Undeclared Wars with Israel

The phrase “undeclared wars with Israel” is not treated as a formally defined legal or historical category by the principal reference sources consulted.[1][2] The National Library of Israel describes Israel’s conflicts as wars, campaigns, hostilities, and military operations, while a Congressional Research Service report uses “shadow war” for the low-level Israel–Iran confrontation and “campaign between the wars” for specific skirmishes and covert actions.[1][2] These terms describe different kinds of conflict and are not interchangeable.

Israeli law, as described by researchers Kobi Michael and Ilana Kwartin, requires a government decision to begin a war under Basic Law: The Government; the government must inform the Knesset’s Security and Foreign Affairs Committee and the prime minister must announce the decision to the Knesset plenum, in both cases “as soon as possible.”[3] The law does not distinguish among types of declarations of war or define the criteria for declaring one.[3] A 2018 amendment allowed the government to delegate authority to the security cabinet, while a separate provision permitting the prime minister and defense minister to act alone in “extreme circumstances” was repealed after about three months.[4] The law does not clearly define which military actions require such a government decision.[4]

The National Library of Israel identifies nine wars fought by Israel since its establishment, including the War of Independence, Sinai Campaign, Six-Day War, War of Attrition, Yom Kippur War, and the 2006 Lebanon War, without classifying them according to whether Israel formally declared war.[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica surveys major Arab-Israeli conflicts in 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, and 2023–present, likewise without presenting “undeclared wars” as a standard category.[5]

The expression has at least two distinct analytical lineages. In Israeli strategic writing, the Campaign Between Wars developed in response to changing regional threats and the destruction of the 2006 Lebanon War. Its architects described it as a shift away from a binary choice between preparing for war and openly fighting one, toward proactive, intelligence-led and often clandestine action below the threshold of full-scale conflict.[6]

A separate historical usage comes from Jeffrey Herf’s book Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left 1967–1989. Herf’s framework concerns ideological hostility, arms transfers, support for Palestinian terrorist organizations, and covert cooperation rather than an Israeli military doctrine.[7] The shared wording therefore links two different concepts, not a single continuous category.

The most extensively analyzed instance of sub-threshold conflict in the sources is the sustained confrontation between Israel and Iran and its proxies, which analysts describe using several overlapping labels. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy characterizes Israel’s Campaign Between Wars as a strategy developed in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon War to weaken adversaries’ capabilities, deter them, delay a larger war, and improve Israel’s military position if such a war occurs.[6] Rather than waiting for open conflict, the campaign relies on proactive, intelligence-led, and often clandestine action.[6] Its targets have included Iranian entrenchment and weapons deployments in Syria, the Qods Force and its proxies, and Hezbollah capabilities in Lebanon.[6]

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies describes this campaign — sometimes called mabam in Hebrew — as “an undeclared war with unclear frontlines” and notes that analysts differ over its boundaries: some focus exclusively on Syria, while others include cyber operations, assassinations, activity inside Iran itself, and maritime incidents.[8] A Congressional Research Service report similarly describes a persistent, low-level Israel–Iran conflict spanning Iran itself, countries bordering Israel, cyberspace, and international waters. Israeli officials identify Iran’s regional influence, nuclear and missile programs, and advanced conventional weapons capabilities as major concerns.[2]

The aerial dimension of the campaign has been especially intense. A March 2022 report cited by CRS estimated that, since 2017, the Israeli air force had struck at least 1,200 targets in Syria using around 5,500 munitions.[2] A Washington Institute analysis separately reported approximately 1,000 airstrikes in Syria between 2017 and summer 2020. These operations were aimed primarily at preventing Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon and blocking Iran from establishing bases or advanced-weapons manufacturing facilities in Syria.[9][2] In June 2022, then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett described some Israeli operations inside Iran during the preceding year as targeting “the head of the octopus,” characterizing the effort as aimed at several Iranian military capabilities simultaneously.[2]

Covert operations against Iran’s nuclear program have been reported but not officially confirmed by Israel. Sabotage, cyberwarfare, and assassinations have been attributed to Israeli efforts to delay the program, though Israel has maintained a policy of neither confirming nor denying involvement.[10] Former Mossad directors Meir Dagan and Ephraim Halevy reportedly argued that sabotage and diplomacy had delayed Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while other Israeli officials and analysts doubted that covert action had stopped Iran’s progress.[10] CRS cautions that parts of the subject remain debated or outside public knowledge.[10]

A parallel low-intensity confrontation has unfolded at sea. The Washington Institute describes the Israel–Iran maritime conflict as a gray-zone struggle that intensified from 2019, centered on Iranian oil shipments and efforts to supply Syria and Hezbollah.[11] The oil-smuggling network reportedly helped fund Hezbollah and the IRGC-Qods Force and supported the Assad regime; reported Israeli efforts sought to disrupt shipments without triggering a broader war.[11] Responsibility for some attacks was reported or inferred rather than publicly acknowledged by Israel, and analysts warned that reciprocal attacks could escalate or endanger international shipping.[11]

