Bellicose Policy, Interethnic Reproduction, and Internal State Expansion: Israel (1948-1956) as an Illustration

Yagil Levy

Center for Studies of Social Change

April, 1995

Introduction

Participants in the academic discourse about international relations frequently call on the proponents of neorealism to address the internal arena of the state as a means to extend the understating of state external action, rather than to focus exclusively on the external arena. Among those calls is Wendt's (1987), who contends a satisfactory explanation of state external action,

that is, one that explains both how that action was possible and why that possibility was actualized in a particular form at a given moment- will have to combine these methodologies into a "structural-historical" ... analysis. This combination will require abstract structural analysis to theorize and explain the causal powers, practices, and interests of states, and concrete historical analysis to trace the casually significant sequences of choices and interactions which led to particular events (p. 364).

Inspired by Wendt's suggestion, this paper attempts to widen the scope of understanding state external action through the case of Israel, in which a bellicose policy was adopted -- beginning with reprisal raids culminating in the Israel-initiated Sinai Campaign (1956, or the Suez War) -- and interwoven with the state's internal expansion and its action to reproduce the interethnic structure.

Wendt's call might serve as an invitation to deepen the limited dialogue between two main schools: neorelism and state formation. Neorealism explains the actual event but fails to address the conditions which made the events possible, mainly the state's relations with the dominant groups that affected the state's capacity to mobilize the required resources for the war and, at the same time, rigidified its preferences in the external arena to opt for a bellicose approach. The internal arena is brought in by the school of state formation reinforced by the neoMarxist statist approach. Still, these schools have failed to address the dynamics by which a state escalated an external conflict beyond its innate inclinations toward violence. A dialogue about such questions is necessary and might be benefited by factoring in social interests drawn upon scientific realism.

To this end I will summarize Israel's policy during the years 1949-1956 to raise the question what explains Israeli policy. I will claim that Israel's policy cannot be fully explained as a rational strategic choice without factoring in internal-arena variables. Therefore, a broader explanation based on a three-dimensional analysis is presented (see figure 1).

Figure 1: The Three-Dimensional Analysis

Dimension I Rational Bellicose Action in the External Arena<......>

   Dimension II Unintended Construction/Realization of Interests in the Internal Arena<......>

      Dimension III State Internal Expansion Interwoven with Construction of Inequitable Social Structure<......>

<..> - relations of inter-dimensional mutual nurture

Israel's policy was steered in dimension I, representing the actual external events, to intentionally meet external challenges as they were perceived by the political-military elite. However, the implementation of external politics was conditional upon mobilization of the main social groups' support, which made possible due to the bellicose policy's unintended consequences, by which an array of social actors' interests, part of them pertinent to the domain of interethnic relations, were realized/ constructed. This inclined domestic agents to work for, or at least, to accept the bellicose policy despite previous opposition (dimension II--social actors' interests). Concomitantly, these effects prompted the state's internal expansion, including the enhancement of its capacity to regulate interethnic relations (dimension III --state's expansion). The occurrences within dimensions II and III further fueled the bellicose policy. The bellicose action thereby serves methodologically as an introduction to a general analysis of state-society relations. Still, the whole analysis involves a theoretical contribution centered on the role played by the state action to reproduce interethnic structure inwardly in fueling its action externally.

The Evolution of the Bellicose Policy

From 1951 to 1956, the period almost immediately after its establishment in 1948, the State of Israel was faced with cross-border infiltrations into its territory from Jordan and Egypt. ₁ The infiltrators were Palestinian refugees who had been evicted or fled from the areas conquered by Israel during the 1948 War. The majority of infiltrations (about 90%) were economically oriented and non-violent. They essentially were attempts by the refugees to return to their former lands and villages, to steal or smuggle, or even visit relatives (Tal, 1990:7-9; Morris, 1993:34-54). Moreover, the Arab states made significant, partially successful attempts to prevent the infiltrations (Tal, ibid.:41-53; Morris, ibid. :70-92).

Israel, for its part, perceived the infiltrations as a threat to its sovereignty, an element of the hostility displayed by the Arab states. At first, the Israeli response to the infiltrations was moderate, embodied in small-scale operations carried out against the Arab villages that served as the infiltrators' jumping-off points. These attacks, executed by untrained troops from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), frequently failed to fulfill their mission (see Dayan, 1976:111-112; Yaniv, 1994:105-106). Still, soldiers deployed along the border shot to kill at would-be infiltrators, including Arabs passing near the border on the other side, while some Israeli border settlements mined their access roads. These measures culminated in between 2,700 and 5,000 Arab fatalities from 1949 to 1956, the majority in the period 1949-1951 (Morris, ibid.:124-135, 416).

Israel's response was even more pronounced when taken against the background of the armistice agreements with its neighbors which prevailed in those years. Under these agreements, direct and regular bilateral talks were held with Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. Israel used the meetings to complain about the infiltrations and hold the respective Arab governments responsible. The latter undertook to deal with the matter. Accordingly, they deployed more army units along the border, punished infiltrators, and tried to move refugee camps away from the border area. The number of infiltrations declined but the problem was not completely solved (Tal, ibid.:41-53; Morris, ibid.:70-92).

The Israeli military reaction, however, not only failed to eliminate the infiltrations but actually aggravated them, as the infiltrators responded in kind. They armed themselves, organized in squads to take on the IDF units that patrolled the border, and launched violent raids deep inside Israel (Morris, ibid. :124-131, 411-414; Yaniv, ibid. :67-70). Israel then intensified its responses. The turning point was the 1953 Qibya Raid, carried out against a Jordanian village in retaliation for the murder of a woman and two children in a nearby village settled by new immigrants. The Qibya Raid was the first large-scale effort carried out by Unit 101, an elite unit created to execute such raids, under the command of Ariel Sharon. The force blew up houses and killed dozens of village residents (Benziman, 1985:35-58). The heavy fatalities inflamed Israeli politicians' and intellectuals' critique. The Qibya Raid heralded a further escalation of the cross-border infiltrations which displayed a violent rather than economic profile (Morris, ibid.: 292-293).

The next level of escalation was the Gaza Raid (February 1955), aimed at the Egyptian army stationed in Gaza, that resulted in dozens of dead Egyptian soldiers. This was also a case of disproportionate escalation, as the attacks which triggered the response had not significantly exceeded the profile of other frictions during that period (Morris, ibid.:324). In response, the circle of animosity broadened to the interstate plane, an expansion demonstrated in Egypt's equipping itself with Soviet weaponry (by means of the Czech Arms Deal, 1955), by which it balanced its military power vis-a-vis Israel. Egypt also formed the Fedayeen, army units manned by Palestinian refugees. Their mission was to carry out attacks in the Israeli heartland and they succeeded in inflicting a large numbers of casualties (Bar-Zohar, 1975: 1146-1147). Manifestly, the Israeli retaliation policy decreased its security: What had been confined to the realm of routine security now became a more significant threat to the state's security. In parallel, the infiltrations, which had initially been unorganized, sporadic, and restrained by the Egyptian government, became deliberately organized by the Egyptian army. In short, Israel dealt with its perceived external challenge within the typical frame of the "security dilemma" (see Levy, 1989: 226-227).

A serious radicalization of the Arab states' position toward Israel thus ensued, repressing any attempt at political dialogue between the two sides (see below). The Arab-Israeli conflict was further energized by other Israeli actions, the most significant being the "Mishap." In 1954, a special Israeli intelligence unit carried out an operation designed to dissuade Britain from evacuating its Suez Canal bases. Its method: perpetration of terrorist incidents against Western targets in Egypt in order to create the impression in the West of Egyptian instability. The operation failed and the unit's members were apprehended (Sharett, 1978:618-736; Eshed, 1979). Consequently, the mishap, concurrently with the Gaza Raid, triggered President Nasser of Egypt to lose his limited interest in the possibility of reaching a political settlement with Israel (Slater, 1994:191).

