Trial and Error

Yagil Levy is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Studies of Social Change at the New School for Social Research, New York.

"By providing an interesting linkage between Israel's foreign policy behavior and alterations and changes in Israeli domestic politics, Levy is offering a provocative thesis that deserves wide readership. I have no doubt that some readers will applaud Levy's courage and thesis, and that others will do just the opposite. No one, however, will walk away feeling indifferent." — Michael Barnett, editor of Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom"An important and valuable contribution to the understanding of Israel's domestic, security, and foreign policies and the close relations among them. From this perspective, Levy's book is not only an important, but also an innovative and serious, addition to the recent growth in the 'revision' of traditional mainstream historical and social-science writings about Israel." — Baruch Kimmerling, editor of The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers"Breaking open the black boxes of international and domestic politics, identifying unsuspected mechanisms within them and unsuspected connections between them, Yagil Levy provides a fresh view of political processes in Israel and elsewhere....His work will stimulate new efforts at integrating studies of inequality, of international interactions, and of how state policy emerges from error-filled and error-correcting political action." — Charles Tilly, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University

• List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. The State's Construction of an Inequitable Social Structure 3. Bellicose Policy Drives Internal State Expansion and Vice Versa (1951–56) 4. The Six-Day War (1967): Expanding the War-Prone Circle 5. The Watershed Years (1968–81) 6. From Escalation to De-Escalation (1982–96) 7. Conclusions: Trial and Error Notes Bibliography Index