After nearly three years of war, the Israeli occupation’s military faces mounting human, financial, and operational strain, while political paralysis has left it overstretched across multiple fronts, according to Maariv military affairs analyst Alon Ben David, who warns that the army will not cooperate with any attempt by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prolong the conflict in order to disrupt or postpone elections.
Ben David said the Israeli military this week formally ordered the return of its ceremonial dress uniform after nearly three years in which the demands of war had pushed normal military routines and standards aside.
“Some soldiers joined the army and were discharged without ever having the chance to wear the formal uniform,” he wrote. Even career personnel who returned to their closets found that the intervening years had taken a physical toll: many no longer fit into uniforms that had suited them three years earlier, while others could not wear their old sizes at all.
According to Ben David, the order to resume wearing formal uniforms at ceremonies sends a clear message: although the war has not ended, the military is attempting to restore the standards, discipline, and institutional norms that have been severely eroded over the past three years.
However, the war has significantly impacted the military beyond its cultural aspects. The Israeli Air Force has flown roughly as many hours over the past three years as it would normally have accumulated over nine years. Tanks and armored personnel carriers have consumed thousands of engines, while the volume of ammunition used is comparable to what the army fired during the 30 years preceding the war.
“All of the equipment can be replaced and repaired,” Ben David said. “Far more difficult is addressing the toll on the people,” he said. He said the Israeli military alone, excluding the other security agencies, has lost 1,138 personnel and recorded 11,730 physically or psychologically wounded. The figures cover only officially recognized cases, he added, with thousands more expected to emerge with psychological injuries.
The impact of the war, he stressed, extends well beyond those formally classified as wounded. Many personnel have suffered profound disruption to their personal lives. A military survey of service members’ spouses and families found that daily routines had changed in 75% of households.
More than half of spouses still support their partners remaining in military service. But when asked how much their partner’s service allowed them to invest in their own careers, only 10% responded positively.
As the sense of immediate crisis and urgency begins to recede, Ben David said, the figures point to an impending loss of experienced personnel. In numerous cases, career officers who offered prestigious command positions have instead requested less demanding staff assignments or opted for retirement.
Nor, he noted, has the military returned to anything resembling normality. The Israeli army currently maintains an average of 53,000 reservists on active duty every day. They are bearing much of the burden at home and in their workplaces and businesses.
The military is deployed across three security zones—in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria—in addition to the occupied West Bank, which has become its principal source of manpower strain. The stated intention is to maintain these security zones and a heavy military presence in the West Bank for the long term.
According to Ben David, the cost of sustaining the army at this scale is staggering. One month of reserve service last year cost roughly 2.1 billion shekels, equivalent to the cost of seven F-35 fighter jets or 70 Merkava tanks. Yet, he argued, it is not clear that such a level of deployment is necessary.
In Gaza, for example, five brigades are currently holding what the military calls the “Yellow Line,” covering roughly 60% of the territory. Two additional reinforced brigades are deployed along the border, alongside local standby teams and regional defense forces, all operating under active reserve mobilization.
The desire to provide residents of communities near the Gaza border with a sense of security is understandable, Ben David wrote, but it is questionable whether it justifies maintaining such a massive force—particularly when several kilometers separate the settlements from Hamas positions and Israeli occupation forces are deployed throughout the intervening area. The same logic, he argued, applies to the Lebanese border.
The Israeli military, already unable to secure from the Finance Ministry the budget required to sustain these vast operations, must begin reducing its forces, Ben David argued—not merely to conserve resources, but above all to preserve its personnel.
The current government and most opposition leaders maintain that “Israel” will have to continue holding three security zones in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon. What remains unclear, he said, is how such a strategy will be financed.
Over the past decade, the Israeli occupation entity has benefited from $33 billion in generous US military assistance, enabling it to build the capabilities that produced what Ben David described as significant military gains against Iran and Hezbollah, as well as in Gaza, despite the failures at the beginning of the war. The current aid agreement expires in 2028.
Israeli officials working with the Trump administration believe Washington had been prepared to approve a new 10-year aid package of similar scale. But Netanyahu decided a year ago to announce that Israel would settle for half the value of the existing package. According to Ben David, that decision effectively undermined the prospect of securing another generous agreement, leaving Israel to cover the shortfall itself.
Ben David also pointed to what he described as a pattern since the outbreak of the war in which Netanyahu has made decisions and issued statements that appear insufficiently considered. The latest consequence, he argued, is the emerging crisis involving Turkey and Syria.
“About a year ago, the Israeli military recommended that Netanyahu pursue a security arrangement with Syria,” Ben David wrote. “Not because the military considered Ahmed al-Sharaa a friend of Israel, but because it was clear that al-Sharaa was seeking a path to Washington and believed the keys to the US capital were in Tel Aviv’s hands.”
Netanyahu rejected the recommendation. Since then, Ben David said, al-Sharaa has concluded that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan holds keys to Washington that are no less important than those held by Israel.
Turkey is now helping rebuild the Syrian military and seeking to deploy its own military capabilities in Syria, developments that could threaten the air corridor Israel established toward Iran.
The Israeli strike on Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airport this week, Ben David argued, brings Israel closer to a confrontation with Turkey—an outcome neither side wants. The problem, he added, is that Israel currently lacks an immediate channel of communication with Ankara, making US envoy Tom Barrack’s insistence on establishing such a channel particularly important.
Ben David said Israel’s “complete political passivity” over the past three years has prevented it from translating even a single military achievement into a more favorable political reality, leaving it increasingly reactive and adrift in the Middle East.
Israel, he argued, has failed to impose a final outcome on any of the active fronts. The military understands that Netanyahu does not want to close any of the war’s fronts and is planning to reignite one of them—most likely Gaza—in an attempt to disrupt or postpone elections.
“Senior military officials tell me they will not lend a hand to entering another unnecessary war,” Ben David said.
For Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, who has already faced difficult tests in confronting a hostile government, Ben David concluded, this could prove to be the most difficult and consequential test of his tenure.