ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the development of the Israeli strategic culture through an historical account of its “formative period”, 1936–1956. The perception of isolation, siege, and the sense of the inevitability of the conflict which came to characterize the early Zionists’ psychological perception of the surrounding “operational milieu” fostered, already in the first years of Israel’s existence, conceptual adherence to a very pessimistic set of strategic beliefs. This was based on two pillars. First, that the build-up of military power and the use of force performed a fundamental communicative function between Israel and its enemies. The build-up of military power and threat and use of force were in fact perceived as fundamental in convincing foes that the Jewish state could not be destroyed by military means. Second, that national security depended more on the ability to autonomously secure facts on the ground, tangible asymmetries vis-à-vis opponents, than on the will to establish a dialogue with them and search for a mutually satisfactory political equilibrium.
