Redeploying combat divisions tests army authority

The military has pulled the Ninety-Eighth Division entirely out of its ongoing assignments. That redeployment shifts a full headquarters into the West Bank to take territorial control amid escalating internal friction and external violence. It leaves frontline commands stretched thin across multiple borders.

I'm Yoni.

And I'm Ari. This is another episode of All Fronts, a Daily Lion production, where we put a week of Israel's security into one picture. Today we are looking at the presidential pardon of Elor Azaria, mounting unrest over police shootings in Umm al-Fahm, and the redeployment of combat divisions to the West Bank. We also examine the grounding of attack drones in Gaza, Hezbollah's infiltration of the Lebanese army, and back-channel intelligence sharing with Saudi Arabia through CENTCOM.

President Isaac Herzog has erased the criminal record of a former soldier convicted of manslaughter. And he did that overriding the objections of the military's top command. The executive clemency arrives just as the army faces renewed international scrutiny over its internal oversight. That ranges from a British coronial inquest into a deadly drone strike. To fresh whistleblower allegations regarding operational conduct in Gaza.

For proponents of military reform, the rules of engagement have become a dangerous burden. Writing in The Jerusalem Post, one commentator who spent three decades in uniform argues that ethical guidelines have morphed into a source of fear for troops on the ground. The rigid enforcement of what the military calls purity of arms paralyzes soldiers. They're forced to make split-second decisions under fire. And that leaves them terrified of judicial micromanagement. In this view, erasing the criminal record corrects a historic overreach. The incident began on March twenty-fourth, twenty sixteen. Two armed Palestinians stabbed an Israeli soldier at a post in Hebron, prompting troops to open fire.

What happened to the soldier after the shooting?

He was prosecuted for his actions that day. He ultimately received an eighteen-month sentence that was reduced to fourteen, of which he served nine. The pardon, granted on September nineteenth, provides necessary personal relief to a soldier who faced an overzealous legal establishment. The Defense Minister had formally requested the clemency in July to lift the lingering civilian burdens on the thirty-year-old. For this camp, the president's decision is a long-overdue signal. It shows the system will finally back its combat soldiers over the demands of military lawyers.

But the institutionalist camp looks at the exact same pardon and sees a devastating blow to military discipline. Former military spokesman Peter Lerner points out that the soldier was convicted of killing a wounded and incapacitated Palestinian attacker. He was released from prison in twenty eighteen. But the conviction was meant to stay on his civilian record until twenty thirty-two. Erasing that penalty now, without any expression of remorse from the soldier, undermines the commanders tasked with enforcing the law. The original trial sparked intense political intimidation. Protesters chanted, Gadi Gadi beware, Rabin seeks a friend, at the chief of staff who pursued the prosecution. Overriding the military justice system today signals to officers that upholding the rules of engagement invites political punishment. This internal breakdown directly threatens the country's legal defense abroad.

Where is that legal defense being tested right now?

When seven World Central Kitchen workers were killed in an April twenty twenty-four strike, the army's investigation found serious failures in decision-making and dismissed two officers. The military concluded the commanders' errors didn't amount to criminal misconduct justifying a criminal investigation. That reliance on internal probes is Israel's primary shield against foreign intervention. But it's already under intense pressure. The UK's Middle East Minister publicly rejected the military's conclusion. He stated the government will continue to push for urgent answers because the lack of a criminal inquiry is, in his words, not good enough. To defend its operations, the military relies on strict protocols, like requiring at least two separate indicators from independent sources before approving a target. Stripping authority from the officers enforcing those safeguards leaves the army unable to prove its moral integrity to the world.

The collision here is about what keeps an army intact. The question is whether a military survives by shielding its soldiers from legal scrutiny in the heat of battle, or by ruthlessly enforcing its own boundaries. The answer will determine not just how the ranks are commanded. It will determine how the country defends its wars on the global stage.

The protests over the police shooting in Umm al-Fahm are escalating. In Local Call, the case is that systemic police violence and state-backed provocations are driving it. Arab citizens face a trigger-happy lethal force protected by institutional impunity. Alaa Mahameed was the ninth Arab citizen killed by police gunfire since the start of this year, following twelve killed in twenty twenty-five. Since the year two thousand, police have killed one hundred and thirty-three Arab citizens. His brother Omar argues this is exactly what the political leadership wants. He notes officers would never dare treat Jewish citizens the same way. The Umm al-Fahm shooting is viewed as an unprovoked execution. Two hundred people protested at the city entrance on September nineteenth, two days after Mahameed was killed on Route sixty-five.

