Israel urged to increase military spending before future challenges

Israel is likely to remain on a war footing for years to come after a government commission report recommended increasing military spending to prepare for future security challenges.

An Israeli army convoy leaves the Gaza Strip as seen from a position on the Israeli side of the border on Tuesday. Picture: Getty Images

Israel needs to boost military spending to strengthen its offensive capabilities, a government commission warned this week, as the country could continue fighting on multiple fronts for the foreseeable future.

The commission, headed by a former Israeli national security adviser, on Monday recommended increasing military spending by an additional $30 billion over the next decade to prepare for Israel’s future security challenges.

The funding would help Israel’s military reorient itself toward an attack posture, which if enacted, would mark a shift away from Israel’s longtime reliance on deterrence in the years before Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks shattered the country’s perception of security.

In its report, the commission criticised Israel’s pre-war approach, which assumed the country could secure long periods of calm through deterrence, and instead said Israel must be ready to launch pre-emptive and preventive attacks, and even initiate war.

“Preventing enemy build-up, in all its forms, is more important than extended quiet,” the report said. “Israel’s response to attempts to harm it must be as disproportionate as possible and must be continuously maintained.”

The recommended addition of $2.5 billion to this year’s budget would raise the total defence budget in 2025 to $34 billion, nearly 7 per cent of Israel’s gross domestic product, up from about 5 per cent ahead of the war.

Even if war ends in 2025, military spending over the next decade would average $26 billion a year, about 40 per cent higher than Israel’s pre-war defence bill.

IDF soldiers, displaying their weaponry for its operation in Lebanon in late December, must be ready to launch pre-emptive and preventive attacks. Picture: Getty Images

The report is part of Israel’s growing expectation that it is likely to be on a war footing for years, after two decades of relative stability and deepening ties across the region.

Although Israel killed the top leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah and degraded their militias in its year of fighting Iran-backed groups, it hasn’t uprooted either of these adversaries. Renewed Israeli focus on Iran as the sponsor of a network of regional militias allied against Israel and the West has raised calls for more direct Israeli action, threatening to inflame the region and draw in the US. And instability caused by the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the hand of Islamist-led rebel groups creates uncertainty on Israel’s northern border.

While marking Iran and its nuclear program as Israel’s top threats, the report expressed concern that rebel-held Syria may develop into a national security priority. Although the Islamist rebels currently remaking the country’s leadership have shied away from marking a position on Israel, Israel is concerned about having a group formerly linked to al Qaeda on its border.

In one of its bolder statements, the report also raised concerns that the instability within Syria creates an opening for Turkey to deepen its influence with the rebels it currently supports and turn Syria into a Turkish proxy state, potentially creating a pathway for direct Israeli-Turkish confrontation after years-long efforts to repair relations were set aside after the war in Gaza began.

An Israeli tank moves along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on January 1. Picture: Getty Images

Seventy per cent of Israel’s defence resources going forward should be dedicated toward offensive capabilities, the report says, and only 30 per cent toward defensive efforts.

As part of this plan, Israel would also increase domestic defence production capabilities. On Tuesday, Israel’s Defence Ministry announced that it signed deals worth $275 million with domestic arms manufacturer Elbit to produce heavy bombs and raw materials needed for defence.

The Defence Ministry said that reducing reliance on defence imports was “a central lesson from the war”.

The report was issued as Israel’s government is debating both its 2025 budget and legislation that would affect the military’s growing need for combat manpower. While the Defence Ministry is pushing to increase mandatory and reserve service requirements for conscripted Israelis, it is facing criticism for not doing more to conscript ultra-Orthodox Jewish youth, a hot-button political issue in the country.

The report didn’t identify clear sources of funding. Israel is already facing tax increases to pay for the war and an expansionary fiscal policy that stabilised its economy after it contracted 6 per cent in the war’s first quarter. Israeli economic officials are concerned about ballooning spending as government debt increased to 7.7 per cent.

Ahead of the continuing war in Gaza, Israel had been steadily decreasing its overall percentage of military spending, tapering off starting in the 1980s after military spending surpassed 30 per cent of its budget in the wake of Israel’s 1973 war against several invading Arab armies.

-Wall Street Journal