Military Knowledge and Weak Civilian Control in the Reality of Low Intensity Conflict \-\- The Israeli Case

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Abstract

The changes in the nature of warfare and its transformation toward intrastate conflicts—known in military jargon as Low Intensity Conflict (LIC)—pose a challenge to the nature of the interaction between the political and the military echelons in general and in Israel—where such a conflict has been a protracted reality since 2000—in particular. While, in these instances, political supremacy is maintained on institutional and formal levels, on the substantial level, which requires reliance on knowledge and systematic staff work, the political position is weakened and substantive civilian control is wanting. I characterize the interactions between the political and the military echelons in Israel during the last half-decade as a "discourse space" imbued with military content and characterized by a blurred political directive. The concept of "epistemic authority" is borrowed from the field of social psychology. Showing how Israel's military echelon has become an "epistemic authority" with regard to the confrontation with the Palestinians, in the eyes of both the general public and the political echelon in Israel, is elucidated through both the nature of the political-military interaction during this period and the weakness of civilian control of the military. The operations launched by the Israeli military, according to its own interpretation of the politicians' intentions and following its newly developed knowledge, helped shape the conflict environment and were perceived by politicians and by most of the Israeli public as justified. The military's hegemonic role in the conflict, in its turn, resulted from the inherent weakness of political control of the military and, at the same time, was a fresh indication of it. The weakness of civilian control of the military in this period suggests that political thinking in Israel is inadequate and attests to the threat to both the supremacy of its civilian sphere and the delimitation of the military's influence over its politics.

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