The escalation demonstrated in the Arab response confirmed the tendency of the Israeli leadership, led by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, to intentionally deteriorate the situation at the borders as a step in the initiation of a war. The war aimed to prevent Egypt from realizing any military superiority acquired by the Czech Arms Deal (Bar-On, 1992:64-65). The policy took the shape of paralyzing the work of the Israeli-Egyptian Armistice Commission (Sharett, ibid.: 902-922, 1018-1021; Tal, ibid.: 55-57) and intensifying the reprisal raids to provoke an Egyptian response which would hand Israel a pretext to seize parts of the Gaza Strip (Morris, ibid. :280-281, 349-351, 355-361). Indeed, in March 1955, Ben-Gurion proposed to the Cabinet that Israel should conquer the Gaza Strip. The proposal was blocked by a coalition of ministers led by Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett who had opposed the retaliatory approach ibid. :103-104; Sharett,ibid.:864-867). In the meantime, the IDF launched an accelerated arms buildup, acquiring offensive weapons from France to support the shift from a defensive to an offensive posture.

Israel's position was reinforced when it joined with France and Britain for the purpose of initiating the Suez War/Sinai Campaign as a large-scale raid in October 1956. Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip within a few days, but was forced to withdraw almost as quickly under American and Soviet pressure. Following the Sinai Campaign, the region was calm for some years and cross-border infiltrations by Palestinians decreased sharply.

Dimension I: The Rational Strategic Calculation

Perceived threats from Arab countries and Israel's bellicose response comprise dimension I of the analysis addressing the question what explains the Israeli policy. (see figure 1). To date, the evolution of the bellicose approach has been analyzed primarily within the international relations (IR) field. Inferring from the IR studies, the Israeli rational calculation that elicited the bellicose approach can be sketched as follows (see, mainly, Aronson and Horowitz, 1971; Handel, 1973: 21-36; Horowitz, 1979; 1985; Levite, 1988; Shimshoni, 1988; Evron, 1989; Morris, 1993; Yaniv, 1994)

The point of departure is that Israel defined its national interest in military terms. It was, beyond ensuring the sheer survival of the state, the expansion of security margins to bridge over its power inferiority vis-a-vis the Arab countries by retaining the accomplishments of the 1948 War: expansion of the borders beyond those allotted within the framework of the U.N. resolution of November 1947, division of Palestine between Jewish and Palestinian states; and removing most of the Palestinian population residing in the areas conquered by Israel.

Israel thus, contrary to its leaders' declared goals, opted to base its security upon a territorial/ demographic status quo, i.e., to hold the new territories and to populate them by Jewish settlers, while utilizing the abandoned lands and houses rather than to restore them to Arab sovereignty and/or to allow return of Palestinian refugees. Viewing the Arab states as fundamentally hostile and unreliable, Israel was reluctant to meet the Arabs' demands for such concessions, and, further, viewed the conflict as an extremely "zero sum game". That was true when Arab states were inclined to promote a peace process with Israel (see below). That is not to judge whether Israel really could have advanced the peace process in this period, but only to explain why the potential for furthering the process was not exhausted.

If so, Israel was inclined to prevent the Arabs from jeopardizing its defined security interest, be it infiltrations that precluded definitive demarcation of the boundaries and hence undermining state sovereignty, or a "second round" of war to be launched by the Arab countries. Accordingly, Israel was determined to retain its military superiority over the Arab states, as a means of both deterrence and defense. Accordingly, in addition to a massive military buildup based on mass conscription, Israel also made efforts to ally with one of the Western powers to ensure political support and a supply of weapons, as the Israel-France alliance indicated.

This dovetailed with a powerful comment against the infiltrations, taking the shape of reprisal raids, as a means to deter both the infiltrators and the Arab countries. This response was preferred to the alternative strategies of: (1) Dealing with the infiltrations by appealing to the international community and thus ensuring both the support of the Western Powers and the stability of the armistice agreement. This agreement's annulment by means of reprisal raids and other offensive actions could have led to war. This alternative was posited by Moshe Sharett, the Foreign Minister of the period (and the Premier during 1954-1955), challenging Ben-Gurion and Dayan's "hawkish" stance (Sharett, 1978; Shlaim, 1983; Sheffer, 1988); and/or (2) to bolster defensive means, such as fencing the borders, an alternative put forward by the Foreign Ministry and some IDF officers (Morris, ibid., 216-219); and/or (3) to view the problem as an integral component of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and then to deal with it by means of exhausting the potential for achieving peace with the Arab countries.

Moreover, the military doctrine was adapted to the state's limits of power, both externally (a quantitative territorial-demographic inferiority vis-a-vis the Arab countries) and internally (the ability to mobilize resources in the domestic arena). Israel, therefore, converted its basic defensive doctrine to an offensive one. The advantages of offensive doctrine, given Israel's limitations, were clear: In event of an Arab attack, a defensive doctrine would prolong war by allowing for a protracted defense posture until the reserve forces could be mobilized and reach the front to mount an offensive. By contrast, an offensive doctrine would eliminate this time-consuming process by means of a preemptive strike or a preventive war. The war is thus potentially concluded more quickly and is consequently of shorter duration (see Levite, 1988:65-66), with less casualties and use of material resources. Moreover, Israel, by formulating an offensive doctrine, also neutralized the effects of uncertainty in the face of the perceived Arab threat.

Consequently, Israel escalated the raids, converted them from a mechanism of combating infiltrations combined with deterrence to that of anti-deterrence, provoking a preventive war when the raids had proven ineffective and the Czech Arms Deal came up (Morris, ibid.:175-183; Evron, 1989). This happened even though the French arms procured by Israel were sufficient to maintain the military balance with Egypt after the Czech Arms Deal (Be'er, 1966:226-230; Bar-On, ibid. :375-378).

The paradox, then, is blatant: realization of the state's interest in perpetuating the political-territorial status quo was, in fact, conditional on a constant escalation of the military tension between the two sides. The alternative was to try to bring quiet to the borders, thus bringing pressure on Israel to make concessions in the spirit of the U.N. partition resolution.

Notwithstanding the IR explanation, it demonstrates some weaknesses that leave the question what explains the Israel policy without a plausible explanation. Scholars have worked on the assumption that Israel defined its interests in terms of expanding security margins by military means. They apparently inspired by the neorealist school, that presupposes that the state has an innate, quasi-deterministic tendency to maximize power, a tendency springing from the inherent anarchy of the world order. This motivates every single state to struggle for resources and for its very survival, constrained by both its own available, mobilized resources and the international system itself (on the neorealist school, see Waltz, 1979; Ashley, 1984; Gilpin, 1984; Keohane, 1986; Levy, 1989:224-228). The neorealism-informed explanation raises several questions: Why and how is security defined in military rather than political terms? Why did the Israeli leaders really opt to rely on territorial assets rather than exhaust the options to bring peace, or, at least, to downscale the Arab-Israeli conflict? This approach naturally downplays the more pacific available alternatives partially outlined above and echoed some Israeli voices, particularly the options to achieve peace.

The Lausanne Conference was convened in 1949, in the aftermath of the 1948 war, with the participation of Israel and the Arab states. The sides agreed on a protocol based on the Arabs' acceptance of the principle of partition in Palestine, implying recognition of Israel. But Israel, after signing the document, impeded its translation into a political agreement. Instead, according to Pappe (1992, 206-213), the Israeli side put forward unreasonable demands and took advantage of the discord among the Arab delegation in regard to the outcomes of the 1948 War. At bottom, Pappe argues, Israel preferred the political status quo over a quest for peace.