What does the video of the incident show?

His older brother Khaled says the video shows four fully equipped officers surrounding a man who wasn't resisting, shooting him in the stomach at point-blank range. The officer who fired got five days house arrest. This friction is compounded by unauthorized agricultural outposts in the Galilee, inflaming land grievances from the Land Day protests of March nineteen seventy-six. Activists see a continuous pattern of zero accountability. When fifty-seven-year-old Ahmad Said al-Na'ami was killed in May, police initially claimed he endangered officers. When Murshed Abd al-Hai was shot twice in the leg in the year twenty twenty-four, medical teams were delayed, and the investigation was closed after twenty-one months. The community is urged to sustain its fight for justice, twenty-six years after thirteen citizens were killed in the October two thousand events.

But the right looks at the same flashpoints and sees a completely different root cause. For Mida, the primary driver of the friction is growing nationalist radicalism, armed lawlessness, and terror support within the Arab sector that threatens state sovereignty. They describe the massive accumulation of illicit firearms as an acute national security crisis that increasingly intersects with terror. The police reported that about eighty percent of the three thousand six hundred and sixty-one illegal weapons seized in the first half of twenty nineteen were taken in the Arab sector. In twenty twenty-four alone, fourteen significant terror attacks were carried out inside Israel by Israeli Arabs, including five by Bedouin from the Negev. This ideological threat is compounded by political incitement and identification with terrorist organizations, which fuel subversion and open confrontations against law enforcement.

What is the legal penalty for expressing that support?

The counter-terrorism law sets a prison sentence of up to three years for expressing identification with a terrorist organization. Yet political leaders are accused of walking a dangerous line. When asked directly if Hamas is a terrorist organization that must be eliminated, Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas said he has an unequivocal answer but refused to actually say it.

Ask the security establishment pragmatists and the focus shifts back to the immediate danger of wartime provocations. In this view, reckless ideological provocations by Jewish extremists risk opening an unnecessary and disastrous internal armed front. The specific fear is that importing provocative agricultural outposts from the West Bank into the Galilee threatens to ignite a wide-scale armed confrontation with Arab citizens.

What precedent is the defense establishment looking at?

They understood the immense risk of a broad violent conflict with Israeli Arabs following the events of Operation Guardian of the Walls in May twenty twenty-one. With the military already stretched across multiple external fronts, they argue the state simply can't afford to let these provocations spark another internal war.

So the question now is whether the state can manage these local disputes before they merge into a broader crisis. What's being tested is the government's ability to enforce the law equitably, disarm the streets, and rein in provocations while the country's already fighting on multiple borders.

The military has placed its forces in the West Bank on maximum alert. That follows a string of deadly attacks just before the autumn holidays. Near Neve Tzuf, a Palestinian gunman opened fire. And at the Maccabim checkpoint, a driver rammed his vehicle into a patrol.

Right, so in response to all of that, the IDF has pulled the ninety-eighth Division completely out of its previous assignments. They redeployed that headquarters directly into the West Bank, and the military is doing that to take territorial control.

Former National Security Council official Amit Aviram argues that violence carried out by Jewish groups has escalated into a direct threat to national security. What is happening now is a pattern of organized raids on Palestinian villages involving dozens of violent participants. In the village of Jalud, an army estimate found that approximately one hundred settlers took part in a recent riot. The military is failing to enforce the law or take responsibility for its operational helplessness. When the army aborted a mission to return an expelled Palestinian family to their home, the IDF Spokesperson simply announced the task was not completed because of the violence. The military issued routine statements condemning vandalism and calling to bring perpetrators to justice. But those in the center see this as an institutional evasion of duty.

What does that evasion of duty do to the rest of the army?

This internal friction is forcing them to pull critical combat assets away from active war fronts. The decision to allocate one additional division headquarters to the West Bank is a direct result of these operational demands. It stretches an already overcommitted army. Halting this breakdown requires immediate government intervention and binding security coordination. Government policy has led to the establishment of many dozens of agricultural outposts in Area C. That expands the friction on the ground. The Defense Ministry established one inter-ministerial directorate this year to handle educational care for youth involved in the outposts. But the situation demands restored administrative detention powers to actually suppress the violence.

