Five Factors Making Israeli Military Weak

Rasa - The Israeli Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has recently published a report on the Israeli military status in which it talked about the army’s lack of readiness for the potential wars in the future.

News ID: 432705

Date: 26 September 2017 - 20:48

RNA - The report blamed the Tel Aviv leaders and criticized them for letting the military forces to downgrade to such a weakness.

The Israeli Walla news website, a much-visited news outlet in the Israeli regime, has only stopped short of publishing part of the parliamentary committee's report due to the sensitivity of the issue, though this is not the first time when a report emerges accentuating the weak points of the military. For example, in February a similar report came out taking about the weakness of the so-called Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as well as the security institutions in addressing the risks of Hamas network of tunnels in Gaza Strip. The report at the time likewise underscored the engagement faults of the IDF and blamed the inefficiency on the political leaders. The report pointed the finger at the intelligence and security and technological shortages as the key factors behind the weakness the Israeli military is suffering from.

What factors are pushing the supervising institutions of the Israeli regime to be worried to this degree about the declining capabilities of their military forces?

IDF’s quantitative power without quality

Quantitatively, the Israeli forces have advanced military equipment on the strength of generous Western technological supports, especially supports by the US. But even the cutting-edge military wares by themselves cannot guarantee success in the war. One reason for definite decline of the Israeli forces in the prospective wars is the extent of capabilities of the rivals.

General Amir Eshel of the Israeli Air Force in June 2017 addressed the speculations about the future war with Lebanon's Hezbollah, telling a security conference “we cannot defend our territorial depth against the Hezbollah rockets, and possibly we will not even manage to protect our citizens against the same rockets.”

This weakness can be blamed on the Israeli air defense systems that practically cannot simultaneously engage with a missile barrage that covers nearly all of the occupied territories. This is beside the Resistance forces' almost unassailable warfare methods that present a serious challenge to the Israeli forces. One example is the network of Hamas tunnels stretching out to the Israeli territories and shoring up the movement’s power of maneuvering against the Israeli army as it provides the Hamas fighters with ability to penetrate to the Israeli places from underground routes, carry out attacks, and return home.

Useless nuclear capabilities

The Israeli leaders are constantly boastful of their nuclear warheads as the key factor giving them military and strategic superiority over the rivals in the region. But the fact is that they cannot use their atomic bombs in the war with the resistant movements in Lebanon and Palestine as the combat occurs in form of guerrilla fighting. Analysts rule out use of the nuclear weapons in any war due to the grave consequences for Tel Aviv itself. The atomic weapons serve only as a deterrent and in case of any attack by the weapons of mass destruction the Israeli regime itself will also fall victim. It is because of this impracticality that many analysts argue that this weapon by itself cannot do much to help secure the territories occupied by Israelis in the predominantly small-sized wars with the resistant movements. There is a view that the nuclear facilities not only provide no strong points to Tel Aviv in the wars with the resistant groups but also they make the strikes of them even more destructive to the Israelis. Once a war breaks out with Tel Aviv, the Dimona nuclear facilities will be an easy target to the rockets of Hezbollah.

Inefficient mercenary army

According to the figures, many Israeli troops are migrants who travelled to the occupied territories from other countries seeking better living conditions. Their being foreign degrades their sense of belonging to the Israeli regime. This very strongly pushes down the degree of loyalty among the soldiers and prevents them from sacrifices for the Israeli ideals. This Israeli military weak spot is faced by the strong point of sacrificial culture that is characteristic of the forces of the opposite resistant camp and giving it special strength.

Additionally, many Israeli families are unwilling to send their children to the army service as the IDF witness rise in troops' desertion and suicide. The IDF have been hit by a sharp rise in the number of desertions among their troops, according to an army report. Since 2005, 1 out of 8 of the Israeli soldiers fled the army service, the report suggests. This report means that the number of desertions in this year rose 30 percent in comparison to 2002. Additional reports talked about 25 percent rise in 2007, signaling that 1 out of 4 soldiers flee the service in the IDF.

Reverse migration

The Israeli regime has a population of about 8.7 million, with the Arabs and non-Jews accounting for a major part of this population, according to the official figures. The increase of the non-Jewish population now serves as a drive for the Jews to lose their motivation for staying in the Israeli territories. The migrants travel to the occupied territories with an idealistic image of the so-called Promised Land, but when they stay and live for some time, they feel the economic troubles as well as the social and political gaps. Moreover, insecure regional atmosphere and the regime’s expansionist policy make security rare for the citizens. This is enough for the adopted citizens to leave, something making the Israeli regime totally susceptible.

Security decline amid Resistance's power gain

The Israeli regime very openly labels Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah as top on its list of regional threats. The 33-Day war against Hezbollah in 2006, which is a noticeable example of the unequal war, led to defeat of Tel Aviv to surprise of not only the Israeli leaders who sent a fully-equipped army to the battleground but also the whole world. The Lebanese group is now significantly stronger and more experienced and equipped militarily than 2006 owing to its anti-terror involvement in the Syrian war. The Israeli officials admit that if Hezbollah was capable of firing 160 rockets daily into the Israeli territories, now it can do the same job with nearly 1,000 rockets per day, with the capability to checkmate the Israeli air defenses that are not designed to address such a rain of rockets.

More Israeli information maintain that the Palestinian and Lebanese resistant groups hold in their storehouses over 220,000 rockets, with over half of them belonging to Hezbollah. Since 2006, Hezbollah has expanded organizationally and took valuable lessons from war against ISIS terrorist group that fights extraordinarily fierce in the front lines. Moreover, in case of outbreak of war, if the engagement touches a certain level, large numbers of allied fighters from across the region are expected to join Hezbollah, something Hezbollah-Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah asserted in his late June address.

Source: Alwaght

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