Israel drafts new defence doctrine

Israel's security establishment has drawn up a new defence doctrine, as the country's political actors are increasingly expressing worry over the welfare of the Jewish state in the region, The Jerusalem Post reported Monday.

The daily, citing senior military sources, said that the six-layered doctrine, devised by the defence ministry, the Home Front Command and the general staff of the army, aims to provide better responses to the threat of rockets and missiles in wartime, Xinhua reported.

The first two layers are deterrence and diplomacy, tools that can be used to "build alliances and take apart enemies" without resorting to military force, the Post quoted a source as saying.

In the event that these two fail, a decisive preemptive strike, coupled with the activation of Israel's multitude of air defences, which comprise the doctrine's third and fourth layers, respectively, would be set in motion.

The fifth layer is passive defences, such as air raid sirens and bomb shelters, and the sixth and last layer centres on the conduct of civilians at a time of war, the report said.

The doctrine comes at a time when Israeli officials are increasingly concerned about its neighbours' growing arsenals of rockets and missiles that can be used against heavily populated urban centres in a future conflict.

A senior Israeli officer last month said that Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah currently stocks some 100,000 projectiles, some of which are capable of striking the Red Sea port of Eilat at Israel's southernmost tip with a one-tonne warhead.

According to Monday's report, Hezbollah had increased its stocks of long-range rockets from 500 to 5,000 since the second Lebanon war in 2006, prompting the Home Front Command to step up emergency preparations for minimising the impact on the civilian population during war.

"One cannot say that there is a front and a home front. The enemy sees the home front as the front in every way," said a military source.