יום חמישי, י״ז תמוז תשפ״וThursday, July 2, 2026
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Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen is a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He served in the IDF for forty-two years and was a corps commander and commander of the IDF Military Colleges.
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For Israel to achieve victory in the war with Hamas, it will have to adapt its security concept to reflect a new and deeper understanding of the enemy’s perception of the nature of its struggle with Israel.
Recent events, including the escape of six terrorists from Gilboa Prison and the death of Sgt. Barel Hadaria Shmueli, who was shot point blank by a Palestinian terrorist, represent a wake-up call for Israelis who have grown too accustomed to the pursuit of day-to-day quiet as a strategic choice. Whether Israelis recognize it or not, they are in a state of war with their enemies.
Diaspora Minister Nachman Shai’s claim that it is not his job to encourage aliya to Israel negates the very purpose of Zionism, as understood and emphasized by the leaders of the founding generation. First and foremost among those leaders was David Ben-Gurion, who saw the ingathering of the exiles as “the yearning, destiny, and mission of the State of Israel.”
Israel needs to formulate a new Jewish-Israeli story that is attuned to the challenges of the future. This requires a political leadership with a lofty spiritual stature.
The demands issued by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas show a clear intention to turn the clock back. Israel cannot accept these dictates, which would have been rejected out of hand by Yitzhak Rabin.
Israeli society must recognize the intensity of the new threats that surround it and critically assess the conventional wisdom that the era of big threats has passed and Israel need no longer be a “mobilized nation.”
The establishment of the Evyatar outpost is a direct continuation of the activist pioneering ethos that the Yishuv leadership developed during the Arab riots of 1936-39, and that has long been lost to considerable parts of the Israeli political establishment.
Surrendering to Hamas threats and canceling the flag parade in Jerusalem constitutes a grave violation of Israeli sovereignty that will lead to no less serious acts of extortion on the political and security levels.
Amid Israel’s profound crisis over the past year, which has entailed a morass of security, social, economic, and ethical problems rooted in a fundamental and unresolvable set of tensions, what is once again needed is a national leadership with a special capacity for synchronized navigation in the Mapai mode of seeking compromise.
The decision by the new chairman of the Jewish National Fund to continue the Fund’s mission to purchase land throughout the Land of Israel is worthy of praise. There is nothing new in its purchase of land in the West Bank as well, an endeavor that has gone on for more than a century.
IDF Chief of General Staff Aviv Kochavi’s January 26 speech conveyed important messages to multiple audiences. The most notable was that the IDF is preparing for action against Iran’s nuclear program even if it has to do it on its own.
Having embraced a market-economy approach, the Israel Land Authority is blocking the growth of Jewish residence in, and control of, most parts of the country that are beyond the densely populated cities of the coastal plain.
The Israeli government is living in denial about the growing violent anarchy in the Negev, the Galilee, and in certain cities. Putting a stop to this phenomenon, which is developing into an existential threat, requires an all-out effort to enhance the power of the military and the police alongside appropriate preparations by the State Attorney’s Office and the legal system to restore sovereignty and governance.
Neither the man nor his kippah are the basis for the opposition to the appointment of Brig. Gen. (res.) and former minister Effi Eitam as chairman of Yad Vashem. At issue is the place of the Holocaust in both contemporary Jewish identity and Israel’s historical narrative.
If the IDF continues to operate according to its old conventions while Hezbollah continues to adapt itself to new realities, it could find itself defeated. IDF commanders need new capabilities to safeguard and support the forces on the ground.
The claim that management of the COVID-19 crisis by the IDF’s Home Front Command would have resulted in a far better outcome is based on the illusion that all emergencies have a common denominator that enables organizations to prepare for and deal with them effectively. But this is a false assumption.
Two messages continue to ring out on the eve of the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. One concerns the severity of the intelligence failure at the time, and the other promises that the right lessons have been learned and the IDF is now prepared for any scenario. When the failure is portrayed as essentially the lack of an intelligence warning, it is easy to promise that it has been diagnosed and remedied in a way that prevent its future recurrence. But an in-depth look at the war shows that the reasons for the fiasco went far beyond the intelligence failure.
With the door (temporarily?) closed on extending sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, the time has come to return to the logic of what used to be known as “practical Zionism.” Though the modern state of Israel was established as far back as 1948, the controversy between “political” and “practical” Zionism remains as current as it was in the 1930s.
At critical junctures a national leadership should be expected to uphold its country’s sovereign right to pursue its own vital interests, even in the face of heavy international pressure.
Israel’s National Outline Plan (NOP 35) has effectively frozen Jewish settlement in the Galilee and the Negev and spurred massive illegal building and land occupancy by the Negev’s Bedouin community. Without renewed Jewish settlement momentum in the land that is still available, the police and law enforcement agencies will be unable to alter this unlawful reality.
Contrary to the alarming charge that the application of sovereignty over parts of the West Bank would transform Israel into a binational state, doing so would not affect 95% of the West Bankers who have been living under the rule of the Palestinian Authority since January 1996. They will continue to do so. The move does entail political risks, but they are smaller than the security hazards that would accompany Israel’s inability to maintain a permanent security presence in the Jordan Valley.
