Israeli warfare

Dates Since 1948

Political Considerations

Israel is a state measuring 27,000 square kilometers (including the West Bank and Gaza), with about 20,000 square kilometers within the Green Line, Israel’s pre-1967 border. It is a country where there is no distinction between foreign and defense policy and where the prime minister traditionally holds the defense portfolio. Israel concluded peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan but is still technically in a state of war with neighboring Lebanon and Syria.

Military Achievement

The formation of the Israeli army goes back to the 1920s and 1930s, when Jewish settlements needed protection against attacks by local Arab forces and the British mandate government. As the numbers of Jewish immigrants to Palestine, both legal and illegal, increased, a military force known as the Haganah (Hebrew for “defense”) was founded.

After statehood in 1948, the Haganah became the core of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The IDF initially functioned as a militia of volunteers, lacking any ranks or uniforms. It also had an elite unit as a special strike force known as the Palmach. This unit was based on the kibbutzim, or cooperative settlements, which served as frontline fortresses during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The youth of these settlements were organized as agriculturalists and military reservists, receiving training as members of a special organization known as Nahal. Other assault strike forces were founded by various factions of the Jewish underground, such as the Irgun Zvai Leumi, headed by Menachem Begin; the Stern, led by Yitzhak Shamir; and Lohamei Herut Yisrael. These were later merged with the Haganah, which became the IDF. From these beginnings and due to the revolutionary origins of these forces, the lines between the civilian and military organizations were blurred.

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) dates to 1947, when the Air Service, or Sherut-Avir, was created from eleven single-engine light aircraft. Several old aircraft were purchased from the British army, to be renovated and flown by pilots with prior experience in the British Royal Air Force.

The country’s response to border attacks by guerrilla groups in the past has been described as a form of massive retaliation. Following the American campaign in Iraq, however, the Israelis resorted to short military operations of the shock-and-awe type (the military technique of overwhelming the enemy with “rapid dominance” by means of extreme speed and force), which they amply utilized in Operation Cast Lead (2006) against Gaza. Despite the apparent success of its offensive doctrine, Israel found itself continuously embroiled in wars. Its persistent occupation of the West Bank, for instance, has reserved policy initiatives for the Arab side, leading to two uprisings (intifadas) and continuous internal and sporadic attacks by Palestinian militants.

Israel’s clear qualitative edge and regional monopoly over nuclear weapons failed to create a state of total securitydue to several factors. One of these is the potential failure of advance warning by military intelligence, as in the 1973 October War (Yom Kippur War). Another factor that developed during that same war was the coming together and coordinated military attacks by two neighboring Arab states, namely Egypt and Syria.

Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate (MID) plays a large role in provoking or instigating military attacks by providing early warning to the government about suspicious enemy troop movements or similar activity along the country’s borders. The MID is a standing corps, just like the air force, which is charged with responding to surprise attacks until the reservists are fully mobilized. More important, the ability of the air force to mount a preemptive attack and render quick support for ground troops lost its deterrent effect, largely because of the emergence of Arab guerrilla forces, which challenge Israel’s seemingly limitless ability to deliver painful blows to its enemies. The lessons of the failed 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which saw Israeli troops hold the Lebanese capital under siege, are implicated in the Sabra and Shatila massacres of civilian Palestinians in September 1982 (witness the abortive failure of the Israeli-Lebanese treaty and eventual retreat back to Israel’s northern region). These failures severely undercut Israeli faith in the effectiveness of their own superior air power and ground troops.

The Israeli attack on the Lebanese guerrilla force Hezbollah in December 2006 was also thwarted by the unexpected show of force on the part of Lebanese irregular troops. In the final days of that war, numerous reservists died in combat, leading to popular discontent and ultimately a shift in the IDF's use of reservists. Thereafter, fewer troops were retained for reserve duty, called up later, and tended to be deployed to noncombat areas.

Additionally, the US-Israel alliance came under scrutiny when the 1990–91 Gulf War forced the United States to exclude Israel from participation, even after Israel suffered from Scud missile attacks launched by the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. Maintaining an American-Arab military alliance during the liberation of Kuwait demonstrated Israel’s limited usefulness as the United States’ great strategic ally in the region. This same alliance also suffered when the Cold War ended, leaving in its wake any threat of an imminent Soviet attack on the Middle East.

Weapons, Uniforms, and Armor

Early weapons of the IDF were acquired from the United States and Czechoslovakia during and just before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Many volunteer pilots and military personnel arrived from several countries and with varied military experience acquired during World War II. By the end of 1948, the air force had swelled to more than one hundred planes and 660 volunteer pilots and skilled mechanics.

