Introduction
The 7 October attack dealt a significant blow to Israel’s concept of its Iron Wall, a notion built on the twin principles of offensive and defensive military power, and which forms the basis of Israel’s system of deterrence. This paper examines how Israel is attempting to repair its Iron Wall through brutal aggression against the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, and how the cracking of that wall poses an existential threat to the state. It is no coincidence that on 7 October 2024, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu changed the name of Israel’s assault on Gaza from “Iron Swords” to “Renaissance” or “Resurrection”, evoking a name given to Israel’s war of independence in 1948 to indicate that the state is undergoing a watershed moment and being established for a second time. In this view, if the 1948 “Renaissance” War was a response to the Holocaust, the second Renaissance War is a response to the catastrophe of 7 October.
The concept of the Iron Wall is based on two articles by prominent Zionist figure Ze’ev Jabotinsky, both published in November 1923. The idea was to form the backbone of Zionist and Israeli security doctrine.[1] It centres on the concept of military power: the Zionist project must rely on superior military power over the Arabs and repeatedly defeat them until they reach the conclusion that they cannot prevail over the Zionist project and must therefore accept it. In an article entitled “The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs),” Jabotinsky wrote: “Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.”[2]
Contrary to the dominant discourse in Israel’s public sphere and among its political elite, Jabotinsky recognizes in his articles that Zionism is a colonial project, that the Palestinians are the country’s original inhabitants, and that they will continue to resist and reject the Zionist project. Only repeated defeats and repulsion of their attacks can convince them to acquiesce in it. Thus, the whole idea of the Iron Wall is based on military strength and invincibility, in order to kill off Arab and Palestinian hopes of defeating the Zionist project in Palestine.
[1] Avi Shlaim,
The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (New York/ London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000).
[2] Ze’ev Jabotinsky, “The Iron Wall,”
Jabotinsky Institute, p. 6., accessed on 10/10/2024, at:
https://tinyurl.com/mrsutn25
