The Long Brief: Power Beneath the Surface
How water, energy, and digital infrastructure quietly became Israel’s most durable form of power
Shalom, friends.
I remember the first time it clicked for me.
It wasn’t during a war briefing or a security conference. It was while standing in a small apartment in central Israel during a rocket escalation (Hezbollah? Houthis? hard to remember), but the electric kettle was turned on, my phone was charging, the Wi-Fi still working, water pressure steady. Sirens outside. Life continuing inside. It must have been before Iran’s ballistic salvo in July, since I didn’t feel the need to go to the shelter. Oops.
The missiles were meant to terrify. They didn’t. What struck me instead was something far less cinematic and far more decisive.
Someone had planned for this. Not rhetorically. Not symbolically. Physically. Mamads (bomb shelters). Pipes. Wires. Backup systems. Redundancy layered on redundancy. The country wasn’t holding together because of slogans or speeches. It was holding because systems were still running.
That moment explained something many people don’t clearly articulate. Israel’s real power isn’t just its formidable military. Part of is infrastructural. And it was designed that way.
This long brief is an attempt to map that reality—without romance, without boosterism, and without pretending it’s neutral.
Infrastructure as National Power
How Israel’s water, energy, and digital systems function as instruments of sovereignty
Israel’s survival has never hinged on diplomacy alone. It rests on an infrastructure built for siege conditions. Water, energy, and digital systems engineered to function even if (when) the world turns hostile. Israeli leaders treated aqueducts and algorithms as strategic weapons—often more decisive than tanks or treaties. The foresight in hardening national systems has made the state uniquely resilient.
Quietly, Israel has turned former dependencies into one-way dependencies of others on itself. Nowhere is this clearer than water and gas. The nation that once had to import energy from neighbors is now a net exporter. In 2021 Israel agreed to double the water it sells to parched Jordan—a lifeline that Jordanian leaders are well aware their country cannot survive without. Egypt, which supplied Israel with gas in the 2000s, today has to import (considerably more expensive) gas from Israel to keep its lights on. The 2018 gas export contract with Egypt was considered the most important deal between the two countries since the 1979 peace treaty—to say nothing of the recent 2025 agreement. Europe, reeling from dependence on Russian fuel, is courting Israeli gas as part of its diversification.
In tech, the world’s largest companies rely on Israeli innovation. Intel’s Israeli factories produce critical chips (accounting for 5.5% of Israel’s high-tech exports by value), and Israeli engineers designed core components in everything from the Intel Centrino to Mobileye’s autonomous driving systems.
Western militaries depend on Israeli defense tech (e.g. Trophy armor systems on US tanks, or Israeli drones in NATO service).
This asymmetric dependency is often unspoken — no ally will trumpet that it can’t do without Israeli know-how — but it shows up in trade flows and covert cooperation. Israel has made itself needed in ways that transcend sentiment. Allies may not love Israel, but they sure need Israel. That’s without even getting into the value that Israel gives to other countries by sharing the fruits of its sprawling intelligence apparatus.
If the world were rational, turning desert to bloom and keeping enemies’ lights on would earn goodwill. But of course we know that it’s not.
Israel’s infrastructure feats have generated cynical narratives — accusations of theft, apartheid, or nefarious intent — that overshadow the facts.
Consider water. NGOs and UN bodies regularly accuse Israel of “water theft” and deliberate deprivation of Palestinians.
Never mind that Israel provides the Palestinian territories more water than it is obligated to by treaty (in fact far beyond its obligation under Oslo II).
Groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch harp on disparities and omit that Israel’s faucets flow primarily thanks to Israeli-built desalination and recycling, not some unfair siphoning. They have even campaigned to boycott Israel’s national water company Mekorot — leading the Dutch firm Vitens to cancel a cooperation project under activist pressure.
Likewise on energy. When Jordan struck a $10 billion deal to import Israeli gas, domestic opponents blasted it as “stolen gas” financing the “Zionist entity,” leading to street protests and parliamentary motions against the deal. Jordan’s government kept the contract, knowing it had little choice, but certainly no grateful public kudos resulted.
In the digital realm, Israeli cyber prowess is spun as sinister. The same offensive cyber tools that great powers routinely use are labeled uniquely evil when they’re Israeli. A good case in point is the global furor over NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, while equivalent American or European exploits are shrouded in silence.
The bottom line: Israel’s infrastructure success stories are often met not with applause but with an avalanche of what can be called narrative warfare. Which is a fancy way of saying that it’s propaganda to recast strength as illegitimacy.
In an era of hybrid warfare and climate stress, a state that cannot ensure continuous electricity, water, internet, and food supply loses its autonomy even without foreign action. Israel grasped earlier than most that infrastructural resilience makes national power possible in modern times.
When Iran’s Revolutionary Guards tried to poison Israeli civilians by hacking water control systems in April 2020, pumping in dangerous levels of chlorine, Israel’s swift cyber defense and backup protocols averted disaster.
Sovereignty meant mothers in Israel never even knew their tap water was under attack. When COVID-19 hit and shattered global supply chains, Israel rapidly repurposed factories to produce masks and ventilators, and leveraged its high-tech clout to secure early vaccine stockpiles. Which meant not having to beg others for PPE or shots.
When Systems Collapse, States Follow
Modern history underscores that failure of infrastructure correlates more directly with state collapse than battlefield defeat. The fall of the Soviet Union, for instance, was presaged by a hollowing of its economy and systems (bread lines and rusting power grids) more than by any direct military loss.
In contrast, states that lost wars but maintained functional systems (Germany and Japan after WWII, for example) were able to rebuild swiftly as sovereign actors. The emerging consensus is that when governments talk deterrence, they usually mean weapons, yet modern power rests equally on the infrastructure that sustains a nation under stress.
In the 21st century then, national power is a tripod. Military, economy, and infrastructure. With the latter providing the foundation.
Because infrastructure is such a linchpin, it has long been a bullseye for enemies. Total war doctrines from WWII onward embraced strategic bombing of power plants, railways, dams, and the like in the hopes of cracking the enemy behind the front.
Today’s adversaries have broadened the toolkit: kinetic attacks (missiles, sabotage) on critical sites, legal warfare (international campaigns to block infrastructure projects or arms deals), and narrative delegitimization (propaganda painting civilian infrastructure as unlawful, as with claims that Israeli desalination plants “steal Palestinian water”).
Water Before Borders
For everyone, water is life. For Israel it was also nationhood.
Long before statehood, Zionist leaders treated water infrastructure as the very precondition for sovereignty in the Land of Israel.
