ABSTRACT
Two systematic efforts have been made into the twenty-first century: the first in 2006 by a team headed by Knesset member Dan Meridor; the second by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief-of-Staff Gadi Eisenkot, who in 2015 released a document entitled "The IDF's Strategy."This chapter looks both documents into their constituent parts in order to reconstruct the operative Israeli security model and to analyze it in three stages. It summarizes the principal components of the security conception that dominated Israeli thinking during the initial decades of statehood. The chapter focuses on the changes, global as well specifically Israeli, which thereafter necessitated re-formulations. It identifies the essential ingredients of Israel's security model. Quantitative inferiority vis-a-vis an Arab War coalition has always constituted an obvious restraint on Israel's freedom of strategic choice. Israel's status as the source of power and authority in the Territories dictated that its conduct there be restricted: morally, legally and politically.