Israeli ground forces developed into an impressive machine, so that by the 1980s they ranked third in the world after the United States and the Soviet Union. By the 1980s, regular ground troops numbered around 450,000, divided among ten mechanical brigades, thirty-three armored brigades, twelve territorial/border infantry brigades, and fifteen artillery brigades. With the rise of the Chinese and Indian militaries, the Israeli military fell back to fifth rank in terms of effectiveness, mobility, and offensive capability. By 1994, ground forces had reached 558,112, divided into forty-two armored brigades, twenty-one infantry brigades, and six territorial brigades. In the past, ground forces were mobilized within forty-eight hours, although this was later relaxed in the twenty-first century. In 2023, the standing army consisted of some 130,000 troops and personnel, while the rest were maintained as reserves, who wear a uniform only one month out of the year. That year there were 465,000 reservists across the three branches of the military, constituting less than 5 percent of the country's total population.

The IAF increased in 1983 to 830 aircraft, and in 1993 to 1,052 aircraft, its personnel swelling from 37,000 to 45,889. Its numbers fell to 487 aircraft and about 10,000 personnel by 2023. The effectiveness of Israel’s air power is due to keeping technical and administrative personnel per combat aircraft to a minimum, however. The IAF pilot-training program was always unusually rigorous. Students aspiring to serving with the air force are required to go through a demanding set of initial tests and psychological profiling. Unlike other countries, where pilot candidates are expected to receive a college degree first, Israel enrolls successful candidates immediately after they complete high school. Students’ training usually lasts about twenty months before they learn how to operate some aircraft. Students are then immersed in a regimen of applied mathematics, physics, and other scientific subjects, and are put through rigorous infantry training.

Israel is known to have acquired a significant nuclear capability, amounting to an estimated ninety nuclear warheads by the late 2010s. Israel has the capacity to deliver these warheads but managed to avoid signing the United Nations’ Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is believed that Israel built two nuclear reactors, one at Nahal Soreq and one at Dimona in the Negev. The former was provided by the United States and devoted mostly to research and the training of scientists; the other was based on French technology and built in the late 1960s. Uranium was acquired surreptitiously from a variety of European and African sources. The United States attempted to subject the Dimona reactor to inspection during the Kennedy administration but was deliberately misled about its true purposes. Israel’s means of delivery of atomic payload is based on a ballistic missile code-named Jericho. It was developed in the mid-1980s based on a French design by the firm of Marcel Dassault. According to some reports, Israel maintains nuclear bases at various locations in the Galilee region. Israel is also suspected of developing chemical and biological weapons at its Nes Ziona plant south of Tel Aviv.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin (1913–92) resisted US pressure during the Camp David negotiations in the 1970s to halt his country’s nuclear program as a price for peace with Egypt. He also initiated the Begin Doctrine, which stated that no state in the region would be allowed to develop a nuclear capability threatening to Israel. This policy led to Israel’s raid on the Osirak nuclear plant near Baghdad, Iraq, in 1981, the first such an attack on a nuclear facility in modern times.

Israel’s defense industries had a modest start when Bedek Aviation Company was formed by the early 1950s in order to provide maintenance services for the country’s fledgling air force. Later, this company developed into Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), which began to produce its own line of combat aircraft, transport jets, and other vehicles. Spurred by frequent arms embargoes due to the desire of the United States and other countries to curtail Israel’s frequent initiation of wars, and fearful of Egypt’s acquisition of immense arms supplies from Czechoslovakia in the mid-1950s, Israel began to manufacture most of its own weapons. This effort was greatly aided by its own scientifically trained population, US funds for research, and the early availability of markets for its weapons in Central and South America, Africa, and East Asia.

Israel’s main weapons industries have always been state-owned. They include Israel Military Industries Ltd, the Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and Israel Shipyards Ltd (which was privatized in 1995). These produce a variety of weapons often based on US technology, such as the Kfir, its fighter plane; the Merkava, a highly rated battle tank; missile-carrying boats; a large selection of artillery pieces; and a variety of missiles. In addition, Israel produces radar, computers, and much electronic equipment, provided by the IAI’s subsidiary ELTA Systems Ltd. Soltam Systems produces guns and self-propelled mortars.

The Israeli arms industry is one of the country’s main economic endeavors, generating more than $345 million in sales abroad in 2020 alone. Israel ranks in the top fifteen exporters of arms worldwide. Israel’s arms sales are often in direct competition with the American arms industry, even though it is highly dependent on US fiscal and technological assistance.

