Israel’s Security Environment and the Fallacy of the Australian Perspective

Public debate in Australia surrounding Israel is often conducted with little appreciation of the very different security environments faced by the two nations.

Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has repeatedly confronted interstate wars, cross-border attacks, rocket fire, terrorism, and hostile regional actors.

At various times, some governments, political movements, and armed organisations in the region have rejected Israel’s legitimacy or called for its elimination.

Australia’s experience has been fundamentally different.

While Australia has participated in numerous overseas conflicts, it has not faced the same pattern of sustained direct military threats from neighbouring states that Israel has experienced.

The most obvious example is the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Following Israel’s declaration of independence, armed forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq entered the territory of the former British Mandate of Palestine as the conflict expanded beyond the preceding civil war between Jewish and Arab communities.

The aims of the participating Arab states varied, but they broadly opposed the establishment of a Jewish state, and they sought to establish a unified, independent Arab state across the entire territory of the former British Mandate.

For the newly established state of Israel, this war was widely understood as a fight for survival.

Subsequent decades saw further major conflicts.

The 1956 Suez Crisis followed escalating tensions between Israel and Egypt and was closely linked to Egypt’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal and ongoing cross-border hostilities.

In 1967, Israel launched a pre-emptive strike amid a rapidly deteriorating regional situation that included Egyptian troop deployments in Sinai, the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force, and the closure of the Straits of Tiran.

Many Israeli leaders viewed these developments as posing a grave threat to the country’s security.

This led to the Six-Day War, a brief but consequential conflict that resulted in a total military victory for Israel against combined forces from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

In 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, catching Israel off guard and inflicting heavy casualties.

Although Israel ultimately repelled the assault, the war reinforced the reality that the country remained vulnerable to coordinated attacks from multiple fronts.

Even after peace treaties were signed with Egypt and Jordan, Israel continued to face security challenges from non-state actors.

The conflicts in Lebanon in 1982 and 2006 were closely connected to attacks and military activity involving armed groups operating from Lebanese territory, including the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1982 and Hezbollah in 2006.

More recently, the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 triggered a major war in Gaza and were accompanied by hostilities involving other armed groups aligned with Iran across several fronts.

Australia’s strategic history stands in stark contrast. The Australian mainland has never faced an existential destruction attempt by a neighbouring country.

The nation has benefited from geographic isolation, secure maritime approaches, and distance from many major centres of conflict.

Australia’s most serious external military threat emerged during the Second World War, when Imperial Japan advanced through the Pacific.

Although concerns about invasion existed at the time, historians generally agree that Japan did not develop plans for a full-scale invasion of the Australian mainland.

Today, Australia’s primary security concerns centre on cyber threats, regional instability, economic coercion, and maritime security rather than the prospect of military defeat or national destruction by neighbouring states.

Any serious discussion of Israel should begin with an understanding of the security environment in which the country has existed since 1948.

Comparing Australia’s strategic circumstances with Israel’s highlights that the two nations have faced markedly different patterns and levels of external military threat throughout their modern histories.