In February 2019, on the eve of the dissolution of the 20th Knesset and the first of the recurring elections that paralyzed the political system in Israel, MK (and today Minister of Public Security) Omer Bar Lev and I issued a report about the ground forces, the need to decide about their role in military campaigns, and on that basis, the ensuing plans for military buildup. In the years prior we headed the two relevant subcommittees of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee – I was the head of the Subcommittee on Defense Doctrine...
The strategic assessment for Israel for 2021 is shaped by significant uncertainty in three principal areas: the level of success in coping with COVID-19; the modus operandi and policies of the new administration in the United States; and the political developments in Israel. The current assessment is based on a broader conception of national security, which places greater weight than in the past on the domestic arena and on threats to internal stability, social cohesion, values, and fabric of life. This of course does not detract...
Public confidence in the IDF is a central social-national asset that enables the military to enlist support, resources, and quality manpower, particularly when civilian needs become prominent and threaten its seniority as a public system. Several recent events may reflect growing gaps between the public’s attitudes regarding how the IDF is managed and how the army presents itself. These events may hint at the decline in the level of confidence in the army on the part of the public and some of those serving in it, and also raise...
A destructive earthquake in Israel is not a question of if it, but when. A reference scenario that was presented to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in 2016 estimated that 7,000 people would be killed, tens of thousands injured, infrastructure damaged, hundreds of thousands of buildings damaged, and hundreds of thousands of people evacuated from their homes. In such a scenario, Israel would be thrust into a state of ongoing disaster, with the government systems hard pressed to contain and handle the event and its numerous...
Endorsing the position of the IDF Chief of Staff, Israel’s Prime Minister and the Ministers of Defense and Finance decided recently to postpone implementation of a previous government decision to shorten compulsory IDF service for men. Accordingly, compulsory IDF service for men will continue to be 32 months. This significant decision opposes the recommendations of several professional commissions and earlier decisions by the government and the Knesset to gradually shorten men’s compulsory service to 24 months. Human resources...
At the start of H. E. President Isaac Herzog’s term of office, and following the many global and local developments and changes over the past six months – including a new administration in Washington, President Biden’s decision to try to return to the nuclear deal with Iran, the formation of a new government in Israel, and growing tensions in Israeli society, including clashes between Arabs and Jews in Israeli cities – the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) presented to President Herzog highlights on the main strategic...
In the fourth round of fighting in 12 years between Israel and Palestinian terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, attacks from Gaza once again targeted Israel’s civilian front. The attacks were characterized by extensive use of high-trajectory weapons – some 400 munitions daily – causing casualties and considerable property damage in Israel’s civilian space. Nonetheless, due to the relatively short duration of the fighting and the efficient actions of the relevant systems in Israel, above all the IDF’s air defense system, the...
The disaster on Mount Meron on April 29-30, 2021 is evidence of the systemic and ongoing crisis that besets the State of Israel, manifested in flawed governance and based on insufficient legal norms that can serve as a general, equal, and binding framework for state, public, and private conduct. In order to turn the dire and unnecessary disaster into an opportunity, Israel must identify and redefine, in a professional and independent manner, the systemic, social, and political roots that facilitated the underlying circumstances of...
The IDF announced recently that it would hold a “war month” in the first half of 2022 lasting four weeks – the first General Staff exercise of its kind. The exercise, which will include regular army and reserve forces on an especially large scale, is designed to evaluate the army’s forces during the course of a long, consecutive, challenging, and life-like exercise in order to enhance readiness and fitness for war. The “war month” name is taken from the concluding stage in training IDF infantry troops....
The defense budget for 2021 continues the defense budget of 2020, which itself is a continuation of the 2019 defense budget, approved in March 2018. The sequence of continuation budgets constitutes a management failure by the government, which for political reasons has not passed a regular state budget. In this situation, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi has taken upon himself a particularly difficult mission – managing a multi-year plan (the Tnufa plan) that is not backed by a regular defense budget and a multi-year budget agreement,...
The INSS 14th Annual International Conference, “National Security in an Atmosphere of Global and Internal Disorder,” was held on January 26-28, 2021. Participating in the conference were foreign ministers (from Germany, India, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel), party leaders in Israel, guest experts from Israel and abroad, and INSS researchers. The discussions and lectures highlighted four key motifs that will affect Israel’s national security in the coming year – two related to the external-regional and...
Israel’s enemies are aware of its strength, preoccupied with their own domestic problems, and eager to avoid escalation. However, war in 2021 is possible – in the northern arena and Gaza – following a “dynamic of escalation.” In a war, the IDF would employ lethal offensive capabilities on the ground, in the air, at sea, and in the cyber realm, and inflict considerable damage on its enemies. But in such a war, Israel would likely face massive surface-to-surface missile and rocket fire on the home front, and attacks...
