Last week, Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz unveiled his reorganization plan for the army, "IDF 2000", touted as revolutionary. The plan touched off a wide ranging debate, taking in Israel’s strategic concerns in the missile age and the relationship between the army and society, and reaching into the heart of Israeli politics.
Smaller, smarter army
The changes outlined in "IDF 2000" are mainly structural, the most significant being the idea of a strategic command to concentrate on threats such as Iraq or Iran arming themselves with nuclear weapons.
In its January 18 leader, "Ha'aretz" dismissed the plan’s revolutionary pretensions, but Amir Oren ("Ha'aretz January 15) said its very existence indicated that the army was at last about to stop preparing for the Yom Kippur War, and that any change that would "shake the IDF out of its fossilized state" was welcome. Oren Shahor ("Ma'ariv" January 14) saw the plan as a correct step towards a leaner, technology-based army, more appropriate to current conditions. "The threats surrounding us have not lessened significantly with the halted peace process... the Arab armies are becoming more and more modern, equipped with sophisticated Western arms in place of antiquated Soviet weaponry."
End conscription
To Baruch Kimmerling ("Ha'aretz" January 19), the planned changes "are still based on the social vista of the 1950s." "If the army really wants to update itself, and not simply adapt to the battlefield of the next century, it must also adapt itself to the fundamental changes in society, values, and demographics, that have taken place since the 1950s," he wrote.
This means slaughtering the sacred cow of universal conscription and a citizen army. Instead, there should be a professional, volunteer force, competing for manpower, and womanpower, in the market place, which Kimmerling believes would be good for the army and the economy alike.
Army running itself
What disturbed "Ha'aretz", however, was not so much the plan itself, as the way it was presented: "The government, not the defense establishment, should determine Israel’s national objectives, and the army is only a tool for attaining them... The army is running itself. This is an unacceptable approach... The rewards of army reform are offset by the great loss caused by the government’s evasion of the task of drawing up a sober policy for peace and security." Yosef Lapid ("Ma'ariv" January 14) also saw the press conference at which "IDF 2000" was announced as an inappropriate forum, and said the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee should have been informed first. "The Chief of Staff ought to respect the rules of the democratic game," he wrote.
Mordechai to blame
Amir Oren sees Minister of Defense Yitzhak Mordechai, (now out of the government), as responsible for the haste, and for the inflated claims for the revolutionary nature of the plan. According to Oren, with the elections being brought forward, Mordechai is in a hurry to brandish achievements.
While Mordechai is generally seen as an honorable man and a responsible minister, Oren has consistently criticized him as being motivated by personal grudges harking back to his army career. He praised the suggestion made this week by prime ministerial candidate Dan Meridor, that an expert civilian was preferable to a former senior officer as Defense Minister. "Meridor’s security platform expresses understanding of the vital links between social solidarity, the balance of forces within the nation, economic strength, technological development, foreign ties, and military power."
In the end, says Oren, what counts is "the ability to minimize losses in war, or, preferably, to avoid war altogether. For this... making the military machine more efficient is not enough. What’s needed is a revolution in policy, and that won’t come from the present government, or its Minister of Defense."
Who’s irrational?
Reuven Pedohtzur ("Ha'aretz" January 19) similarly sees the problem as being on the political rather than the military level. He quotes a member of the General Staff as saying that, as the Middle East enters the nuclear age, Israel cannot draw hopeful conclusions from the history of the Cold War, because that history was shaped by the fact that the leaders on both sides were rational, while Arab leaders’ attitudes to Israel are irrational.
According to Pedohtzur, the kinds of suggestions coming out of the government about how Israel should respond to various provocations indicates that the boot may be on the other foot, and "the leadership always considered the most rational and balanced in the region is emerging as adventurist, irresponsible, and lacking in minimal strategic understanding... Anyone prepared to lose US strategic support over breaches of the Wye agreement apparently doesn’t understand how the strategic environment will look in the next decade, and the extent to which Israel will be dependent on the US for her security. The behavior of Israel’s government and its head gives another dimension to the claim (made by Amnon Lipkin-Shahak) ‘Netanyahu is dangerous for Israel’"
Haim Hanegbi ("Yediot Aharonot" January 14) says that, among the prime ministerial candidates, Netanyahu does not have a monopoly on recklessness, and that Labour leader Ehud Barak, as a member of the General Staff at the time of the Lebanon War, proposed finding a pretext to broaden the scale of the campaign and deal a decisive blow to the Syrians. "Barak must prove he has exchanged military adventurism for a policy of peace," Hanegbi wrote.
Soldiers first
Amos Gilboa ("Yediot Aharonot" January 17) puts the individual soldier back at center stage. Israel, he says, should learn from the way the US rehabilitated its army after the Vietnam war. "No revolutions, but gradual development," the most important element of which was inculcating into the soldier "creative thinking and values such as initiative, independence of thought, fighting spirit, responsibility." Gilboa believes the down-to-earth attitude shown by Shaul Mofaz at the start of his term as Chief of Staff, an attitude which he says is gradually permeating down through the ranks, is a hopeful sign.
Not a Liar
Meretz leader Yossi Sarid has remarked that it’s hard to catch Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling the truth. But, according to Emuna Alon ("Yediot Aharonot" January 20), it has become so commonplace to regard Netanyahu as a liar that no-one stops to ask precisely when he lied to whom about what. "Plenty of claims can be made against Netanyahu and his leadership, but the claim that he’s a liar isn’t one of them," she wrote.
On the contrary, she says, people are disappointed in him precisely because he did not lie. The political right hoped he was lying when he said before the last election that he would honor Israel’s international agreements, "but Netanyahu was telling the truth, and has abided faithfully by his declared policy... here and there he delayed matters to maintain the principle of mutuality, but that too was included in advance in his sincere promise."
For Sarid, the challenge is on.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on January 21, 1999
Responses to Press Cuttings are welcome. Please send comments to davidg@globes.co.il
Israel’s Main Hebrew Dailies:
| Readership as % of population |
| | Weekday | Weekend |
| Yediot Aharonot | 50.8% | 63.5% |
| Ma’ariv | 23.8% | 31.9% |
| Ha’aretz | 6.5% | 7.9% |
| Globes | 2.8% | 2.2% |
The above figures are based on a survey carried out by the Israel Advertising Association in October 1998. The survey covered a sample of 10,000 people representing a cross-section of the adult population of Israel. Each percentage point represents 37,000 people.
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