Publications on Military and Strategic Affairs

April 2016 marked the official beginning of the National Cyber Defense Authority. The guiding rationale that informed the establishment of the Authority is that close cooperation among all parts of the civil sector is required for the defense of cyberspace, and hence the need to establish a civilian authority to focus solely on cyber security and, in the future, assume some of the work traditionally performed by the Israel Security Agency to defend critical national infrastructures. In addition,  the division of responsibility and...

The seven essays collected in this volume explore different aspects of the model of military service in Israel all touch on a central question at the heart of the Israeli public debate: is the model of a “people’s army” still relevant to contemporary Israel and the IDF, or should this model be modified in light of developments as to the army’s needs, changes in the security threats to the nation, and Israel’s current social and economic fabric? Although the collection does not provide definitive answers to the question, the editors...

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 11, 2006 ended the Second Lebanon War and outlined the security regime that has been in effect for the past decade between Israel and its northern neighbor. To support the Lebanese government in fulfilling the resolution, UNIFIL, the temporary UN force in Lebanon (first established in 1978 by UN Security Council Resolution 425), was expanded from 2,000 soldiers before the 2006 war to 12,000 troops of higher quality. In the decade since its reestablishment, UNIFIL II helped stabilize the...

The Israeli Home Front Command has undergone many phases of change until having reached its present level of preparedness for providing the adequate response to man-made security challenges. This level of performance raises several serious questions regarding its capacity to serve as Israel’s primary agent of response to major disruptions, extensive man-made security hazards, and natural novel risks. Its future success in standing up to wide-scale challenges will depend not only on its own level of preparedness, but also on its...

Relations between the military and political echelons in Israel are complex and multifaceted, both in theory and in practice. The problems resulting from the interface between the two have at times resulted in ineffective military deployment or a crisis of expectations. Moreover, as the positions of the political echelon are never unanimous, its directives to the military have not always been aligned with the government’s position, and sometimes even have been nebulous. In August 2015, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released a...

(This essay is an edited transcript of the chief of staff’s speech at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies in January 2016.) The challenges facing the Israel Defense (IDF) Forces (IDF) in the foreseeable future are composed of three main factors. The first is Israel’s rapidly changing strategic environment. The nuclear deal between Iran and the superpowers and the subsequent lifting of the sanctions against Iran constitute a strategic turning point for the IDF’s major threat over the past decade. The...

The demand by Education Minister Naftali Bennett to broaden the professional knowledge of the members of the security cabinet so that they can fulfill their duties in optimal fashion is, in principle, correct. Members of the cabinet (as well as the other ministers in the government, which has the authority over the IDF) need a system for learning and keeping abreast of developments in order to make informed strategic assessments and diplomatic and military decisions. The political compromise proposed by Minister Yaakov Litzman and...