David Ben-Gurion famously said Zionism’s success required “making the desert bloom”—which meant what? Water. Lots of water.
In the early 20th century, the land of Israel (then Mandatory Palestine) was water-poor and population growth was limited by it. British Mandate officials warned that the region could only sustain at most a couple million people on its available water resources.
Zionist visionaries refused to accept this Malthusian cap. From the 1920s, they launched a concerted effort to map and harness every drop of water — an effort fundamentally and explicitly entwined with national security.
British surveys in the 1940s noted that any large influx of Jewish refugees (both survivors of the Holocaust and those that were getting kicked out of Arab lands) would demand new water development. Indeed, the joint Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1946 recommended that the government “acquire powers to investigate fully the extent of the country’s water resources, to control the use of underground water” — implicitly acknowledging that water could be the limiting factor for the nascent state.
Jewish institutions took matters into their own hands. The Mekorot water company was founded in 1937 by the Jewish Agency, long before Israel’s independence, precisely to develop new water supplies. Its first managing director was Levi Eshkol, later he would serve as Prime Minister, illustrating how water development was seen as nation-building at the highest level. Mekorot’s early projects included laying pipelines to bring water to new farming villages and drilling wells in the Negev desert.
During the 1948 War of Independence, these engineers-turned-soldiers performed a miracle under fire. Mekorot constructed an emergency water supply line to besieged Jerusalem, as Arab forces had cut off the city’s traditional pipelines. This makeshift pipeline, built through rough terrain amidst shelling, kept Jerusalem’s Jewish population from dehydration and forced surrender.
After independence, Israel wasted no time in executing a national water plan. Throughout the 1950s, new pipelines and reservoirs came online, often doubling as defense projects. The flagship was the National Water Carrier, completed in the 1960s— a monumental canal and pipeline system channeling (and elevating) water from the Sea of Galilee south to the dry core of the country. The project was so strategic that its announcement prompted military threats from neighboring Arab states, leading to border clashes in the early 1960s as Syria attempted to divert water sources feeding Israel. By the time it was done, the National Water Carrier was delivering about half of Israel’s total water needs and enabling flourishing agriculture in the Negev.
Choosing Desalination Before Crisis
If the National Water Carrier was the marvel of the mid-20th century, seawater desalination became the keystone of Israel’s water strategy in the 21st. Israel embraced large-scale desalination proactively, before absolute crisis hit. By the 1990s, Israel faced recurring droughts and a growing population. Rather than hope for rain or fight over rivers, the government in 1999 decided to initiate a long-term, large-scale reverse osmosis desalination of seawater program. Notably, this was a strategic choice made when water scarcity was a concern but not yet a cataclysm. The mid-90s had been relatively wet.
The program rolled out as a public-private partnership model, reflecting Israeli pragmatism. In 2002, construction began on the first major plant in Ashkelon by private firms under government tender. As drought conditions worsened in the early 2000s, Israel rapidly scaled up targets. Initial plans for 50 million cubic meters per year were upped to 230 million, then 505 million, and ultimately aiming for 750 million cubic meters annually by 2020. For context, 750 MCM is a volume approaching Israel’s entire natural freshwater yield in an average year.
Israeli government pressed on even while facing strong headwinds from a variety of sources: Economists who fretted about cost (though the costs dropped with new tech). Environmentalists who worried about brine discharge into the Mediterranean and high energy use. And ideologues who argued Israel should first cut consumption or use more treated wastewater rather than build more machines.
An epic drought (between 2008 and 2010) brought the Sea of Galilee to its “black line” (dangerously low level), Israel’s desal plants were just ramping up. There were tight water rations and farmers had a tough time. But after that close call, the new desalination capacity came online in force.
By 2013, Ashkelon and Hadera plants were operating, and the massive Sorek plant (the world’s largest) opened in 2015. The turnabout was dramatic: Israel went from fearing running out of water to a state of surplus within a few years.
Israel now has five large coastal desalination plants (Ashkelon, Palmachim, Hadera, Sorek, Ashdod) with more on the way, supplying the majority of domestic water needs.
Today Israel has strategic redundancy, If rainfall is low or a neighbor cuts off a shared stream, Israelis won’t go thirsty because the desalination faucets can be opened wider.
From Survival to Leverage
Israel had achieved what once seemed like science fiction for the dry, middle eastern nation: water independence. It is a remarkable statistic that Israel not only secures 100% of its own drinking water needs but even has a water surplus in many years, which it uses to replenish natural lakes and export to neighbors.
Thanks to desalination and aggressive wastewater recycling, Israel’s per capita water availability has actually increased even as the population grew. Over 80% of Israel’s sewage is treated and reused for agriculture, the highest rate in the world by far (the second place, Spain, reuses under 20%).
This effect of which is that Israel’s farmers can maintain output during droughts by relying on recycled water for crops. Through the 2010s, even when the rains failed, Israel’s agricultural yields remained stable — no small feat in a region where drought routinely devastates harvests. A Food and Agriculture Organization analysis showed Israel’s crop yields fluctuating far less year-to-year than neighboring countries, a testament to irrigation buffer and stable supply.
This surplus has become a tool of regional diplomacy (and leverage). Under the 1994 peace treaty, Israel committed to provide Jordan 50 million cubic meters of water per year; in practice it has provided much more.
In 2021, with Jordan facing a dire water crisis, Israel agreed to double the supply for that year. Jordan, in turn, is cooperating with Israel and the UAE on a plan where Jordan will supply solar power to Israel and get additional desalinated water back (the “water-for-energy” deal brokered in 2021). Amman’s very stability relies in part on Israeli water—something Jordan needs far more than Israel needs anything from Jordan (something the Kingdom loves to grumble about).
Similarly, the Palestinian Authority depends on Israeli water networks. Under interim agreements, Israel provides about 70 MCM annually to Palestinian enclaves in Judea and Samaria. Which Israel has upped in recent years to try to alleviate shortages in Palestinian cities. Gaza, though ruled by Hamas, still receives Israeli water and electricity.
This puts Israel in the paradoxical position of being attacked by Palestinians, even as Israel is the primary supplier keeping their taps flowing. It’s worth noting that Israel sells water to the PA at (or often below) cost. And even during conflicts has repaired lines into Gaza that were damaged by either fighting or, frequently, intentionally by Hamas—as they steal the pipes to turn into rockets which are then fired back into Israel!
The War Over Water Narratives
A staple claim is that Israel is “stealing Palestinian water” or denying Palestinians their fair share. NGOs often cite that per capita water use by Israelis is higher than that of Palestinians as ipso facto evidence of oppression.
