In a television interview in late September 2014, US President Barack Obama essentially admitted that the United States had underestimated the Islamic State’s ability to operate and recruit new members, and overestimated the Iraqi army’s ability to fight the organization. Indeed, within a short period of time – almost overnight – ISIS embarked on a path to institute a new world order and managed to position and brand itself as the savior of the Muslim ummah from the chains of the oppressive West. Contrary to the assessment of the intelligence community in both the United States and Israel, the organization succeeded in quickly expanding the area under its influence and increasing its recruitment, and it seems to be on the brink of further successes. The source of its power is its radical Islamic, anti-Shia, and anti-Western message. Even calling this message “nonsense,” as Obama did, reflects a flawed understanding of the potency of the enmity between the Sunni and Shiite camps in the Middle East and the attraction the organization poses, which allows it – alongside its brutal military force – to seize large swaths of territory and makes any attempt to confront it difficult.

The fact that US intelligence agencies failed to properly assess ISIS’s potential power until well into the changed reality in the Levant should sound a loud wake-up call in Israel. For now, Israel is not at the top of the ISIS agenda or the priorities of similar outfits, but the country cannot allow itself the luxury of waiting for the potential threat to be realized in the form of ISIS or allied operatives turning their organized or sporadic attention to direct action against it. Israel must therefore reexamine some traditional strategic conventions.

New strategic insights should form on the basis of the possibility that the risk inherent in radical Sunni jihadist organizations will sooner or later be turned against Israel. Israel is liable to find itself having to cope with ISIS and allied factions just across the country’s borders, such as in the Sinai Peninsula, Jordan, and the Syrian Golan Heights. Early worrisome signs of the effect of ISIS’s militant message have already been detected in the West Bank and even within Israel proper. Therefore, Israel must update its conceptual, intelligence, military, and political thinking so as to map the threat and identify a suitable response to the developing regional reality.

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