The Rise and Fall of Israeli Operational Art, 1948-2008

This chapter examines the rise and fall of operational art in the Israeli armed forces. It argues that until the early 1970s the dominance of high-intensity conflicts, with their relatively favourable conditions for battlefield manoeuvre, enabled Israeli operational art to flourish. Since then, operational art became a lost art form, a trend that Israel sought to overcome by establishing the Operational Theory Research Institute in 1995, but the author maintains that the effort failed miserably because it created a postmodern theoretical construct and terminology that few could understand and relate to. Furthermore, in terms of leadership training the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) focused more on equipping commanders with managerial skills than on grooming great captains.