More Important is Patience

The discussion of Israel’s strategic choices in Mosaic is a welcome initiative, and the essay by Ofir Haivry makes for a serious point of departure. But his essay also exhibits several weaknesses, which I shall try to outline in what follows.

In his categorization of historical periods in Israel’s unfolding regional strategy, Haivry lauds in particular the “activism” of the years under the influence and premiership of David Ben-Gurion. This, in his view, was replaced after 1967 by a more passive “search for stability,” characterized by efforts to reach accommodations with the region’s Sunni regimes. For the period now upon us, he advocates a return to the older “strategic activism,” pointing out the political opportunities (as well as some of the risks) held out by such a course.

Haivry’s historical scheme is debatable. Setting aside shifting circumstances and the idiosyncrasies of particular leaders, there has actually been greater continuity in Israel’s foreign and national-security policy than he suggests. No less than Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin in the 1980s and 90s, David Ben-Gurion did his own share of playing for time, waiting for the Arabs to change their rejectionist stance while doing what he could to build Israel into a strong geo-political actor. For Ben-Gurion as for his successors, Israel’s use of force was limited to impressing upon the Arabs that they could not win militarily, and to creating sufficient deterrence to prolong the intervals between necessary wars.