What they omit is context: Israel’s higher usage comes from its augmentation of supply via desalination and reuse, not simply division of a fixed natural pie. In fact, under the Oslo Accords, Israel and the PA agreed on water allocations and cooperative development. Israel has consistently exceeded its agreed supply to the Palestinians — providing 70 MCM yearly (or significantly more) when the agreement obligated about 30 MCM.
As NGO Monitor documents, “Israel’s supply of water to the Palestinians is actually far beyond its obligation,” while Palestinian authorities have failed to develop the wells allocated to them or to curb waste.
Moreover, Israel hasn’t cut Palestinian water even during security crises. Nonetheless, slogans like “Israel cuts water to ‘West Bank’ villages” circulate widely (often based on instances where Palestinian water thieves illegally tapped lines, causing pressure drops — a nuance lost in headlines).
Another narrative: that Israel “weaponizes” water by withholding it from Gaza. The truth is that Gaza’s water crisis is self-inflicted (over-pumping of its aquifer and mismanagement by Hamas) and by the cruel facts of geography (Gaza sits on a tiny coastal aquifer with a huge population).
Israel actually supplies water to Gaza each year and has at times offered to give more, but Hamas has rebuffed higher reliance on Israel.
In 2016, a consortium of donors including Israel even planned a major desalination plant for Gaza, but it stalled due to politics. Tellingly, some pro-Palestinian activists opposed that desalination project on the grounds it would “accommodate the occupation.” Preferring, of course, Gaza remain thirsty so as to defend a talking point. As NGO Monitor highlighted, the Palestinian NGO EWASH openly rejected a new desalination plant for Gaza because it might reduce pressure on Israel politically.
Israel finds itself in a no-win scenario. If Gaza lacks water, Israel is blamed. If Israel helps provide water, it “normalizes occupation.” Despite this, Israel continues quiet cooperation. For instance, fixing Gaza’s power lines and pipes during and after conflicts—in addition to piping over water.
This egregious water theft narrative also gets amplified in international fora. The UN Human Rights Council has heard reports accusing Israel of denying Palestinians the right to development via control of [the Israeli] Area C in the West Bank, where major aquifers lie.
Nevermind that Israel has increased water deliveries to Palestinians in Judea and Samaria over time as their population grew. Technical data rarely makes it into these discussions. It falls on Israel to constantly publish joint water committee minutes, figures of drilling permits granted, etc., to debunk myths.
For example, when activists claimed Israel refuses to let Palestinians drill new wells, Israel pointed out it had approved numerous wells but donor countries didn’t fund them or the PA didn’t execute them (documented in Civil Administration reports).
Even after the 2005 disengagement, Israel supplies water to Gaza purely as humanitarian gesture. But entrenched propagandists will continue to claim that if a Palestinian village has a water shortage, it’s by Israeli malice, not, say, a burst pipe or mismanagement by their municipality.
Keeping the Lights on in War
If water was Israel’s first infrastructure battle, electricity has been its second. Israel’s electricity sector has been consciously designed under the shadow of war, just like its water system. The goal is to keep the grid online, or restore it fast, even under missile barrages or isolation. Over decades, Israel moved from fuel import dependency to domestic energy sources, built redundancies into generation and transmission, and developed rapid repair units for wartime.
A Grid Built to Be Hit
Geographically, Israel’s national electric grid is relatively small. It spans a country only about 500 km long and 100 km across at its widest. This compactness is a double-edged sword. It’s easier to interconnect for redundancy, but also easier for enemies to attack with rockets or other weapons.
Recognizing this, Israel adopted a highly centralized yet defensively oriented grid architecture. Historically, a handful of large power stations supplied most of the electricity: the Orot Rabincoal plant in Hadera, the Reading plant in Tel Aviv, Eshkol in Ashdod, and later gas-fired plants like Gezer and Ramat Hovav. These were all coastal or near critical infrastructure. The grid was built as a tight mesh so any plant could send power anywhere in the country. But the flip side: knock out one or two, and a huge chunk of generation drops.
In recent years, Israeli planners have grown concerned about this centralization. A 2025 study warned that “the national grid remains highly centralized, so damage to a major power station or a single gas platform could cause disruptions.” That is a vulnerability — one successful missile on a gas rig could halt fuel supply to power plants, causing widespread blackouts. The Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) has thus been working on contingencies: maintaining dual-fuel capability at plants (so they can burn diesel if gas is cut), stockpiling at least 30 days of diesel on-site, and dispersing fuel reserves.
Another protective measure: hardening and redundancy. Key substations, the nodes that switch high-voltage power, are fortified or have backup sites. Most are underground or in reinforced concrete structures. Transmission lines are looped so that if one line is severed, power can flow from the other direction. Israel also has emergency mobile generators that can be dispatched to power critical facilities if grid supply fails. For example, the Home Front Command and IEC have generator convoys ready to light up hospitals or command centers in blackouts.
Crucially, the grid is designed expecting disruption, not peace. To paraphrase an Israeli engineer: “We assume war will come, so we build so the grid bends but doesn’t break.” Israel’s ethos: plan for the worst case.
It’s telling that every power plant has an IDF liaison officer and a defense plan. New infrastructure must be approved by the Home Front Command for protective measures.
Repair as Doctrine
How has this grid fared in actual conflicts? The record is impressive, though not flawless. During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi Scud missiles rained on Israel. Some hit near power infrastructure (one struck a Tel Aviv area and temporarily knocked out a substation). Yet power was restored within hours in most cases.
Fast forward to the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets at northern Israel daily. Some hit around Haifa, where major oil refineries and a power plant reside. In one instance, rockets damaged distribution lines causing outages in parts of Haifa. IEC crews, wearing helmets and flak jackets, went out to reroute and fix lines often while sirens were still sounding. They restored power sometimes within minutes to critical sites by switching feeds. As a result, even as sirens wailed, most Israelis not in the immediate impact zone had electricity. The government later reported that no large-scale blackout occurred despite over a thousand rocket strikes. Outages were localized and typically repaired the same day.
In the numerous Gaza conflicts (2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2023-present), Hamas rocket fire at Israeli cities sometimes struck infrastructure. For example, in 2014 a rocket hit a high-voltage line near Ashkelon, causing a cut that also ironically halted power to parts of Gaza (since Israel supplies Gaza power via that line). Israel fixed the line in short order. In May 2021, rockets from Gaza reached as far as Tel Aviv’s outskirts, lightly damaging some electric infrastructure. Again fixed within hours. The resilience was such that Israeli life behind the front largely continued normally in terms of utilities. There were no multi-day electricity outages for Israeli citizens in these wars, an astonishing achievement in wartime.
