Democratic Palestine : 32 (ص 30)
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- Democratic Palestine : 32 (ص 30)
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in wartime and in times of national crisis, has an influence on
the constitution of ad hoc coalitions between political and
military authorities» (Israeli Society and its Defense
Establishment).
This observation is highly relevant to ‘Israel’ which has
engaged in more wars than any other state since World War II.
If one looks closely, disagreements in the Israeli leadership do
not usually go between the politicians and the generals, but
between factions with representatives in both sectors, who have
differing tactics for achieving shared Zionist goals. According
to Benjamini, neither was there any decision in 1967 to take the
West Bank or the Golan Heights, but subsequent developments
show a high degree of unity on exploiting the facts created in
the field. It took over a decade for the question of territorial
compromise to become a controversy in Israeli politics, and the
dispute is not between politicians and generals. Labor which
contemplates territorial compromise is the same political force
that commands the political allegiance of most of the army
elite, in 1967 and today.
What Benjamini terms «ad hoc coalitions between political
and military authorities» are not so very ad hoc in ‘Israel’, but
a consequence of how the state was organized in the first place.
When the state was formed, Ben Gurion dissolved the Palmach
which was dominated by Mapam, in order to concentrate
power in the hands of Mapai (later the Labor Party); mean-
while, the Haganah became the army. His slogan was
separating the military from politics, but the real effects of his
reorganization was to concentrate power in the cabinet, and
actually the inner cabinet. Although ‘Israel’ is formally a
parliamentary democracy, in practice the cabinet leads the
Knesset and has a wide range of military and _ security
prerogatives. Control over the military, in fact all contact
between the military and the Knesset, goes through the defense
and prime ministers who in at least three periods have been the
same person. Though the defense minister is formally part of
the political leadership, most of them have considered
themselves as representing the military before the cabinet. The
result is that though the military is subordinate to the political
leadership according to law, there exists a de facto partnership.
This system is reinforced on the level of personnel. «Exten-
sive reasearch has been conducted on the subject of the
representation of the professional military in Israel’s political
elite. Peri, for example, has indicated that between the 1948
War of Independence and 1977, one-third of all retired
generals have become involved in a full-time political career.
Since the 1967 Six-Day War, there has been a marked increase
in the number of senior reserve offcers in key policy-making
bodies, such as the Cabinet and the Knesset (up to 1967, there
had never been more than two reserve officers in the Cabinet,
whereas since then, the range increased to 3-5; parallel figures
for the Knesset for the pre- and post-1967 periods are 0-5 and
4-10, respectively). Even more relevant to our study is the
transition of senior officers to positions of direct responsiblity
for Israel’s security... Up to 1967, the office of Defense
Minister had never been filled by a senior army officer,
28
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whereas three such officers have assumed the position since
then (Rabin’s current term as Defense Minister raises this
figure to four - our note). A similar trend was noted among
Deputy and Assistant Defense Ministers (only one senior
reserve officer had held this post prior to 1967, while four have
assumed it since then... The transition of senior IDF officers to
-other parts of the complex should also be noted. The heads of
the Mossad, Border Police, Civil Guard, Civilian Administra-
tion, Airports Administration and the like are nearly always
senior officers. A similar situation prevails in government
concerns considered essential to security (e.g. the Electric
Company, the oil refineries and El Al), while a more recent
trend is the ‘parachuting’ of generals into the defense industry
-primarily the state-owned defense industries and other key
manufacturing plants supplying the IDF...» (Alex Mintz, «The
Military-Industrial Complex: The Israeli Case,» in Israeli
Society and its Defense Establishment).
With this set-up, who needs a military coup?
As a footnote about the allegiances of the Israeli elite, we
add a single fact which appeared in the Jewish Telegraph
Agency on June 10, 1986: According to US immigration
authorities, in the past twenty years, 402 Israeli government
officials have been naturalized as US citizens.
CORPORATE STATE
Heavy state control of the Israeli economy has not precluded
the free development of private capital. In fact, Pinhas Sapir,
Finance Minister in several governments led by the Labor Par-
ty, the main proponent of the state sector, created several new
millionaires by lending capital at low rates and granting pro-
duction monopolies and tax concessions to private investors
who were often not Labor supporters. This was done to en-
courage private Jewish capital investment in ‘Israel’, especially
from abroad, and to cement political alliances between Mapai
and its coalition partners - the General Zionists (forerunner of
the Liberal Party and junior partner in the preceding Likud
government) and the religious parties. «Since 1948, there has
been increasingly more interpenetration between collective and
private capital, although collective capital... remains the
dominant element...» (Joel Beinin, MERIP, September-
October 1986).
Added to the overlap between the political and military
leadership, then, is the increasingly unified interests of the
Israeli bourgeoisie, which cut across the tactical contradictions
which divide the two major political blocks (Labor and Likud).
This tendency can only increase in view of the rise of hightech
industry in ‘Israel’. In 1984 alone, nearly 700 new hightech
companies were started in ‘Israel’, many of them based on
joint Israeli-US capital. This phenomenon in turn links up with
the military industry where the state is dominant.
In view of the factors we have reviewed above, ‘Israel’ can
be categorized as a corporate state with the military playing a
role in all spheres of life. It is this internal make-up that
qualifies it to be US imperialism’s no. 1 ally in the strategic
Middle East. @
Democratic Palestine, March 1989 - هو جزء من
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