A MILITARY BUDGET FOR A PERMANENT WAR - Shlomo Swirski, Etty Konor Attias

That priority, in turn, derives from the fact that with very few exceptions – the decade after the Sinai War of 1956 and the decade or so after the 1973 Yom Kippur war - Israel has been in constant conflict with varying coalitions of Arab states: in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 - and with the Palestinians: in 1948, 1987, 2000-2005, and 2023-2024. [...] It is told that soon after the war of 1948, Yigal Yadin, the then chief of staff of the IDF, came to Ben Gurion to ask for a larger defense budget, in view of a possible “second round” against the Arab armies. [...] There was no fenced, electronic obstacle line covered by air power…” That changed as soon as Israel opted to keep the new territories: as Amir Oren stated, the number of companies needed to defend the now longer borders then jumped to 92: “Ninety-two is more than eleven times eight – and 92 companies is the force the army needed after the Six Day War to guard the new lines and patrol the conquered. [...] The adoption came with a large aid package - the largest in the world before the eruption of the Ukrainian war. [...] Most of the aid package came in the form of US dollars for the purchase of US-made armaments.