Defence

Israel's foreign policy is a foreign policy which has to be managed during a very complex and severe conflict.

Address by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon:
"Challenges for Israeli Foreign Policy"
Israel Council on Foreign Relations
Jerusalem, January 6, 2010

Shalom and good evening. We just concluded a meeting with the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Ms. Jane Holl Lute, of the United States. And in light of the near miss on the 25th of December, of the attack on Delta, it is very, very important for us to reinvigorate and actually to intensify the longstanding cooperation that we have on aviation security. But the challenge is really to be ahead of the curve, because aviation security, of course, has many faces. But we also have to look into the possibility of cyberterrorism, of infrastructure defense, and many, many other things, because evidently we are facing a very determined enemy, which is also unfortunately very able and innovative and is attacking us (when I say "us" I mean the entire civilization that we are all members of) on a very wide front. This just exemplifies, once again, the very deep and broad cooperation that we have with the United States, and we will continue on that issue as well.

I saw that the headline is "Challenges for Israeli Foreign Policy," and we have to understand that Israeli foreign policy is in a very unique position. It's a foreign policy which is under attack (meaning, by the way, that it is attacked internally and from outside), but also a foreign policy which has to be managed during a conflict, a very, very complex and severe conflict.

If we look at the battles we've had since the reestablishment of the State of Israel (and I always say "the reestablishment" because we were here many years ago, but nobody counts that), since then, they won. There were different tactics that were used by our enemies in order to bring us down, in order to vanquish us, in order to get rid of us, in order to defeat us, whatever term you want to use. The first one was a military tactic; and fast-forwarding, this, of course, did not succeed. And today, very, very skillfully, but also very fortunately, we have managed to build a defense with which we can defend ourselves, by ourselves, in a very credible way. And deterrence, of course, is the main element here on the defense, to assure our national security, our individual security and our very existence here.
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