Analisi Difesa year 6 issue 63

002 - WORLD ANALYSIS

ISRAEL ORDERS NEW SECURITY DOCTRINE

January 2006 - The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, planning a withdrawal from the West Bank by 2009, has sponsored an effort to redefine Israel's national security doctrine. Government sources said the high-level panel of experts was formulating a doctrine that would end Israel's traditional stress on strategic depth. They said the new doctrine would deem the West Bank and Golan Heights as lacking strategic significance amid the Palestinian insurgency and the prospect of Iranian nuclear attack. "Many of these concepts have already been adopted by the military," a government source familiar with the panel said. "The panel would employ these concepts as part of a proposed national security doctrine." The panel has been headed by Sharon's longtime confidant, former Israeli Finance Minister Dan Meridor. The panel also included Israeli National Security Adviser Giora Eiland and his deputy, Itamar Yaad. The military was represented by an unidentified senior air force officer.

Middle East Newsline