No Foreign Policy, No Security Doctrine

“Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic politics.” – Henry Kissinger, 1976

“It is both wrong and short-sighted to believe that we can better protect our national security interests by ignoring or sidelining human rights.” Todd Young, US Senator – Indiana

Foreign policy is a government’s strategy in dealing with other nations. A national security doctrine helps the statesmen identify and prioritize the country’s geopolitical interests. It encompasses the sum of a country’s military, diplomatic, economic, and social policies that will together protect and promote the country’s national security interests.

In the absence of an Israeli national security doctrine resulting from the lack of foreign policy and national objectives, many myths, beliefs, concepts, policies, and behaviors arose to fill the resulting vacuum. These, in no particular order, were:

1. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be unilaterally managed forever. There is no urgency and the solution or path to a solution can be indefinitely shelved.
2. There is a kinetic, military solution for every problem with the Palestinians. If force does not work then more force needs to be applied.
3. If the army, Shin Bet, and other security arms are not solving the problem, then Israel just needs to invest more money for them to find solutions.
4. Regular, periodic military operations against the enemy will serve as a deterrent.
5. Israeli intelligence gathering capabilities and operations will enable Israel to know everything that happens in Gaza by monitoring every conversation, filming every meeting, and collating all the intelligence, thereby enabling full control of the area.
6. The IDF is a strong, sophisticated, technologically superior force that can timeously respond to any threat in the region.
7. The Shin Bet is a strong, sophisticated organization that has deterrent capability due to its operational capability and intelligence-gathering sophistication.
8. The policy of divide and rule between the PA (PLO) and Hamas is effective. By strengthening Hamas the PA is weakened and the Palestinians cannot act in concert to create a Palestinian state. This makes the state of Israel safer.
9. Oslo failed, therefore Israel should not try to negotiate a political settlement again.
10. The startup nation, the state of Israel is smarter, stronger, and more sophisticated than its enemies, therefore both technologies and superior intelligence will protect the state and its citizens.
11. Hamas is neither an army nor is it an organized group capable of planning broad and extensive tactical and strategic operations.
12. Targeted assassinations to eliminate the heads and leaders of enemy organizations will deal a death blow to the organization rendering it ineffective and helpless. This concept has proven time and time again to be a failure with new leadership arising to replace those killed. Time and time again more extremist leadership has emerged to replace the dead. Despite the obvious failure of the policy of targeted assassinations, Israel continues to target and kill enemy leaders and others in ongoing operations.
13. It’s possible to separate the Palestinians of the West Bank from their counterparts in Gaza and manage the two areas successfully through a policy of divide and rule.
14. Terror and violent resistance can be managed and defeated by the use of force.
15. There is no occupation.

All of these concepts were revealed to be lethally false on October 7. While there have been some attempts at analysis of the failures of October 7, these have been mainly aimed at military and intelligence tactical and procedural failure rather than strategic and political decision-making failures. To date, Netanyahu, and the ruling coalition, have strongly resisted the creation of an independent commission of inquiry that would examine the strategic and tactical policies that led to October 7 at both the political and military levels. The reasons for resting the creation of a commission of inquiry are obvious as the blame for October 7, at the political level, will obviously point to the failures of Netanyahu’s leadership over the last twenty years. Furthermore, it will, yet again, highlight the fact that the Palestinian conflict cannot be solved through force of arms.

Until there is a commission of inquiry, until there is broad recognition and acceptance from Israeli society of the above failures, until there are commonly accepted ideas of what kind of society Israelis desire, until there are fixed, recognized borders, until there is a national security doctrine driven by foreign policy, until there is progress towards a political solution, Israelis and Palestinians will continue to die in an unending cycle of violence with the potential for extreme events like October 7.

With thanks to Anat Saragusti for the list and inspiration.