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Nearly three years after the shock of Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli security doctrine — whose fragility the attack exposed — has been transformed into a field reality being redrawn across four fronts. The system built on deterrence, containment and early warning, and on faith in the ability of the smart wall and electronic borders to protect the home front, collapsed within hours. In its wake, the security establishment concluded: Defense begins far from the fence, deep inside enemy territory, where areas are emptied, urban infrastructure erased, and turned into permanent security belts.
Researchers at the Carnegie Endowment described this shift as a move toward “sustained active defense.” At the same time, analyses by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA) saw it as a revival of the logic of the “iron wall” formulated by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in 1923. The new doctrine becomes even more dangerous as security obsession converges with the expansionist ambitions of the Zionist right. In an interview with i24 in August 2025, Benjamin Netanyahu declared his “deep” attachment to the vision of “Greater Israel”. He said he saw himself on a “historic and spiritual mission,” while Donald Trump described “Israel” in February of the same year as a “small country” whose area was insufficient.
Between the security pretext and the ideological ambition, an Israeli buffer zone is taking shape from Rafah in the south to Mount Hermon in the north, covering roughly 1,000 square kilometers-about 5 percent of “Israel’s” area within the 1949 borders-highlighting its regional strategic implications and potential for regional destabilization.
From the belt to the smart wall: The roots of the idea and its collapse
The roots of the buffer zone in Israeli security doctrine go back to Jabotinsky’s 1923 essay, “The Iron Wall,” in which he argued that the Zionist project could advance only behind military force that would convince the Arabs it was impossible to uproot it. David Ben-Gurion later framed this logic within the triad of early warning, deterrence, and decisive victory, turning the image of the “wall” from a political metaphor into a field practice with multiple forms.
Its first form was occupying land as a buffer. After the 1982 invasion, “Israel” established a security belt in southern Lebanon reaching a depth of 15 kilometers. It administered it with the South Lebanon Army militia for 15 years. The experiment ended with a unilateral withdrawal in 2000 after a war of attrition that strengthened Hezbollah politically and militarily. It offered a lesson: A buffer under occupation, when people remain in it, turns into a theater of attrition, and the adversary fills the vacuum left by withdrawal. The current doctrine invokes that lesson to justify remaining on land without its people, and occupation without responsibilities.
In the second form, technology replaced occupation of depth. “Israel” built the separation wall in the West Bank beginning in 2002, then the smart wall around Gaza, completed in December 2021 at a cost of more than $1 billion and after three years of construction. The project included an underground concrete wall equipped with sensors to detect tunnels, a 6-meter-high steel fence, and hundreds of cameras, radars, and automated weapons platforms. Then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz described it as an “iron wall” between Hamas and “southern Israel.”
– The Samaria Settlements Council distributed about 60 advanced thermal drones to settlements and farms in the West Bank- under the pretext of strengthening security measures after the events of October 7.
– The Council equipped the aircraft with cameras capable of night surveillance and the detection of suspicious movements, thereby enabling security teams to identify threats and direct…… pic.twitter.com/U3O2t8klJa
— (@NoonPost) September 5, 2026
That wager collapsed on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, when resistance fighters breached the wall at about 30 points within minutes, using cheap drones to turn off cameras and automated weapons, bulldozers to tear down the fence, and powered gliders to fly over it. An N12 investigation found that the wall’s advertised capabilities had not materialized, quoting an officer involved in the project as saying that “the security establishment knew the smart wall was an illusion,” and that only two robots patrolled it when journalists were present.
Army and Shin Bet investigations concluded that the failure stemmed from privileging technology over human and intelligence elements. That failure gave rise to the doctrine of “multilayered borders,” which reproduces the security belt across four fronts.
Yellow lines: From temporary to permanent
The Israeli rationale for buffer zones rests on the claim that allowing a hostile force to remain near Israeli communities has become a red line, and that regional depth provides warning time and freedom of maneuver. In practice, however, it has entrenched a permanent military presence inside others’ territory under the cover of interim arrangements.
Trump’s plan to stop the war on Gaza — under which a ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10, 2025 — provided the term that became a tool of entrenchment. The “yellow line” was born as a temporary line for army deployment in the first phase, to be followed by a gradual withdrawal, the deployment of an “international stabilization force,” and the transfer of administration to a technocratic committee under the authority of the Peace Council. But beginning on the 20th of that month, it was fixed in place with yellow concrete blocks, dividing the Strip so that 53 percent of it fell under Israeli control according to the agreement’s maps.
The markers were then pushed westward, taking the proportion beyond 60 percent, while Netanyahu declared that the goal was to reach 70 percent. Field sources confirm this when they account for the control exercised by vehicles and firepower. That turned American maps meant to regulate withdrawal into a framework that gives Israeli presence the status of a fait accompli and lets its scope expand gradually.