The issue of applying sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and the West Bank’s Israeli communities puts PM Benjamin Netanyahu on the horns of a difficult strategic dilemma, one of the most important in Israel’s history. At critical strategic junctures, decisions are always complex, and Netanyahu’s is complex many times over. But full Israeli control over the West Bank’s main traffic arteries is absolutely essential.
For years, Egypt and Jordan have exploited their peace treaties with Israel as a tool of extortion to prevent Israel from pursuing its security and political interests.
Twenty years after Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon, it is worth considering basic questions about its experience over years of warfare in a campaign that did not aim for victory. Those questions include what was going on, what Israel was fighting for, and what ultimately impelled it to withdraw. Such considerations have immediate significance in terms of clarifying the tenets of Israel’s security concept.
With the May 2000 abandonment of the South Lebanon Army, Israel signaled to its regional allies that it is not a reliable mainstay.
A comprehensive planning blueprint is needed for the western Land of Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It should set out the required spatial balance among the infrastructures for transportation, water, electricity, housing, sewage removal, and green-space preservation. Concomitantly, the application of sovereignty calls for the strategic governmental formulation of a new national master plan for the development of Israel’s eastern rampart.
Criticism of the Israeli government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has focused on its “on the move” decision-making and lack of an “exit strategy.” But a consideration of David Ben-Gurion’s leadership during the War of Independence reveals personal perspective to be an essential element in decision-making and shows the necessity of learning in the midst of change.
The coronavirus crisis underscores agriculture’s importance as a vital national asset. Public health depends not only on the quality of medical services but also on the availability and quality of food, which makes it vital for the state to maintain the highest possible level of agricultural self-sufficiency.
When PM Benjamin Netanyahu said, in a March 21 TV interview, that “with God’s help we’ll get through” the coronavirus crisis, the interviewer interrupted him with these words: “With the help of the Weizmann Institute…The modern Temple of Zionism is at the Weizmann Institute.” This exchange reveals the gap between the modern state’s promise of efficient management even in the face of great adversity and the elements of randomness and surprise that can render the most powerful and advanced states helpless.
At the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Tel Hai (which occurred on March 1, 1920), it is instructive to recall the heated debate that preceded it among the Yishuv leadership concerning the question of abandoning the site. This debate sheds light on the decline of the Zionist left in general and the results of the latest Israeli elections in particular.
President Trump’s peace plan must be understood as a systemic impetus toward a new breakthrough rather than as a practical blueprint for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Most of the talk about the ravages of last month’s floods in Israel’s coastal cities concerns the responsibility of state authorities that failed to invest sufficiently in infrastructure development. But that is only part of the story. The main problem, which is repressed to the point of denial, stems from a planning failure at the macro level. This is not just a matter of flawed local planning for local drainage systems. This is a greater conceptual failure that results from ignoring the basic geographic conditions of the Land of Israel.
Regardless of the ambiguities and open questions attending President Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” Israel clearly stands at a historic juncture and must decide what to make of this one-time opportunity. About such moments it is said: “There are those who gain the world in a single moment and there are those who lose the world in a single moment.”
The Jordan Valley, in its full scope and broadest definition, is essential to Israel’s national security. Its retention by Israel requires not only military deployment but a comprehensive development plan—i.e., the construction of housing, roads, and infrastructure—that will establish this territory as Israel’s eastern wing.
The diplomatic campaign Mahmoud Abbas has been waging for a decade and a half is no less dangerous to Israel than the “armed struggle” led by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. With the growing influence of Iran and the advent of a new array of threats on Israel’s borders to the north and south, renewing negotiations with Abbas on the basis of the Barak-Olmert framework would entail an existential threat to Israel.
The phenomenon of a growing reluctance to go to war and commit ground troops to combat can be seen around the world, not only in Israel. Citizens are increasingly demanding clarity on the purpose of the wars their armies are expected to fight.
In a recent press conference, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett presented a goal for IDF activity in Syria: “To cause Iran to give up its attempt to entrench itself in Syria.” Unlike the common tendency toward ambiguity in defining strategic objectives, Bennett dared pronounce a clear and measurable goal. But is the goal he presented achievable? And is it right to declare a strategic goal in that way?
The unprecedented convergence of strategic threats now taking shape under Iran’s inspiration and guidance requires the IDF to adopt a new operational approach without delay (including a reorganization and a suitable buildup) and the Israeli public to prepare for the emergency situations attending these new emergent threats.
The latest flare-up in Gaza – a direct corollary of the Oslo Accords and the 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the Strip – is a sad testament to the limits of Israeli power and a forewarning against repeating the same mistakes in the West Bank.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Beyond its unquestionable vitality for Israel’s security, the Jordan Valley in its full geographical scope can accommodate millions of Israelis and national infrastructure that cannot be compressed into the coastal plain. If PM Netanyahu’s declaration of sovereignty is not immediately borne out by a surge of building and focused governmental support, it will sputter and die.