However, one must not get complacent. The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack caused some more serious issues: militants physically attacked some power substations near the Gaza border, plunging several kibbutzim into darkness as part of their assault. This compounded the chaos as communications failed too. It took the IDF and IEC a day or two to fully restore stable power in those areas after the militants were expelled.
On the immediate front lines, continuity can break for a time. But notably, the national grid was never in jeopardy. The lesson learned was to better secure small rural substations (perhaps by placing them underground or behind better fortifications). Already, there’s been movement toward hardening border-area infrastructure.
Fuel, Redundancy, and Freedom of Action
Electricity doesn’t come from the ether. And Israel’s sources of fuel have dramatically shifted in the past 20 years, bringing new strengths and some constraints.
Up until the 2000s, Israel was almost entirely dependent on imported coal and oil for electricity. This meant vulnerability. The 1973 OPEC oil embargo, for example, hit Israel hard (though Iran under the Shah quietly supplied it then).
To avoid such leverage against it, Israel diversified suppliers and built up stockpiles. By law it maintains a 90-day strategic reserve of oil. But real relief came with the discovery of natural gas offshore in the 2000s. By the mid-2010s, gas from domestic fields supplied the majority of Israel’s electricity generation. This was a game-changer. Suddenly Israel had a local, secure energy source not subject to foreign whims.
Dependence on a few gas rigs creates a single-point risk. Which is something Israel mitigates by maintaining dual-fuel plants and exploring new fields (like the smaller Karish-Tanin fields).
It also keeps some gas in a reserve called the “security stock” rather than exporting it all. Moreover, as part of big export contracts to Egypt, Israel ensured clauses that in an emergency, domestic needs get priority. Essentially, Israel will turn off exports before it ever has to brown out its own people for lack of gas.
Another element is renewables. Israel is very sunny, yet solar power was slow to take off due to land and storage issues. In the last few years that’s changing. Solar now can provide 10-15% of midday power on a good day. The strategic value of solar is that it’s indigenous and not easily attackable (it’s distributed over thousands of panels). The strategic downside is intermittency. Still, Israel’s 2050 energy plan targets a high share of renewables, which will further immunize it from fuel embargos or price shocks.
The energy mix shift also opened new diplomatic doors for regional energy cooperation. Israel’s gas exports to Egypt and Jordan, as discussed, bind those countries into mutual benefit and create a lobby against destabilizing Israel (their own energy security would suffer). This is a twist on the old oil weapon. But now Israel wields gas as a carrot. That said, Israel’s leaders know energy ties alone won’t buy loyalty — public opinion in Cairo and Amman remains hostile. But it raises the cost for those governments to allow a rupture in relations.
Gas Changes the Map
In strategic terms, gas has been both an empowering asset and a complex new variable for Israel. It has bolstered energy security and opened diplomatic channels, yet also introduced new vulnerabilities (big offshore rigs to guard, export politics to navigate).
The Offshore Breakthrough
In the late 1990s, few would have bet on Israel striking major hydrocarbons. Then, in 1999, a modest field (Mari-B) was found off Ashkelon, supplying some gas to Israel’s first gas-fired power station by 2004 . But the game-changer came a decade later. In 2009, a consortium led by Noble Energy confirmed the Tamar field in the eastern Mediterranean, with reserves of about 8 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas. Enough to fuel Israel for decades. A year later, lightning struck again. The Leviathan field, roughly double Tamar’s size (~16 TCF), was discovered deeper offshore. Suddenly, Israel had more gas than it could have hoped for. The timing was poetic — just as Egyptian gas imports were faltering due to Sinai pipeline attacks (more on that soon), Israel found its own gas salvation.
The discoveries were met with euphoria but also intense internal debate. On one hand, energy independence was a dream come true. The Israeli public saw dollar signs and cheaper electricity. On the other hand, policymakers realized this windfall came with decisions to make. How to tax it. Whether to export. How to secure it. How to integrate it without corruption. The government convened the Sheshinski Committee in 2010 to examine the royalty and tax regime. Its conclusion in 2011 was to substantially raise the state’s take (up to ~60% of profits). Ultimately Israel did increase taxes on gas profits and created a sovereign wealth fund to invest the proceeds for the future.
Another debate: how much gas to earmark for domestic use vs export. Here, security considerations loomed. The Zemach Committee (2012) advised ensuring at least 50% of reserves are reserved for domestic consumption to guarantee 25-30 years of supply . The government initially approved something like a 60/40 split (60% for Israelis, 40% can be exported), trying to balance long-term energy security with the desire to monetize via export. Some argued for hoarding it all (energy hawks saying who knows if fields might deplete faster), others for exporting most (free-market types wanting to seize high prices while they could). The compromise leaned cautious. In other words, to prioritize Israel’s own energy independence first.
Security assessments identified a glaring vulnerability. Big offshore platforms in the Mediterranean that could be targeted by Hezbollah or even Iranian cruise missiles. Almost immediately, the Israeli Navy was tasked with expanding to protect the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Billions of shekels were invested in new Sa’ar 6 corvettes equipped with advanced radars and anti-missile systems to guard the gas rigs. Israel has stationed permanent defenses at Leviathan and Tamar (combination of naval patrols, drones, and on-rig interceptors).
Lebanon claimed Leviathan might extend into its waters (it doesn’t, but the issue of EEZ borders led to a years-long dispute). Hezbollah issued threats that it wouldn’t allow Israel to “plunder” maritime resources — effectively trying to scare off companies. But Israel stood firm and also courted international involvement (the drilling consortium included an American company Noble and later major investors like Chevron, which adds a layer of U.S. interest in stability).
When Dependence Explodes
In the mid-2000s, riding on the new peace with Jordan and warmer ties with Egypt, Israel agreed to import natural gas from Egypt via a pipeline through Sinai. For a time (2008-2011), this Egyptian gas provided around 40% of Israel’s natural gas needs, fueling its power plants cheaply. Strategically, it seemed a win-win. Egypt earned revenue and cemented peace economics. Israel got affordable gas and diversified from coal. But the arrangement was only as stable as Egypt’s Sinai security and politics — which, as you could have guessed, proved shaky.
After President Mubarak’s ouster in 2011, the pipeline came under relentless attack by Sinai jihadis. Over two dozen bombings hit the pipeline from 2011 to 2012, repeatedly interrupting gas flow. Each time, Israel had to scramble to switch power plants back to costly diesel or fuel oil to avoid blackouts. The writing was on the wall: reliance on Egyptian supply had become a strategic liability. The situation got so untenable that in 2012 the Egyptian supplier EGAS unilaterally canceled the contract (ostensibly a business dispute, but really they couldn’t guarantee delivery). Israel suddenly had a gaping hole in its energy supply — a minor crisis.
