In 2019, Ofer Shelah, then-head of the Knesset’s subcommittee on defense doctrine and military buildup, coauthored a classified report on the state of the IDF’s ground forces, and how resources ought to be distributed in the coming years. Due to political deadlock, many of the key questions of budgeting and allocation of resources—not to mention the strategic questions on which they rest—remain unresolved. Shelah, who no longer holds office, presents here an unclassified version of the report. At issue is the key problem of whether Israel should focus finite resources on the “stand-off” capabilities of air power, missiles, and rockets or instead on tanks, infantry, and other ground forces:
The achievement required in any campaign is a situation in which the answer to “who won?” is not in doubt. Even if the enemy does not have a clear point of defeat, and even if the campaign does not end with its waving a white flag, the gap between the physical, political, and cognitive damage that it suffered and what was suffered by Israel must be unequivocal. In the last few campaigns, the security establishment has taken pride in the fact that most of Hamas’s offensive intentions were thwarted. But this is insufficient.
In any campaign, the necessary defensive achievement alone is not enough. Operation Guardian of the Walls, [i.e., the May 2021 Gaza war], evolved into an extreme and bizarre situation: Israel waged a campaign in the physical realm, and struck Hamas’s military capabilities and damaged its assets; while Hamas’s campaign was waged almost entirely in the political-cognitive realm, where it reached unprecedented achievements—it positioned itself as the defender of Jerusalem, and for the first time succeeded in igniting the street and garnering identification with its cause both in the West Bank and, especially, within Israel. The IDF’s use of firepower did not detract from Hamas’s strategic achievements at all, and even amplified them.
At its best, the IDF is a surprising, cunning, and proactive army. The aversion to maneuver warfare [involving ground forces] has created a situation in which the enemy knows well what we intend or do not intend to do. . . .
By its nature, the IDF is an army that aspires to offense . . . and undisputed victory. This [fact] stems both from its history and from its character as a people’s army that wages campaigns on Israel’s borders and doesn’t operate as a professional expeditionary force overseas. Values such as assault, the [goal of] decisive victory, commanders leading from the front, and other cornerstones of the IDF’s basic culture fit the type of fighting that is suitable for it—fast, powerful action that leads to a clear, unequivocal achievement.
Read more on Institute for National Security Studies: https://www.inss.org.il/publication/idf-maneuver/