Has Israel’s Security Model Become Its Weakness?

Israel in 2026 is grappling with land disputes, ongoing security threats and painful failures, food-security vulnerabilities and dependence on foreign labor as exposed in October 2023, and escalating violence between settlers and Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. At the same time, there are mounting demands for housing and education budgets, urgent calls to end violence in Arab society, and an unresolved debate over whether Israel needs a “smart” army or mass troop deployment — a debate that continues to fuel resentment toward the Haredi population.

The noise surrounding these dilemmas obscures a deeper question: whether certain founding assumptions — once necessary — now threaten Israel’s resilience.

1. Why is national civic service (sherut leumi) significantly shorter than military service, despite its critical contribution to society?
2. Why is there no reserve-duty framework for those who serve in sherut leumi, even though many of these roles are essential during peacetime, emergencies and wartime?
3. What are the long-term consequences for wages and labor standards in healthcare, education, agriculture, and welfare sectors that rely heavily on a bounty of eighteen-year-olds working below minimum wage?
4. What is the cost to the public and service standards of placing unqualified teenagers in positions that require professional judgment?
5. What are the consequences of sending teenagers—many with no workplace experience, no exposure to mixed-age environments, an undeveloped understanding that their instincts exist to protect them, and little ability to challenge authority—into military service?

(This question is especially relevant in light of the fatal failures involving the female surveillance soldiers on the Gaza border.)

6. What would happen if sherut leumi were equal in length to military service, included a reserve component, and if both military and civil service could be deferred—a policy introduced gradually and under regulation—until the age of 26, with mandatory service ending no later than 29?
7. What if young adults used this regulated deferral period to study in yeshiva or seminary, pursue higher education, work, travel, or gain real-life experience before choosing their form of service?
8. What if political and military leaders seriously engaged with international research showing that older recruits provide better service, demonstrate higher motivation, greater reliability, and lower dropout rates?
9. What if every citizen—civil or military—who begins service (up to age 26) received government-supported housing for themselves (and their families), with combat soldiers permitted to defer this benefit until after completing their service?
10. What if this housing benefit were part of a broader effort to rehabilitate the country after war—strengthening the periphery while easing pressure on the overheated housing market in the center and implementing land reform?
11. What if a nursing school and a kindergarten-teacher training college were opened in the North to serve those choosing the sherut leumi track—addressing severe labor shortages—and what if a long-promised new hospital in the North were finally built and fully staffed?
12. What if the IDF acknowledged that the cumulative costs of the teenage recruit dropout rate owing to physical and psychological injury, reserve-force burnout, ongoing conflict with the Haredi population, and long-term welfare payments for the wounded and for soldiers with PTSD exceed the political cost of confronting outdated assumptions?
13. What if sherut leumi were renamed “Citizens’ Service,” removed from the control of the Prime Minister’s Office and the Defense Ministry, and transferred to civilian ministries—Health, Education, Welfare, Agriculture—allowing anyone, including those with a combat profile, to choose either civil or military service? And what if citizens who refuse to choose either track by age 26 lost access to state social-security benefits?
14. What would happen to education levels, employment prospects, and rates of violence in Arab society if Arab citizens provided (at least) Citizens’ Service, paired with the housing benefit in protected and supported communities?
15. What if treating Arab citizens with dignity provided the key Israel needs to making peace with our neighbors?

Theodore Herzl did not commission “feasibility studies”; he believed in a dream and worked to make it real. It is time to slaughter a few sacred cows and imagine the next vision.

This vision is beneficial to Hareidim, Jewish non-Hareidim, Israeli Arabs, and the military, because it legitimizes older recruits, places civilian service on equal footing with military service without being pacifist or naïve in the face of security threats, and strengthens civil society rather than weakening it. It also nurtures a new generation of Arabic speaking Israelis, whose civil participation and civil partnership hold the key to peace with our neighbors.

Those who profit politically or economically from perpetual conflict fear strong civil societies. Endless war strengthens extremists, while prolonged militarization corrodes democracy. A gradual demilitarization of Israeli society — alongside a more professional and civilian-minded IDF — would strengthen both security and democracy.

Older recruits with life experience are not a threat to national security. They are its strongest foundations.

16. What if we had leaders with vision?