One example of this relationship was the Lavi project, which sought to build a fighter plane, supported by US credits that Congress approved in 1983. The Lavi project, which employed four thousand skilled workers, was canceled by the Israeli cabinet in 1986 because of its excessive cost to the United States (in the amount $2 billion).

US strategic cooperation with Israel and the sharing of advanced military technology have always been justified by access to battlefield testing of weapons in Israel’s various wars. The United States has also frequently overlooked its own legislation prohibiting the use of American-supplied arms in aggressive wars, such as the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Foreign Sales Act of 1968.

By the early twenty-first century, Israel also had cyberweapons at its disposal and was itself subject to cyberattacks. In 2009, the Stuxnet worm (jointly developed with the United States) was deployed against computers at companies associated with an Iranian nuclear enrichment plant and, after the software being transferred by USB drive, caused repeated centrifuge failures at the plant; a second version targeted the centrifuges directly. The Israelis went on to develop other software that could be used for cyberwarfare. For instance, the privately held NSO Group devised the powerful anti-encryption tool Pegasus. Sales of Pegasus to other national governments became fraught with controversy, however, after a number of buyers engaged in human rights violations and targeted journalists and lawyers as well as drug lords.

Military Organization

Historically, the least important branch of IDF has been the navy. The navy is the smallest of the three branches, both in personnel and equipment, because of the country’s limited coastline of about 225 kilometers, which includes Gaza. After the Israeli destroyer Eilat was sunk by Egyptian missiles in the June war of 1967 (the so-called Six-Day War), Israel began to acquire small but fast-track boats designed by the West German firm Lürssen Werft, which were actually produced by a French company. These were fitted with Israeli Gabriel surface-to-surface missiles. Eventually, Israel developed an advanced type of this design in its own Haifa shipyards. By 2004, Israel had guaranteed the regional superiority of its navy by acquiring German submarines of the Dolphin type, equipped with nuclear cruise missiles.

Thus, while the Israeli IDF suffer from a dramatic negative quantitative comparison with the standing armies of the surrounding Arab countries, even when all the reserve units are mobilized, Israel continues to enjoy a decisive qualitative edge when it comes to the total effectiveness of its units. Israel’s limited territorial depth made it vulnerable prior to the acquisition of Sinai, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank in the 1967 war. Although much ameliorated, this vulnerability continues to be addressed through a strong and extensive early-warning system. Israel’s dependence on a vast army of reservists and its frequent lengthy mobilization of manpower and civilian transport vehicles often resulted in severe economic disruption. This was the case prior to the 1967 war, when a monthlong period of mobilization along all fronts aggravated the political crisis, leading to a preemptive attack against all surrounding Arab air bases.

Doctrine, Strategy, and Tactics

Israel’s military doctrine has changed over the years but has remained based on the principle of military and psychological deterrence. This doctrine was intended to discourage attacks on Israel’s population centers or on its vital strategic assets, such as its nuclear reactors. Because of its lack of strategic depth prior to 1967, Israel always felt justified in launching preemptive attacks. Known as the “operational plan,” this doctrine called for delivering simultaneous offensive attacks against all of its neighboring Arab airfields. These strikes depended greatly on reports by military intelligence and its policy recommendations, as well as on a variety of intelligence sources and on coordinating with all branches of the military services. Because of the IDF’s numerical inferiority when compared to the total strength of surrounding Arab armies, they enjoy a qualitative edge in terms of air power and the speed with which they can carry out a mission. Israel relies heavily on an early-warning system based on the work of military intelligence.

Israel’s faith in its own strategic doctrine changed as a result of its 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, home to large Palestinian populations who therefore became subject to Israeli control. Since Israel’s armed forces are made up largely of ordinary citizens serving as reservists, they easily became highly sensitive to psychological pressures resulting from a permanent military occupation of a densely populated territory. More and more Israelis expressed a reluctance to function as an occupation army charged with containing a civilian population. The reputation of the military institution was tarnished as a result of its failure to deliver a decisive blow to Hezbollah’s forces in southern Lebanon. Israel’s previous vocalization of potentially targeting the Jordanian territory in case of an imminent attack from the east was relinquished after the signing of the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement in 1994. The same strategic shift occurred as a result of relinquishing control over Sinai in the Camp David Accords (1978). In the 2010s and 2020s, Israel has found itself on the horns of a dilemma, being forced to develop a new strategic doctrine while a solution for the Palestinian issue remained as elusive as ever.

