Yedidya Atlas on May 15th, 2012
Editor’s note: To read Part I of this three-part article series, click here.
Conceding Israeli control of the 34-mile-wide area known as Judea and
Samaria to any of Israel’s actual or even potential enemies means a
return to the pre-1967 nine-mile waistline across Israel’s coastal strip
and a security border of 223 miles to patrol and defend. Retention of
said territories means a mere 62 miles of security border to patrol and
defend. It also means Israeli control of vital mountain passes, the
4,200-foot high ground overlooking the Jordan Rift Valley, and the
minimal strategic depth between the Jordan River and Israel’s highly
populated and industrialized coastal plain.
When Israel fights a war, it must take into account many factors:
weapons technologies, tactical knowledge, motivation and education of
the soldiers, etc. However, the prime factor is still numbers. The best
equipped and most superiorly trained army cannot win if it is hopelessly
outnumbered. This has always been an issue for Israel.
The IDF, as every responsible army, must be prepared for every
eventuality. Israel cannot afford to lose a war. According to reports,
the latest annual IDF General Staff exercises dealt with various
combinations of possible attacks from different fronts including south
(Gaza and Egypt), north (Lebanon and Syria) and east (Iran). Other
possibilities were also taken into account, but those were the major
ones.
In each of these possibilities, strategic depth is a critical factor.
In the south, Israel has already given up its strategic buffer areas,
and if the IDF were to fail to take the battle into enemy territory
(basic IDF doctrine), the fighting would be within easy range of major
Israeli population centers.
In the north, the Golan Heights are, as always, critical, and in the
northeast and east, Judea and Samaria are not only vital for defense,
but would also serve as passage ways for mobilization and logistics.
(The Cross-Samarian Highway, for example, was originally planned by the
IDF General Staff following the 1967 Six Day War as the major connecting
artery to the Jordan Valley from the coastal plain.)
Despite the immense security risks Israel faces, the Jewish State’s
small population means it doesn’t have the security of a large standing
army despite the immense security risks it faces. For that reason,
soldiers who have completed their mandatory service, continue in the
reserves – especially in combat units – well into their forties,
contributing up to over a month or more of service each year for both
training and active-duty assignments. In short: the army reserves
constitute the backbone of the IDF’s manpower needs.
IDF doctrine encompasses a number of basic security truths. Among
them are that Israel cannot afford to lose a single war, we must have a
credible deterrent posture including territorially, and that the outcome
of war must be determined quickly and decisively. Proper preparation
means Israel’s small standing army must be equipped with an
early-warning capability, coupled with an efficient reserve mobilization
and deployment system.
Israel, prior to mobilization, is basically a relatively weak country
militarily in terms of all out war with more than one front involved –
which is a distinct possibility that the IDF planners seriously take
into account. Post-mobilization Israel, on the other hand, is an
entirely different story.
Israel has the potential to mobilize hundreds of thousands of
reserves which more than triples the manpower of the Israeli army. This
considerably alters the ratio against the enemy. While exact figures are
classified, suffice to say the combined Arab armies outnumber Israel’s
standing army by a ratio of approximately 15 to 1. Whereas after a full
scale call-up of Israel’s reserves, the ratio is reduced to less than 4
to 1.
While these are still great odds against the Jewish State, it is
necessary to add into the mix the Israeli army’s strength: superior
weapons systems, intelligence and logistics, better training, higher
education and motivation (being in a “no alternative” situation where
losing means national annihilation is a major factor in superior
motivation). The result is an army with a better than even chance of
winning a war.
As noted, current Israeli defense doctrine must take into account the
vulnerability of its national infrastructure to enemy missile attack.
This means reserves deployment locations must be sufficiently dispersed
and distant from one another and from the border itself, to increase the
chances of completing the mobilization and deploying the reserve forces
to the war zone, even in the event of a missile attack. If the reserve
mobilization were delayed by a barrage of ballistic missiles, then
initial terrain conditions for Israel’s small, numerically inferior,
standing army units would become all the more critical.
Judea and Samaria’s mountain ridge is also crucial to Israel’s air
defenses. Israel deploys its air defense facilities along the mountain
ridge to enable the interception of enemy aircraft from forward
positions instead of from the heavily populated coastal plain.
Short-range radar and early-warning systems situated in the coastal
plain would have their line-of-sight blocked by the Judea and Samaria
mountain ridge. Without control of this high ground Israel would have no
warning time to intercept attacking aircraft. It takes only three
minutes for an enemy fighter bomber to cross the Jordan River and fly
the 42 miles to Tel Aviv. If Israel’s strategic depth were 34 miles less
(i.e.: without Judea and Samaria), enemy planes could leave Arab air
space and reach Tel Aviv in under one minute or less than minimum
Israeli “scramble time,” not to mention ground defenses’ reaction time.
But to win the war with the aforementioned better than even chance,
another agonizing problem must be solved. As noted, Israel requires 48
hours to fully mobilize. It is economically unfeasible for the IDF to be
in a state of constant mobilization. The productivity of the country
would grind to a standstill. No nation could survive such conditions
indefinitely. In fact, it was due to this factor that the Soviet Union
was able to orchestrate the 1967 Six Day War.
The Soviets informed the Egyptians that Israel was mobilizing on its
northern borders opposite Syria. Although untrue, it caused the
Egyptians to pull their troops out of Yemen and mass them on the Israeli
lines. This in turn forced Israel to truly mobilize – this time
opposite Egypt. Realizing the consequences of long-term mobilization,
Israel sent word to Egypt proposing a mutual de-escalation of troops.
Nasser’s response was to close the Straits of Tiran, which was an act of
war. Israel, faced with the task of waiting for Egypt to attack, while
forced to maintain an unending full-scale mobilization with the
consequences of impending national economic disaster, had no choice but
to act. Hence, Israel’s preemptive attack on the morning of June 5,
1967.
While conventional warfare, Israel’s main threat up until the late
1980s, subsequently became less probable, the threat of terrorist
attacks together with missiles, from short-range rockets to large
ballistic missiles, appear to have become the primary threats Israel
faces. However, the political upheaval in the Arab world in the last few
years cannot rule out – especially with the rise in prominence of
radical Islamic elements in Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, among others –
the potential return of regular Arab armies facing Israel in the near
future.
Even in the missile age, wars are still ultimately decided by the
movement of armies and not just by air strikes. As long as conventional
ground forces remain the decisive element in determining the outcome of
wars, then such issues as territory and strategic depth are crucial.
Despite the proliferation of missiles and the use of terrorism as a
strategic weapon, most of Israel’s Arab neighbors still stress the role
of heavy armor in their order of battle, thus conventional warfare
remains a significant potential threat.
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