Israel's Strategic Assessment and Its Points of Weakness

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Israel’s military strategic assessment was recently released, concerned primarily with the military challenges Israel now faces. It is noteworthy that the assessment focused on the strength of others — the strength of enemies — but did not highlight Israel’s own points of weakness, perhaps because this falls under the heading of internal military secrets. But it is scientifically well known that internal points of weakness matter far more than the enemy’s points of strength, because a weak household means the dominance of external others over it. Internal weakness is what opens social, moral, political, security, and military gaps through which the covetous slip in.

The strategic assessment noted that Israel faces serious challenges from three parties: Iran, Hezbollah, and the Hamas movement. The assessment says Iran’s missile strength has grown enormously, that it is effective and highly advanced technically, and can strike every point in Israel with precision. Should conflict break out, Iranian missiles would be devastating, causing a strategic disruption to Israeli military capabilities. Iran continues developing its missile arsenal, and conducting missile tests on various types. Beyond this, Iran’s nuclear program has not vanished — it exists and stands ready, and Iran will return to its nuclear activity once the effect of the Western nuclear agreement with Iran expires after some years. It considers that the Western states have only temporarily frozen Iran’s military nuclear program, and that Iran can return to its former state at any moment it wishes. Israel says this freeze comes hand in hand with the lifting of sanctions, which enables Iran to obtain sufficient funds to implement the economic, social, and scientific programs and policies that will make it more capable, in the future, of absorbing any external and military pressures against it.

Hezbollah comes as the second danger after Iran, because the Party possesses combat tools and capabilities that qualify it to be a deterrent force in confronting Israel. Israeli assessments say the Party possesses tens of thousands of missiles, perhaps hundreds of thousands, qualifying it to bombard Israel with a thousand missiles daily, striking Israeli targets with precision. The Israelis are convinced Hezbollah is capable of reaching every location in Israel, and it continues to obtain weapons that breach the military balance in the region — that is, weapons that end Israeli military dominance. Israel is aware of Hezbollah’s ability to paralyze the effect of its air force, as happened in 2006, and to destroy columns of tanks that might cross the makeshift border between Lebanon and Palestine. Most importantly, Israel has come to acknowledge the Party’s ability to breach the border and take control of settlements in northern Palestine.

Israel also fears the strength of Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip, particularly Hamas’s strength. It sees that Hamas now has something resembling an army, whose military capabilities are growing, its number of missiles increasing, undergoing development in terms of payload and precision. Hamas has a complex network of tunnels beneath Palestinian cities, extending across the ceasefire lines and possibly reaching some Israeli settlements in southern Palestine. It does not currently see Hamas as constituting a deterrent force against Israel, but it can occupy broad sectors of the Israeli army should war break out, and can also significantly affect the movement of people in southern Palestine, creating a genuine crisis in securing Israeli residents fleeing the northern and central regions. Hamas’s missiles are no longer primitive, and can reach various parts of the Zionist entity, though not in great abundance.

There are points of weakness within the Zionist entity that were not focused on in the strategic assessment, namely:

1. The area of the Zionist entity is very small, about 21,000 square kilometers, and it is easy to cover the entire area with explosive missiles, and easy to displace the entire population, cramming them into a shrinking land. Israel adopted, from the outset, the principle of fighting battles on enemy territory, and now finds itself unable to fortify any patch of the land it stands on. Hezbollah is capable of threatening every point, and so is Iran, and soon Gaza’s resistance will be capable of this too.

2. The strategic assessment never asked how much war different peoples can endure, and their capacity to absorb its horrors. Are Israelis capable of enduring what Arabs endure? Are they capable of carrying on with life smoothly, without severe psychological burdens and without heavy preparations and costs? We Arabs have been tested in Lebanon and Palestine, and there have been tests with the Israelis in a number of wars. The Lebanese people was capable of bearing the sorrowful, painful consequences, but quickly recovered and carried on with life, and the same was true of the people of Gaza, despite all the destruction that occurred and the blood that was shed. Israelis are more prepared to avoid certain consequences of war, but are less capable of absorbing pain and grief, and less capable of holding firm. They rush away in fear and panic at the very first bullet fired at them, while Arabs run up to rooftops to witness the course of the battles. The losses inflicted on Arabs are usually far greater than the losses inflicted on Israelis — so how will Israelis behave if their own losses come to exceed Arab losses? In the coming war, Israeli losses will grow, reaching levels they have never witnessed before, and it is possible they will find no safe place except in Arab villages such as Sakhnin, Umm al-Fahm, and Kafr Qasim — that is, if Palestinians open their homes to them.

3. As for the other, greater point of weakness, it lies in the soldier. The Arab soldier today is different from what he was in the past, and so is the Israeli soldier. The Arab soldier today is disciplined and aware, knows his goal, and is well trained in the use of weapons. The Zionist soldier is trained and organized, but less disciplined than he once was, and less committed and dedicated. Israel’s soldier today is rather like a “Kit Kat,” while the Arab resistance’s soldier carries within him a creed of faith and a creed of combat that believes in victory or martyrdom. The Israeli soldier now flees from battles, while the Arab soldier takes the bullet in his own chest. Weapons matter, and Israel’s weapons are highly advanced, but the more important lesson lies in the hand gripping the trigger.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “التقدير الإستراتيجي الإسرائيلي وإسقاط نقاط الضعف” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.