Avi Shlaim

Failures in National Intelligence Estimates: The Case of the Yom Kippur War

The principal question which this article seeks to answer is: Why was the intention of the Arabs to launch the Yom Kippur War misperceived despite the fact that Israeli Intelligence had ample and accurate information on enemy moves and dispositions? In this anatomy of the Israeli intelligence failure, extensive use is made of the report of the official commission of inquiry that investigated the events leading up to the war. The article is equally concerned with the phenomenon of strategic surprise in general, and this case study is used to explore the psychological and organizational roots of intelligence failures. Some safeguards and institutional reforms for reducing the frequency of failure are examined. However, there is no suggestion that surprise can ever be eliminated altogether. In conclusion a case is made for developing a theory of intelligence through case studies and systematic research.

The war for Palestine : rewriting the history of 1948

Introduction 1. The Palestinians and 1948: the causes of failure Rashid Khalidi 2. Revisiting the Palestinian exodus of 1948 Benny Morris 3. The Druze and the birth of Israel Laila Parsons 4. Israel and the Arab coalition in 1948 Avi Shlaim 5. Jordan and 1948: the persistence of an official history Eugene Rogan 6. Iraq and the 1948 war: mirror of Iraqs disorder Charles Tripp 7. Egypt and the 1948 war: internal conflict and regional ambition Fawaz Gerges 8. Syria and the 1948 war Joshua Landis Afterword: the consequences of the 1948 war Edward Said.

The Debate about 1948

“Conquerors, my son, consider as true history only what they themselves have fabricated.” Thus remarked the old Arab headmaster to young Saeed on his return to Haifa in the summer of 1948 in Emile Habibys tragicomic novel The Secret Life of Saʿid, the Ill-Fated Pessoptimist . The headmaster spoke about the Israelis more in sorrow than in anger: “It is true they did demolish those villages … and did evict their inhabitants. But, my son, they are far more merciful than the conquerors our forefathers had years before”.

The Protocol of Séevres, 1956: anatomy of a war plot

The tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956 involved an extraordinary reversal of Britains position in the Middle East. The French were the matchmakers in bringing Britain and Israel into a military pact whose principal aim was the overthrow of Gamal Abdel Nasser. The war plot against Egypt was hatched towards the end of October 1956 in a secret meeting at Svres, near Paris. The discussions lasted three days and culminated in the signing of the Protocol of Sevres. British, French and Israeli sources are used here to reconstruct the sequence of events that produced the mostfamous war plot in modern history.

Britain, the Berlin blockade and the cold war

The role played by Britain in the conduct of East-West relations during the formative period of the cold war, from 1945 to 1950, is only now beginning to receive the detailed scholarly attention which the subject merits by virtue of its importance and which the release of the official papers makes possible. In the vast and still rapidly growing literature on the origins of the cold war, attention is focussed on the principal protagonists, the United States and the Soviet Union, virtually to the exclusion of all other actors. To the extent that Britain does feature in accounts of the cold war, it is usually treated not so much as an actor in its own right but as an appendage to the United States. Thus it is generally recognized that the withdrawal by Britain of aid to Greece and Turkey in the early weeks of 1947 forced America to assume the lead in the containment of the Soviet Union, but the continuing British impact on Western policy is all too frequently underrated. The tendency to ninimize the part played by Britain in the containment of the Soviet tUnion becomes much more pronounced in respect of the period following Americas assumption ot the leadership of the free world with the enunciation of the Truman Doctrine and the launching of the Marshall Plan. It is my view, elaborated elsewhere, that Britain under the leadership of Ernest Bevin played a much more significant and decisive role in organizing the Western world for the postwar struggle for power in Europe than is commtonly believed. The aim of the present article is to highlight the nature of that role by focussi ig on a single cold war crisis, the crisis precipitated by the Soviet blockade of the Western sectors of Berlin in 1948-9. In retrospect it is clear beyond any shadow of doubt that this was the most critical crisis of the cold war. The stakes coulI hardly have been greater. As Bevin perceived at the time, the future of Germany, the future of Westelrn Europe and the future of the precarious postwar international order all hung in the balance. The Berlin crisis was not only critical, it was also an unusually long crisis, lasting eleven months, and a highly complex one, requiring actions at the political, diplomatic, legal, military logistical and propaganda levels. As one of the four occupying powers of Germany, with its own sector in Berlin, Britain acL ively participated, alongside America and France, at all these different levels. That America was the leading actor in management of the crisis on the West:ern side is not in question.2 All that is argued here is that for good or bad Britain played a significant role, far more significant than is usually recognized, in forging the overall Western policy of firmness in dealing with the Soviet challenge and that this role can now be usefully re-examined with the help of the documentary record made available by both the British and the American governments.3 Four aspects of the Berlin crisis