Sanctification of the status quo was also apparent in Israel's secret political negotiations with the Arab states in the early 1950's, as described by Itamar Rabinovich (1991). According to Rabinovich, the Arabs put forward territorial demands based on the (agreed) temporary status of the armistice accords, but these were rejected by Israel. Examples are Ben-Gurion's refusal to meet with Syrian ruler Za'im for fear he would demand border rectifications in the Kinneret-Jordan River area; Israel's rejection of Jordan's proposal to annex the southern Negev and give that country an outlet to the Mediterranean; Israel's refusal to agree to territorial adjustments in the Negev; and Israel's refusal to permit the Palestinian refugees to return. Rabinovich concludes that the question of which side missed the opportunity for peace, the Arabs or Israel, is moot. Such a summation is a challenge to the official Israeli position, which is internalized deep within the country's political discourse, the more so because it comes from a historian who is in the mainstream of the Israeli academy (and at the time of this writing was Israel's ambassador to Washington).

It follows that Israel's interest could have been defined in political terms, namely to achieve peace, even at the price of limited territorial concessions and readiness to reabsorb some of the Palestinian refugees. Then, Israel could have more easily advanced the Zionist project of building a state attracting the world Jewry and avoided a prolonged, heavy military burden. Its reluctance to embark on this road calls for explanation regarding the state's preference.

One may claim that the Arab threat was so forceful as to brush aside more pacifist options. If so, more significant than the objective aspect of missing opportunities is the subjective one, namely, the manner in which state agencies mobilized the needed support and resources for their preferred policy. This should embrace the inculcation of the Arab threat in the Israeli public, a process that in both its origins and its success demands explanation. Arguably, a definition of national interestsand the underlying threats is an outcome of an internal political process rather than just a rational calculation. It involves identity formation by which the political community dynamically determines itself in relation to the external system, while interests are endogenous rather than exogenously defined in relation to identities (see Wendt, 1992; 1994). However, the IR approach unquestioningly goes from perceived threat to national interest (see the theoretical critique by Andrews, 1984 on the neorealist school).

Subsequently, scholars failed to analyze the dispute between Ben-Gurion's and Sharett's schools of thought, which, I would claim, reflected a broader dispute between the state and the prestate power centers, and, as such, impacted the state's ability to mobilize both legitimacy and material resources for the war effort. Rather, the winning formula -- the force-oriented one based on a military-informed interest -- is taken as a point of departure to explain Israel's behavior; scholars fail to tackle the process by which the dominance of this formula came about (see Barnett, 1992 on war preparation).

In sum, by analytically grasping the elite-defined security interest, scholars have focused on how the state indispensably coped with a perceived external, given situation, i.e., the perceived Arab threat, rather than on how and why it shared in engendering the situation, in which the external system appears to the state as no more than "conditions of possibility for state action" (Wendt, 1987, 342). Hence, the scholars let slip the opportunity to read the reality as a history of alternatives (see the general critique by Pappe, 1993).

Thus, Israel's policy cannot be explained solely by a rational strategic calculation, centered on the external arena alone. To use Wendt's terms (1987:362-365), this explains the actual, what actually happened, while the problematic claimed above requires us to look at the possible as well. How does the actual become possible through the causal properties of the state? or in other words, how does a rationale of external threat in conjunction with internal-arena structural factors, effect the military-political strategy (see also Hechter, 1992 at the methodological level)? The IR explanation is therefore placed within dimension I of the overall analysis. The possible is suggested by the two other dimensions centering on the realization and construction of social interests leading to the state's internal expansion.

Dimensions Ii and Iii: Confronting the Social Problematic of State Making

1. Theoretical Background

Drawing upon the school of state formation, the Israeli case resembles other historical instances in the modern era, in which violent behavior by the state awarded it internal supremacy over other forces, nowhere more blatant than in its ability to extend control to sectors and power centers, which, in the premodern era, had enjoyed a high level of autonomy, and to direct social-civil activities according to state-defined goals (see Giddens, 1985; Mann, 1988; Tilly, 1992). In a similar fashion, the state could exploit existential fears to create bureaucratic mechanisms for coping with those fears, such as mass conscription, tax collection, and territorial centralization. These mechanisms originated from the introduction of massive artillery and gunpowder into the military arena from the 16th and 17th centuries, propelling state agencies to extract resources in favor of military's buildup (Tilly, 1985a; 1992), and, subsequently, with conscription of the domestic population insofar as growing needs for disciplined manpower could no longer be met by mercenaries (Thomson, 1992). A linkage thus was created between the state capacity for war preparation and its internal expansion (see Barnett, 1992).

Moving one step farther, since the state is not only a bureaucratic apparatus but also the nexus between a social structure and the international system, its violence-based supremacy affects, through the very nature of its action, the (re)construction of relations of social power, beyond bolstering its administrative system (see Cox, 1981). The state's image as an essentially rational and objective entity is highly instrumental for this capacity (see for example: Althusser, 1976; Gold et al, 1975; Habermas, 1971, 81-122; Poulantzas, 1978; Zeitlin, 1980, 22-28). It follows that state action practically realizes/constructs social interests, old and new alike, whose agents might exchange their support for the state's bellicose orientation and the internal expansion that it entailed in return for a share in the possible profits of this process. The term "social interest" refers to "those purposes implied in the performance of social practices, and therefore implicitly and practically held by participants in these practices" (Isaac, 1987, 99). "Interest" does not necessarily express the declared, conscious preferences of social agents and hence the interpretative methods by which this interest being analyzed. The underlying pattern of exchange was formed between the dominant social groups in Israeli society, namely the Ashkenazis, and the state.

2. State Action in Reproducing Interethnic Relations

The Ashkenazis arrived in Palestine in serial waves of immigration from Europe beginning in 1882 and gradually constituted the Jewish community's institutions, known as the Yishuv, functioning as a pre-state frame of rule under the British mandate (see Horowitz and Lissak, 1978). The Yishuv, through its very strategies of accumulation and allocation of resources, gave rise to the emergence of a huge bureaucracy and quasi-autonomous economic system, gradually engendering the crystallization of an Ashkenazi-composed bureaucratic middle class (Shapiro, 1984:35-53).

The transition from pre-state to a state structure entailed a crucial challenge to this social group when the state absorbed hundreds of thousands of indigent Jews, known as Orientals, immediately after it had been founded, mainly from Muslim countries. Hypothetically, the Ashkenazi elites now staffing the new state institutions implicitly calculated several alternative strategies of absorption: (1) to absorb the Orientals on an egalitarian basis, involving equal allocation of state resources, but then the Ashkenazis' dominant status would be jeopardized, as absorption would have entailed drastic regression in their standard of living. In practice, the Ashkenazi groups indeed torpedoed the state strategy to adopt egalitarianism during the years 1949-1952, embodied in enacting the policy of austerity and rationing (Shapiro, 1984: 128-132; Segev, 1986: 296-323). (2) To openly perpetuate the backward status of the Orientals, who would be treated as ordinary immigrants, as in other capitalist countries. However, the costs entailed would have been not only to inflame an interethnic/interclass conflict, but, equally significant, to preclude the Orientals' mobilization to play their designated roles presented as national missions -- in the economy, agrarian settlement, and the military. Consequently, this mobilization would have to be left to limited market-oriented, rather than national, mechanisms.

Since options 1 and 2 had been practically rejected, the Ashkenazis opted for a moderate option: (3) To employ methods that would leave intact the pre-state sociopolitical structure, namely, to entrench the arrangements that assured the Ashkenazis' perpetual social mobility, despite the mission of mass absorption. By themselves, those arrangements were stipulated by the creation of mechanisms that would reduce the structure's inherent potential to incubate an active class-ethnic conflict by blurring to the utmost the inegalitarian essence of the ethnic-class division of labor. It should be emphasized that this preferred mode was not necessarily the product of a deliberate, defined plan but, rather, the objective outcome of power relations. ₂

Against this background, the Ashkenazi elites were inclined to rely on the state as a mechanism of both carrying out the absorption and legitimizing the ethnic-class division of labor. The state thus played a dual role. It directly carried out the absorption, displacing the party apparatuses (the majority of which were identified with the Ashkenazi Labor movement) which had fulfilled this task in the pre-state period. It then, through its very methods of absorption, constructed an inequitable social structure. This was based on the government's policy of housing the incoming Orientals in remote, peripheral border settlements, or in the peripheral neighborhoods of the large cities, and employing them as low-wage manual laborers. For the most part, they replaced Ashkenazi workers, who gradually improved their lot by incorporating into the growing state bureaucracy, becoming "bourgeoisified," or incorporating into the growing private sector, exploiting the Orientals as a cheap labor force (see Bernstein and Swirski, 1982; Peled, 1991; Shalev, 1992).

