Thursday 13/November/2025 – 06:34 PM
The Israeli State Comptroller’s report reveals a deep strategic flaw that goes beyond administrative negligence or bureaucratic inertia, exposing a chronic institutional weakness in the state’s ability to formulate an official and unified national security doctrine.
According to the report, Israel witnessed at least six attempts between 1998 and 2021 to formulate such a doctrine, but none of them was officially approved by the Security-Political Cabinet, or the Israeli government to date.
What is striking is that the last national security doctrine that was formulated dates back to 1953, during the era of founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, which means that Israel is still managing its national security according to a vision drawn up in the middle of the twentieth century, despite the radical transformations in its regional and international environment.
Institutional failure and legal abuse
In 2008, the Knesset passed the National Security Council Law, which obligated the council to examine the national security doctrine and submit proposals for updating it. However, the report shows that this legal obligation was never implemented: the council has not submitted any updated doctrine to the security-political cabinet since then, which shows a clear institutional failure and disregard for a regulatory law aimed at ensuring the continuity of the state’s strategic planning.
Individual attempts without political will
The report also notes failures at the political leadership level. In August 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented what he described as the 2030 Security Doctrine to the security-political cabinet, but this initiative was not put up for discussion or approval at any subsequent meeting, nor did it gain any official status, but was completely neglected.
This example shows that the crisis does not lie in the absence of intellectual or security initiatives, but rather in the lack of political will to turn them into binding official policy.
Strategic implications
1. Long-term strategic paralysis: The continued absence of an official national security doctrine over more than seven decades reflects a crisis in strategic thinking, as Israel deals with complex security challenges with a reactive approach and not with a long-term vision approach.
2. Erosion of the principle of the rule of law: The failure of official institutions, led by the National Security Council, to implement their duties stipulated by the law raises questions about the effectiveness of the system of governance and accountability in the state’s most dangerous files.
3. Politicization of national security: The repeated failure to adopt a unified doctrine indicates that political differences and partisan interests trump the supreme national interest, turning the security file into a tool for internal political conflict.
4. A gap with the challenges of the times: Continuing to rely on a vision dating back to the 1950s in an environment dominated by unconventional wars, cyber attacks, drones, and tunnel wars, produces a strategic gap that threatens the state’s security balance.
In conclusion, the State Comptroller’s report highlights that Israel possesses a technologically advanced security system, but it lacks the intellectual and institutional structure that unites it within a binding strategic framework.
While the Ben-Gurion Doctrine of 1953 expressed a coherent founding spirit, the current situation reflects a structural decline in the state’s ability to produce an integrated strategic vision.
Thus, the report not only criticizes the absence of a document, but also reveals an institutional and administrative deficiency that affects the very essence of Israeli national security at a time when threats are accelerating more than ever before.