Look, for the right, that same redeployment is a politicized campaign fixating on settler violence to obscure the actual security threat. Commentary in Ynet argues this focus distorts reality by ignoring relentless Palestinian terrorism. Over a single Friday and Saturday, six attacks on Jewish farmers were recorded. Nearby, residents of the village of al-Mughayyir were responsible for eleven cases of sheep poisoning on surrounding farms. The actual terror threat is massive and organized, fueled by online incitement videos declaring they're coming for Jerusalem. On Yom Kippur, the IDF arrested two terrorists in Qabatiya about to carry out an attack, two weeks after arresting a terror cell of five operatives in the same town. Meanwhile, when the former Shin Bet chief presented a list of eight Arab casualties attributed to settler violence, evidence showed soldiers shot them.

How do they view the settler violence itself?

Against that backdrop, Jewish violence is an exaggerated, marginal phenomenon. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu characterized its entirety as one hundred and fifty youths throwing stones and chopping down olive trees. That recent ramming attack happened three days after a Palestinian gunman killed an Israeli father of six. After that shooting, Israeli troops searched approximately one hundred locations in Biddu. An hour later, soldiers thwarted a separate car-ramming attempt at the Ganim military post, killing one attacker and detaining a second. The threat extends underground, requiring a total military crackdown. In Qalqilya, police uncovered a terror tunnel reaching a depth of twenty-five metres, arresting four suspects at the site and seizing sniper rifles, ammunition, and fertilizer. For this camp, the mission is clear. Palestinian terrorism seeks to uproot the people of Israel from their land, and the military must settle scores with all of them across every front.

The military is now tasked with holding the line in a territory where the friction is both external and internal. What is being tested is whether a reinforced division can suppress a surge in organized terror cells while simultaneously navigating the collapse of local law and order.

On Friday in northern Gaza, an explosive drone operated by Israeli forces unexpectedly turned back. And it crashed into an army outpost. The detonation killed two reservists. That prompted the military to immediately ground all attack and munition-dropping drones across active combat sectors pending an inquiry.

Researchers at JISS argue that cheap commercial devices overturn the economics of air defense. They note that an off-the-shelf drone costing anywhere from hundreds to a few thousand dollars can now be deployed to strike civilian infrastructure. Or it can disrupt an expensive defensive system.

Who is exploiting that?

That economic imbalance is being weaponized on an industrial scale by hostile adversaries. They're fielding advanced low-altitude evasion doctrines to overwhelm Israeli borders, with Iran reportedly producing roughly sixty thousand drones of various types every month. They're adopting Russian designs developed in Ukraine. And that's backed by a 2027 Russian budget allocating one trillion rubles for the production of standard and jet-powered suicide drones. The resulting jet models reach speeds of approximately six hundred kilometers per hour, featuring low radar signatures and advanced evasion capabilities. Against that saturation threat, domestic air defense is compromised by fragmented inter-agency oversight and obsolete civil aviation regulations. The existing Israeli legal framework governing airspace was drafted more than thirty years ago. It was built for a technological reality that can't govern dual-use drone proliferation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a directive and warning about this evolving global threat in August 2026, describing a shift that's changing the battlefield.

The 16th Brigade had been operating in northern Gaza since September 10, utilizing tactical UAVs to target militants. The fatal crash killed twenty-four-year-old Nadav Kali and twenty-three-year-old Ofek Moalem. Both were combat soldiers in the brigade's 7007th Battalion. The Prime Minister stressed that all necessary lessons must be learned and implemented to ensure the safety of the troops.

How are national leaders responding to the loss?

The loss has drawn deep mourning from national leaders. Netanyahu expressed grief over the incident, calling them courageous soldiers who defended the country's security. Moalem had recently finished his first year studying mechanical engineering in Jerusalem. A close childhood friend recalled how happy Moalem was in the reserves. He noted that he stepped into a command role because he couldn't sit on the sidelines. The tragedy compounds recent losses for the communities involved. Kali lived in Har Halutz right across the street from a former classmate who was killed fighting in the Gaza Strip in November 2023. The Misgav Regional Council issued a statement saying it bows its head and shares in the grief of the Kali family.

The immediate tactical pause allows the army to investigate a fatal malfunction. But the broader vulnerability remains open. What's being tested is whether a defense establishment built to intercept expensive state-level missiles can adapt its command structures and regulations fast enough. They have to counter cheap, mass-produced swarms before they saturate the airspace.