One notable reported incident involved the Saviz, a converted cargo ship moored near Eritrea’s Dahlak Archipelago and suspected of serving as an intelligence outpost and floating armory for Iran.[11] The vessel was attacked in the Red Sea on April 6, 2021, with the strike aimed below the waterline; the Washington Institute characterized it as a de facto military target despite its civilian classification.[11] Earlier, on June 11, 1971, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — with reported Stasi assistance — launched missiles at the Israeli oil tanker Coral Sea near the Bab el-Mandeb strait. The tanker caught fire, but its crew extinguished the blaze and saved the vessel.[12]

Michael and Kwartin characterize Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014 as a war in many respects that began without a formal declaration and lasted 51 days.[3] They argue that it expanded beyond Israel’s initial plan for a focused aerial campaign after Hamas employed naval commando units, UAVs, and attack tunnels, prompting a large ground deployment.[3] They describe Protective Edge as the third instance in which Israel intentionally avoided issuing a declaration of war, while qualifying that the Second Lebanon War may have been an inadvertent case of non-declaration.[3]

A legal challenge during the 2006 Lebanon conflict sought to compel a formal declaration; in Michael and Kwartin’s account, the court rejected the petition while finding that the statutory notification conditions had been met.[3] A 2018 amendment to Basic Law: The Government later allowed the government to delegate war-making authority to the security cabinet, though a provision permitting the prime minister and defense minister to act alone was subsequently repealed.[4]

On October 8, 2023, following the Hamas terrorist attack of the previous day, the government formally approved a state of war under Section 40 of Basic Law: The Government, retroactive to 6:00 a.m. on October 7.[4] Opposition members subsequently joined the government in a national unity arrangement approved by the Knesset.[13] Researcher Kobi Michael described the government decision as the first such declaration since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.[4] A June 2025 analysis of Israel’s operation against Iran reported Prof. Amichai Cohen’s view that a formal declaration of war was not legally necessary to conduct military operations of that kind and noted that the law does not clearly distinguish war from other major military operations.[14]

The Jewish Virtual Library applies the label “never formally declared” to the conflict it calls the “Palestinian War,” which it dates from September 2000 to the end of September 2005.[15] In that account, the violence began with a surge of Palestinian terrorist attacks in September 2000 and was suppressed by Israeli forces before petering out, without a formal cease-fire or peace agreement to end it.[15] Arabs referred to the same conflict as the “al-Aksa intifada.”[15]

The same account disputes the widely circulated claim that Ariel Sharon’s September 2000 visit to the Temple Mount caused the outbreak of hostilities. It cites the Mitchell Report’s conclusion that “The Sharon visit did not cause the ‘Al-Aksa Intifada,’” and points to incidents of violence that preceded the visit — including the killing of an Israeli soldier at Netzarim Junction on September 27 and the killing of an Israeli by a Palestinian police officer during a joint patrol on September 28.[15] These accounts and the labels attached to the conflict remain politically contested.

Israel’s War of Independence began with clashes following the UN partition vote of November 29, 1947, and entered an interstate phase after Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, when forces from Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, and Iraq entered the conflict.[15][5] The war’s military phase ended through General Armistice Agreements reached after UN-sponsored negotiations.[16][17] Egypt signed on February 24, Lebanon on March 23, Jordan on April 3, and Syria on July 20, 1949.[16] The resulting armistice line became known as the Green Line.[17]

Encyclopedia.com emphasizes that these agreements were provisional measures intended to facilitate a transition toward permanent peace, not final peace settlements.[16] A fundamental disagreement over their legal meaning persisted: Arab governments regarded the armistices as incidents in a continuing war that left belligerent rights intact, while Israel considered them to have terminated any possible state of war.[16] The distinction between armistice and peace treaty was formally resolved only decades later in some cases. The Israel–Egypt peace treaty, signed on March 26, 1979, formally ended the state of war that had existed between the two countries for thirty years.[5]

A distinct use of the phrase “undeclared wars with Israel” comes from historian Jeffrey Herf’s book of the same title, which examines how East Germany and the West German far left conducted sustained rhetorical, diplomatic, material, and covert hostility toward Israel between 1967 and 1989.[7]

Reviewer Allan Arkush argues that East Germany and the West German far left repeatedly demonized Israel and provided material as well as rhetorical support for Arab states and Palestinian terrorist organizations, while portraying Israel as heir to German genocide.[7] East Germany’s Communist Party had initially supported the establishment of a Jewish state in 1948, but the regime later adopted an anti-Israel stance in line with Soviet bloc policy.[7] After the Six-Day War, East Germany denounced Israel as the aggressor; in 1965, party leader Walter Ulbricht had characterized Israel as “a base of Western imperialism.”[7] East Germany never established diplomatic relations with Israel, so it did not break them after 1967.[7]

In the years following the Six-Day War, East Germany followed expressions of solidarity with Arab states with agreements to deliver weapons, sometimes at no cost.[7] Although smaller than Soviet and some Warsaw Pact deliveries, East German arms sales to Arab countries amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars. The GDR also sent hundreds of advisers, accepted Arab students, and established diplomatic relations with Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Egypt, and South Yemen in 1969.[7] Through the 1970s and 1980s, the GDR supported Palestinian organizations with funds and covert weapons, justified attacks against Israel, and provided members safe haven.[7]

