CIA experts warned in a classified report that Israel could be headed toward “civil war” or “total collapse,” Drop Site News reported Monday after being briefed on the assessment by two U.S. sources.
“The writers of this are Israel experts,” one of the U.S. sources told Drop Site News, speaking on the condition of anonymity for the outlet’s report, which was co-published Monday alongside the news outlet Capital & Empire. “This isn’t a fantastical what if — with the upcoming election and the fissures in Israel we should take seriously their conclusion that Israel is one spark away from real internal conflict.”
Titled “Fracture From Within,” the report was compiled in August by Red Cell, an analytical unit within the agency created after the Sept. 11 attacks to “challenge conventional wisdom in the intelligence community” by producing “alternative analysis,” as described by Foreign Policy.
Drop Site News had the content of the report described to it by the two U.S. sources, with the assessment pointing to several “volatile” pressures that appeared to be "converging" ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 elections, the outlet reported.
Among those pressures straining Israeli society cited in the report are economic struggles, record-high military spending, and mass psychological trauma and “mental illness.” The “deepest fractures in Israeli politics” cited in the report, Drop Site News noted, involved the nation’s growing ultra-Orthodox population, whose men have historically received broad exemptions to Israel’s mandatory military service “while continuing to receive state benefits.”
“Their collective refusal to serve is not rooted in opposition to Israel’s wars, as ultra-Orthodox leaders argue that military service threatens religious life and their obligation to Torah study,” Drop Site News’ report reads. “But after years in which reservists have been repeatedly called away from their jobs and families, the exemption has become a potent source of resentment in Israeli society.”