The occupation government is attempting to seize a “historic opportunity” to impose a settlement reality in southern Lebanon, driven by the rise of the nationalist right and broad American support. But what are the roots of Israeli ambitions there
📍Find out in the following report.👇https://t.co/P4a2bUxCuX pic.twitter.com/3W78yQDQpb
— (@NoonPost) July 22, 2026
Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir settled the nature of the line on Dec. 7, 2025, describing it as “a new border line, a forward defense line for the settlements, and an attack line,” and calling 2026 a “decisive” year in shaping Israel’s security reality. In early September 2026, Netanyahu said from a military site near the yellow line: “We control the area. We will not withdraw. We are staying on this line, controlling 60 percent of the Strip, and there is more to come,” while Defense Minister Israel Katz pledged that the army would remain in the security zones “under any temporary or permanent arrangement.”
“Israel” replicated the experience in Lebanon on April 18, 2026, after the ceasefire, announcing a “yellow line” within a strip 4 to 10 kilometers deep, extending from coastal Bayada south of Tire to the western slope of Mount Hermon, and connected to areas under control in the occupied Golan. This clearly intertwined the Gaza, Lebanese, and Syrian lines in an arc encircling three fronts, except that the Gaza line was presented as temporary under American cover. At the same time, in Lebanon it was imposed by unilateral decision and justified as the anti-tank missile line occupied during ground operations.
This reveals a leap in Israeli ambition. From five elevated points retained by the army after the late-2024 ceasefire — from Labbouneh opposite Shlomi to Jabal al-Deir near Kiryat Shmona — it moved to a line that prevents tens of thousands of residents of about 55 villages from returning, and turns vast areas of the south into occupied territory under direct military presence. Netanyahu tied withdrawal to Hezbollah’s disarmament and the absence of any threat — an open-ended condition that revives the security belt experience, with the current doctrine treating staying as an objective in itself.
Syria: From incursion to restricting sovereignty
The Syrian front combines land occupation with restrictions on a neighboring state’s sovereignty. After the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime on Dec. 8, 2024, “Israel” declared the 1974 disengagement agreement null and void, and pushed its forces into the buffer zone and then toward the countryside of Daraa and Quneitra. The “Financial Times” and Karam Shaar Advisory estimate the area under its effective control at about 350 square kilometers, from Mount Hermon to the Yarmouk Basin, without announcing an official line.
This “silent” control is exercised through nine fixed military points, two of them on the summit of Mount Hermon and seven inside the buffer zone, from which forces launched more than 800 documented incursions during 2025. The absence of a declared line gives “Israel” flexibility to extend the movement of its forces without having to define a final scope for the occupation or bear the consequences of announcing it.
Katz announced that the army would remain there indefinitely, affirming the existence of a “new policy in southern Syria,” and addressed President Ahmed al-Sharaa by saying: “When you wake up in the palace in Damascus, and look at Mount Hermon and see our forces, you know we are here to defend our towns and our borders.”
The Syrian model extends to imposing restrictions on the state’s armament. Netanyahu demanded in February 2025 that Quneitra, Daraa and Sweida — whose area exceeds 11,000 square kilometers — be made “demilitarized,” then expanded the demand from Damascus to the outskirts of Mount Hermon. This became an obstacle in the Jordan-hosted negotiations in August 2026 between a Syrian delegation led by Asaad al-Shaibani and an Israeli delegation headed by Mossad chief Roman Gofman under American sponsorship.
📌These violations constitute an infringement on Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, pic.twitter.com/i4nL4aEWq0
— (@NoonPostSY) September 8, 2026
The Syrian side, according to SANA, insisted on its right to build its army and determine its alliances, especially after the Israeli bombardment that targeted Abu al-Duhur military airport in eastern Idlib countryside with a series of airstrikes at dawn on Aug. 17, 2026, which Israel justified as preventing Turkish influence in Syria and aimed at strengthening the Syrian army’s capabilities. In early September, an Israeli official announced that the agreement had failed because of “Israel’s” refusal to withdraw from the buffer zone, which he described as a “security asset.”
“Israel” also uses the sectarian card to entrench its presence. After the Sweida clashes in July 2025, it bombed Syrian army positions under the banner of “protecting the Druze” — a justification rejected by members of the community as a violation of sovereignty. Reuters revealed that “Israel” had worked to unify Druze factions and provided them with military supplies and salaries for thousands of fighters, turning the minority into a pressure card that keeps the south outside state control. This shows that the doctrine has gone beyond pushing back threats to obstructing the state’s ability to build its army and define its alliances.
