Israel’s Top Military Strategist Talks War and Peace
A retired general and former national security adviser in nearly every Middle Eastern state would live in paranoia and luxury, with servants, bodyguards, hangers-on, and a few odd state or army-owned business interests to keep them busy behind the high walls of their compound. In contrast to his Egyptian or Jordanian equivalents, 70-year-old Yaakov Amidror, perhaps Israel’s most canny and influential security strategist, lives in a suburb of Tel Aviv, on an easily public-transit-accessible street of closely built houses that are spacious by Israeli standards without being notably opulent. On a Thursday in late July, toys were scattered around the entrance—one of Amidror’s young grandkids is a frequent visitor.
Amidror officially left public service in 2014 but was at the center of many of the most important decisions Israel has made over the past decade. During his time in government, Israel reduced a number of once-pressing dangers to mere annoyances. Now that he’s in the think-tank world, Amidror is one of the few people close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who can talk semiopenly about the most recent era of Israeli security policy, in which Israel has emerged stable, prosperous, and powerful without having to make significant concessions to the Palestinians, or to anyone else.
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