Israel must choose a responsible, farsighted leadership to steer it through stormy seas - opinion

To ensure its status as a secure, Jewish and democratic state with regional and global legitimacy, Israel must build up national resilience and reaffirm the partnerships and alliances that underpin its strength.

October 7, and the difficult months since, have exposed the long-term shifts in Israel’s strategic and operational environment. These changes require fundamental revisions to Israel’s concepts of security and leadership, and to its national priorities.

Threats are on a dangerous upward trend, while Israel’s qualitative military superiority and other traditional assets are being eroded. This endangers Israel’s resilience, its regional and global standing, and its deterrence capability.

Growing challenges and threats

On the strategic level, Iran is growing stronger militarily and politically, and projecting ever more power across the region. With Israel mired in the war in Gaza, and the US focused on competition with China and with Russia’s war in Ukraine, Tehran may see a historic opportunity for nuclear weapons breakout.

Already, under the umbrella of its advanced nuclear program and its expanding missile and drone arsenal, Iran is directing a network of militias and proxies operating with increasing coordination against Israel, while also engaging for the first time directly in the conflict. Tehran’s relations with Moscow and Beijing are deepening, providing the Islamic Republic with superpower backing in political, military, and technological fields.

Meanwhile, American deterrence against Iran is eroding. With the US embroiled in the great power competition and beset with domestic political polarization, Washington wants to avoid Middle Eastern wars and to focus on China and East Asia.

In the region, Israel is surrounded by hostile states. As these states’ internal economic, political and security situations are worsening, their hostility towards Israel is growing. These trends – likely to be exacerbated by the climate crisis – are emerging in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and to some extent also in Jordan and Egypt. The Gulf states are favorable exceptions, and therefore represent significant opportunities.

AS THE Israeli-Palestinian conflict is escalating, Israel swings between two paradigms. The annexation approach emphasizes permanent Israeli territorial control between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, while the security and civil separation approach prioritizes Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state.

The escalation of the Palestinian conflict erodes Israel’s security on all other fronts, and makes it difficult to create strategic depth in the Middle East and globally. It harms Israel’s international standing with negative implications for its economy, its scientific capability, its ability to equip itself, and the IDF’s freedom of action.

Israel is tumbling into increasing international and regional isolation with growing risks of sanctions and boycotts, a potential arms embargo, and escalating legal threats. These trends are already reflected in the downgrading of Israel’s credit rating, the harm to trade, declining investments, and the cessation of flights. The erosion of Israel’s image and soft power make it difficult to promote integration at the regional level and advance cooperation at the global level.

In operational terms, the war in Gaza is a wake-up call regarding the challenges of multi-front war, including simultaneous attacks on several fronts, disrupting trade and supply routes.

With Iran’s help, Israel’s enemies are increasing their ability to wage long wars of attrition. In the shadow of the war in Gaza, there has also been a normalization of firing missiles and drones into Israeli territory by Iran directly and by its various proxies across the region.

The proliferation of aerial threats, and the heightened ground threats on the borders, offset Israel’s qualitative and quantitative advantages. It is difficult for Israel to use crushing force to secure quick and decisive victory, highlighting gaps in its military structure and weaponry.

Erosion of resilience

While the challenges Israel faces are intensifying, its ability to cope is eroding. In the shadow of escalating great power competition, Israel has no alternative but to align with the US-led Western camp to protect its political, economic, and security interests, and to maintain its status as a technological innovator.

Yet Washington’s strength is being sapped by multiple arenas of global struggle and growing internal division. And there are growing voices in the US that see Israel as a strategic burden rather than an asset. The values basis of US-Israel ties, which is critical to their special relationship, is being undermined by internal changes in both countries. The alienation from Israel among young Americans, including Jews, along with a sharp rise in antisemitism is a long-term strategic problem, illustrated by recent campus protests.

Israel has opportunities to create strategic depth and integration with Europe and the Arab region. But their realization depends mainly on advancing arrangements in the Palestinian arena, and Washington’s willingness to continue providing benefits to Arab countries, while overcoming its domestic political challenges.

These external challenges for Israel are exacerbated by its internal divisions. The state faces an ongoing political crisis, paralysis of governance, and the weakening of the state with respect to legislation, policy planning and implementation, and law. These trends project weakness and undermine deterrence to our enemies. The damage to Israeli democracy also harms relations with Western allies. Above all, infighting undermines national resilience.

Israel faces an unequal sharing of the national burden, socioeconomic gaps, the deterioration of education in science and innovation, and the lack of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) integration into the labor market. These threaten to collapse Israel’s economy in the coming decades and to severely damage the remnants of the “people’s army”, welfare policy, and governance. Economic decline means less resources for defense and reduced soft power and international status.

Different leadership and multidimensional response

Coping with this new and complex reality will require a multidimensional Israeli response. A responsible Israeli government must heal the social rifts, rehabilitate the economy and public sector, and consolidate democracy, rule of law, and judicial independence.

First, the leadership should end the political crisis, restore the people’s mandate through elections, renew functioning government and state apparatuses, and return to the supremacy of the rule of law.

It must then refocus the state’s budget on defense. This includes improved protection of the civilian and military home front and critical infrastructure; rehabilitation and reconstruction of intelligence services; and strengthening the air force and ground systems to enable decisive action on several fronts.

Israel must increase self-reliance and diversification of supplies for its industrial-military base and ensure greater resilience for prolonged, region-wide conflicts. It must be more autonomous in manufacturing infrastructure and R&D, as well as sea and land supply chains.

The IDF should expand recruitment quotas to reflect the increased demands on the military under these new regional conditions and reduce gaps in the sharing of the burden. Education in technology and science must also be expanded to grow the workforce and the state’s economic capacity.

HOWEVER, improving self-reliance will not be enough. Israel will have to build on partnerships and alliances, like all countries including superpowers such as the US, in the current era of deglobalization and supply chain security. This means adding a political pillar to the security strategy. Diplomatic initiatives and political arrangements in the Israeli-Palestinian arena will enable Israel to promote strategic depth and a regional and international campaign to halt Iran’s nuclearization. They will also stabilize Israel’s standing in the world and prevent isolation and sanctions.

At the same time, Israel must preserve at all costs the special relationship with the US, and even consider a more binding security and technological partnership. Given the stabilization of Russian and Chinese support for Iran, Hamas, and the radical axis, it is also time to adjust policy towards these great powers and associated issues such as Ukraine and Taiwan.

Israel should leverage its technological assets in the fields of security, energy, and climate to fortify its strategic posture and regional integration, and maintain its qualitative advantage.

Finally, Israel should consolidate strategic depth by deepening cooperation with other democracies beyond the US. This means Europe but also democracies in Asia, including India, Japan and South Korea.

In sum, Israel must choose a responsible and farsighted leadership to steer it safely through these stormy seas. That leadership must grasp the breadth of the picture and the significance of the hour and put the national interest first. This is a necessary condition – of course not sufficient – to ensure Israel remains secure, Jewish and democratic; a just regional power and technological and economic leader; and a state with regional and global legitimacy and soft-power.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin is a former IDF head of Military Intelligence, current chair of the European Leadership Network’s (ELNET) Forum of Strategic Dialogue and president of MIND Israel. Col. (res.) Udi Evental is an expert in strategy and policy planning at MIND Israel.