“Greater Israel”: No immunity for peace partners
In its most extreme form, expansion extends to the horizon of “Greater Israel” or the “Land of Israel in its entirety.” At its minimum, the definition ranges over the territories occupied in 1967; at its maximal biblical extent, it stretches “from the River of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates,” encompassing parts of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
The vision moved from the margins of religious discourse when Bezalel Smotrich appeared in 2023 before a map that included Jordan, and soldiers wore patches showing a map from the Nile to the Euphrates. Netanyahu then gave it political cover by declaring his attachment to it.
This ambition reaches the field through settlement. The Nahala movement, led by Daniella Weiss — dubbed the “godmother of the settlement movement” — theorizes a return to Gaza and expansion into southern Syria, such that filling the demographic vacuum imposes a military presence that prevents withdrawal. In this equation, security becomes the gateway to settlement, and settlement itself then becomes the reason for perpetuating military deployment. The security pretext and the expansionist ambition feed off one another.
Egypt reveals how the doctrine has constrained a peace partner since 1979. The Israeli security establishment warned of what it considers a military buildup exceeding the Camp David annex, with estimates of about 40,000 troops deployed in Sinai in early 2026, along with Abrams and T-90 tanks, long-range air defense systems in Zone C, and runways and underground facilities.
- It was designed to be a “future warfare laboratory” and the most lethal unit… but what happened when it hit the ground?
📍Learn about the “Ghosts 888” unit of the occupation army—whose commander was killed during the opening hours of the “Flood” operation, and whose technologies crumbled in the face of battlefield realities.👇
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✍️ @ahmad_m_tanani pic.twitter.com/te8JfekATO
— (@NoonPost) July 28, 2026
Axios reported that Netanyahu asked Marco Rubio in September 2025 to intervene to curb this presence, and warned before the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in February 2026 about the growing strength of the Egyptian army. This reflects a principle of keeping the Camp David balance skewed in “Israel’s” favor, and reading any Egyptian military development as a threat to the southern buffer.
The same logic applies to Jordan, a peace partner since 1994. In June 2025, “Israel” formed the “96th Division” or “Gilead,” and deployed it from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, the first new division in 46 years. Its scenarios assume a threat from the infiltration of Palestinians or fighters linked to Iraqi factions. At the same time, the Cabinet approved five settlements in the Jordan Valley under the concept that “settlement is a means of defending the border.”
A demographic dimension is also added, as the ambitions of the right make Egypt and Jordan destinations for the displacement of Palestinians, reviving in Jordan fears of the “alternative homeland“. Former Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister Mamdouh al-Abbadi warned that “the displacement has moved into implementation, and after the West Bank the enemy will move to the East Bank.” The buffer zone thus goes beyond pushing back threats to redrawing the region in line with a historic ambition.
Ambition greater than capacity
The “multilayered borders” doctrine reflects a shift from deterrence to preemptive field control, and from waiting for threats to moving the battle into neighboring depth through buffer spaces, demilitarization and permanent deployment. In its ideological dimension, it reveals the right’s ambitions, which approach settlement through the gateway of security: The presence of a settlement imposes a military presence to secure it and creates a barrier between occupied cities and Arab population centers. Yet this ambition collides with “Israel’s” human and economic capacity.
Zamir warned the Cabinet that the army could “collapse in on itself” if compulsory service is not extended, pointing to a shortage of about 12,000 soldiers, including 7,000 combat troops. Reservists are being called up for their sixth and seventh tours, and many now serve between 80 and 100 days a year instead of 55, while the shortening of compulsory service to 30 months in early 2027 widens the gap. Reliance on reservists drains the economy of a state with limited human depth and threatens its social cohesion, in a way that is incompatible with permanent deployment on four fronts.
A financial shortfall matches this. A leaked document by Deputy Chief of Staff Tamir Yadai revealed a gap of about 40 billion shekels — roughly $11.1 billion — between army expenditures and Finance Ministry allocations, harming readiness and halting defensive infrastructure projects. The gap coincides with the cost of war, the absence of thousands of workers, and swelling security spending, making the belt system a burden beyond the budget’s capacity.
The cost remains manageable, even as the bill rises, as long as the fronts stay “semi-quiet” and the burden is limited to human and financial operating costs, along with the strain of deployment and intelligence readiness. The new doctrine assumes the ability to protect military points, secure supply lines, monitor wider areas, and still retain sufficient force for war and maneuver.
The real test begins if rules of engagement emerge that raise the cost of remaining on this geography and open the door to attrition, reviving debate over the doctrine’s utility and the limits of a capacity that has not yet been tested. That is especially true in the absence of serious debate, as the Israeli decision-maker remains under the weight of the failure of Oct. 7 and the pressure of ideology and the expansionist ambitions of the right.