At the same time, the state played a pivotal role in legitimizing the products of the ethnic-class division of labor. In addition to employing intensive methods of a typical welfare state, the state, in practice, "universalized" its action through the Mamlachtiyut (statism), the state ideology which was formulated, mainly, by David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister and Defense Minister. Mamlachtiyut raised the state to a supreme symbol, supplanting any particularist conception incompatible with state-directed goals. It inculcated the notion that the state possesses a legitimacy which does not depend on any domestic political force (Horowitz and Lissak, 1989:91). Instead of Pioneering (Chalutziyut), the dominant criterion in the Yishuv society previously used for evaluating social action (personal and collective), Mamlachtiyut laid down a new criterion, one which gave priority to the individual or group placing themselves in the service of the state. This act was thus seen as a supreme value (Peled, 1992). The gradual displacement of the Pioneer status paved the way for the emergence of new statuses identified with the state, above all the Fighter, a process which was supported by force-oriented symbols, being underscored within Mamlachtiyut, and conspicuously embodied by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) (Kimmerling, 1971; Gertz, 1985-6:269, see more below).

Arguably, the social criterion embodied in Mamlachtiyut granted a commensurate social status and legitimized Ashkenazi dominance by imbuing the Orientals with the idea that their social status depended on their contribution to the state. Accordingly, they were expected to "enter" society through "contributory" social activity but until they could do so, they were to accept their inferiority vis-a-vis the Ashkenazis, whose contribution (certainly the historical one) was portrayed as greater than that of the Orientals. The effectiveness of the state action was enhanced by its image of universality, arising from the perception of Mamlachtiyut as a neutral, objective ideology in relation to social power, even if, in practice, it supported a particular social class. Consequently, the products of state action were portrayed as objective phenomena, divorced from the Ashkenazis staffing the state institutions.

Paradoxically, the result was the creation of a structural interdependence between the state's ability to play its part in legitimizing the ethnic-class division of labor and the diminution of the political power held by the Ashkenazi political elites. To put it differently, the preservation of the Ashkenazi elites' social dominance compelled the reinforcement of the state which, in turn, required the state to impose its authority and weaken its dependence on the pre-state power centers identified with the same Ashkenazi elites. It seems safe to assume that had the state overtly remained dependent on the pre-state power centers, its universalistic image would have been impaired and it would not have been able to legitimize its action in perpetuating the ethnic-class division of labor. In that case, state interventionism would have been interpreted as supportive of the dominant social groups that managed its institutions and, as such, illegitimate. If so, relations of exchange were formed, in which the Ashkenazi elites maintained their. dominant social status in exchange for their unconsciously readiness to accept the state internal expansion, even while foregoing part of their political power.

This political power was held, particularly, by Mapai (Land of Israel workers' party, the ruling party), and its main controlled apparatus, the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor, the supreme organization of Jewish workers in British Palestine/State of Israel), both the prominent pre-state power centers. Mapai accumulated huge political power during the pre-state period due to its combined control of the Histadrut and the Jewish Agency, the supreme institution of world Jewry and the main mechanism of underwriting the Zionist pr9ject. By this control, Mapai produced political power owing to its ability to monitor the flow of resources both from external and internal sources (Shapiro, 1977).

Initially, the state had depended on the Mapai-ruled power centers at several levels. They functioned as quasi-statist agencies in significant areas of typical statist activity (for instance, educational and employment services). Moreover, as long as a direct dialogue between the state and its citizens had not taken root, the status of the statist leadership depended on the support the party could muster through its own channels. State expansion was thereby reflected, first and foremost, in the process by which the state assumed functions that had been carried out by the pre-state power centers, such as security, education, labor market regulation, absorption, and more (see Kimmerling, 1993). Consequently, the state's relative autonomy vis-a-vis the power centers was enhanced as its dependence on them, and hence their ability to limit the state's capacity to implement its policies, declined. The state thereby acquired the ability to act in a manner that contradicted the short-term interests of the dominant groups in return for the part taken by the state in reproducing the social structure, which is the long-term interest of those groups, and realizing short-term interests in other spheres (see, at the theoretical level, Poulantzas, 1978). This pattern of exchange was mediated through the bellicose policy.

3. The Unintended Consequences of the Bellicose Policy

The bellicose policy, by itself intentionally conceived to deal with the perceived Arab threat, unintentionally cemented state supremacy and the state's ability to legitimize the interethnic structure. It is worth emphasizing that unintended consequences are not necessarily undesirable, nor are they a perverse outcome (in Hirschman's terms, 1991: 11-42); they can sometimes even be an indirect realization of agents' interests.

A central role was played by the cyclical nature of the bellicose policy: By establishing border settlements as a means to cope with infiltrations and to fix the state borders, populated mainly by Oriental immigrants (the most mobile Jewish population at the time), the state exposed the settlers to existential danger. Yet, it concurrently took measures to repulse that danger, mainly in the form of reprisal raids. Symbolically, it demonstrated the meaning of the state's responsibility as the protector of communal and individual existence, beyond the abstract meaning attached to that role. Discursively, this effect was furthered as, from the outset, the Israeli leadership injected into the country's public discourse the idea that the border crossers (even the nonviolent refugees at the beginning of the period) were "infiltrators." The term "infiltrators" connoted criminal trespassers who posed a threat to Israel and therefore deserved a violent response (Laor, 1993:10). In consequence, the political-military elite could more easily mobilize the required mass-public support for its force-oriented policy.

Practically, that policy had the effect of extending the state's internal control. As it will be recalled, a circular process evolved in which Israel escalated the military frictions by its reactions to the infiltrations; those reactions made the neighboring states more hostile and willing to translate their hostility into active violence, aggravating the potential danger to Israel. Then, in a counter-reaction, Israel raised the level of violence another notch, justified by citing the danger to Israel a danger itself fueled by Israel's reprisal policy. At the same time, the state utilized the escalation to legitimize its demands on several groups, a process resembling the formation of some Western states in which the state functioned as a mechanism of protection (in Tilly's terms, 1985a), convincing its citizens (consumers) to increase their demand for security and to purchase it at higher price, thus promoting the state's capacity to extract its citizens' resources (Lake, 1992). In return for the fulfillment of its commands, the state served the involved groups' interests, in addition to supplying protection.

To illustrate these concrete effects, I analyze the processes by which the Ashkenazi dominance in the military was consolidated, the state's autonomous status was bolstered, and state control over the military was institutionalized.

A. Unintended Consequences: Consolidating the Aslikenazi Dominance in the IDF

Mamlachtiyut to a significant extent drew its power from the IDF. Constituted by means of egalitarian compulsory conscription, the IDF became an organization functioning as a social "melting pot" according to Ben-Gurion's vision (1971:42-43), in which all the country's Jewish young people supposedly met under equal conditions and without barriers. At the same time, the army structured a system of stratification which paralleled the civilian social structure, conferring dominance on Ashkenazi soldiers while perpetuating the peripheral status of Oriental soldiers, a trend seen in the small proportion of officers from Oriental communities (see Ben-Gurion, 1981; Smooha, 1984).

The existence of a stratified system within the mass, egalitarian military was of crucial importance in view of the successful effort made by the military to inculcate conscripts with the recognition that their personal status within the military stemmed from objective criteria inherent in the IDF's needs rather than from ethnic affiliation. The inequality within the army thus acquired legitimation. Consequently, with the Fighter now seen as a paramount status, the Ashkenazis' military contribution enabled them both to convert their dominance in the military into social dominance in the civilian society following their release from service and to legitimize this dominance (see Levy, 1994). For the Orientals, however, the same process perpetuated their peripheral social status. In this way the military, as a state agency, helped bring about the inegalitarian ethnic-class division of labor within Israeli society, but also helped regulate the tensions produced by that ethnic-class division of labor.

