Israel now treats US as ‘declining power’ and war as permanent condition, says former intelligence chief

A former head of Israeli military intelligence has said that since 7 October 2023, Israel has been run by an unwritten security doctrine that writes off the US as a declining power, rejects peace as a strategic goal and makes war a permanent feature of national life.

Major General (res.) Tamir Hayman, who now heads Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), sets out the doctrine in a paper the think tank published this week.

Hayman says the new concept has never been written down or presented to the public. Even so, it now “inform[s] decision-making and dictate[s] Israel’s approach to security”. He argues the shift goes beyond military planning and points to “a change in Israel’s national identity”.

The most striking principle is the doctrine’s view of Washington. Hayman says it treats the US as a “declining power” and holds that “excessive adherence to restrictions imposed on Israel by a US administration is dangerous”.

Under this thinking, the US, “given its ongoing social and political shifts, will soon abandon Israel in any event”. Dependence on Washington is also seen as exposing Israel “to the influence of a progressive American value system that is incompatible with Israel’s Jewish character”. Cutting ties with the US is therefore “not only inevitable, but essential to Israel’s independence and the resilience of its Jewish national identity”.

Hayman rejects that view. He points out that Israel is a small country with few natural resources and depends heavily on trade with the rest of the world. For that reason, he says, the country’s security chiefs have always believed it needs a major power on its side, because Israel “cannot sustain an autarkic defence economy isolated from the world”. In other words, Israel is incapable of producing everything it needs for its own defence.

Hayman questions whether a relationship with Washington based only on mutual interest would be enough to protect Israel. He also asks whether cutting Israeli science and arms industries off from international partnerships, such as the EU’s Horizon research programme, would leave Israel facing “technological stagnation and diplomatic isolation”.

Throughout the Gaza genocide, Israel has relied on American weapons and on US diplomatic protection at the UN.

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Hayman identifies four other major principles behind the new doctrine. Taken together, they describe a state that puts ethnic identity before democracy, sees peace as a trap and treats war as normal.

The first is that Israel’s Jewish identity comes before its democracy. Under the doctrine, the state must stay Jewish “even at the cost of eroding its democratic values”. Hayman asks whether Israel can still call itself “Jewish and democratic” if it pursues a policy of curbing the civil rights of its Palestinian citizens, who make up about a fifth of the population.

The second principle rejects peace altogether. The doctrine holds that “a meaningful peace agreement is unattainable in the Middle East” and assumes that “any arrangement with Arab actors is temporary and deceptive”. 

The doctrine treats peace deals as “merely technical and temporary arrangements”. Peace has no value of its own and is only “a means of achieving other policy objectives”. Peace itself is dismissed as “a naive concept” belonging to the left-wing “peace camp”, and set against “security”, which belongs to the right.

The third is contempt for Israel’s Arab neighbours as states. The doctrine views most of them as “not genuine nation-states, but collections of tribes and ethnic groups lacking a shared history”. It therefore sees their collapse as “a natural process” that Israel can manage and “should even encourage”.

The fourth is that war is Israel’s normal condition, not an exception. Preventive war is preferred, and the “constant presence” of war is considered “an asset to national security”. The paper quotes the slogan “Silence is filth” to sum up the view that seeking peace is a sign of weakness.

The doctrine goes further on territory. It calls for “forward defence” zones and civilian settlements in the occupied West Bank and in security zones inside Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It rules out a Palestinian state and dismisses the Palestinian national movement as “an inauthentic Western narrative”.

Hayman says the doctrine draws its power from never being stated openly. It works “as an unwritten concept revealed through practice, rather than as a government’s declared policy”. He calls for a public debate on whether it is “a necessary adaptation” to Israel’s security situation or “an expression of a fundamental, unchecked shift in the state’s identity”.

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