Decision Process, Choice, and Consequences: Israel's Deep-Penetration Bombing in Egypt, 1970

Weapons systems have a great impact on national security decision making. In particular, the use of air power for political coercion or “compellence” is a tempting option when a nation has overwhelming aerial capabilities relative to an opponent. Israels decision to launch air attacks deep within Egypt during the 1970 War of Attrition suggests that coercive bombing may not yield expected benefits and effect unanticipated costs. The decision process that produced the bombing choice was characterized by inadequate search for alternatives; conservative revision of opinion; faulty evaluation of consequences in terms of likelihood, benefits, and costs; a failure to consider value trade-offs between military and political dimensions; and overestimation of the probability of preferred outcomes, coupled with underestimation of the likelihood of undesirable outcomes.

The Rise and Fall of the All-Palestine Government in Gaza

The All-Palestine Government established in Gaza in September 1948 was short-lived and ill-starred, but it constituted one of the more interesting and instructive political experiments in the history of the Palestinian national movement. Any proposal for an independent Palestinian state inevitably raises questions about the form of the government that such a state would have. In this respect, the All-Palestine Government is not simply a historical curiosity, but a subject of considerable and enduring political relevance insofar as it highlights some of the basic dilemmas of Palestinian nationalism and above all the question of dependence on the Arab states.

The 1967 Arab-Israeli war : origins and consequences

Introduction 1. Israel: poor little Samson Avi Shlaim 2. Egypt: dangerous illusions Laura M. James 3. Syria: playing with fire David Lesch 4. Jordan: walking the tight rope Avi Shlaim 5. The Palestinian national movement Wendy Pearlman 6. The Yemen war and Egypts war preparedness in June 1967 Eugene Rogan and Tewfik Aclimandos 7. The United States and the 1967 war Charles D. Smith 8. The Soviet Union: the roots of war and a reassessment of historiography Rami Ginat 9. Britain: the ghost of Suez and resolution 242 Wm. Roger Louis 10. France and the June 1967 war Jean-Pierre Filiu 11. The 1967 war and the demise of Arab nationalism: chronicle of a death foretold Rashid Khalidi 12. The transformation of Arab politics: disentangling myth from reality Fawaz A. Gerges.

Britain's Quest for a World Role

Pragmatism has always been widely regarded by practitioners and commentators alike as the chief characteristic of British foreign policy. The essence of the British approach to world affairs, it is frequently repeated, is the treatment of issues on their own merit and an ad hoc response to problems as they arise without reference to any a priori theories. James Joll has summed up the whole tradition which shapes British foreign policy-making as prudent empiricism and the reluctance to accept general principles. This fair charaoterisation of the style of British foreign policy has, however, tended to obscure the fact that the content of British foreign policy since the war has been largely determined by refer-

Israeli Politics and Middle East Peacemaking

Israel, Henry Kissinger once remarked, has no foreign policy, only domestic politics. Although this remark involves an obvious oversimplification, it does raise an interesting question about the relationship between the two in Israel. While domestic politics influence foreign policy in all countries, the impact of the first on the second is particularly profound in Israel, where the questions of national identity involved in foreign policy weigh more heavily on the public mind than they generally do elsewhere. The relationship between domestic politics and foreign policy is not a one-way street. Just as internal politics influence foreign policy decisions, developments in the external sphere feed into the domestic political scene in a never-ending process. The purpose of this article is to examine the interplay between domestic politics and Middle East peacemaking since the June 1992 elections brought Labor back to power after fifteen years of Likud dominance. The main focus is the eventful period from the signing of the Israel-PLO accord on 13 September 1993 to the signing of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty on 26 October 1994.