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Ever since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, its decision-makers have been fully aware of the impact of the international system on the ArabIsraeli conflict. Interests of external powers in the Middle East had to be taken into consideration in the formation of Israel's foreign policy. During the War of Independence the threat of British intervention on behalf of the Arab states was seriously contemplated, and a decision made to exercise self-restraint in order to avoid military confrontation.' David Ben-Gurion, Israel's Premier and Minister of Defense, was convinced that Israel must not provoke the intervention of a great power by means of its military action. While Israel had no other alternative but to fight the Arabs, war with a great power was far from inevitable.2 The question of external constraints in Israel's foreign and defense policy was rendered more acute in the early 1 950s, following the military deterioration along the armistice lines. This was aggravated by the failure of Israel's preliminary effort to obtain arms and security guarantees. The interrelationship between conflict management and consideration of great-power constraints produced two distinct schools of thought among Israel's decision maker in the early 1950s. Ben-Gurion espoused a hawkish and activist approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, while minimizing the prominence of external constraints. Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett represented a doveish and more restrained line of conflict management, attributing great importance to foreign powers, the United Nations and international public opinion.3 This study aims to examine the emergence of these two approaches to management of the Arab-Israeli conflict, while analysing the actual impact of external constraints on Israel's foreign and defense policy between 1954 and 1956. It is argued that had the United States better understood Israel's defense problems, providing it with arms and security guarantees, it could have exercised greater influence over its foreign policy. Possibly the downfall of Sharett, the establishment of the Franco-Israeli alliance and even the 1956 war might have been prevented.

Bar-Siman-Tov, Y. Crisis Management by Military Cooperation with a Small Ally: American-Israeli Cooperation in the Syrian-Jordanian Crisis, September 1970. Cooperation and Conflict, XVII, 1982, 151-162. The aim of this study is to examine the American—Israeli military cooperation in the Jordanian-Syrian crisis of September 1970, as an illustrative case of crisis management by military cooperation with a small ally, in a situation where there are inadequate conditions for the effective employment of direct coercive diplomacy by the major power. The U.S. role in the resolution of the crisis became effective only when it demonstrated clearly that it had a credible means to manage the crisis. The military cooperation with Israel increased tremendously the American credibility and therefore its coercive diplomacy bargaining position in the crisis. The U.S. succeeded in employ ing its military cooperation with Israel as an effective means of crisis management. because the preliminary conditions for that strategy were present. The U.S. had a local ally with its own interests, motivation and capability to act as a 'crisis manager assistant'. The main negative result of the crisis for the U.S. was Israel's increased bargaining power. When a superpower is unable to protect its vital interests by use of its own direct coercive diplomacy and needs to rely on the assistance of an ally, it has no choice other than to accept the increased bargaining power of the ally.

dependence between two states: 'If B is highly dependent on A for something of great economic value to him, and A is not similarly dependent on B, the latter is vulnerable to the threat of having the receipt of the valued object suspended. He is subject to the coercive exertion of economic leverage.'2 The effectiveness of economic sanctions as a political tool is contingent upon change in the target state's behaviour and/or commitment on its part to avoid such behaviour in the future. However, a strong consensus exists in the literature that economic sanctions alone have been ineffective in the fulfilment of their