At 70, Israel sits atop a volcano

Israel’s army holds a definitive advantage over the rest of the region, but the 70-year-old country is confronted by multiple enemies and points of conflict…

This is an example of the Israeli paradox. On the one hand, Israel is, truly, a military and economic powerhouse. Its existence is not shrouded in doubt, and there are no forces threatening its existence. On the other hand, at any given moment, one of its battlefronts could burst into flames, leading to all-out war. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has raised this likelihood in Cabinet discussions and has even commented that he thinks that this scenario will, ultimately, come to pass: a multi-front war that will erupt between Israel and all the players on the northern front (that is, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah), and then Hamas will join the fray…

Eizenkot enumerated the possible battlefronts that Israel faces as “five fronts plus one,” the “plus one” being Iran. The other five are Lebanon (Hezbollah), Syria, terrorism on the West Bank, the Hamas threat from Gaza, and the threat of the Islamic State from the Sinai.

According to Eizenkot, there might be an escalation on all these fronts in 2018…

This article is being written at a time when tension in Israel has peaked with regard to the very hot front between Israel and Iran. As previously reported in Al-Monitor, Israel and Iran are in a virtual war. It started as a cold war, branched out into a conflict by proxy and is now becoming a real, direct confrontation.