Israel Security Policy
The need for a strong military posture in the face of the perceived Arab threats to Israel's survival has been endorsed with near unanimity by Israeli policy makers and citizens. Nevertheless, the question of which strategies best ensure national defense has often caused acrimonious national, as well as international, controversy. Events subsequent to Ben-Gurion's initial concepts of national security laid down when Israel was founded in 1948, particularly Israel's occupation of Arab territories since the June 1967 War, have modified the foundations for Israel's concepts of national security.
Over the course of two decades, Israeli combat doctrine underwent several successive revisions, expressed in the plans of Kela, Tevin, Oz, Gideon, and Tenuva. The first review took place after the first Gulf War, the second after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the third review came after the Summer War. The fourth was brought about by the “Arab Spring,” especially the repercussions of the explosion of the situation in Syria, and the fifth was the result of the 2014 Gaza War, until the momentum plan. "Tnuva".
The Kela Plan (2003-2006), developed under Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon, was based on the idea of “remote warfare”. It called for reducing the size of operating ground forces by 10%, and the rehabilitation and training of forces, to absorb modern programs and weapons. In the wake of Israel's failure in the "Second Lebanon War" in 2006, most of the generals directed their anger at the Keila plan, criticizing the method of managing the war, the reliance on the air force, and neglecting the role of the ground effort.
Since the 2006 war, Israel revisited its whole approach to a future conflict with Hezbollah, earmarking resources and developing the Dahiya Doctrine, which uses disproportionate force and targets civilian infrastructures when the time comes. Coincidently, the author of this doctrine, former Israel army Chief of General Staff Gadi Eizenkot, was one of the four generals in the 2023 war-time national unity government and sat on its war council.
The "Dahiya Doctrine" got its name after Israel indiscriminately attacked military and civilian infrastructure in a neighbourhood of Beirut in 2006 following its war with Hezbollah. The policy was first mentioned by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a think-tank with close ties to the Israeli political and military establishment. INSS published it in a policy paper "Disproportionate Force: Israel's Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War." The policy stresses that in a conflict with Hamas, the Israeli army should use "force that was disproportionate to the enemy's actions and the threat it poses."
A senior Israeli General, Gadi Eisenkot, speaking to the Israeli press in 2008, said that the Dahiya Doctrine "isn't a suggestion" but a "plan that has already been authorised." In 2006 Israel's then army chief General Dan Halutz boasted that the military would target civilian infrastructure in Lebanon with the aim to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years." Israel implanted such a policy during its attack on Gaza in 2008-2009, which left more than 1,400 Palestinians dead.
The Tevin Plan (2008-2012) was developed under Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and called for enhancing the efficiency of ground forces, quantitatively and qualitatively. It also called for strengthening the long arm of the Air Force, warning systems, and space espionage, thus achieving a “multi-objective army.” It practically abolished the Kela plan, the theory of “remote warfare,” and the idea of a small and smart army, and returned it to the strategy of rapid, blitzkrieg war, based on strengthening the ground forces alongside the air force. In this plan, there was no compromise between “necessities and risks,” and it turned out that logistical resources It was afflicted with many shortcomings in various elements, such as: confronting short-range missiles, and failures in building force.
The Oz Plan (2011-2014) of Chief of Staff Benny Gantz called for reducing ground forces teams, and increase spending on projects related to intelligence services, advanced combat capabilities of air, land and sea weapons, and projects related to cyber warfare. The Oz plan overthrew the Tevin plan and Ashkenazi’s visions about revitalizing the People’s Army, and with it all the efforts exerted over the past years, including training, maneuvers, and the creation of new ground units. It explains the failure of the plan during the 2014 Gaza war.
The Gideon Plan (2015-2019) developed under Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot envisioned unifying the ground operations arm and the cyber and logistics arm, and forming a coordination center between the various arms of the army and the secret services. It also called for strengthening the Israeli army’s ability to deterrence and operational activity within the framework of "the battle between wars". The plan did not contain anything new, except for the amendments demanded by the Meridor committees in 1986 and 2006, the most important of which was the inclusion of the term defense, along with the terms deterrence, early warning, and battle resolution, to the new strategy. Two new battlefields were added: espionage, electronic piracy, and the struggle to gain international public opinion.
