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This article is co-published with Capital and Empire.
Israel risks civil war or state collapse, a classified CIA assessment warns, as years of genocide in Gaza and war in Lebanon and Iran deepen political, economic and social divides within the country.
The August report, titled “Fracture From Within,” was compiled by experts from the CIA’s Red Cell, according to two U.S. sources who described the report’s contents to Drop Site News. Red Cell, which is the unit responsible for providing “alternative analysis” within the agency, produced the assessment by combining open source information and U.S. intelligence. The assessment appears to refer only to Jewish citizens of Israel and does not take into account Palestinian citizens, who make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population and who experience various forms of discrimination that Amnesty International and other human rights groups have called part of a broader apartheid system. The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.
CIA experts have highlighted a volatile mix of pressures converging in the run-up to Israel’s Oct. 27 elections: economic crisis and rising military spending; heavily armed veterans returning from prolonged combat, many suffering from severe psychological trauma; growing fury against ultra-Orthodox men who are exempt from military service; the escalation of settler violence in the occupied West Bank; and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struggling to retain power and sparking a constitutional crisis.
CIA “red teams” are tasked with developing analyzes and insights that challenge dominant assumptions and reveal groupthink or blind spots that can take hold within the intelligence apparatus. “The authors of this article are experts on Israel,” noted a source in the intelligence community, “this is not a fantasy scenario: with the upcoming elections and the fissures in Israel, we should take seriously their conclusion that Israel is only a spark away from full-blown internal conflict.” »
One of the deepest divides in Israeli politics is not over opposition to the country’s war crimes, but over who is supposed to fight and who is exempt. Ultra-Orthodox men have historically enjoyed broad exemptions from military service while continuing to receive state benefits, an arrangement that has become increasingly controversial amid repeated mobilizations of reservists. Their collective refusal to serve is not rooted in opposition to Israel’s wars, as ultra-Orthodox leaders say military service threatens religious life and their obligation to study Torah. But after years of reservists being repeatedly called away from their jobs and families, the exemption has become a powerful source of resentment in Israeli society. Households have also absorbed the costs of Israel’s belligerent policies. Food prices have reached recordswith the cost of food – including fresh fruit and vegetables – having risen by 9.5 percent over the past two years, worsening an already severe cost of living crisis after years of war.
Yet much of the opposition to Netanyahu is not opposition to Israel’s brutality against the Palestinians, but anger at the way he has handled the situation. The main anti-Netanyahu Zionist parties are themselves divided over coalition leadership and strategy, while one of the main lines of attack against Netanyahu has been his responsibility for the October 7 security failure. Recent vote showed that the Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu blocs are struggling to secure the 61 seats required to govern.
The sources warned that the combination of political fractures and a growing population of heavily armed and traumatized veterans has historical precedents. “It is common knowledge that the German Free Corps were veterans suffering from PTSD, armed and thirsty for blood,” he said. “I’m not saying that Israel after Gaza is Germany after the First World War, but there are certainly aspects that are similar to me. »
Israel also faces growing isolation abroad, including an erosion of support for the United States, which Israeli officials themselves have privately treated as a long-term threat. The August report highlighted Israel’s increasingly becoming a pariah state as a factor that could lead to state collapse.
According to another CIA assessment, Capital & Empire reported As of July, Israeli officials believe that the U.S. political consensus underpinning the alliance is crumbling and that continued reliance on billions of dollars in direct U.S. military aid could eventually become politically untenable. Their response was to seek deeper integration into the US military, intelligence and defense establishment – ties that would be harder for future governments to undo. Last spring, 60% of Americans viewed Israel unfavorably, up from 53% a year earlier, according to the Pew Research Center. investigation.
This deterioration of support is also increasingly visible within the US national security establishment. “The intelligence community, like America, like the military, like everywhere, is increasingly frustrated with the real and political capital being spent to support Israel,” the source said. “As we move forward in integrating our military-industrial capabilities with them, we feel a deep frustration that we are doing this for a country that has dragged us into a war that we are losing, a country that is spying on us.”
The CIA report also attempted to assess how these pressures might interact if Israel’s internal crisis deepens – how a single spark could turn a political divide into open civil conflict, and what would ensue. Scenarios discussed include foreign technology and artificial intelligence companies withdrawing investments or personnel from Israel, further eroding an already strained economy, regional governments reconsidering the political and strategic interest of deeper normalization of relations with Israel, and Hamas or Hezbollah exploiting a period of domestic weakness. The report specifically uses the term “civil conflict,” according to sources.
For decades, Israel’s power depended not only on its weapons and American support, but also on the belief that its military dominance, intelligence superiority and internal cohesion made the state effectively unbreakable. But as the assessment indicates, behind this projection of overwhelming force, Israel accumulates economic, political and social contradictions that military might alone may not be able to contain.
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