Israel managed by upping production from its small domestic fields and using more expensive imported fuel. This pinch underscored the importance of developing Tamar ASAP, which fortunately came online in 2013 just in time to save the day.
By 2014, Israel no longer needed Egyptian gas. It had its own from Tamar. The pipeline, lying dormant, became a symbol of how external dependence can literally blow up in your face. But here’s the twist: within a few years, the pipeline found new life — in reverse. In 2018, Israel signed a $15 billion deal to export gas to Egypt using that very same Sinai pipeline. Israel’s Delek Group and its partner Noble even bought a stake in the pipeline to ensure its operation. Gas began flowing from Israel to Egypt in early 2020, making Israel a net energy exporter for the first time. In February 2020, ISIS-Sinai blew up a section of pipeline. However, by then Egypt had alternate routes and storage, so the impact was minimal and fixed quickly.
Pipelines as Alignment
Israel’s gas discoveries coincided with similar finds by Cyprus and Egypt, creating a shared interest in developing these resources and exporting to Europe. This led to the formation of the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF) in 2019, headquartered in Cairo, with members including Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority. The forum’s existence is a minor miracle. It’s one of the few multilateral bodies where Israel sits alongside Arab states (sans direct US/EU mediation). The EMGF aims to coordinate policies, build regional pipelines, and ensure each gets a piece of the pie. Notably, Turkey was excluded (much to Turkey’s anger), solidifying a Greece-Cyprus-Israel-Egypt alignment. As analyst Hugh Lovatt observed, “Israel no doubt sees the creation of the EMGF as an important step… The exclusion of Turkey, and the deep animosity shown towards [it] by members, are a welcome bonus for Israel,” since Turkey backs Hamas and harasses Israel’s allies.
Israel’s ability to export gas to Europe (even if relatively modest amounts) raised its profile. In June 2022, the EU signed a memorandum with Israel and Egypt to increase gas imports from the East Med. Europe’s hunt to replace Russian gas turned Israel from an irrelevant player (in EU eyes) to a potential contributor to European energy security. It’s not a game-changer (volumes are relatively small), but it’s a foot in the door of strategic dialogues that Israel wasn’t part of before.
Natural gas has undoubtedly strengthened Israel’s hand, but it is not an all-powerful trump card.
The Systems Nation
Israel is often dubbed the “Startup Nation,” but increasingly it’s morphing into what we might call the “Systems Nation.” Where an integrated ecosystem of military, academia, and industry drives cutting-edge digital infrastructure.
Military R&D as National Engine
For a country of fewer than 10 million, Israel punches absurdly above its weight in technology. The roots of this go back to its founding. Necessity drove innovation (radios, codebreaking, aerospace), and a culture that prized education and tachles (practical results) nurtured many engineers. But the key accelerator was the integration between the IDF’s technological units, Israeli universities, and a burgeoning private tech sector. Over decades, this integration has become seamless, creating a pipeline of talent and ideas that constantly rejuvenates Israel’s digital infrastructure.
One emblematic engine is Unit 8200, Israel’s elite signals intelligence and cyber unit, often likened to America’s NSA. Veterans of Unit 8200 have spawned countless startups and cybersecurity companies. What began as a trickle of 8200 alumni founding companies in the 1990s and 2000s is now a torrent.
According to recent estimates, hundreds of startups have roots in 8200, and more broadly IDF tech units (including Unit 81 for hardware, Air Force tech, etc.) are a training academy for Israel’s entire innovation economy.
This synergy essentially means Israel’s digital infrastructure — from cybersecurity firms guarding global banks to healthcare AI — often originates in military R&D labs or is accelerated by skills learned there.
Israel’s defense-tech sector has nearly doubled in size since October 7, 2023, growing from roughly 160 companies to more than 300 active start-ups in recent days. Veterans returned from the battlefield with ideas for better drones, sensors, AI battle management, and immediately started new companies to fill those needs.
The government and IDF, far from keeping everything in-house, increasingly tap these startups for solutions, often embedding them in projects from the early stages.
A young Israeli might serve in a cyber unit at age 19, be solving complex problems with top-notch tools, finish service at 23, then found a startup using similar techniques to solve a civilian problem, all while perhaps still doing reserve duty where she stays abreast of the latest military tech. This cycle constantly cross-pollinates knowledge.
The outcome of all this is not just successful companies, but a robust digital infrastructure within Israel that supports national power. Think of critical areas: communications, banking, transportation, government IT — Israeli tech secures and optimizes them in a very self-reliant way. Israel famously has backup communications methods (like an independent satellite network, AMOS, after relying on foreign satellites proved risky). Its government networks are defended by a lattice of local cyber firms and the cyber units.
Israel doesn’t depend on foreign IT contractors for sensitive systems — it leverages its own. Even during crises, Israeli digital networks have proven resilient (e.g. despite massive cyber attacks by Anonymous and Iran during conflicts, Israel’s internet and finance system never suffered catastrophic failure; quick isolations and backups were in place).
Where the World Depends on Israel
One might ask: how does Israel’s digital prowess translate into global dependence or influence? The answer lies in key industries where Israel is a node that the world economy or security ecosystem quietly relies on.
Surprising to some, tiny Israel is a giant in the chip world. Intel has operated in Israel since 1974 and today has major chip fabrication plants in Kiryat Gat. These produce advanced microprocessors — including many of Intel’s Core PC chips and the latest Mobileye autonomous driving chips. In fact, an estimated 10-15% of all new Intel computer chips worldwide are designed or manufactured in Israel (Intel Israel’s exports hit $9 billion in 2022, about 1.7% of Israel’s GDP and 5.5% of its high-tech exports). If something were to disrupt those plants, Intel’s global supply chain would feel it.
Apple, AMD, Nvidia all have R&D centers in Israel working on next-gen chips. Nvidia’s newest AI chips (crucial for training large language models) have key components designed by its Israeli teams. Simply put, Israel’s chip engineers are embedded in most major tech firms’ product development. If Israel’s tech workforce were cut off, product cycles in Silicon Valley would stumble. This gives Israel intangible leverage — companies like Intel and Apple have a stake in Israel’s stability and will lobby albeit usually behind closed doors to ensure Israel is supported.
Israel was a fast adopter of AI, especially in defense and surveillance (which draws criticism from civil liberties advocates, but has kept Israel ahead of adversaries in tech).
