Over the past three decades, the foundational assumptions of Israel’s security doctrine have shifted. A weakening of the idea of decisive victory through military action in favor of defensive actions; increased investment in stand-off fire capabilities, precision weaponry, and intelligence—all while reducing the ground forces and weakening maneuver capability and reserve readiness; a significant expansion of active defense systems (such as Iron Dome) and technological barriers along the borders; three withdrawals—from Lebanon, Gaza, and Judea and Samaria—on the one hand, and, on the other, a long-term avoidance of establishing security-oriented settlements in the periphery. This shift also entailed a focus on the “campaign between wars,” conducted below the threshold of full-scale war, and a prolonged avoidance of implementing the Begin Doctrine with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, until the execution of Operation Rising Lion in June 2025.
The ultimate result of this shift in doctrine was, among other things, the development of Iran’s “ring of fire” threat surrounding Israel, as manifested in the Iron Swords War. This war must serve as a new turning point for Israel’s security doctrine. To this end, Israel must adopt alternative strategic principles that will enable it to defeat its enemies and shape the strategic environment in which it operates, shifting toward an offensive and initiative-driven approach, rather than a reactive one.
Adopting such an alternative requires a return to the core principles embedded in the Iron Wall of the Zionist enterprise: viewing the struggle against the State of Israel as an ongoing conflict of varying intensity; understanding the ideological roots of the enemies’ aspiration to destroy the State of Israel; placing initiative and decisive victory as top priorities; striving for security independence and self-reliance in the use of force; recognizing the military and psychological significance of territorial control and the creation of defensible borders; avoiding territorial concessions; preventing the emergence of threats at their earliest stages; and building force capabilities capable of winning a multi-front war through the execution of ground maneuver at long distances.
