Israel's new army chief redefines missions, capabilities

The first Lebanon war in 1982 was the last time Israel was able to declare a crushing military victory on the battlefield. In a ground forces maneuver that included armored divisions operating along three axes — the coastal, central and eastern ones — the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reached Beirut and the Damascus-Beirut Highway, overcoming the forces of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, various Lebanese militias and the Syrian army. However, the war culminated in disaster, with the slaughter of Palestinian residents of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps carried out by Christian militias under the nose of the IDF. The massacre forced the resignation of then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and dragged Israel into an 18-year, low-intensity conflict for control of a so-called “security zone” in southern Lebanon that cost the lives of hundreds of its soldiers but did not yield any benefits. Thus, even an IDF victory on the battlefield in 1982 did not result in any diplomatic or military achievement for Israel.

The four ensuing decades have not been kind to the IDF’s ground forces, currently considered the military’s greatest weakness. The task ahead of Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, who recently stepped into the big shoes of Lt. Gen. (res.) Gadi Eizenkot as IDF chief of staff, is to hone and redefine the term “victory” so that despite the dramatic transformation of the modern battlefield, the IDF will still be able to declare some form of triumph on the ground. To do so, Kochavi has convened various brainstorming teams and has been devoting his time to the in-depth study of these issues in recent months. Several principles now starting to emerge will shape the IDF’s new multiyear plan of 2020 and present political decision-makers with capabilities designed to implement Israel’s decisive superiority over its enemies even in the chaotic disarray of third-millennium battlefields.