Israel’s Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir issued a stark warning to the country’s cabinet this week: unless urgent measures are taken, the Israeli army is on the brink of collapse.According to a report by Israel’s Channel 13 on Thursday, Zamir told ministers that he was “raising 10 red flags”, urging the government to move quickly on long-delayed legislation to alleviate the strain on its “exhausted” military.The army has been overseeing what rights groups and the United Nations have determined is a genocide in Gaza, the de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank and numerous incursions into Lebanon and Syria.Addressing ministers, Zamir stressed the need for a “conscription law, a reserve duty law, and a law to extend mandatory service”, adding that without these measures, “before long, the [Israeli military] will not be ready for its routine missions and the reserve system will not last”.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since said that plans will be made to extend mandatory military service. However, this is not the first time the alarm has been raised that the military is straining under the pressure of repeated operations, which have seen it involved in the killings of tens of thousands of civilians across the Middle Eas …
