' attempts to make life difficult in 91 Israel, to undermine morale, and so on...

...there are now 500 dead and well over 2,000 wounded...

...The third change associated with the war in Lebanon was a social and political one: the readiness of the government to start a war without securing a national consensus...

...the negative image of Israel that was created abroad, and so on...

...It was a sharp departure from the traditional doctrine that had led the Israeli army in previous wars to deal first with the militarily strongest opponents...

...We destroy equipment, and we lose some ourselves when the Arab capacity to renew stocks is much better than ours, for both financial and political reasons...

...In the case of the war in Lebanon these include: the strengthening of Syria...

...From a strictly military point of view, much more could have been achieved, and at much less cost, if from the beginning Israel had attacked the Syrians with all its force and taken them by surprise...

...Consequently the Lebanese War became the first war that was focused on the Palestinians and not on the threat from Arab states...

...Thus the Israeli army succeeded in reaching the Beirut-Damascus road, which was Sharon's main target, on the western front, but it failed to do so on the eastern front...

...It would have been much more rational to assume that the 95 Russians, who in the past didn't provide the Syrians with the best equipment they have, now would try to supply them with better systems (as indeed has happened...

...and there are no katushas falling on Kiryat Shimona...

...The army cannot reorganize...

...Armament and other equipment can be destroyed...

...Therefore, though the human and material losses, and the political losses, were perhaps less than those in the Yom Kippur War, the long-range consequences will, I think, be much more severe...

...New people were appointed to key positions: Shamir as foreign minister, Sharon as defense minister—and both were strongly associated with the ideology of Greater Israel...

...So, again, there is no rationale for initiating a war...

...The costs are the result of incomprehensible mistakes—naïve assumptions and illusions...

...This was the first change...

...The exploitation of opportunities thus becomes the guiding strategic idea...

...This was a result of the order of priorities: first to destroy not only the military infrastructure of the Palestinians in the south of Lebanon but also their political center in Beirut...

...First, there was a change in the composition of the government...

...but for what purpose...

...Basic security has to do with the Arab countries' threat to destroy the state of Israel altogether, using the military power of the Arab world...

...Another example: how could anyone not understand that there is a difference between capturing South Lebanon and holding it...

...First of all, it is wrong to measure the outcome of a war only by comparing its results with its objectives...

...The first is that the Lebanese War didn't focus on the interstate conflict between Israel and the Arab countries...

...Even if the ratio of destruction is much in favor of Israel, and this is usually the case, the rate of replacement clearly favors the Arabs...

...it can hope for only a limited success that ends the hostilities without allowing the enemy any political gains...

...And the more peripheral groups in Israeli society are underrepresented—not only in the officers' corps (that's probably true everywhere), but also in the fighting units...

...In Israel it is the other way around...

...Before the '67 War, Israel developed the concept of the casus belli as a way of answering this question...

...Thus even when Israel struck first, war was forced upon the country, not chosen by it...

...Thus Israel's wars were limited, and Israel has always preferred to use its army as a deterrent...

...For within the pre-'67 borders, Israel did not have the capacity to absorb an attack and could not secure a decisive victory, or even a limited military success that would prevent the enemy from achieving his political goals, without striking first...

...They expected a very rapid and decisive success, at a very low cost...

...In recent years, the Arabs too have adopted a more limited strategic concept as they became convinced that Israel could not be totally destroyed— first, because of the strength of the Israeli army...

...Perhaps not entirely ignored, as their need to deceive indicates...

...In this respect, it's not like most other armies, where you find bettereducated people in noncombatant roles, while in the fighting units you find mostly the less educated and lower-income groups...

...What Israel can gain is mainly the destruction of the enemy's equipment...

...Therefore the emphasis in the security field was still on the defense of Israel against a major Arab attack...

...Apparently, about 10 or 15 percent of the population opposed the war altogether...

...There's no difference in principle: so long as a border exists between two states and between the majority of the Palestinians and the people of Israel, the communal problem would be transformed, again, into a relation between states...

...Indeed, wars initiated by Israel are additional wars and not a substitute for wars started by the Arabs...

...and third, because of the Arabs' belief that Israel has a nuclear capability...

...The Israeli elites are overrepresented in the crack units of the army, in the paratroops, the commando units, the air force, and so on...

...Inside the country, there is political polarization—the result of fighting without a consensus...

...Israel again would be essentially a Jewish nationstate with an Arab minority...

...Two years after this victory, Egypt started the war of attrition and four years later, the Egyptians and the Syrians started the Yom Kippur War...

...MICHAEL WALZER There are three major differences between the Lebanese War and previous Israeli wars (with the possible exception of the Sinai campaign of 1956...

...Thus Begin was entirely wrong when he defended the Lebanese War on grounds that "wars of choice spare [us] wars of no choice...