The creation of an Iranian military/terrorist axis along Israel’s northern and southern borders, comprising Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, lays the groundwork for the long-term multi-frontal attrition of the Jewish state.
It’s a simple matter: Jews and Arabs aren’t only fighting over freedom of movement in the country’s open spaces, but over who controls them. This struggle assumes many different forms, spanning all corners of the land, from the Galilee to the Negev.
The rejection by Israeli intellectuals of Jewish spiritual and political activism, as exemplified in the preaching and actions of Rabbi Akiva, who was executed by the Romans for his support of the Bar-Kochba revolt (132-35 CE), runs counter to the thinking of David Ben-Gurion, who considered himself a disciple and successor of the eminent sage.
The Six-Day War was a decisive turning point in the Zionist enterprise. But the project of building Israeli communities on the West Bank and the messianic aspects of Zionism were not born in 1967. They are stages in processes that were initiated by the workers’ parties and the Herut movement.
For David Ben-Gurion, the concept of mamlachtiut captured the perennial tension between the establishment of the state of Israel as an orderly and delimited institutional project and the view of the state as a means in an exalted process of redemption. Hence, even after its establishment, Israel would continue – as an instrument through which to fulfill an infinite vision – to be “a state in the making.”
The former commanders who are demanding a referendum on the possible annexation of parts of the West Bank’s Area C misunderstand the threats confronting Israel. One need only consider the latest round of fighting in Gaza to understand what the threat to the cities of the coastal plain would look like if Israel were to give up control of the mountainous terrain dominating the country’s economic-social-industrial heartland.
We must not transform the Zionist dream into nothing more than a desire for a safe haven for persecuted Jews
Overthrowing Hamas and handing rule in Gaza to Mahmoud Abbas will not bring about a solution to the Gaza problem. It was, after all, Yasser Arafat, Abbas’s predecessor as PLO leader, who transformed Gaza into an ineradicable terrorist hotbed by flouting the Oslo Accords that he had signed. The solution to the Gaza problem does not lie in Ramallah but rather in the Strip’s historic hinterland – the Sinai Peninsula.
The State of Israel is at a fateful crossroads. The unending necessity to safeguard the state’s secure existence ensures that its leaders will face complex and painful decisions. But there are other, no less critical considerations that must be factored into the decision-making equation, notably powerful national, historical, cultural, and religious sentiments and aspirations.
At this strategic watershed moment, one can discern the logic of the policy that has guided the Netanyahu government’s approach to Gaza over the past decade – that it is in Israel’s interest for Hamas to remain in control until the group is rejected by its own people.
Last summer’s events in the Gaza Strip cast serious doubt on the feasibility of a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, as the proximity of that area to Israel’s main population centers and economic/strategic assets ensures its transformation into the main combat zone should it undergo a militarization process similar to that experienced by Gaza and Lebanon. The question is whether the IDF has an effective response to the advent of parallel major threats on several fronts.
The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), recently issued “A Political-Security Framework Strategic Action Plan for the Israeli-Palestinian Arena.” The gap between the INSS initiative and the basic principles expressed by PM Yitzhak Rabin is such that one might assume Rabin would have been fundamentally opposed to the initiative.
The recent round of fighting between Israel and Hamas was seemingly sparked by the exposure of an Israeli special forces team during a covert operation in Khan Yunis. The Hamas leadership, which apparently is not interested in war, nevertheless chose to respond by escalating to the very brink. Why has the Israeli government refrained (yet again) from instructing the IDF to settle conclusively the Hamas threat?
While there is little doubt that the Bedouin settlement of Khan Ahmar (on the Jerusalem-Dead Sea road) was illegally built, the decision to move its residents to an alternative site needs to be reassessed despite its approval by the Supreme Court. It involves much broader strategic questions than the necessity to enforce the rule of law in one particular case.
Mr. PM, there is a lingering concern about your demographic vision of the spatial arrangement of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Not least because your government’s long-term construction plans envisage the concentration of most of Israel’s population in the crowded coastal strip and the Dan metropolitan area
Extricating itself from President Clinton’s December 2000 “peace” parameters is a supreme Israeli interest. Ironically, this goal is being made feasible by the crystallizing deal with Hamas over the Gaza Strip.
As long as the historic debate about the two-state solution remains unresolved, the future of Gaza in general, and of Hamas’s continued rule of the Strip in particular, will remain open.
When it comes to defending the Gaza border against the physical threat, the responsibility of the Chief of Staff and the commander of Southern Command is clear-cut and well fulfilled. That, however, does not constitute a sufficient response to Hamas’s effort to turn the border fence events into a strategic achievement.
The proposed transfer of significant parts of Area C to the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) will be detrimental to Israel’s national interest, if only because these territories are almost completely devoid of any Palestinian population. As such, they afford not only a strong security grip but the possibility of extensive Jewish settlement without threatening Israel’s Jewish and democratic character.
June 26, 2026 