The diplomatic frameworks meant to stabilize the northern border rely on a central mechanism: the Lebanese Armed Forces stepping in to enforce a buffer zone. Two years after the coordinated pager detonations and the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, attention has shifted to the military tasked with keeping Hezbollah out of the south. The scrutiny crystallized late last month following a tactical clash at Deir Mimas. The incident prompted a public examination of who exactly is commanding the Lebanese units on the border, bringing the demographic and political makeup of the state's official military into the center of the security debate.

And for Israeli security researchers, relying on the Lebanese military to secure the border is a dangerous illusion because the army itself is deeply compromised. They point out that Hezbollah intentionally exploits the demographic balance of the state's armed forces to build a network of sympathy and active cooperation within the ranks. The numbers dictate the reality on the ground, with approximately fifty percent of the soldiers in the Lebanese military coming from the Shiite community.

How does that demographic reality translate into active cooperation?

Well, many of these troops and their commanding officers actively assist Hezbollah, aligning with its interests or taking direct orders from its operatives. Because of this infiltration, deploying these units to the south creates a severe operational risk. Pro-Hezbollah officers and intelligence personnel embedded in these border deployments have the power to engineer tactical clashes with Israeli forces. By manufacturing a localized escalation, a rogue field commander could intentionally sabotage any ceasefire or diplomatic framework, serving Hezbollah's strategic goals from inside a Lebanese uniform.

But on September twenty-third, the Hezbollah mouthpiece Al-Akhbar responded directly to all of this public scrutiny. They completely reject any attempt to police the army's ranks, asking publicly whether Israel or Lebanese commanders get to decide the identity of the soldiers.

What else are they asking about those ranks?

And the newspaper also asked who's actually entitled to serve in the Lebanese military down in the south. Because that's exactly where they're drawing the line right now on this entire public debate over who controls the ranks on the ground.

So the viability of any northern border arrangement rests entirely on this mechanism. If the state military can't act independently of the forces it's supposed to separate, the diplomatic frameworks drawn up on paper won't survive contact with the ground. The test is whether the units patrolling the frontier answer to Beirut or to the factions around them.

Persistent Houthi drone and missile assaults have prompted a new and covert intelligence sharing arrangement between the Israeli military and Saudi authorities. United States Central Command is brokering the coordination. And that follows a quiet gathering of regional military chiefs at a secluded German ski resort.

The case from the Misgav Institute is that Israel must avoid launching a unilateral military campaign against the Houthis right now. The think tank held an online situation assessment on September 22. They concluded that the military should refrain from initiating an independent front.

Why are they advising against an independent front?

The researchers argue that the renewed civil war in Yemen is keeping the Houthis focused on internal warfare and regional positioning. And that fighting broke out after a relative lull lasting around four years. Because the militia's occupied with domestic conquests, the paper advises using this window to offer intelligence and technological cooperation to an isolated Saudi Arabia. That secures strategic ties without offering concessions on the Palestinian issue.

The Jerusalem Post argues that the collapse of regional defense arrangements has left Saudi Arabia reliant on Israeli intelligence. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Mecca Pact defense agreement on August 7. But the Houthis initiated a major wave of attacks against Saudi targets on September 8. And the pact failed to provide concrete military protection. Pakistan's military spokesman insisted in his words that his country fully stands with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia both diplomatically and physically. He promised they would go to any extent. But no allied troops intervened. That failure pushed Riyadh to seek direct American assistance. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met Admiral Brad Cooper in Jeddah on September 14 amid the escalating Houthi attacks. The following day, Washington agreed to offer targeted assistance to Saudi Arabia.

What does that targeted assistance actually look like?

The resulting framework relies heavily on Israeli surveillance. The newspaper notes that covert strategic cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel has spanned a sixty-year history. And the Institute for the Study of War describes the new intelligence sharing as resembling the support relationship Israel currently maintains with the United Arab Emirates.

The question now is whether this back-channel coordination remains a temporary fix for a specific threat, or hardens into a permanent regional architecture. The answer depends on whether Riyadh's need for early warning systems ultimately outweighs its reluctance to formalize ties while the war continues.

That's the picture as best we can see it. All Fronts is a Daily Lion production. Don't forget to tune in to the other Daily Lion shows: Sixty One, Crosswinds, and Tribe & State. See you next Wednesday.