Israeli startups are leaders in computer vision (used in autonomous drones, border security), predictive analytics (for cyber defense, finance, etc.), and natural language processing for intel.
Much of the AI talent comes out of places like Unit 8200’s data science divisions. Globally, Israel’s AI algorithms permeate — from algorithms in Microsoft’s cloud security (thanks to Microsoft’s big Israel R&D center) to image recognition in many smartphones (Apple’s FaceID’s foundations are from an Israeli acquisition, PrimeSense). Moreover, Israel’s data sets (e.g. years of drone surveillance, combat scenarios) have been used to train AIs that allied countries employ. Also, Israel’s early warning and missile defense AI is now integrated with U.S. systems (e.g. the United States has bought Iron Dome batteries, and the algorithms and radar integration came along).
Trust comes into play here. Certain Western allies trust Israeli tech enough to incorporate it in their sensitive systems—something they couldn’t do with, say, Chinese tech. For instance, Britain uses Israeli UAVs in its military, and Germany is buying Israel’s Arrow-3 anti-ballistic missile system for European defense. These involve software/AI trust.
Conversely, Israel also trusts a select few allies to share technology with under export controls (the U.S., and increasingly India, etc.). Israel is careful not to sell cutting-edge cyber or AI to adversaries of the West (after a brush with China on an airborne radar sale in 2000 that the U.S. nixed, Israel recalibrated its export oversight).
Israel’s role in defense tech exports is crucial. It’s among the top 10 arms exporters globally, specializing in things like drones, anti-missile systems, electronic warfare, and cyber tools. Many countries’ militaries depend on Israeli kit. India’s military is a major client (Israeli radar and missiles on Indian ships, Israeli drones patrol Indian borders).
EU states (even the overtly antisemitic and hostile ones like Poland) just bought hundreds of Israeli loitering munitions.
Even some Arab states quietly use Israeli surveillance tech (as leaks about Pegasus spyware showed, several Gulf and other governments used it — which, controversy aside, indicates they saw Israel as an integral part for their own cyber arsenals).
That said, dependence doesn’t equal affection or diplomatic alignment.
Many EU countries that buy Israeli arms still vote to condemn Israel in UN forums. Israel knows this, so it doesn’t overestimate influence from exports. But it does create an undercurrent of pragmatic relationships.
For example, when the EU was weighing labeling goods from Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria, Israel subtly reminded that some of those “goods” were components in tech that European companies use — a minor factor perhaps, but every bit of interdependence adds reluctance to wholly alienate Israel.
For a period, China became a major market for Israeli tech (notably in surveillance and AI). China is certainly no ally of Israel politically — it votes against Israel often at the UN. Yet it covets Israeli innovation. Israel had to scale back sales to China under US pressure (e.g. no advanced defense sales), but tech investment continues in the civilian sector. So China extracts value from Israel’s ecosystem while still arms-length diplomatically. That has pushed Israel to be more guarded. Sovereignty in tech also means being careful who you share it with. Israel learned that giving China too much could anger the US and possibly come back to harm Israel’s own qualitative military edge. So Israel tries to align with Western export controls on critical tech, even though it costs some business.
One could argue a hostile but pragmatic country might say “We’ll just replicate Israeli tech ourselves if Israel is gone.” But replication isn’t trivial. The decades of know-how and unique security-driven perspective Israel’s tech minds have cannot be instantly cloned. That’s why even superpowers find value in Israeli innovations (e.g. the US military incorporated Israeli active protection systems on tanks because the US hadn’t developed one as good yet).
Continuity in the Digital Domain
If water and electricity keep Israel’s body alive, cyber is the neural network keeping its brain and nerves functioning. Israel’s cyber infrastructure encompasses defensive measures to protect its critical systems and offensive capabilities to deter or disrupt enemies. It is another realm where Israel has innovated a doctrine of continuity: ensuring that even under cyber attack, essential services continue, and that Israel can hit back to make adversaries think twice.
On the defensive side, Israel has a National Cyber Directorate (INCD) that works closely with the IDF Unit 8200 and civilian sectors. They have developed a multi-tiered approach: securing government networks (the Cyber Dome program), assisting the private sector to harden key industries, and running nationwide drills (like the “Cyberstorm” exercises) to simulate major cyber attacks. The 2020 attempted Iranian cyber attack on water systems was a wake-up call. Israel’s response was to immediately upgrade the isolation of its water SCADA controls and enforce two-factor authentication and other best practices across all utility control systems. The head of INCD admitted that the attack’s goal was to sicken civilians by altering chlorine levels — a blatant attempt at mass harm. That crossed a line. Though the attack was thwarted by failsafes (or luck), it propelled Israel to institute what one might call a “zero trust” approach on critical infrastructure: assume breaches and limit their impact via fail-safes (e.g. if a chemical injection command is suspicious, system defaults to shutdown rather than execution).
Cyber resilience also means backup modes. Israel reportedly retains manual overrides for many systems— meaning if hacking knocks out automation, operators can fall back to analog control. This was an advantage of having a mix of older and newer tech; not everything in Israel is fully digitized (Israel’s water system still had manual valves which is partly why the 2020 hack didn’t succeed). Additionally, Israel invests heavily in cyber intelligence to catch attacks in planning. Being a top-tier cyber power, Israel often has visibility into adversaries’ capabilities.
On the offensive side, Israel has used cyber as a strategic tool in its deterrence kit. The most famous example: Stuxnet (2010), widely attributed to Israel (with US help), which sabotaged Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges. That was a milestone: a cyber attack causing physical damage to a strategic program. It delayed Iran’s nuclear drive without a single bomb dropped.
Israel keeps its offensive cyber units mostly in the shadows, but their reputation is well known. Unit 8200 is believed to have an array of cyber weapons and a dedicated mission of foiling terror and WMD plots via hacking. One published case: 8200 reportedly foiled an ISIS plan to bomb a passenger plane in 2017 by hacking into ISIS comm channels, info which Israel passed to Australia to stop the bombers at the airport. That kind of intelligence coup via cyber saves lives and wins Israel immense goodwill from allies. It also underscores that Israel’s offensive cyber is not just for destruction but also for surveillance and preemption.
Cyber resilience for civilian continuity is another focus. Israel sees its civilian population as part of the war effort (the “home front”), so keeping their morale and daily life going is vital. Therefore, critical civilian services — power, water, finance, telecom — are protected almost like military assets in cyber terms. There’s close coordination between companies and the state. For example, major banks in Israel regularly do joint drills with INCD for cyber crisis, making sure an attack on financial networks won’t crash the economy or at least that recovery is quick. In 2017, when a global ransomware (NotPetya) hit many countries, Israel had minimal impact because its agencies had warned companies to patch systems (based on intel gleaned by Unit 8200).
