FROM INTERMITTENT WAR TO PERMANENT WAR
For Israel, war is much more than a founding act, it is a status, an immanent condition.
The Zionist ruling classes, long before the creation of Israel, were aware of representing a foreign body in Palestine, and only by virtue of the belief that that land had been promised to them by God did they consider themselves entitled to occupy it. The awareness of this irremediable foreignness meant that, from the very beginning, the Jewish state conceived of itself – and equipped itself – as an organism shaped for war. In the romantic representation of a supremacist socialism (that is, reserved for Jews only, excluding Arabs) that was realized in the kibbutzim, the prototype of the new man was represented – ideally and iconographically – with a hoe and a machine gun on his shoulder. And in fact the first twenty-five years of Israel are marked by wars with neighboring Arab countries: the 1948 war, the 1956 Suez War, the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
And if the first two see the Jewish state not yet fully assimilated into the US system of global domination (in 1956 it was Washington that imposed the stop), the subsequent ones take place in a context that sees Israel no longer only as a European colonial settlement, but as an outpost of American hegemonic power.
From that moment on, also thanks to continuous and massive US aid, Israeli military power will assert itself as predominant in the region and, with the 1973 war, the season of clashes between Israel and neighboring Arab countries ends, while that of the Palestinian Resistance opens, in turn marked by a series of acute phases (the 1982 Lebanon war, the first and second intifada and repeated wars in the Gaza Strip).
Unlike the Arab countries, however, which in the Israeli perspective constituted (and in part constitute) a latent threat, destined to manifest itself cyclically, the Resistance of the Palestinian people is characterized - albeit within an oscillating trend - as a constant, which will indeed know some particularly acute phases, but which will never actually cease.
And it is between these two phases that Israel's security doctrine is taking shape, for a series of reasons that are not exclusively military.
This is essentially based on a general principle, that of deterrence, but a deterrence of terror. In the impossibility of removing the primary causes that determine the hostility of the indigenous populations towards the Zionist colonizers, and in the awareness of their largely minority condition in terms of demographics, Israeli leaders establish the need to instill fear in their enemies by making them the object - always and in any case - of disproportionate violence, in reaction to any sign of rebellion, or even just rejection. Any initiative by the Arab-Palestinian side that in any way questioned the Zionist colonial presence had to be responded to in an extremely harsh manner, so as to discourage – for as long as possible – a new hostile action. This approach, which as mentioned represented the cornerstone of the Israeli security doctrine, implied (something later confirmed by concrete experience) that the need to exercise military force in a massive form would periodically recur. From this came the second pillar of this doctrine, namely the ability to promptly develop an offensive capacity capable of overcoming any potential threat, and to annihilate it quickly.
The particular condition of the Israeli Jewish population, which is demographically inferior to the Arab-Palestinian one, does not allow for the maintenance of a permanent army with substantial forces, which must therefore rely on a long-term military service for both sexes (3 years for men, 2 for women), and above all on a substantial reserve force, which can be mobilized rapidly when necessary.
The consequence is twofold: a high capacity to predict events is necessary, so that the reservists can be recalled in good time to face the threat, and this must be stopped in a fairly short time, because the reservists must return to the productive life of the country. To respond to this dual need, Israel has therefore developed a powerful and articulated intelligence system, which operates both within the country and in the occupied territories and in the Arab countries. Thanks to this network, it has therefore been able to detect the signs that some threat to security was mounting, and prepare the armed forces to face it.
And it is this doctrine that, in a certain way, has in turn shaped Israeli society, which has found itself constantly under arms, and engaged in an intermittent war.
Another significant moment, in this respect, was the geopolitical landslide produced above all by the Second Gulf War. The violent dethronement of the former ally Saddam, by Western forces led by the United States, has in fact destabilized the entire region, determining the conditions for a subsequent radical change in the Middle Eastern balance of power. The end of the Baathist regime in Iraq, in fact, has put an end to the predominance of the strong Sunni minority, opening the doors of power to the Shiite majority.
And, although the war also led to the de facto secession of the Kurdistan region (where both the US and Israel have established very solid operational bases), the advent of the Shiites to the government of Baghdad first, and the birth of ISIS later, laid the foundations for what would later become – thanks to the intuition of General Qassam Solemaini – the Axis of Resistance. The birth of armed Shiite militias in Iraq has in fact allowed Tehran to extend its influence on the neighboring country and, through this, to also reunite territorially with the Lebanese Shiites of Hezbollah, and with the Syrian regime.