The Tnuva plan (2020-2025) developed under Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi proposed making the army more technological and more lethal, while maintaining the quality of manpower in the army. It proposed raising the level of motivation to serve in the army, and iimproving the suitability of the land arm according to the various variables. It also called for multiplying defense capabilities in the field of cyber, and linking the various arms. The Corona pandemic and the economic and political crisis dealt a strong blow to the “Tnuva” plan, and caused the delay of many items related to the defensive and offensive systems that must be obtained. The Israeli Army tried to work to replace the concept of military decisiveness, replacing it with the concept of victory, which was the new term. Which was included by Gadi Eisenkot, the former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, into the Israeli Army document in the year 2015.
The Battle of “Saif Al-Quds” proved that the Israeli Army was unable to achieve the victory hoped for in the “Tnuva” plan. On the contrary, it was clearly defeated at the level of the military plan in the face of the Palestinian resistance.
It was clear from a review of Israeli combat plans that, within two decades, they underwent approximately five successive reviews, in which the focus on air superiority was clear, and this was gradually reflected in a relative neglect of the ground forces. The military leadership was convinced that maneuver and ground battle belonged to the wars of the past, and that was why their greatest interest was in modernizing and strengthening the air force, to become the basis and focus of actual modernization in the Israeli army. The ongoing Israeli plans confirm the resistance’s state of depletion of the Zionist capabilities on the human and material levels. The direct confrontation demonstrated the ability of the resistance fighters to confront the enemy army, despite the tireless work to draw lessons. The most prominent feature of the Israeli intelligence vision was the inability of military intelligence to claim clarity in anticipating the course of events, and the reason for this was the rapid changes in the map of threats in the region that would lead to errors in intelligence estimates, as there was no long-term vision and calculations depend on developments.
A cornerstone of US assistance to Israel was guaranteeing Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME). QME pertains to Israel's ability to defend itself by itself against any combination of Mideast adversaries. Helping Israel maintain its qualitative military advantage enhances security by preventing regional conflict and builds the confidence necessary for Israel to take calculated risks for peace. The annual military assistance that Israel receives constitutes an important part of US support for these objectives. Israel uses this assistance both to procure US-origin defense articles, ranging from ammunition to advanced weapons systems and training, and to develop and support its own defense industry. Washington's decades-long, commitment to Israel's QME has been codified into US law.
IDF rules of engagement in responses to the "Knife Intifada" in 2016 required the use of the minimum force necessary to neutralize a threat. The debate over the use of deadly force and the army’s rules of engagement, opened a long-running rift among Israelis over the role of the military in Israeli life. " ... an increasingly conservative political leadership has pointed with growing alarm to what they see as military leaders overstepping their boundaries and interfering in civilian affairs. Military leaders accuse the political echelon of making policy decisions that undermine Israel’s security in both the short and long range, driven by thinly veiled ideological and religious considerations wrapped in security arguments that are poorly thought-out and often ignorant. Politicians and public intellectuals, mostly but not only on the right, say the generals’ outspokenness undermines the democratic principle of elected civilians making policy. The debate was filled with ironies. For one, it upends the usual Western pattern of armies staking out the right flank in most national debates. In Israel, especially given the paralysis of the political left, the security establishment has emerged as one of the main voices on the left flank of national discourse... "
The Israeli nonprofit organization Breaking the Silence was established in 2004 by veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The purpose of group, which was an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military, was to expose Israelis to the reality of everyday life in the occupied territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, and to bring an end to Israeli occupation there, according to its website.
On 17 July 2018, Israel’s Parliament passed the so-called “Breaking the Silence” law, which bans nongovernmental organizations and other activist groups from entering Israeli schools and talking to students. "Organizations that undermine Israel and besmirch IDF soldiers will no longer be able to reach Israeli students," Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement. "Breaking the Silence long ago crossed the red lines beyond legitimate discourse when they started libeling Israel in the international arena. As long as they operate against Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) abroad, I won't let them in the education system," Bennett added, the Jerusalem Post reported 17 July 2016.
The "Kela Plan" ["all-encompassing"] was a comprehensive strategy devised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May 2024 for the reconstruction and future governance of Gaza. Named after the Hebrew word for "all-encompassing," the plan outlines a multi-stage process aimed at stabilizing and redeveloping Gaza following the recent conflict with Hamas.
By the end of 2024 the result of the war in Gaza was noticeable - Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank are almost not fighting back. No Arab country is fighting against Israel. Except Iran fires missiles and drones from time to time. So Israel knew that the time had come to take everything for itself - to change the Middle East.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