During the recent war surges, there have been massive attempts by state actors (Iran, Turkey, China, Russia, etc.) and hacktivists to take down Israeli government websites and critical infrastructure. Some succeeded briefly (a few .gov.il sites were down for hours due to DDoS attacks). But Israel had backup domains and cloud mitigation, so services were restored.
The adaptation even mid-crisis — shifting some sites to Israeli CloudFront instances and using geo-blocking — showed agility. Hacktivists did breach some peripheral systems. But no core infrastructure was compromised.
Supply Chains Under Siege
Infrastructure doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s part of an overall national system that includes trade networks, supply chains for essentials like food and medicine, and the information battles that swirl around them.
Planning for Blockade
For a country that imports over 90% of its grain and a large share of raw materials, Israel takes supply chain security very seriously. There’s a national grain reserve (usually a few months’ worth of wheat stored in silos). Fuel reserves we mentioned (90 days requirement). During the 2020 pandemic, Israel was quick to airlift supplies and ramp up local production of things like masks and ventilators. The government realized during COVID that global just-in-time supply can fail, so they started initiatives to encourage local production of some essentials.
Israel’s agriculture is highly efficient (fruits, vegetables, dairy, and poultry are largely self-sufficient). But as an OECD report noted in 2025, Israel is “a consistent net-importer of agro-food products” especially grains, oilseeds, beef, and fish.
Recognizing vulnerability, Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture recently launched a National Food Security 2050 program. It aims to diversify import sources, increase local production where possible (like encouraging some grain cultivation in the Galilee or Negev using resilient crop strains), and importantly, monitoring global risks in real-time. This came after October 7, 2023 war when there were calls to boycott Israel goods or refuse shipping. “The events of October 7 highlighted that Israel cannot rely on imports as an alternative to local production, given increasing boycotts and climate change effects,” the Agriculture Ministry stated bluntly. Thus they’re building a system to ensure “functional continuity in the face of blocked supply routes.”
They’re even working on concrete infrastructural fixes. Israel has Ashdod and Haifa as main ports, but also smaller ports in Eilat and nascent private operations also in Ashdod, Haifa, and under consideration elsewhere — multiple entry points so a closure of one (due to conflict or boycott) doesn’t choke trade. Also, after seeing some foreign shipping companies hesitate during conflicts, Israel developed a modest national shipping capacity (through Zim, partly Israeli-owned, which in crisis prioritizes Israeli needs). Air freight can also be a lifeline: El Al famously flew on Shabbat in the Yom Kippur War to bring emergency arms. For COVID it flew to China and back for medical gear.
Israel has one of the world’s most self-contained defense industries for a country its size. Of course, it does buy high-end fighters from the US, etc., but often customizes them with Israeli avionics. This reduces vulnerability to arms embargoes. Today, if one pipeline of arms is cut, Israel has alternatives or its own interim solutions. However, it has a way to go towards autarky— a needed development, since at present, Israel relies to heavily on U.S. goodwill (something that historically has not been guaranteed).
However, there are still weak spots. Israel, as noted, imports most of its animal feed. If global grain markets seized up (like if the Black Sea grain deal collapses completely), feed costs soar — affecting local poultry and dairy output. Climate change could also hit its supply partners and even local farming (though Israel is somewhat cushioned by advanced irrigation). The key is Israel is openly planning for these eventualities.
What Collapse Actually Looks Like
To appreciate Israel’s durable systems, it’s instructive to contrast with places where infrastructure was misused or collapsed, yielding true fragility or state failure. These cautionary tales put into relief the smart choices Israel made.
Venezuela, once one of the richest per capita countries in Latin America due to oil, nationalized and politicized its infrastructure. The electric grid was starved of investment and staffed by loyalty over expertise. Result: massive blackouts in 2019 and onward. Public transport and communication systems collapsed with losses above $875 million from one week-long blackout. This contributed to an exodus of millions of citizens and essentially a failed state. (To say nothing of the current upheaval in the wake of Maduro’s capture by the U.S.) Why? Infrastructure was treated as a political tool (for patronage) not as a national backbone.
Since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, basic services there deteriorated. They prioritized tunnel building and rockets over water plants and power. Gaza’s sole power plant often is offline due to lack of fuel or maintenance. Its water aquifer is over-pumped causing salinity and sewage issues. Hamas even dug up water pipes to make rocket casings. This is a stark example of ideology trumping infrastructure — and it’s resulted in misery for Gazans (12-hour daily blackouts are norm, water is undrinkable without filtering). Hamas also has attacked Israeli infrastructure (like trying to blow crossing pipelines) that supply Gaza. Infrastructure fragility has made Gaza more dependent (on international aid, on Israel’s goodwill for fuel), undercutting Hamas’s supposed “resistance” posture.
Lebanon, Hezbollah’s fiefdom, has what is effectively a failed electric grid (even before the 2020 economic meltdown, Beirut had daily generator hours; now state power is maybe 1-2 hours/day). This collapse came from decades of sectarian mismanagement and corruption in infrastructure, plus Hezbollah’s parallel illicit economy. Lebanon can’t project power or stability and is at mercy of fuel donors and diaspora remittances. Lebanon’s internal sovereignty eroded as its infrastructure did.
The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine illustrates how infrastructure becomes the battleground. Russia bombs Ukraine’s grid to break morale. Ukraine innovates (using Israeli supplied generators among others) to keep lights on, and amazingly Ukraine’s state hasn’t collapsed after years of infrastructure targeting. It underscores that continuity of systems under attack can decide a nation’s fate. We also see Russia suffering logistics issues due to corruption in its military infrastructure — again, how internal rot of systems (maintenance, supply chain) cripples battlefield performance.
The Fantasy of Collapse
From its founding, Israel’s adversaries have comforted themselves with a belief that Israel is a temporary aberration. A “crusader state” that will eventually crumble. One hears Iranian leaders say Israel is a “cancer” that will be removed.
In 2000, after IDF withdrew from south Lebanon, Hezbollah’s Nasrallah gloated that Israel had become as feeble as a cobweb. He argued that Israeli civilians have no stomach for sacrifice — break their infrastructure or comfort, and they’ll flee. They amassed rockets aimed at Israeli cities thinking a barrage would send Israelis panicking and the state imploding. The 2006 war and subsequent conflicts have empirically disproven this. Israel has endured barrages, mourned losses, but did not collapse. Nasrallah told an interviewer that he was amazed how in 2006 Haifa residents under rockets still went about some daily business and the army kept fighting strong. Good riddance to him.
