The conditions that led to the establishment of Iran’s “Ring of Fire” around Israel and to the Hamas attack were not the result of a single point of failure, but rather stemmed from a shift away from the fundamental principles of Israel’s security doctrine. The security doctrine formulated by Ben-Gurion, inspired by Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” idea, functioned successfully until the 1990s. This doctrine emphasized several core principles: decisive victory—meaning that in every encounter with an enemy, Israel must strive for a clear and unequivocal outcome in its favor; deterrence, as an outcome of decisive victory. Willingness to launch preemptive strikes. Self-reliance, meaning that only IDF soldiers fight for Israel’s security and not foreign forces, alongside the development of a nuclear capability. Securing the support of a global power. Jewish settlement of the land as an essential security component of the State of Israel. Militarily, this doctrine emphasized the rapid transfer of the battle into enemy territory through overwhelming ground and air maneuver.

However, the signing of peace agreements with Egypt, the PLO, and Jordan, together with changes in the nature of Israel’s adversaries, opened the door to the adoption of new underlying assumptions, such as: the era of major wars has ended; conflicts would now be limited and against terror organizations rather than states; there is no longer a conventional military threat; cross-border terrorism can be contained; holding territory cannot be justified; and that “a political solution is preferable to a military one.” These changes reflected a value system that does not recognize the concept of an enemy, but rather only a rival, and a belief that any conflict can be resolved through negotiation and diplomacy.