IDF chief: Israel must be ‘more prepared than ever’ for a multi-arena conflict

Israel’s Defence Force chief, Herzl Halevi, has warned that Israel must be more prepared than ever for a multi-arena and extensive military conflict. 

Halevi addressed the IDF’s main assembly to mark 50 years since the Yom Kippur War, honouring the memory of the 2,689 soldiers who fell in the war, as well as the 7,251 wounded and 294 who were held captive.

“Memory has many faces: from a parent’s painful memory of their son who never returned, to the memory of signing a historic peace agreement with a bitter enemy,” Halevi said.

“On my way out of the National Military Museum in Cairo, I reflected on how our story focuses on looking at the difficulties, investigating the ability to get out of hard situations and seeing how they can be avoided,” Halevi said.

“To the Egyptian general who accompanied me, I said: Your casualties were significantly higher than ours and yet, in our story, very differently from yours, there is self-criticism. It’s not terrible, I added, that we tell a different story about the war, as long as we know how to tell a common story about the future,” he added.

Halevi said that the Yom Kippur War serves as a “living lesson” for Israel regarding the “danger of arrogance, the upheaval of strategic surprise and the heavy national price of a perceptual, political and military crisis.”

Hinting at the recent threats made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to send Israel back to the “Stone Age” in a future war, Halevi said the IDF “must regard every declaration of our enemies, in words or actions; not to underestimate them, and not to glorify ourselves.”

“We must be more prepared than ever for a multi-arena and extensive military conflict, which will include manoeuvring in close contact and high friction with the enemy, which will involve losses and casualties, and where the home front will be on the front line,” he said.

Security experts have long warned that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Iran are trying to ignite a multi-front conflict with Israel, as it would be much harder for the IDF to defend against several threats at the same time.

“Our enemies may be tempted to see an advantage in the multi-arena threat to us. It is better for them to know that when Israel is threatened, it knows how to mobilise all its resources, put the differences aside – and strike. It was like that in the Yom Kippur War, and it will be like that today, if need be,” Halevi said.