Ground Game is Game Changer

Police and the IDF patrol northern border after Hezbollah shooting incident

R ecent attacks on Israeli ground positions along the northern border with Lebanon and the southern border with Egypt provide an unambiguous reminder that Israel cannot afford to reduce its ground forces if it expects to deal efficiently with future military threats from non-state or state actors. So says Dr. Eado Hecht a research associate at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and a lecturer on military affairs at the IDF Command and General Staff College. “Those who say way we can make do with fewer soldiers and light infantry are not correct.”

In the incidents last week one IDF soldier was wounded by gunfire from a vehicle traveling on the other side of the border in Lebanon and an Israeli civilian was shot and killed near the border fence with Egypt.

In an extensive report published in September in the journal Survival Dr. Hecht and co-author Dr. Eitan Shamir contend the growing threats and capabilities of non-state actors mean that Israel must continue to build effective ground forces and that the IDF must not favor its air force and precision-fire assets over ground units.

While conventional wisdom holds that Hezbollah will not start a war while its forces are embroiled in Syria’s civil war Dr. Hecht warns that unforeseeable events could lead to a military escalation similar to what sparked the Second Lebanon War in 2006.