Needless to say, the Ashkenazi dominance in the military was conditional on Ashkenazi youngsters' motivation to perform in an outstanding capacity in the frontline units as a means to achieve prestige. However, in the early 1950's the IDF's combat units were manned increasingly by draftees from the newly arrived Oriental collective -- about 40% of the recruits were Orientals. The Ashkenazis either staffed rear headquarters or served in the Nahal, the units which manned the agricultural settlements. This lopsided situation was in part the result of the demographic shift and the Defence Security Law (1949) which obligated equal military service from all Jewish eighteen-year-olds, but it also derived from the frame of mind of the Ashkenazi youngsters. They were fed up following the 1948 War and unwilling to serve in frontline units (see Teveth, 1971:355-356, 364-365, 375-376). The Orientals, in contrast, perceived military service as a necessary "entry station" to the society and were therefore eager to serve (see, for example, Milstein, 1974: 173).

As it will be recalled, the period 1951-1953 was marked by the execution of the first reprisal raids, which revealed the low standard of the combat units. Their inadequate professionalism was attributed by their commanders to the high percentage of unskilled Oriental inductees (Rabin, 1979:88; Dayan, ibid.:l11). Structurally speaking, beyond its effects on the army's professional level as it was grasped by its commanders, the IDF's altered ethnic composition had clear implications for its ability to contribute to legitimizing the ethnic-class division of labor. That capability entailed the sustaining of the Ashkenazis' dominant status in the military, which legitimized the group's social dominance. Furthermore, the growing presence of Orientals in the army created conditions which would undoubtedly prompt this collective to demand, gradually and legitimately, a rise in their social status in exchange for their service.

The military elite then attempted to lure Ashkenazi youngsters back into combat units to meet the growing needs of the IDF. The seeds of the campaign were laid in 1950-1952, when Ashkenazi high school graduates were assigned to combat units over their protests. The Nahal, where many of the Ashkenazi elite served, was also gradually cut (Teveth, ibid.: 364-365, 375-376). The transformation in the character of the military activity due to the escalation of the reprisal raids lent urgency to the effort. The turning point came in 1953, when General Dayan decided to establish the elite Unit 101 to execute cross-border reprisals. The operations carried out by the unit under the command of Ariel Sharon, beginning with Qibya Raid (1953), vastly enhanced the IDF's prestige, especially as the unit was absorbed into the Paratroop Brigade and passed its spirit to other units (Dayan, ibid.:119). Young people, particularly from the agricultural sector, began to be attracted to these units and to view service in them as a challenge (Benziman, 1985: 61-62).

The upshot was that the escalation of the reprisals, up to the Sinai Campaign, restored the army's status as a magnet for Ashkenazi youngsters. Through the IDF, they could reacquire the prestige denied them during the state's first years because of the army's failures in the struggle against the infiltrators, and because of its other current preoccupations, which were considered dull and dreary when compared with the heroic myth of the 1948 War. No longer alienated from the military, Ashkenazis became more amenable to volunteering for combat units and joining the career army (see Dayan, ibid.: 130, 360-361). At the same time, the raids even further motivated the Orientals' effort to find a place in the army as a necessary channel of mobility into the absorbing society. Nor did it matter that, in practice, the Orientals failed in the contest for advancement at that stage.

Structurally, the result was the entrenchment of Ashkenazi dominance in the army; or, from a different perspective, elimination of any possibility that the Orientals might attain a significant quantitative advantage in the combat units, at least for the short term. Furthermore, the prestigious raids fortified the Fighter status as well as the symbolic and material rewards granted to those enjoying access to that status, mainly the Ashkenazis. This process, therefore, suggests that the emergence of the Fighter was linked to, and driven by, social interests, rather than being a product of an external cultural process. Israel's worsening security situation thus served to underscore the Ashkenazis' vitality, compared to the Orientals' image of deficiency as Fighters. By the same token, the IDF's system of objective, achievement-oriented criteria for promotion -- which underlay the army's ability to play its role in the domain of interethnic reproduction -- was revalidated.

Moreover, the escalation of the reprisal raids brought home the danger facing the country's citizens and made it more legitimate for the state to extract the resources -- including manpower -- needed to maintain security. This had the further effect of limiting the ability of Ashkenazi youngsters to avoid military service with the support of their social networks (such as the agricultural movements, see below).

It is worth emphasizing that this story does not suggest a conspiracy. The military elite tried to improve the operational ability of combat units by beefing them up with Ashkenazi soldiers, believing that they were best suited to military activity (dimension I --steering the bellicose policy). At dimension II, namely of social interests, Ashkenazi youngsters ultimately accepted being disciplined by the state as a response to the perceived security danger, and later, as a means to achieve social prestige. Still, the implementation of this policy affected, unintentionally, interethnic power relations, as the Ashkenazis maintained their dominance within the army which by itself stipulated their social dominance outside the organization. At another level, the military elite acquired prestige that further motivated its adherence to the militant mode of action. Hence, on dimension III, the process was instrumental to the state's basic inclination both to mitigate potential interethnic tension and to energize the raids. The upshot was that the state, for its part, increased its ability to deal with the regulation of the ethnicclass division of labor, beyond cementing its autonomous status vis-a-vis the Ashkenazi social networks. This effect coincided with the following one.

B. Unintended Consequences: Enhancing the State's Autonomous Status

The enhancement of the state's autonomous status was achieved by two major, parallel moves. The first was consolidation of the state supremacy over Mapai, the second, a weakening of the agricultural sector.

(1) Enhancing the State Autonomous Status: Consolidation of the State Supremacy over Mapai

The bellicose policy, by underscoring state supremacy, assisted the state in acquiring a dominant status vis-a-vis Mapal and the Histadrut, whose activity was not identified with existential missions.

From the beginning, the Mapai leadership, inspired by its traditional concepts, espoused a moderate military approach and rejected an impulsive response to the infiltrations. For that reason, Mapai ministers supported the approach of Foreign Minister (and for one year the Premier) Moshe Sharett, who had tried to restrain some of Ben-Gurion's and the IDF's militant initiatives. Still, the party group was aware that the public, primarily the border settlers, longed for security and expected the military to provide it. Therefore, Mapai supported, via its cabinet emissaries, operations which not only served military needs but also tried to meet the public's wishes and thus to increase electoral support for the party (Aronson and Horowitz, 1971; Sharett, ibid.: 419, 949-950, 99-100; Barzilai and Russett, 1990; Shapiro, 1991:153-154).

The dilemma in which the party leadership found itself having to choose between a moderate political approach and an activist military orientation -- was resolved by the results of the elections to the Third Knesset (the Israeli parliament) held in 1955. The moderate parties, with Mapai at the center, lost seats, whereas the "hawkish" ones did better. Mapai's decline extended even to its traditional supporters among the veteran Ashkenazi population (see Berger, 1955). Possibly, this outcome, caused by other factors in addition to security, induced the party leaders to decide in favor of Ben-Gurion '5 approach by enabling him to overthrow Sharett in June 1956, over their original objections. They thereby lifted the most significant internal political obstacles for the initiation of the Sinai Campaign. Indeed, the elections held in 1959, after the Sinai Campaign, affirmed the renewal of Mapai's unquestioned electoral dominance.

