Israel's Democracy and Security

Israeli security policy began to formulate in the early 1950s by its first leader, David Ben-Gurion. The three pillars of the defence doctrine were deterrence of possible threats; detection of impending attacks, and decisive military defeat of the enemy when the deterrence had failed. Up until the 1990s, the major perceived threat was an Arab military invasion into Israel and a war between states. In the early 1990s, Israel started to formulate a new security concept according to which the main threat might not emanate from states but from sub-state organizations such as Hamas and the Hezbollah. Israel is surrounded by non-state actors: Hamas, Hezbollah, rebel organizations in Syria, jihadist elements in the Golan Heights, Sinai and in Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority. Since the mid-2000s, a lot of attention is given to the Iranian nuclear threat and to rocket and missile attacks from Gaza, Lebanon and potentially other hostile areas.