Vision to Reality: The Reut Blog

In recent months, starting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s categorization of Israel’s delegitimization as one of three key challenges facing the country, political and diplomatic arenas seem to be increasingly emerging as a national security focus among Israeli decision makers. The growing prominence of these arenas is further reflected in media commentary, exemplified by two recent pieces appearing in Haaretz.

Hanan Shai highlights Israel’s need to expand its national security concept beyond the current focus on physical defense, drawing upon that May 31 Gaza Flotilla Affair as evidence of the strategic damage caused by a failure to encompass Israel’s diplomatic interests as a core national security concern.

Shai provides an overview of the historical evolution of Israel’s national security apparatus, highlighting the preeminence of military prowess as the primary guarantor of security in the 20^th century. He focuses criticism on the failure of Israel’s National Security Council to integrate a range of government ministries, including the foreign affairs components. According to Shai, a National Security Council representing this range may have appropriately characterized the Gaza Flotilla as an existential threat to Israel’s legitimacy, and focused activities on designing preventative diplomatic measures and and tapping various government bodies to implement them.

Also in Haaretz, Shlomo Brom makes the point that the complex security threats Israel faces necessitates an IDF chief of staff who operates with an understanding of the broader diplomatic context. Brom uses the term ‘security environment’ to refer not only to the physical threats themselves, but also to the political-diplomatic context that can enable, or alternately constrain, Israel’s ability to implement its policies.

In our work on the challenge posed by Israel’s delegitimization, the Reut Institute highlights the fundamental gap between the Israeli establishment’s threat perception and the changing reality. Whereas, since the state’s founding, the primary focus has been on the physical threat, the changing reality increasingly evidences the inextricable links connecting military, political, and diplomatic arenas. The setbacks Israel has repeatedly suffered in recent years in all three arenas, in our view, stems from a failure to adopt a broad and systemic approach guiding decision-making and resource distribution relevant to the complexity of the evolving threat.