This background suggests that the dispute between Moshe Sharett and Ben-Gurion was one aspect of the conflict between Ben-Gurion, the architect of Mamlachtiyut, and the party, rather than only a disagreement over the thrust of foreign policy or an intergroup conflict. The underlying issue was the status of the party with regard to the political division of labor in the state era. Mapai's functionaries saw the party (and the Histadrut as its main controlled apparatus) as the chief mechanism and thereby opposed the process in which the state assumed the labor movement's pre-state roles (see Kimmerling, 1993). They were even convinced that Ben-Gurion was planning a putsch, perhaps with the connivance of the army, an apprehension that intensified insofar as the IDF excessively assumed purely civil roles such as the management of camps for new immigrants (Teveth, 1992: 251-286). So, Mapai's leaders displayed resentment toward the flourishing of the military establishment (see more below). Theoretically, this clash was similar to other historical conflicts between a state and power centers that antedated its establishment (see, for example, Badie and Bimbaum, 1983: 55-59; Mann, 1985; Migdal, 1988).

Ben-Gurion, for his part, endeavored to undo the traditional party-centered pattern. His efforts went beyond the Mamlachtiyut. They were accompanied by the attempt to change the electoral system from a national to a regional mode. This, it was thought, would ensure a Mapai majority which would weaken the dependence of state agencies on the ruling party, while also reducing the strength of the party apparatus by creating direct channels between the party constituency and elected representatives. On top of this, Ben-Gurion tried to circumvent the party by organizing extraparty mass political movements (Goldberg, 1991). The dispute, then, transcended the confines of the party.

Sharett's removal from the cabinet then marked the growing state ascendancy over Mapai. First, the bureaucratic group that emerged as a result of the army's expansion was not beholden to the parties. Secondly, security became a tangible resource which the state allocated to its citizens, again bypassing party mechanisms, especially those of the Histadrut. For illustration, Ben-Gurion declared that the reprisals were aimed also to fill the Oriental settlers (viewed as a potential constituency of the "hawkish" parties) with pride, and to prove to them that the state was not abandoning them to the mercy of infiltrators -- in contrast to the humiliations which, he claimed, they had suffered in the Arab states (Bar-Zohar, 1975, 1139).

Thirdly and most importantly, the bellicose policy served Ben-Gurion and his allies in their effort to reduce the state's dependence on the party by enhancing the military as an extra-party mechanism. The buildup of the army created a channel for direct dialogue between the state and its citizens through an organization which, was a meeting point for most Jewish youngsters. Furthermore, the interaction between the IDF and Israeli society had been structured along "fragmented boundaries" (in Luckham's 1971 term): civilian values highly penetrate the military, and vice versa, along several dimensions due to the civilian roles taken by the IDF. This structure inspired the image of Israeli society as a "Nation-in-Arms" (Horowitz, 1982; Lissak, 1984; Ben-Eliezer, 1994). Consequently, citizens were affected bit by bit by state-controlled channels of communication supplanting the pre-state partycontrolled social networks (see Galnoor, 1982). A channel of this kind was visible in the mobilization of mass support that accompanied the escalation of the reprisals. For example, a Defense Fund was established in late 1955 by the government to raise money from the public for arms purchases following the Czech Arms Deal. Quasi-voluntary in character, the Fund was really an instrument of mass mobilization, since the state could have better achieved the same goal through taxation. Indeed, the Fund fueled the militant public mood. At a later stage, as part of the army's deployment for the war, a broad volunteer campaign to fortify the border settlements was launched; at its height, about 100,000 people were involved in the project (Bar-On, ibid.:23-29, 96-97, see at the comparative level Tilly, 1992:107-116 on post-revolutionary France).

In sum, Mapai accepted the state's supremacy and thus exchanged its prominent political status vis-a-vis the young state for ensuring electoral dominance drawn from supplying security. Moreover, the party worked to ensure political stability by decreasing disquiet among the frontier settlers. This meant that Mapai accepted the link between force-oriented reaction to external problems and electoral gains but was hence at the mercy of the state, which became the source of this gain. On the long-term plane, this move accelerated the party's decline, paradoxically in tandem with entrenchment of its constituency's (the Ashkenazi collective) social dominance. These effects were beyond the party leadership's consciousness (they would grasp the real meaning of their decline only in the aftermath of the Sinai Campaign, see Levy and Peled, 1994). In consequence, a separation between the state and the party was at work. Admittedly, state agencies were administered by emissaries of the party; in practice, however, those agencies gradually developed a "schizophrenic," autonomous pattern of behavior vis-a-vis the party, arising from raisons d'Etat, rather than from a rationale of party.

(2) Enhancing the State's Autonomous Status: Weakening of the Agricultural Sector

The escalation of border frictions increased the army's material needs via the circular process described above, by which the gradual neutralization of one of the major pre-state power centers -- the agricultural sector -- was legitimized. This sector drew its power from several sources: The economic centrality of agriculture at the time; its being the most traditional constituency of the labor parties (and Ashkenazi in its ethnic composition); and its influence on the Palmach, the prestigious pre-state military organization which had been dismantled with the state's establishment.

Against this background, the political-military leadership moved to establish an independent military unit to serve the agricultural sector's needs, namely the Nahal (short for "Fighting Pioneer Youth"). The arrangement, which came into effect upon the creation of the army in 1949, obliged all conscripts to serve one year -- out of two years of compulsory service -- in the Nahal. The agricultural sector was thus able to retain its control over a large part of the draftees at the expense of the professional military. An additional element of those arrangements was the Territorial Defense Organization. It relied -- as a heritage of the pre-state defense conception -- on the border veteran agricultural settlements (differentiated from the new settlements mainly populated by Orientals) as forward outposts. As such, this was an additional mechanism of retaining the agricultural sector's control over its youngsters.

In the early 1950's, as security needs increased due to the escalation of the reprisals, these arrangements were gradually phased out. The year of service in an agricultural settlement was effectively abolished and the human and material resources were diverted instead to the buildup of combat units, especially the formation of armored and airborne offensive forces. This move ran concomitantly with the extension of compulsory military service from 24 to 30 months (Ben-Gurion, 1971:71-72, 93, 175-178). The process reached its zenith following the Czech Arms Deal, which accelerated the preparation of the army for war, accompanied by reorientation of the military doctrine from a defensive to an offensive posture. This shift involved a significant cut in the Territorial Defense Organization and the diversion of personnel and budget from the agricultural sector to combat units (Bar-On, 1992: 93-95, 101-103).

These moves inflamed the opposition of the agriculture movements' leadership (supported by some of Mapai's leaders as a part of the state-party dispute), who, in fact, opposed the buildup of the army at the expense of their power (see Dayan, 1976: 180-181, 195; Sharett, ibid. :171). The implementation of the buildup therefore became conditional on an escalation along the borders by means of the reprisal raids, which gave security needs priority over those of the agricultural settlements. To put it differently, the state dynamically invoked the external arena as a means to overcome difficulties inwardly (see, from another perspective, Putnam, 1988, on "Two-Level Games"). Further, the intensification of the force-oriented symbols, reported above, was an element in this process, as it lent symbolic meaning to security and invested it with priority over the Pioneer values which had been symbolized by the agricultural movement. Fighter then further pushed aside Pioneer as the dominant social status.

It is therefore only natural that this policy was supplemented, beginning in 1953, by the massive industrialization of the Israeli economy under state aegis, using resources diverted from agriculture (see Beilin, 1987:121-123). Industrialization involved the erection of an enormous military industry, notably controlled by the state, to meet the growing needs of the modernizing military. State autonomy was thus further augmented vis-a-vis not only the agricultural sector, but more significantly, the Histadrut, the pre-state's most powerful economic force. That is because industrialization raised a new economic sector directed by the state inasmuch as it could channel the required resources for industry either directly (for example by using foreign aid) or indirectly as the main client of many industries, due to the interrelatedness between military empowerment and industrialization (see on the case of Israel, Barnett, 1992: 182-184; and on a similar process in the U.S. see, Hooks, 1990; Hooks and McLauchlan, 1992).

