learning institution. Three ‘waves’ of operational art are described in the paper: in
the late 1940s, between the mid-1950s and 1967, and between 1995 and 2005.
These waves are attributed, respectively, to the revolutionary spirit of the Haga-
nah’s striking force (Palmach), Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan’s offensive approach
and sophistication, and the establishment of the OTRI. On the other hand, the
period between the late 1940s and the early 1950s is portrayed as the first negative
period in Israeli operational art, resulting from the disbandment of the Palmach
by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion during wartime. The paper refers to the
Palmach’s disbandment as a ‘coup’, 5 although the fact is that Ben-Gurion dis-
solved it into three IDF brigades in order to ensure the unity of command, and
that Palmach members would form the backbone of the IDF’s high command for
many years to come. The post-1967 so-called ‘long dark age’ is explained by the
myth of Israeli-armoured invincibility, the deterioration of operational art into a
mere set of technical rules, and the detachment of the Israeli ‘paradigm of
offensive preemption’ from the new strategic reality. The current poor condition
of Israeli operational art is attributed to the OTRI’s disbandment and the ‘purge’
undertaken by ex-Chief of Staff Dan Halutz of the institute’s adherents among the
senior IDF commanders, many of whom were ‘Paras’ (paratroopers) and former
members of the special forces, mainly for ‘political’ reasons. 6 According to the
paper’s author, had the OTRI managed to spread its ideas among a greater
number of commanders, the Second Lebanon War might well have looked
differently, perhaps like a replica of Operation Defensive Shield. Throughout
the paper, the author expresses regret that the institute invested in middle-rank
commanders, many of whom left military service after a few years.
The poor state of the IDF’s intellectualism is no novelty. 7 The explanation this
paper offers for it, however, suffers from two major weaknesses. First, it has a
strong personal and political bent. Israeli operational art is described as a struggle
between the ‘good guys’, that is, the Palmach ‘revolutionaries’, Dayan, and the
‘Paras’, and the OTRI’s team and supporters, on the one hand, and the ‘bad guys’,
that is, Ben-Gurion, the square-headed, tank-centric school, and Chief of Staff
Dan Halutz’s general staff on the other. Second, it does not offer any clear sense of
what should be considered good or bad operational art.
This chapter’s focus is operational art and the IDF’s assessment. It undertakes
to analyse critically the reasons for both the rise and fall of Israeli operational art.
The key to the issue, in a nutshell, is that, until the early 1970s, the dominance of
high-intensity conflicts (HICs), the existence of clear objectives, and favourable
conditions for manoeuvre on the battlefield enabled operational art to blossom.
Since the early 1970s, however, new conditions have affected Israeli operational
art negatively: the prevalence and dominance of low-intensity conflicts (LICs),
the central role played by the tactical and grand-strategic levels of war at the
expense of the operational and strategic levels, the ascendancy of firepower over
manoeuvre, the cult of technology, and post-heroic tendencies. Both the previous
rise and subsequent fall of operational art as a result of this change in conditions
are reflected in the relative importance and role played by force multipliers
employed by the IDF during its wars to compensate for its inferiority in the
The Rise and Fall of Israeli Operational Art, 1948–2008 167