Israel’s military footprint abroad has never been about imperial vanity or flag-planting theatrics. It has always been about survival, reach, and the cold logic of deterrence in a hostile strategic environment that begins far from its borders and ends—if left unchecked—at Ben Gurion Airport.

From the Red Sea to the Caucasus and the Horn of Africa, Israel’s overseas presence, past, present, and prospective, reveals a consistent strategic doctrine: a small state refusing to fight only where its enemies choose.

Historically, Israel’s most consequential foreign military activity unfolded along the maritime arteries that feed its economy and sustain its security.

During the 1960s and 1970s, as part of what later became known as the ‘periphery doctrine’, Jerusalem developed military and intelligence footholds across East Africa and the Red Sea basin to break Arab encirclement and secure access to Eilat. These were not symbolic deployments but operational facilities—naval access points, radar installations, and listening posts—designed to monitor hostile fleets, Soviet-aligned Arab movements, and threats to Israeli shipping.

Under this strategy, Eritrea stands out as the most consistently documented case; in fact, multiple intelligence assessments over the years have pointed to Israeli naval and intelligence facilities in the Dahlak Archipelago, near Massawa, and at Amba Soira, explicitly linked to early-warning and surveillance missions over the Red Sea.

While officially denied, the persistence, geographic specificity, and strategic coherence of these reports make........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)