The result was that the state cemented its autonomous status by forcing a policy upon a power center (the agricultural sector) that conflicted with the latter's short-term material interest. Nevertheless, the policy was compatible with short-term interests: The prestige acquired by Ashkenazi youngsters, notably of the agricultural sector as we saw above, through the Fighter image; and with the long-term interest conditioned on the state's empowerment, namely, reproduction of the Ashkenazis' social dominance, including the groups associated with the veteran agricultural sector. This sector also benefited from the lands allocated by the state, most of them confiscated from Palestinian refugees. Clearly, this benefit was conditional on the entrenchment of the conflict as a means to delegitimize the Palestinians' claims to lands.

The organizational change in the military, moreover, enabled the state to gain direct control of its draftees, without resorting to the mediation of a sectorial power center, such as the agricultural sector. This effect intersected with the state's success (described above) in severing members of the Ashkenazi communal group from civil life and transferring them to the military's control as part of the transformation of the army's ethnic composition (see, at the comparative level, Thomson, 1990 on the linkage between sovereignty and direct control over conscription).

***

To sum up, the bellicose policy, taking the form of reprisal raids, strengthened the autonomous status of the state by reducing its dependence on the dominant Ashkenazi groups, such as the Mapai groups and the agricultural sector. Reduced dependence, it will be recalled, was a central condition for the state's ability to enjoy a universalist status, based on its ability to demonstrate independence from the particularist power centers and hence to increase its capacity to regulate the ethnic-class division of labor.

C. Unintended Consequences: Institutionalization of Political Supervision over the IDF

The bellicose policy contributed to the institutionalization of civilian political supervision over the military. The state's first years saw constant bickering between the IDF and the political elite, even though the principle of the army's subordination to the civil authorities was already firmly rooted in Israeli political culture, as a heritage of the Yishuv (see Pail, 1979; Ben-Eliezer, 1988). Politicians of the time were fearful that the army's empowerment might bring about its active intervention in politics (see Teveth, 1971:368-369; Segev, 1986: 150-151, 268-271), in addition to fears about Ben-Gurion's possible putsch as mentioned above. In 1952 and 1953 two successive chiefs of staff --Yigael Yadin and Mordechai Makleff -- resigned over disputes with Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ben-Gurion concerning the division of powers between the Ministry of Defense and the IDF (Teveth, 1971: 368-369; Pen, 1983:194-197). In 1953, the friction grew when many retaliatory operations were carried out by the IDF. The army tended to act independently in defiance of Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon, who himself displayed disloyalty toward Prime Minister Sharett (both appointed following Ben-Gurion's temporary retirement). The IDF virtually dictated to the political level a series of operations, and in some cases did not even report its cross-border activity to the Prime Minister (see Dayan, 1976: 150-152; Sharett, 1978: 34-41, 446-447, 514-526, 670-680; Morris, 1993). The most notorious case was the telling "mishap" in 1954 involving military activity in Egypt without the clear approval of the political level (Eshed, 1979).

Faced with this situation, the civilian leadership considered it imperative to upgrade political supervision over the army. To begin with, Sharett, as Premier during the years 1953-1954, introduced a formal procedure whereby reprisal raids would need the approval of a small ministerial forum (Sharett, ibid.:53). Ben-Gurion, after his return to office, instituted a more stringent method in the wake of the Kinneret Raid (conducted against the Syrian army in December 1955) debacle: the complete plan of every reprisal raid required his personal approval (Teveth, ibid.:428). At the same time, the division of power between the IDF and the Ministry of Defense was consolidated in a manner which diminished the former's authority in the realms of budget and procurement and made the latter unequivocally responsible for areas not directly connected with the management of operational military activity (Greenberg, 1993).

Clearly, the militarization of Israeli statecraft played a crucial role in this process. This demonstrated the IDF's growing dependence on the politicians for mobilizing the needed resources to energize military activity. Consequently, as "soldiers... became ever-more dependent on their civilian supporters for the wherewithal of war.. .the autonomy and personal power of the [military] men [was decreased]" (Tilly, 1985b:78, at the theoretical level).

Arguably, beyond meeting the IDF's needs (dimension I), the state civil agencies re-solidified relations of exchange with the army (dimension II). The politicians acknowledged military thought as the preferred mode for dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict in exchange for ensuring the IDF's loyalty. For substantiation, when the raids were being conceived and planned, Prime Minister Sharett maintained that opposition to the army's moves might encourage officers to reject the government's authority, like the "breakaway" underground organizations -- the IZL (the National Military Organization) and Lehi (Israel Freedom Fighters, or "Stern Group") -- in the Yishuv period (Sharett, ibid. :1205). In consequence, the state civilian institutions augmented their administrative power.

The army, for its part, accepted the politicians' unquestioned authority in exchange for realizing other interests: First, the IDF benefited from huge material and human resources, allowing it to maintain a massive, long-term buildup, beyond the direct needs of the early 1950's. Secondly, it acquired the capacity to leave a powerful impact on civil statecraft, in fact forming relations of partnership with, rather than instrumental obedience to, the politicians (Pen, 1983) without resorting to overt intervention. Had the IDF intervened openly in politics (similar to its Third World counterparts at the same period) and, doing so become a target of open political criticism, it would have lost part of its social prestige. If so, its third gain was to produce net prestige from its warfare activity. Owing to accepting its political subordination, the army showed itself to be without political interests or inclinations but acting universalitically on behalf of the entire Jewish political community. Consequently, the IDF's ability to appropriate the prestigious Fighter symbol constructed its interest in fortifying those arrangements.

However, the relevance of the process went beyond the organizational dimension (from dimension II to III). As the process solidified the IDF's universalist status, it was further able to play its part in reproducing the interethnic relation. Furthermore, universalization of the army downplayed the Mapai leaders' call to block the military empowerment and curb the state's internal expansion, at the same time enhancing the state agencies' ability to utilize the military profession to camouflage their empowerment.

Summary and Conclusions

The bellicose policy was steered to intentionally meet external challenges as they were read by the political-military elite, a process that took place in dimension I. This policy was congruent with the agencies' institutional responsibility for building the military, sealing and fixing the state's borders, protecting the settlers, and more. This direct motivating force for the state agencies behavior has been plausibly analyzed by students of IR.

Still, in dimension II, unintended consequences of the policy helped to realize those and other agents' interests in the domains of social prestige, material resources, political stability, electoral dominance, and more. Moreover, in some cases, the very action of the state constructed new interests, such as those of Ashkenazi youngsters in entrenching their grip on the IDF, or the IDF's interest in fortifying its universalist image by means of political subordination. In consequence, agents were inclined to work for or, at least, to accept the bellicose approach despite previous opposition on grounds of ideological considerations or on the reluctance to pay the costs.

The effects of this process were reflected both in dimension III and dimension I (energizing the policy): The bellicose policy propelled the state's internal expansion, as the escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict both stimulated the creation of civil bureaucratic mechanisms to deal with the war effort at the expense of the pre-state power centers, and further legitimized the state supremacy via the Mamlachtiyut. As it will be recalled, this expansion affected the state's ability to legitimize the ethnic-class division of labor. Consequently, social interests were reconstructed or rigidified in accordance with the new created social structure, most important, to link the long-term interest of the Ashkenazi dominant social groups with bolstering the state's internal status as a means to confirm their social dominance. These groups thus converted assets directly attained by means of war participation, as social prestige, into long-term gains taking the form of social dominance. Moreover, the state' expansion not only enhanced the state's ability to carry out the reprisal raids and the Sinai Campaign, but also further fueled the bellicose tendencies (to be elaborated below).

The state's internal empowerment was beyond the involved agents' consciousness. They supported the policy for their own reasons but, in fact, paved the road for the state's empowerment, sometimes even in a manner that was partially conflicted with their interests, particularly the Mapai-affiliated groups. Drawing upon scientific realism, agents work to realize their self interests, but, simultaneously, those interests also work, divorced from the involved agents' intentions, to set in motion a new structure, in this case a centralist state. Dialectically, the state disempowers the constitutive groups themselves in the political realm (see Isaac, 1987:56-58; Wendt, 1987), but gives them an alternative asset in the social realm.