...The main thrust of the army was in the west, not in the east...

...Israel cannot win wars decisively...

...Israelis invest more in their security than any other country in the world—not only financially (the military budget is about 30 percent of the gross national product) but also in length of military service, with people serving first as conscripts, for three years, and later as reservists, for almost a month each year (adding up to another two to three years...

...No government in Israel before that of Begin was willing to run the risk that Israel's capacity to conduct a war would be impaired in the long run as a result of a decline in national consensus...

...This idea, if fully implemented, would make Israel a destabilizing factor in the Middle East—because when threatened, it would have to fight wars of no choice, and when not threatened but strong, it would initiate wars of choice...

...Still, Israel did not go to war for the purpose of changing the status quo...

...There is also a heavy economic cost...

...There were always problems in avoiding contradic93 tions between these two levels, in accommodating the operational concept to the strategic concept...

...I can't understand it...

...Some thousands of enemy soldiers may be killed—but without significantly reducing the size of the Arab armies...

...And the Israeli elites are more associated with the Labor party, while the lower-income and less educated strata are more inclined to support the Begin government—and therefore to support the war...

...The benefits are very small...

...He is active in the Israeli Labor party and a well-known commentator on Israeli politics...

...In planning the war, their assumptions were not based on worst-case analyses but rather on best-case analyses...

...These are the achievements, and they are very limited...

...second, because the superpowers, especially the United States, won't allow it...

...the relatively high rate of casualties...

...And that the Syrians would accept the better systems and agree to an increased Soviet intervention in their affairs as part of the price for the reequipping of their forces...

...They now are less dangerous than they were before the war to the people who live in Kiryat Shimona...

...Israel became an approximate nation-state with a rather small Arab minority...

...But to believe that the Gemayel family, using the few thousand ill-trained and not fully equipped soldiers of the Lebanese army together with some few thousand paramilitary fighters, could enforce law and order in that country, remain friendly to Israel, and cut their relations with the Arab world—this requires a degree of naïveté that is incomprehensible...

...The idea was that Israel would only go to war when it was threatened and when the threat was acute and immediate—as it was in '67...

...You can make this kind of argument so long as you don't take into account all the direct and indirect unanticipated costs...

...Thus the partition and the demographic results of the 1948 conflict transformed the intercommunal conflict into an interstate conflict...

...q 96...

...The rationale for this approach involved several considerations...

...And the Yom Kippur War was undoubtedly "a war of no choice...

...Altogether, that means six to seven years...

...So the opposition to the war came from social groups on which the army relies for much of its fighting strength, and this made the problem of consensus even more serious...

...The second change was made from a strategically defensive and operationally offensive doctrine to a strategically offensive doctrine that remained operationally offensive as well—a spillover from the tactical level onto the strategic level...

...The costs are enormous...

...For these and other reasons...

...whenever, that is, the war isn't vital to Israel's basic existential situation...

...even political doves were often military hawks...

...A parallel change had taken place even earlier on the Arab side...

...The problem isn't the legitimacy, of the government's decision, in the light of law or the principles of political theory, but the wisdom of the decision, socially and politically...

...But the government needed to present the war as a more limited operation than it really was...

...The extra burden of wars in human and material resources is thus a strong argument in favor of adopting a defensive strategic doctrine...

...there is no rationale for fighting to change the status quo because the most that could be achieved would be a tactical change while the costs would be high and the balance of costs and benefits doubtful...

...The reasons for the spillover were not military but political, having to do with the ideological concept of a Greater Israel and the return of the communal conflict...

...no katushas are falling on Kiryat Shimona," as Begin would say...

...The result was that security problems became much more difficult, especially in the Galilee, because of the buildup of a PLO military infrastructure in southern Lebanon...

...For all these reasons, the war is a failure from which Israel will suffer, not for a few years, but for many, many years...

...Another argument for the defensive approach of the past was that the Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be decided through military means...

...Perhaps Begin and Sharon had illusions about the capacity of the Christian militia, the Phalange, to impose its will on the whole population of Lebanon--a multicommunity population, with Druse and Shi'ite Moslems, with Sunni Moslems and different kinds of Christian denominations, and all of them Arabs...

...A blockade of the straits of Tiran, for example, is a sign that deterrence has failed and thus a casus belli...

...As long as the Labor party was in power, the emphasis was still on the interstate conflict because Israel still hoped for a territorial solution to the problem of the Palestinians...

...And they tend to say, "Peace with Lebanon was not achieved but there was a limited agreement...

...Whether that dependency is good or bad, I don't know...

...And there is, of course, a cost to the image of Israel abroad...

...This new focus affected the military planning of the operation, for the Israeli army put more emphasis on the western sector where the Palestinians were fighting than on the eastern sector where the Syrian forces were deployed...

...There was the destruction of the political center of the PLO in Beirut...