ABSTRACT
In the decades since 1967 Israel's national security was eroding so quickly that in the second half of the 1980s, the country appeared to be living on borrowed time. Outcomes of wars are the first, and most striking, indicator of military weakness. In the period from 1967 to 1982, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) was involved in combat more than five times. The demonstrated inability to defeat the Syrian Army in Lebanon in the spring of 1982 shows just how much the weakness had penetrated and spread through the ground forces and how malignant the erosion of military power had become. The military outcome of the Yom Kippur War and subsequent developments did not lead to a reassessment of military capability, and, on the eve of the Peace for Galilee War, the IDFs self-assessment was unrealistic and almost absurd.
