The deep trauma left by the October 7 war, along with the large budgets allocated to the defense establishment as a result, may lead the IDF to pursue a whole series of force buildup and procurement programs without clear priorities. Priorities must be set from the top-down by the General Staff, based on expected threat scenarios for the next war, should it occur. The main stresses and gaps in the IDF’s capabilities should be identified, and force-buildup investments directed accordingly. To a large extent, this is already happening....
The agreement that has been reached is a tremendous achievement for Israel. It includes what Hamas had refused until now: the immediate release of all the hostages, thereby relinquishing its principal bargaining chip before the IDF withdraws from the Gaza Strip, and a demilitarization clause that appears in the agreement—even if Hamas avoided formally accepting it. For Hamas, this clause is a double-edged sword: If it complies, it loses; if it does not, it will face political and military attacks for violating the agreement, without...
With the major turning point in the war in the Gaza Strip, the release of all the remaining living hostages, and the apparent end of the intense phase of fighting, it is time to return to and reexamine several fundamental assumptions of the Arab–Israeli conflict. Segments of the Israeli elite are deeply—and rightly—concerned about the growing messianic and annexationist tendencies in Israel, which have reached their peak in the current governing coalition. They also sense—again understandably—that the absence of an adequate response...
The long duration of the campaign in the Gaza Strip, the difficulty in achieving a decisive outcome, and the immense scale of Israeli forces involved—all stem directly from the unique underground challenge in this arena. This has significant implications, not only for the current state of the war in the Gaza Strip but also for the situation that will emerge after the war.
Once the Israeli-Iranian exchange of blows ended impressively, the question of continuing the war in the Gaza Strip has returned to the center of public controversy in Israel, inextricably tied to the issue of the remaining hostages still held by Hamas. Disagreements and differing predictions about the future—always marked by uncertainty—are legitimate. So too are the value-based differences that guide decision-making, for which no objective resolution exists—only a decision about what norms to adopt and what not to, after weighing...
In his book The Hi-Tech Army and the Cavalry Army: How Israel Abandoned the Ground Forces (Hebrew, 2024), written mostly before the war in Gaza, Brig. Gen. (res.) Guy Hazut sharply criticizes the steadily declining importance and chronic neglect of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ground forces over recent decades. He critiques the division of the IDF into an elite “hi-tech army,” relying on the air force, precision-guided munitions, and special forces, on the one hand, and, on the other, the supposedly outdated “cavalry army”—the...
The war that broke out on October 7, 2023, has brought the Palestinian issue back to the forefront of the global, Middle Eastern, and Israeli agenda. The debate over how to address—let alone resolve—it continues as it has for the past half-century, and in various forms—for more than a century. Why have all attempts at an agreement failed since the Oslo Accords, and what does this suggest about the prospects for resolving the conflict? In light of its frustrating persistence, the conflict continues to generate a range of opposing...
Michael Walzer, the doyen of just war theory, has argued in a New York Times opinion piece that Israel’s “pager attack” on thousands of Hezbollah operatives throughout Lebanon was “an act of terrorism,” since it failed to respect “the distinction between combatants and civilians” crucial to the rules of just war. This is strange, because this attack was, as a matter of fact, one of the most “targeted” that a state can possibly launch against a terrorist or guerilla force operating amongst a civilian population. With greater precision...
After a year of war, it is time to reassess Israel’s fundamental strategic alternatives and the contrasting views that have figured prominently in the professional disputes, media opinions, and public discourse regarding the war, its trajectory, and continuation since its outbreak.
Hamas’s successful surprise attack on October 7, 2023, exactly 50 years after October 6, 1973, in the Yom Kippur War, has once again raised the question, in all seriousness, of why and how strategic surprises occur. After the trauma of the Yom Kippur War, which preoccupied the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate (AMAN), defense establishment, and the public at large for decades, all the elements of that surprise recurred—with catastrophic results.
It is well recognized in the literature on strategic surprise that historical...
The “concept” is a term that remains fixed in the Israeli public discourse after the 1973 Yom Kippur debacle. It refers to a failed overarching narrative that underlay Israel’s intelligence and security framework. As in 1973, the one that was shattered on October 7, 2023, was marked by overconfidence and complacency. When it shattered, Israel’s vulnerability to the Iranian “ring of fire” was exposed, adding to distressing matters directly involved in the war: The problem of the hostages in Gaza, overstretching of the military forces,...
Since Hamas’s attack and the outbreak of the war in the Gaza Strip, the public discourse has been impressed by the view, which Major General (res.) Itzhak Brik in particular voiced even before the war, that the IDF is too small given the threats; that reliance on technology has led to dangerous neglect and reduction of the ground forces; that the air force is disproportionately funded at the expense of the ground forces; and that there is a need to increase the defense budget significantly and permanently, beyond covering the...
