ABSTRACT
The Six Day War in June 1967 disoriented Israel’s external military politics. It appeared almost certain that the remnants of the 1949 armistice system had been shattered beyond repair. An appreciation of the magnitude of Israel’s security problems was indispensable to an appraisal of the state’s defense efforts. A frontier of 750 miles, four-fifths of it on land, was uncommonly long for a country less than 8,000 square miles in size. Israel found its primary answer in a citizen army. The structure of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is more typical of Europe than of the Middle East, and among the European armies the IDF, particularly in the organization of the reserves, most closely resembles the citizen army of Switzerland, after which it was originally patterned. Israel is a democratic republic with a ceremonial president and an executive cabinet, responsible to a 120-member unicameral Kneset, or parliament, from which the prime minister and most of his ministerial colleagues are drawn.
