External danger is real; only renewed legitimacy can ensure the state can respond.

Israel today faces existential threats. What is new—and more troubling—is that the State of Israel is being required to confront those threats under conditions that are themselves becoming unstable.

This essay builds on earlier analysis of Israel’s democratic erosion and strategic condition. In Israel at the Brink: A Systemic Crisis of Democracy, I argued that Israel is not experiencing a passing political dispute but a sustained weakening of institutional restraint. That diagnosis now points to a more demanding question: whether the state can sustain effective action under simultaneous external and internal pressure.

Israel’s existential challenge is dual: external and domestic, operating simultaneously and reinforcing one another.

Externally, the threat is real and serious. The posture of Iran—including its nuclear trajectory and its network of regional proxies—has long been understood as posing potentially existential risks in Israeli strategic analysis. This reflects concrete scenarios that could fundamentally challenge Israel’s security and long-term viability.

But beyond strategy, the threat is also immediate. In the north, communities remain displaced. Families face ongoing uncertainty about return. Deterrence remains incomplete. In the south, areas affected by October 7 have yet to be fully rehabilitated, and a sense of security has not been fully restored. External threat is therefore uneven, prolonged, and deeply felt.

At the same time, internal security is unevenly enforced across Israeli society. Persistent criminal violence affecting Arab citizens of Israel, including in some Bedouin communities, has been widely reported as a serious policing challenge (see The Times of Israel reporting on violent crime and Knesset discussions on violence in Arab society). In a different context, the activities of so-called “hilltop youth” and the difficulty of consistent law enforcement in responding to them also point to uneven governance (see The Times of Israel coverage of hilltop youth). Where the state’s authority is applied unevenly, security fragments. This is not a claim about any community as a whole, but about governance, policing, and legitimacy.

More broadly, the internal condition of the state is under strain. Political polarization, declining institutional trust, and contested legitimacy shape how decisions are made—and whether those decisions are accepted.

These developments are connected. A state may face external enemies and still function effectively. But it cannot function if it begins to lose the ability to make decisions that its own society recognizes as binding.

External threats test a state’s strength. Internal fragmentation tests its capacity to act.

When both operate together, the risk changes. External pressure intensifies internal division. Internal division weakens the ability to respond externally. Over time, this interaction becomes self-reinforcing.

Leadership operates within this structure—and shapes it. As argued in Trump’s Netanyahu Myth Collapses on October 7, the strategy of Benjamin Netanyahu has emphasized the projection of strength in the external arena. At the same time, decision-making takes place within a coalition framework, under political constraints, and in the context of an ongoing trial. As further explored in Netanyahu’s Enigma: His War Without End! and From Shtadlanut to State Budgets: Prudence, Power, and Exploitation, strategic framing, coalition dependence, and resource allocation shape how authority is exercised in practice. These factors do not eliminate the state’s capacity—but they can make coherent, widely accepted action more difficult to sustain.

The implication is direct. A state can endure even severe external threats. What it cannot endure is the erosion of its ability to respond.

An existential crisis does not begin with danger. It begins when the state’s capacity to act coherently and legitimately starts to weaken.

This process is rarely sudden. Decisions take longer. Authority is more frequently contested. Trust declines. The system continues to operate—but with reduced clarity and confidence.

Israel is not in that condition. But the direction is not neutral.

Preventing such a development requires more than military strength. It requires the renewal of state legitimacy.

Legitimacy is the condition that allows the state to translate decisions into coordinated action across institutions and over time. Without it, response does not cease—but it becomes slower, less consistent, and harder to sustain.

Security response is not a single act but a sequence: government direction, military execution, intelligence integration, local implementation, and public compliance. When legitimacy is intact, these elements align. When it weakens, coordination fragments. Decisions are contested. Signals become inconsistent. Implementation slows.

Institutional erosion does not immediately disable the state. It reduces its ability to act as a coherent system—and under sustained external pressure, that difference becomes decisive.

Three conditions are therefore essential.

First, institutions must remain credible—even when contested. Courts, government, and security bodies must be recognized as authoritative, including by those who disagree with them.

Second, procedures must be trusted. In a divided society, agreement on outcomes is limited. What must remain is confidence in the process through which decisions are made.

Third, the state must sustain a coherent sense of purpose. Citizens must understand what is being defended and why. Without that clarity, even necessary policies risk losing legitimacy.

These are the conditions under which a state under pressure continues to function.

Israel retains them—but under strain. The margin for error is narrowing. Decisions that might once have been absorbed now generate wider fragmentation.

Renewal, therefore, is not a return to consensus. It is the restoration of the frameworks within which disagreement can produce binding outcomes, the strengthening of institutions capable of acting under pressure, and the re-establishment of a shared orientation that allows a divided society to respond without deepening internal fracture.

The alternative is not immediate collapse. It is progressive weakening—a state that remains strong externally while losing internal coherence.

Israel’s future will be determined not only by the threats it faces from outside, but by whether it can sustain the internal conditions that make effective response possible.

A state is not defeated only by its enemies. It is defeated when it can no longer act as a state.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)