Thus, the interconnectedness between the perpetuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the enhancement of the state and the IDF internally aroused minimal political resistance, as long as not only the short-term effects were partially congruent with the involved agents' interests, but also the long-term effects -- to entrench Ashkenazi dominance through the fortification of state internal supremacy. By the same token, the peripheral groups, mainly the Orientals, were kept from accumulating power or, in other words, their potential for doing so was greatly reduced. Had this development not occurred, it would have practically raised the costs of maintaining the ethnic-class division of labor. Relations of exchange were thus at work: The Ashkenazis accepted their downgraded political status, through the empowerment of the state, in return for the upgrading of their material-symbolic status under the auspices of a centralist state.

The aggregate effects stemming from the realization of these interests unintentionally fueled the bellicose policy as they made the events possible and even preferred. By this assertion, I also turn to confirm the advantages of the three-dimensional analysis over that of the IR explanation solely centered on the actual, dimension I. Basically, those interests made it possible to mobilize the required legitimacy and material resources for carrying out the policy. Unlike the proponents of IR, the "winning formula" opted for by the Israeli leadership for dealing with the external challenge is not taken as a point of departure to explain the Israeli policy. Rather, the opposition demonstrated by various groups, both directly (Sharett's supporters) and indirectly (for example, the Ashkenazis' resistance to the military buildup) has been addressed, thus taking into account the structure that enabled the political-military elite to reconstruct these initial attitudes. This was achieved due to the state agencies' capacity to shape the relations of exchange between state agencies and the dominant groups, whose support stipulated the state's capacity to shape public opinion. These agencies could thereby impose their concepts on the political discourse, with their interpretation of the term "security interest" informed by the Arab perceived threat, by transforming this interest into the vested interests of an array of social groups. This structure allowed a link to be created between identities, ideas, and images on the one hand and political action on the other. So, the elite's interpretation of this interest was not taken as given. True, state agencies worked to "convince" the public to support the force-oriented response, but this paper uncovers the hidden dynamics behind the process. ₃

By the same token, Israel's bellicose approach was based on the strength of the army, which grew sharply in both manpower and arms in these years. The IDF's buildup made it possible for Israel to execute the Sinai Campaign, which was only in part supported by Britain and France. It therefore is essential to examine the conditions that enabled the army's growth at the expense of the civilian sectors, and how it nurtured foreign policy. To accept the fact of the IDF's buildup as a starting point for analysis is therefore inadequate (see the theoretical critique by Cox, 1981; Barnett, 1990).

All true, then, at the second, more significant, level, the possible also became the preferred policy. First, insofar as the state's ability to carry out the policy was enhanced, the militant groups within the government and the IDF became further motivated, insofar as their view seemed implementable. For illustration, in 1954, Prime Minister Sharett was reported by his aid that the army's leadership "is consumed with passion for war" (Sharett, ibid.: 246). This spirit was nurtured by the growing IDF's material capacity, while previously it adhered to a defensive approach. Theoretically, ability in this situation is more likely to be translated into operative action (see Posen, 1988, 16-23), and the agencies might be more easily directed by rigid, inertial organizational routines (see Allison, 1969; Levy, 1986). Thus, statist agents' orientations dynamically adapted to the repertoire of both opportunities and capacities created by the interaction with social groups. Second, the constructed/served interests reduced the agents' own freedom of choice and thus hardened their mode of operation, be those agents state agencies (the operators) or social agents (the supporters). Thus, state external action was further fueled. For illustration, if Israel had opted to advance the peace process with the Arab states and/or to exhaust the moderate option to deal with the infiltrations, then the policy's gains would not have been achieved and the state would have had to deal with growing dissatisfaction expressed by many social groups, including the military. Third, war and war preparation are highly linked in the sense that the war itself serves to energize its preparation, as it enables its operators to employ mechanisms of protection, in Tilly's words (1985a) -- exploitation of existential fears to create bureaucratic mechanisms for coping with those fears. If so, war preparation is not only the condition for war, as Barnett (1992) puts it, but paradoxically, it is also the outcome of war.

In sum, all these factors contributed to the brushing aside of more pacific options, and so became the structural conditions which not only made the actual (i.e., the warfare operations) possible, but were also their driving force. Still, unlike the proponents of IR, this approach does not adduce a pure causal explanation for the events. True, the Israeli leadership could have selected a more pacifist option, but then it would have had to pay a greater cost, insofar as this option was incongruent with the main groups' interests. By contrast, the force-oriented option had been implemented smoothly, and thus was more easily to be grasp by its proponents. Further, if the impact of the military operations had been different-- if, for example, the Orientals had gained social prestige from their possible massive participation in the raids, or if the policy's human and material cost had been intolerable then Mapai, certain social groups, and even some state agencies would have tried to restrain the defense establishment's activism. The same groups had already brought about the elimination of the austerity when they found that it conflicted with their material expectations from the state.

The analysis thus posits an alternative to the acceptance of the Arab-Israeli conflict as a starting point for discussion, a perspective deeply rooted among the Israeli proponents of IR studies (and among the "mainstream" of Israeli sociologists; see the critique by Levy and Peled, 1994). Their approach reflects the imprint of the neorealist school. Consequently, the focus has been on how the Israeli state (similar to other states) has coped with a given, external situation. In this paper, rather, the very state of conflict is viewed as a subject itself meriting observation, focusing on the Israeli state's part in maintaining the reality of conflict with its entailed ideas, identities, and institutions. Still, the paper does not pretend to adduce a comprehensive explanation for the general state of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but focuses solely on the choices made by the Israeli side.

To sum up theoretically by integrating the underlaying schools of thought, notably "state formation" and neorealism, the state makes use of the power accumulated by means of external violence, not only to expand its bureaucratic system, as the proponents of state formation maintain (see, primarily, Giddens, 1985; Mann, 1988; Tilly, 1992), but also to reconstruct relations of social power between the main social groups. The state thus reconstructs social relations outside its bureaucratic apparatus. The internal arena therefore plays a significant role in shaping the state's external action, far more than the main schools allow us to admit. Unlike some of the critics of neorealism (see for example, Andrews, 1975; Ruggie, 1983; Mastanduno et al, 1989; Barnett, 1990), the case in point illustrates that the state not only is constrained by the domestic arena or seeks to mobilize it in favor of war effort, but first and foremost, forms control over this arena through its very attempts to manage external action. The key for the understanding of the state's power is the manner in which it works to construct social interests fitted to its overt policies.

Social interests then are one of the bridges between the theories. Statist theories have failed to explain how states fuel, rather than just being affected by, wars. True, the state formation school has laid the foundation to understand the state's capacity for war preparation, but has refrained from linking the war's effects to motivating force. Neorelism, while neglecting the structure that made war possible, furnishes us with basic concepts to understand the state's reaction given a perceived threat embedded within the anarchic global system. Notwithstanding the state's innate inclination toward bellicose action, by itself agreed upon both schools, this inclination is translated to operative action through state leaders' dynamic "mode of reading" of the external system (see Wendt, 1992). By the same token, this mode is not divorced from the structure that made it possible owing to supportive or constraining sets of domestic interests. Here again, the dialogue between theories is necessary.

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Footnotes

Note 1: As distinct from the Egyptian and Jordanian arenas, no acute refugee-infiltrator problem developed on the Syrian border. The conflicts there involved only minor problems (until 1964) of border demarcations and the division of the area's water resources. Back.

Note 2: The paper does not deal with the Palestinian minority that was annexed to the State of Israel as a result of the 1948 War. The state achieved an effective control over this collective by means of military rule, and this minority did not, in those years, present a challenge to the state control system (see Lustick, 1980). Back.

Note 3: This advantage still holds true even if one dissolves the state-as-actor unit of analysis, as it perceived by the neorealist school, into its constitutive agencies (following the critique made by Wagner, 1974). Then, it is still incumbent to adduce an in-depth explanation, which exposes the structural conditions giving rise to certain agents' capacity to achieve dominance over others. Back.