Palestinians refer to Israel as an “artificial entity” bound to disintegrate — pointing to internal divisions or emigrant Israelis as evidence of rot. These beliefs perhaps serve to sustain hope in the face of Israel’s military might. They bet on an implosion from within. Indeed, encouraging that is a strategy. Hence Iran and proxies wage psychological war, pushing narratives of Israeli society breaking (for instance, Hamas on Oct 7 aimed to project that their brutal attack had Israelis fleeing or soldiers melting away, which was false — within hours Israel mobilized 360,000 reservists, the opposite of collapse).
After October 7th, a narrative in some circles was “this is Israel’s 9/11, it will overreact and implode” or “Israelis have lost faith in their security, the society will fracture.” It’s a renewal of spider web theory. But then Israel’s systems kept functioning: yes, politics in Israel is heated, but water, power, economy all humming (some wartime dips but no breakdown). External attacks usually unite Israelis (at least short-term) more than divide them.
Israel’s flourishing high-tech and global integration have created facts that contradict fragility narratives. The myth of fragility sometimes leads foes into strategic mistakes — underestimating response or overestimating how a blow will crumble Israel. Hamas, on Oct 7, thought Israeli Arabs would rise against the State and IDF reservists wouldn’t respond. Instead, the opposite.
What Endures
Continue turning scarcity into surplus. More renewable energy so if gas rigs are threatened, it’s ok. More food tech like drought-resistant crops to be food secure during climate stress. Also remain flexible — a lesson of infrastructure as power is you must adapt it as conditions change. For instance, when AI can predict maintenance issues, that should be deployed to pre-empt infrastructure failures.
The Eastern Med is heating and drying. Israel’s Water Authority models predict a significant drop in natural water recharge by 2050. However, more extreme weather (flash floods, heatwaves) could strain electricity demand and physical infrastructure. Israel’s electric grid must handle peak loads under heatwaves that push A/C use to the max. To this end, Israel is deploying smart grid tech and storage to shave peaks. Also, rising Mediterranean sea levels might affect coastal power plants by mid-century. Israel has begun fortifying and considering more inland generation. Regionally, neighbors face worse climate stress, which could cause further instability, as well as Arab-world migrations. Israel might find its desalination and solar tech in even higher demand as countries seek to adapt. Conversely, if neighbors collapse under climate pressure, Israel may need contingency plans (perhaps quietly helping via third parties to prevent total chaos next door, as it already does by occasionally supplying water or fuel to south Syria villages in covert humanitarian ops).
The world is in an AI arms race. Israel is extremely well placed, with dozens of top AI startups and AI integrated in everything from military intel to agri-tech. But AI also poses threats — deepfakes, cyber attacks enhanced by AI, etc. Israel’s cybersecurity strategy explicitly now accounts for AI-driven threats (like AI that can find zero-day exploits faster). To maintain resilience, Israel will likely invest heavily in AI for cyber defense (already Unit 8200 uses AI to triage cyber anomalies) and for optimizing infrastructure (predictive maintenance in rail, smart traffic grids to avoid one route failure jamming entire city, etc.). Quantum computing could, in a decade, break today’s encryption — so Israel is working on quantum-resistant cryptography for its secure communications networks.
Models for Middle East stability in next 10-20 years vary, but most foresee a continued struggle between Iran’s camp and a US-Israel-Arab camp, plus non-state chaos in failing states. In that worst case, one would expect heavy damage to northern Israeli infrastructure. Israel’s strategy is to shorten such war by massive offensive, but it’s also enhancing redundancy (e.g., prepping southern Israel hospitals to take patients if northern ones are bombed beyond their capacity, etc.). Israel runs regional and nationwide drills (like turning off power in a city to simulate outage recovery). Israel expects the unexpected and is racing to ensure that even if some infrastructure goes down, alternatives kick in within hours.
If global supply lines reorient (less reliance on China, etc.), Israel could benefit by stepping in with trusted supply in certain niches. But also, if a recession hits allies, there could be less investment flowing to Israeli innovation. Israel should thus keep diversifying markets (courting Global South, etc.).
Sovereignty by Design
From the first pipelines and power stations of the 1930s to today’s cloud servers and gas rigs, Israel consciously designed infrastructure as instruments of national power.
Even today, the roll-out of 5G or fiber is tied into secure networks for defense and economic robustness. Nothing in Israel’s infrastructure is truly neutral — it’s all imbued with a mission of keeping the state viable under threat.
Enemies have tried to terrorize the Israeli public with rocket barrages, intending to create chaos and psychological defeat. But when rockets are met with interception (Iron Dome and its associate systems) and immediate restoration of any damaged utilities, the attempt to break continuity fails. In cyber terms, when Iran’s attempt to poison water was countered and responded to with a more humane cyber counter-punch on their port, it likely deterred them from escalating cyber attacks to critical Israeli systems since they know Israel can absorb and hit back.
The very capacity of Israel to absorb shocks and continue to function removes adversaries’ incentives to use infrastructure attack strategies.
It’s unfortunate but undeniable that Israel’s advancements have not mellowed its enemies, but often enraged them further. Israel’s emergence as a gas exporter led Lebanon to posture harder on maritime claims until a deal was mediated. The more Israel disproves the fragility myth, the more some hostile actors double down on trying to find other angles (legal, narrative) to undermine it. This means Israel cannot expect its humanitarian or constructive efforts alone to change deeply ingrained hostility. As Israel’s indispensability grows, some hostility will wane pragmatically, but the core ideological enemies will actually intensify efforts out of frustration.
Israel’s continuity of governance and services through wars, intifadas, and isolation attempts shows a level of sovereignty that few countries facing similar threats have ever maintained. Israel’s projection of power — diplomatic, military, economic — is entirely undergirded by the resilient systems at home that free it to act independently.
Israel, through its infrastructure-as-national-power strategy, has earned a reputation even among adversaries as “hard to kill.” And so it will remain.
I keep thinking back to that apartment.
Same kettle. Same wiring. Same pipes. Same country—after wars, elections, protests, and pressures that were supposed to crack it.
Israel’s enemies still talk about fragility. About inevitability. About collapse just around the corner. They’ve been saying it for decades.
Meanwhile, the water keeps flowing. The grid holds. The networks route around damage. The systems endure.
That doesn’t make Israel perfect. It makes it real.
And in this century, sovereignty belongs to the states that can keep functioning when others want them to fail.
— Uri Zehavi · Intelligence Editor, Israel Brief