The aforementioned changes induced in Israeli society by its security doctrine have however also determined its radicalization. Such a condition in fact requires a strong ideological substratum to sustain it, for a time that is by definition infinite. Since there is no turning point, beyond which this condition will cease, the motivations must be very strong. And this is one of the reasons (not the only one) why a messianic vision of Zionism has increasingly taken hold, and has coagulated in far-right movements and parties. This has happened especially starting from the settlers' movement which, also for religious reasons, pursues fertility and has gradually acquired considerable electoral weight. While the Ashkenazi elites and bourgeoisie of European origin, who have long represented the ruling class, were progressively becoming secularized, taking on typical liberal connotations, a new class, of predominantly North African and Middle Eastern origin, strongly religious, and decidedly racist, has gradually climbed to power, to settle there decisively with the advent of the latest Netanyahu governments [1].
If this has introduced elements of division, even significant ones, within Israeli society, it has however accentuated two of its intrinsic aspects: the harshness of the occupation and the ambition for territorial expansion. The first has obviously fueled a spiral of hostility, which in turn fuels the radicalization of society. The second has led to a relaunch of the Zionist dream of Greater Israel, which would ideally extend over much of Syria and Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, and large parts of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Obviously – and the leaders of ultra-Zionism are well aware of this – it is precisely a dream, decidedly unachievable, if only because a population of only six million Jews could never colonize such an immense territory. In practice, however, this represents the ideal utopia to strive for, and which serves to support much more concrete and realistic ambitions. The settlers’ lust for land, in fact, is fundamentally concentrated on the West Bank, because that is where most of the (illegal) settlements are located, because that is where the Palestinian territories are extremely fragmented, and above all because the Jordan Valley is obviously a very fertile and rich land.
It is important to keep in mind the importance that the West Bank has in the imagination of the Zionist far right (and not only in the imagination…). This region, in fact, is not only the primary object of expansionist ambitions, but it is also the heart of what the Israelis call Judea and Samaria, a fundamental piece of biblical Israel. Which in turn also makes clear why the borders of this region with Syria and Lebanon are so important (and so heated).
Judea and Samaria is in turn the heart of the Zionist far right, the main electoral base of the Netanyahu government, and constitutes the nucleus of a potential secession from the Jewish state; the growing gap between the more secularized population and the one strongly religiously characterized (and which aspires to a state conformed to religious principles), in fact pushes Israeli society towards a radical breaking point, in which "calls for a coup d'état and civil war are far from rare" [2]. It goes without saying that, in the face of this split, anti-Palestinian sentiment is the main glue that holds it together.
And this region will also play an important role in the events that will determine a radical change in Israeli security doctrine.
As is known, Operation Al Aqsa Flood of October 7, 2023, marked a very important turning point in the Middle Eastern balance, but above all it highlighted how - in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - the capacity for deterrence and prevention, as envisaged by the current doctrine, were no longer adequate.
The issue of the surprise factor, with which the Palestinian attack caught the IDF red-handed, has been much discussed, and there is a significant portion of opinion that continues to believe the thesis according to which there was in fact no surprise, that everything had been foreseen by the Israeli services, and that the choice was made to let the attack happen in order to have a pretext that would justify the subsequent massacre. This thesis has been refuted several times, even on these pages, but like all theses tinged with conspiracy, it is refractory to any argument that calls it into question.
The thesis is basically born from the resistance to accept logical evidence, to which instead the idea that everything originates from hidden plots is preferred, and it was promptly ridden by the forces interested in maintaining the image of infallibility of the Israeli services, based on the scheme "it was not the Palestinians who fooled the Israelis, but it was the latter who pretended to be fooled in order to fool the Palestinians". It would be enough in fact to look at the consequences of those events (from the hundreds of Israeli deaths caused by the chaos in the IDF commands and by a massive and extensive application of the infamous Hannibal Directive, to the resignations of high military and intelligence officials, and more generally to the impact of that attack on Israel), to refute the thesis. But there is also another element to take into consideration. Obviously there had been signs of preparatory activities, by the Gaza Resistance, detected by the observation services. But as is normal, these signals are then evaluated by the military leaders, in a more general information framework, who decide whether and to what extent to take them into consideration. And this evaluation activity was undermined by two factors: the belief that Hamas was not capable of carrying out a significant attack, and that it had no plans to do so in the short term, and that instead there were much more significant (and worrying) signs of an escalation in the West Bank – the region that is closest to the heart of a significant part of the Israeli government. And in fact in the weeks preceding the attack, significant parts of the armed forces were redeployed from the borders of Gaza to the West Bank.
In any case, the Palestinian attack had a devastating impact on Israel, at every level. On the government, which immediately understood how this called into question its ability to defend the country, on the army and the secret services, whose ineffectiveness it exposed, and obviously on the entire Israeli society, which saw all the pillars on which its idea of security was based collapse in an instant. And the ferocious reaction that followed was not simply an example of the classic principle of the disproportionate response, but a real hysterical catharsis, totally devoid of rationality, both politically and militarily. A psychological condition that took months to emerge from.
