ABSTRACT
Aside from the technological-qualitative factor, a second pillar of Israeli military thinking is the emphasis placed upon offense. This premise requires the IDF to shift the focus of combat onto enemy soil, and as quickly as possible. "A mantra rather than a reality," is how US Congressman Tom Lantos described Israel's publicized qualitative edge in October 1990, in the wake of American arms sales to Arab countries. There is little question but that Arab success in narrowing Israel's qualitative advantage in military technologies alters the delicate overall Israel-Arab strategic power balance. The picture, in its essentials, indicates that since 1979 and the signing of the Egyptian-Israel peace treaty, Cairo has officially removed itself from the anti-Israel war coalition. A similar pattern repeated itself in the case of the Israel Air Force when, in the course of the war in Lebanon, it surprised the rival Syrian Air Force and its aerial defense system.
