ABSTRACT
As seen in Chapter 4, the Israeli security doctrine mostly focused on responding to conventional threats from Israel’s Arab neighbours. Even solutions to sub-conventional threats, such as the terrorist infiltrations of the fedayeen during the 1950s, or the high-profile hijacking or kidnappings of the 1970s and 1980s, were carried out as conventional retaliatory attacks in the former case, and special commando salvage operations in the latter case. The fact that Israel was more concerned with existential security threats than with current security threats, understandably influenced the way in which Israeli strategic doctrine was formulated and operationalised and the way in which the IDF prepared itself for major military contingencies.
