A Paradigm in Crisis? Israel's Doctrine of Military Decision

The Middle East peace process and the emphasis on the security arrangements attending the expected accords have somewhat diverted attention from both the changing nature of Israel's security problems during recent years and the dilemmas to which this change has given rise. One of the most evident dilemmas is the crisis threatening the Israeli military-decision paradigm (to use Thomas Kuhn's terminology).¹ From a substantive point of view, it appears that a battlefield decision no longer provides an adequate solution to the main strategic challenges that Israel now faces; from the “sociological” standpoint it seems that the longstanding consensus among Israel's military-strategic policy-makers regarding the merits of battlefield decision has been recently eroded. The aim of this article is to present the main elements of the traditional Israeli military-decision doctrine within the framework of its wider security concept, and to examine the challenges confronting it now.