Israel’s Military Faces Old Challenges in a New Kind of War

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Countries caught up in the coronavirus pandemic are using their military forces with various degrees of caution (among democracies) and abandon (among dictatorships). Israel, uniquely, deployed its armed forces early and as part of a whole-of-government approach to dealing with the crisis—with mixed results, so far. Although the Israeli Defense Forces have demonstrated remarkable speed and efficiency in their response, the use of military technology, especially snooping software, is proving controversial.

It’s hard to know if Israel’s experience can be replicated elsewhere. Its system of compulsory military service for men and women is rare. The, IDF with 170,000 active-service personnel and 465,000 reserves, has a high degree of identification with, and popularity among, ordinary Israelis. But equally, the military is loathed by the Palestinian population it polices and blockades—a population the IDF may be required to assist in the event of a major virus outbreak in the West Bank and Gaza. 

Few military forces anywhere operate under such conditions. Even so, there may be lessons, both salutary and cautionary, for other countries to glean from the IDF’s role in Israel’s war against the virus.

Israel closed schools on March 12 amid growing concern over rising numbers of cases and travelers returning from abroad who might be carrying the virus. Two days later, the country was under partial lockdown. The IDF had already begun checking soldiers for symptoms, conductive blood drives and distributing protective gear, such as facemasks for those preparing food. On March 19, the defense ministry called up 2,000 reservists.

By then, the defense ministry had announced its Home Front Command would take over the management of several hotels where the health ministry would treat patients with light symptoms. By the end of March, 1,000 patients were housed in six hotels in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Tiberias.

In the meantime, hundreds of soldiers were assigned to patrol civilian neighborhoods, supplementing police efforts at enforcing increasingly stringent lockdown rules. The defense ministry of defense spent $14 million to buy 2,500 ventilators, 1,000 of them manufactured in Israel. A missile-production line was repurposed for Israel Aerospace Industries and medical-device maker Inovytec to produce ventilators for the health ministry.

The Military Intelligence Directorate’s research division and the elite Unit 8200 signal-intelligence team was ordered to help the health ministry track coronavirus cases. A new unit was created to identify and develop other tech solutions: by the end of March, it had come up with a new mask design, a radar system with electro-optics to measure body temperatures remotely, and a voice test to identify those infected. (With artificial intelligence, it may be able to identify the unique “vocal fingerprint” of the virus through voice recordings on a mobile app.)

Even Israel’s spooks were deployed in the fight:  Mossad sourced hundreds of thousands of test kits from suppliers abroad. This unconventional procurement method is typically used when dealing with countries that don’t have official relations with Israel.

Like military forces everywhere, the IDF has also had to deal with the challenge of keeping its troops healthy. Service personnel, by the nature of their work and deployment, are at heightened risk for epidemic—consider the example of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. At the end of March there were 62 cases of infected soldiers and 2,900 in isolation. That is a lower incidence of infection than in the general population.  

Inevitably, the IDF and intelligence services expansive role in the crises has aroused anxieties, among some members of the Knesset and in sections of the media, about military overreach. Right groups worry that emergency provisions allow the use of security techniques and tools—such as Internal Security Service’s phone tracking anti-terror software—on civilians without the usual civil-liberties protections. Two groups have petitioned the courts to freeze the surveillance, but a Knesset intelligence subcommittee has approved most aspects of the new initiative.

There are also questions about who should be leading the government’s crisis-management efforts. At the moment, that role belongs the ministry of health, but Defense Minister Naftali Bennet believes his department should be in charge, arguing, “We are in a war, the IDF is a bulldozer and that’s what we need to fight.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, himself under quarantine in the middle of the delicate political task of forming a new coalition government, has left the health ministry in charge, but the argument will almost certainly come up again, especially if the crisis deepens. 

The numbers are scary enough already. As April 1, Israel had 6,092 cases and 25 deaths. In the Middle East, Israel has among the highest proportions of confirmed infections: 646 per million, compared with 333 per million in Bahrain and 160 per million in Turkey. (The reliability of statistics from some of the region’s most populous countries, like  Egypt and Iran, is questionable.)

But it could get a lot worse if the virus begins to rampage through the Palestinian population. Since the Palestinian Authority doesn’t have the infrastructure or resources to manage such a crisis, it may fall to the IDF to facilitate the delivery of medical and humanitarian assistance to a community with which it has historically hostile relations.

So far, 12 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Gaza, and 107 in the West Banks; there has been one death in the West Bank. IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus says Israel is in close communication with the PA to help educate its employees about the virus. Some test kits and protective gear have been transferred and joint training conducted. But the IDF and Hamas are still trading rockets and missiles, and Bennett has linked any virus-related assistance for Gaza to the recovery of Israeli soldiers captured in 2014.

For the IDF, the war against the virus is certain to present more complexities than those confronting most military forces. 

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Seth J. Frantzman covers Middle East affairs for the Jerusalem Post. He is the author of "After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East" and executive director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis.

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