on the ground, were often characterized by non-linear thinking and abundant
creativity, imagination, and audacity. A decentralized command system simulta-
neously reflected and encouraged these skills. A gap, however, existed between the
great importance of the operational level, on the one hand, and the almost non-
existent formal military thinking invested in it on the other.
The following sections present in more detail the conditions under which
Israeli operational art developed from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, and the
way it was applied.
Conditions
The challenge of general quantitative inferiority
Although Israel was surrounded by enemies from three directions, and despite the
consequent worst-case-scenario assumption adopted by its war planners regard-
ing a simultaneous multi-front and multi-enemy confrontation, in 1948–9, 1956,
1982, and 2006, the IDF did not suffer from quantitative inferiority on the
battlefield. The following section refers to the early wars.
When the War of Independence broke out, the IDF did not yet exist as a regular
army; it was gradually built during the fighting. Knowing how inferior the new
state would be vis-a`-vis the Arab world both demographically and militarily, the
Israeli political leadership took a great risk by declaring independence when only a
thread seemed to separate success from another tragedy for the Jewish people. The
calculated risk succeeded, though, thanks not only to the wise military conduct of
the war on the Israeli side and the quick shift from a militia force to a regular army,
but also to the insufficient forces dispatched by the Arab states to the battlefield
due to complacency regarding the chances of defeating the emerging IDF quickly,
Jordan’s defection from the Arab war coalition, 8 and the negative impact that the
embargo declared and imposed by the great powers had on Jordan’s and Egypt’s
war effort. 9 On the Israeli side, the embargo was bypassed thanks to a supply of
weapons from Czechoslovakia—a Soviet satellite—and via illegal purchases in the
United States. Israel was gradually able to balance Arab weapon-systems superior-
ity, and the IDF even achieved air superiority in the later stages of the war. 10
In 1956, Egypt fought alone against Israel, after its Arab allies—Syria and
Jordan—preferred evasion to cooperation. 11 Thus, it was only in 1967 that the
IDF found itself, for the first time, in a position of real quantitative inferiority
(1:2.5), coping with it successfully thanks to two main factors. First, again, was
the division within the Arab war coalition. Second was the application of force
multipliers, which was feasible thanks to the ascendancy of manoeuvre over
firepower on the battlefield, discussed in greater detail below.
The need for artificial strategic or operational depth
The fact that Israel lacked strategic or operational depth made it believe that it
had to create such depth artificially by transferring the fighting onto the enemy’s
The Rise and Fall of Israeli Operational Art, 1948–2008 169