How did Israel succeed in defeating the Arabs in all its wars?

As it is known, since the establishment of the State of Israel, many wars have taken place between the Arab states and Israel, and Israel has won almost all of these wars. Although Israel could not conclude its struggle with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 as it wanted, considering that Hezbollah is not a state but an organisation, it is still possible to say that Arab states have never won any war.

But why do the Arabs always fail and the Jews succeed?

Everyone can give a different answer to this question. Some will say that the Arabs are not in unity and solidarity, some will say that the Arabs do not know how to fight, and some will say that the Western states, especially the USA, that is, foreign powers, support Israel and that is why the Arabs lose. Of course, there will also be those who will come up with some unthinkable theories.

But there is a concrete fact. Israel has often succeeded in defeating Arab armies many times stronger than its own, and it has done so using its own army, not the soldiers of another country. Of course, it has received arms, logistical and intelligence support from some countries. But when we look at the Arab side, they also received similar support from many countries. 

The Arab states made some strategic mistakes, failed to coordinate their armies, were not always united, and their armies were always poorly trained. Nevertheless, in some wars, they achieved great numerical superiority, at least at the beginning of the war, they were able to act in coordination and even create a raiding effect. But they still lost.

The main reason for this is that, no matter how numerically strong they are, the relative combat power of the Arab countries is always weaker than Israel's relative combat power. But what is this relative combat power? 

The strength of an army is determined not only by the number of vehicles, weapons, equipment and soldiers. The qualifications of the soldiers and the command, as well as the characteristics of the weapons and equipment, are also important. Relative combat power is the power calculated by taking into account the effect of all these factors. 

The most important factor determining the relative combat power is the utilisation of the economic, demographic, cultural, etc. resources of the warring parties in a way to capture strategic targets. In other words, it is the efficiency of the available elements of national power.

When we look at Israel, we see that the efficiency is very high; when we look at the Arab states, we see that it is very low. Israel has a very dynamic army, which can be assembled in a short time with its conscription system and which applies modern military administration techniques. The Arab countries fighting it do not have these capabilities.

In fact, in terms of population, Israel has always been in a very disadvantageous position compared to the states that have fought with it. For example, the total population of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, the three countries with which Israel has fought the most wars, has always been 20 times that of Israel.  However, Israel has been able to compensate for this weakness by rapidly mobilising its entire population and economic resources to wage an all-out war. 

Israel's neighbours at war with Israel have almost never been able to mobilise effectively. Thus, despite having a much larger population, they have never been able to mobilise more than three times as many troops as the Israeli army. 

Moreover, the Arabs were never able to gather the troops they were able to mobilise on the battlefields at the most appropriate time and place. On the other hand, the Israelis, who are always alert and ready for war, have usually managed to send more soldiers to the battlefields than the Arabs, even when their number of soldiers was one third of the Arabs.

Another Israeli advantage is that they are almost always the first to mobilise and strike the first blow. Only in the 1973 war did the Arabs attack first, and they also achieved a numerical superiority over Israel. All other wars started with an Israeli offensive and the Israeli army had the numerical superiority in terms of the troops fighting on the front line. Moreover, the Arabs failed to inflict a heavy defeat on Israel even in 1973, when they started the war in a superior position. 

The most important reason for this was that the Israeli army was much better trained. Thus, the Israeli army was able to use its weapons much more effectively than the Arabs. Moreover, since the officers and generals of the Israeli army were more skilful, they were able to make more appropriate decisions in terms of tactics, operative art and strategy. 

Another Arab weakness is the lack of a common goal. On the Israeli side, on the other hand, the goal is always clear and unambiguous. The Israeli army, which is a national army that acts in a more professional manner than the Arabs and is least affected by domestic politics, always has only one goal: Win the war! Because every soldier is aware that if they lose the war, they will lose their state and their independence. 

Arab armies, on the other hand, are up to their necks in politics and are the armies of the regimes that dominate the country, not the nation. The purpose of the establishment of these armies is not to provide security for the people and to win victories to protect the state, but to maintain the regime. 

For this reason, Arab states have been able to use only a part of the population in their countries that is reliable for the regime. For example, almost all the officers in the Syrian army are Alawites, who make up just over 10 per cent of the total population. The situation is not very different in other countries. This situation has caused Arab countries to fail to utilise a large part of their potential.

In such a situation, the administrations of the Arab states have preferred losing the war to losing the army. This is because the Arab rulers feared that even if they were victorious, if they lost their armies, they would not be able to hold the strings of their countries in their hands. This is because the army is the most important force that allows them to keep the strings of the country in their hands.  

In fact, even though this strategy has been disastrous for Arab countries, it has been a very rational choice for the regimes. For example, Saddam Hussein, instead of resisting the coalition forces in the First Gulf War, withdrew most of his army and thus managed to stay in power for 12 more years. The Baathist regime in Syria also survived the Arab Spring thanks to an army commanded by mostly Alawite officers.

In conclusion, it can be said that there are many reasons why Israel has won almost every war it has fought with the Arabs. But the most important reason is that the Israeli army is a national army established to protect the state of Israel and its people against external threats, while the armies of the Arab states are armies established to oppress and control the people for the continuation of the regime. For this reason, the armies of both sides have been successful in the areas appropriate to the purposes for which they were established.