Those events, however, demolished the certainty of being able to have, always and in any case, a deterrent capacity capable of keeping the Palestinian fighting formations at bay, without them ever constituting an authentic threat to Israel.
The most important consequence was, obviously, the questioning of the entire security doctrine, based precisely on deterrence and intermittent warfare. A doctrine that was then given the final blow when it came to direct confrontation with Iran. The two Iranian operations True Promise 1 and 2, in fact, have in turn highlighted how Israel's security, and its deterrent capacity, were now nullified, to the point that without the direct and active intervention of the American ally, an effective defense against attacks would have been impossible. All this - together with the aforementioned cracks within the social body - is leading to a radical redefinition of the conceptual framework of the security architecture. Which is moving from the idea of containing the enemy (be it Hamas, Hezbollah or a hostile country) to that of eliminating it - even in the knowledge, however, that this is almost impossible. The result is the gradual transition to a condition of permanent war.
The increased perception of insecurity, in fact, pushes the Israeli leadership, and part of society itself, to an approach that clearly privileges the military aspect over the political one. Obviously, internal political factors also weigh in, which cannot be traced back simply to the political fragility of the government, or to Netanyahu's personal fears, but also to the need to keep the country united, in many other ways dangerously close to splitting.
This new vision of security, which is no longer based on the ability to respond but on the need to prevent, however, entails significant and problematic consequences, making changes in direction (and not only) necessary both in the armed forces and in the secret services - changes that, not surprisingly, are in turn causing tensions.
The fundamental issue is that this reorientation of the security doctrine, increasingly proactive, implies the increase in tensions and the increase in crisis situations, in a Middle Eastern context that has definitely changed, and not at all for the better for Israel. The fall of the Assad regime, just to mention what Netanyahu claims as the greatest success of his action to redesign the Middle East, and in which the Israeli role was secondary and predominantly previous, was in reality a Turkish success, and is increasing the already existing latent hostilities between Ankara and Tel Aviv. While, on the Gaza front, the insistence on the occupation of the Philadelphia corridor and the Rafah crossing produces the same effect with Egypt.
The Jewish state, therefore, finds itself today faced with a situation of multi-front conflict (Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran ...) and prolonged like never before - this is the longest war ever fought by Israel, and from which it is unable to emerge.
And this is also a war in which it is unable to achieve a definitive result, and which therefore necessarily becomes permanent. An unsustainable condition for Israel, however, both because – as has been said – its armed forces are largely composed of reservists (who cannot be removed from the country's economic system for long), and because a permanent state of war produces an accumulation effect that is difficult to sustain. For example, according to recently released official data, the public assistance system currently has 78,000 seriously wounded or disabled soldiers in its care, of which 16,000 as a consequence of the post-October 7 conflicts. Which is as if in Italy there were almost 700,000 war invalids... And obviously it is not only an economic issue (unproductive people and dependent on the state) but also psychological, since they visually represent a social wound that is not reabsorbed, and which is added to that of the fallen (for which there are no credible official figures).
The paradox is that the state of Israel is now in a condition in which it is no longer able to contain threats through a periodic exercise of force, and not only must it be constantly able to exercise it but it even requires – to an essential extent – active cooperation in its defense by the United States. Therefore, the Jewish state would tend to aim for a decisive war, capable of wiping out all its enemies (actual and potential), or at least significantly reducing their offensive capacity. Something that, however, it is not only absolutely incapable of doing alone, but which in any case could not be done simultaneously. At the same time, the country on whose help it vitally depends, the United States, has no strategic interest in inflaming the region, and even if it could be available for a kinetic war, this should be limited, fast and as painless as possible for the United States itself. A condition, this, in general now unavailable on any front, and certainly not on the Middle Eastern one. Israel, therefore, is condemned to a permanent state of war that will consume it, regardless of how much damage it may in turn cause to its enemies in the meantime.
Notes
1 – It is interesting to note that Israeli society, in recent years, has also been marked by a phenomenon opposite to that of the first decades following the founding of the state of Israel. While initially there was a strong migratory flow towards the new state, especially by European Ashkenazi Jews, now there is an opposite phenomenon: Jews, especially liberal ones, are leaving Israel, moving mainly to Europe. According to a report by Jewish Policy Research (See “Israelis abroad: Transformation of the Jewish Diaspora?”, JPR), over six hundred thousand Israelis have left the country (i.e. just under 10% of the Jewish population). Obviously this phenomenon favors the prevalence of the Mizrahi component (Middle Eastern and North African Jews), particularly involved in the settler movement.
2 – See “The Kingdom of Judea vs. the State of Israel”, Alastair Crooke, Unz Review