A new challenge to Israel’s nuclear hegemony in the Middle East materialized when Iran began developing its own nuclear capability. When Egypt and the United States attempted to persuade Israel to give up its nuclear weapons as an attempt to solidify the Camp David peace treaty, Israel refused to do so until every Arab state in the area signed a similar treaty with Israel. By the late 1970s, Israel had finalized the so-called Begin Doctrine, which reflected the views of Prime Minister Begin and his stance during these negotiations. It was there that he announced Israel’s determination to resist any effort to develop a rival nuclear power in the region. Any such nuclear state would be considered a threat to Israel’s security and must be forced to dismantle such weapons. Israel’s 1981 attack on the Osirak reactor in Iraq was the first response to such a threat, an attack that was severely criticized by the UN Security Council. How far Israel would go in order to replicate its attack on the Iraqi reactor vis-à-vis Iran remained unclear, but it was clear that Israel had decided to enforce a wide territorial doctrine when it came to this type of weapon. Such a situation was averted during Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s years in office (1955–63), when he sought to cultivate close relationships with countries, such as Turkey and Iran, lying within Israel’s outer rim.

The removal of the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, from office in 1979 and his replacement with a radical Islamic regime at odds with Israel’s claims of nuclear monopoly in the Middle East posed new threats to the entire region. The danger of instigating a nuclear duel between Israel and its challengers became real. In 2008, it was revealed that Israel’s air force had been practicing to mount a strike on the Iranian reactor and Iran had test-fired a new missile capable of reaching Israel. These Israeli maneuvers were reminiscent of the building of a model of the Osirak reactor in Israel in order to practice mounting a strike against it. Any such attack on Iran’s nuclear reactor was expected to come in the form of serial bombings, which would provide ample opportunity for Iranian retaliation.

Even though a nuclear attack against Egypt’s most vulnerable strategic asset, the Aswan Dam, was averted by the signing of the Camp David agreement and these two countries’ adherence to their international obligations, by 2010 it seemed that Israel had used uranium-based weapons in some of its recent wars. It is known that Israel has used weapons (such as American “buster bombs,” which were dropped on Hezbollah’s offices in Beirut in the 2006 campaign) proscribed by the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions. Both the United States and Israel have declined to sign these conventions. Cluster bombs and phosphorus bombs were used in the 2008 attack on Gaza. The British scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, Christopher Busby, concluded upon testing soil samples that Israel during the 2006 Lebanese campaign must have used a new weapon with a nuclear fission device or a bunker-busting uranium penetrator weapon. The latter may have used enriched uranium, rather than depleted uranium. The Israelis continued to argue, however, that the Geneva Conventions did not cover many of these nuclear waste weapons.

Israel isolated the Gaza Strip in 2007, strictly controlling all entry points and airspace over Gaza, while Gazans were ostensibly governed by the political arm of Hamas. It conducted limited ground operations against Hamas militants in 2008–9 and 2014 as well as limited airstrikes in 2012 and 2021. Analysts termed those limited IDF campaigns a "mowing the grass" strategy that sought to deter attacks on Israel but essentially maintain the political status quo. Then, on October 7, 2023, thousands of Hamas militants attacked the main body of Israel, both on the ground within its borders and with airstrikes reaching as far north as Tel Aviv. Hamas killed as many as 1,400 Israelis, took up to 150 hostages, and transported the hostages to places unknown. Israel responded with a major ground offensive in Gaza intended to recover hostages, punish those responsible, and eliminate Hamas' ability to conduct future attacks by, for example, destroying its extensive tunnel network. Within six weeks, more than 11,000 Palestinians were dead. Critics considered such IDF actions as launching airstrikes in heavily populated civilian areas and evacuating hospitals disproportionate, deemed the situation a humanitarian crisis, and claimed Israel was retaliating with no clear, overarching military or governing strategy for the occupied territory. Analysts noted that Israel's approach was defined by the embeddedness of Hamas within the civilian population.

Contemporary Sources

There is much in the way of archival, firsthand material on the history of the Israeli military. Much information on the early wars surrounding the founding of the state of Israel is available in the David Ben-Gurion Archive, held at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Sede Boker campus. The archive contains not only Ben-Gurion’s personal papers and speeches, but also the minutes of meetings and other documents produced by Israel’s first prime minister. In addition, the Israel State Archives in Jerusalem holds its record groups 72 and 153, which contain the private papers of many prominent Israeli politicians and government officials.

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