Daniel Pipes has a clear-eyed view of the world. There is no equivocation in his new book Israel Victory, and very little uncertainty. He analyzes the component elements of the historic and intractable Jewish-Arab dispute and its transformation over time, identifies the successes and past failures of Israel’s governments, its military and security establishments, and assesses the nation’s current circumstances. The very process of doing so, avoiding ambiguity and ambivalence in Pipes’s characteristic fashion, finally brings to light the logical way to break the persistent Israeli-Palestinian logjam – the way, to quote from his subtitle, for Zionists finally to win acceptance, and the Palestinians to unshackle themselves from the chains of rejectionism that have thwarted their development for decades.
To state it starkly, Pipes believes that today, as in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1972/3, Israel is in a struggle for its very existence. The vital difference between then and now, he asserts, is that the nation has psychologically lost the will to defeat its enemies. He quotes Naveh Dromi of the Middle East Forum, who has written that victory had been the IDF’s goal until that was replaced by a reliance “on diplomacy, negotiations, and compromise. Even Israel’s constant battles on its northern and southern borders, against Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively, were fought more in line with the diplomatic clock than any military strategy.”
