ABSTRACT
Mordechai Gazit, who served as director-general both of the Prime Minister’s Office and of the Foreign Ministry, states that “there is no institutionalization of the decisionmaking process and it differs from case to case and from individual to individual.” The key problem in Israel’s national security decisionmaking process is not so much the lack of a high-level forum per se, as the total absence of staff facilities of any sort for the decisionmaker. A recurring theme in so many of the comments on and assessments of Israel’s national security decisionmaking process is criticism of the disproportionate role played by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in shaping Israel’s strategy. The 1969–1970 War of Attrition, in which Israel suffered many hundreds of casualties, was a consequence of the IDF’s deployment along the east bank of the Suez Canal. The IDF chief of staff presented to the Ministerial Defense Committee a plan for bombing specific targets in Egypt.