The GDR’s response to the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre illustrated the limits of its stated positions: the government condemned a “crime against the Olympic Games” but, according to the review, avoided identifying the Israeli victims or explaining why they were murdered.[7] KGB records described by Ynet indicate that the Stasi provided training and weapons to the PFLP and helped prepare the 1971 missile attack on the Israeli tanker Coral Sea.[12] KGB assistance also helped a PFLP operative connect with West German radical-left groups, including the Baader-Meinhof Group, for possible joint operations.[12] An Israel Hayom account records Klaus Langhoff’s recollection that East Germany allowed Palestinian terrorists to travel through and prepare in the country and that Munich attack organizer Abu Daoud was protected there.[18]

On the West German side, Arkush argues that non-communist leftists and left-liberals had largely held pro-Israel views between 1949 and 1967, during a period when Vergangenheitsbewältigung — coming to terms with the Nazi past — involved repudiation of Nazism, reparations to Jewish victims, and acknowledgment of German responsibility for the Holocaust.[7] Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War and the killing of student Benno Ohnesorg in June 1967 helped shift the New Left’s orientation; within three months, the Socialist German Student League had condemned Israel’s actions and called for the return of Palestinian refugees.[7] Dieter Kunzelmann’s 1969 “Letter from Amman” exemplified the inversion of Holocaust memory by some far-left figures: rejecting what he called the “Jewish complex,” Kunzelmann argued that solidarity with Fatah could replace “philo-semitism,” framing support for Israel and sympathy for Jewish victims as compromised and Palestinian armed struggle as anti-fascist.[7]

Some West German leftists moved beyond rhetoric to direct collaboration with Palestinian terrorist groups. Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann worked with the PFLP in the hijacking of an Air France flight to Uganda and were killed by Israeli commandos during Operation Entebbe.[7] Members of the Revolutionary Cells bombed Jewish and Israeli sites in Germany between 1973 and 1980; Hans-Joachim Klein later renounced his involvement in a 1979 book.[7] The GDR and West German far left did not conduct a joint campaign, but their anti-Zionist rhetoric shared the theme of portraying Israel as the heir to Nazism.[7]

In 1990, East Germany’s first freely elected parliament asked Israelis for forgiveness for the GDR’s “hypocrisy and hostility” toward Israel and adopted a resolution rejecting decades of anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist policy; all parties except the Communist Party’s successor supported the resolution.[7] Arkush characterizes Herf’s work as “a post-mortem with a polemical edge,” concluding with Herf’s warning that distortions about Israel, the use of terrorism, and its justifications “cast a long and destructive shadow over politics and political culture in the Middle East, in Germany, and around the world.”[7]

The various frameworks grouped under this expression expose a recurring gap between the scale of hostile activity and the formal legal language used to describe it. In the Campaign Between Wars, sustained military and intelligence action is intended to weaken adversaries, deter escalation, delay a larger war, and improve Israel’s position if one occurs, even though the activity remains below the threshold of openly declared war.[6]

The legal debate separately shows that government authorization, public declaration, and the common description of an operation as a war are not necessarily the same thing.[3][4] Herf’s historical framework broadens the expression further by applying it to ideological campaigns, arms transfers, support for terrorist organizations, and covert activity conducted without conventional interstate warfare.[7] The phrase is therefore most useful as an interpretive description whose meaning must be specified in each context.

The core definitional problem is that “undeclared wars with Israel” is an interpretive framing rather than a settled legal or historical category.[8][2] Analysts and reference sources apply the phrase, or similar language, to phenomena as varied as Israeli airstrikes against Iranian assets in Syria, gray-zone maritime confrontations, and the 2000–2005 Palestinian conflict.[11][15] Herf’s framework applies the same wording to East Germany’s and the West German far left’s ideological and material hostility toward Israel, a context with a substantially different legal and strategic character.[7]

The scope of Israel’s Campaign Between Wars is itself contested. FDD records differing views: some confine the campaign to Syria, while others extend it to cyber operations, assassinations, activity inside Iran, and maritime incidents.[8] Reported Israeli responsibility for specific maritime attacks has not been publicly acknowledged by Israel, and some attributions rest on inference rather than confirmed fact.[11] Similarly, the effectiveness of covert action against Iran’s nuclear program remains disputed among Israeli officials and intelligence veterans, with some crediting it with meaningful delay and others skeptical of its impact.[10]

Michael and Kwartin’s characterization of Protective Edge as the third intentional avoidance of a formal declaration, and their treatment of the Second Lebanon War as a possible inadvertent case, are the authors’ interpretations rather than settled legal conclusions.[3] The Center for Israel Education describes the October 8, 2023 decision as the first formal declaration of war in half a century, while Globes attributes to Kobi Michael the more specific comparison with the 1973 Yom Kippur War.[13][4]

The 1949 armistice agreements themselves carried disputed legal meaning: Encyclopedia.com records that Arab governments viewed them as incidents within a continuing state of war, while Israel regarded them as terminating any possible state of war.[16] This foundational ambiguity meant that the legal status of subsequent hostilities was contested almost from Israel’s founding.