Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Rodman, David

Titel

Territory and Israeli national security: Defensible borders, strategic depth, and war-fighting paradigms

Ist Teil von

• Israel's National Security Predicament, 2024, p.47-57

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

United Kingdom: Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This chapter examines how Israel's national security establishment has incorporated the components of strategic depth and defensible borders into the country's national security doctrine over time. The chapter highlights the national security establishment's increasingly ambivalent attitude with respect to the retention of territories inhabited by hostile populations as a consequence of a series of low-intensity conflicts in which Israel has been involved since the 1982 Lebanon War. This chapter examines how Israel's national security establishment has incorporated the components of strategic depth and defensible borders into the country's national security doctrine over time. It highlights the national security establishment's increasingly ambivalent attitude with respect to the retention of territories inhabited by hostile populations as a consequence of a series of low-intensity conflicts in which Israel has been involved since the 1982 Lebanon War. Offense and defense are rather easily grasped concepts. When country A's army takes the initiative against country B's army, then country A's army is said to be engaged in offensive warfare. The permeability of Israel's borders, coupled with the country's lack of strategic depth, led the Israeli national security establishment to conclude early on that any future hostilities with Arab adversaries, particularly in the form of interstate warfare, must take place on Arab, not Israeli, soil. The acquisition of territory as a consequence of hostilities has been a double-edged sword for Israel.