Earlier this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech responding to growing claims that Israel was becoming economically and diplomatically isolated. His reference to Sparta, a small state forced to stand on its own, was widely interpreted as an admission that Israel was being pushed to the margins of the international system.

There is some truth to the claim that Israel has faced increased political and diplomatic pressure during the war. But the facts do not entirely support the broader interpretation of isolation. On the economic front, Israel was recently ranked by The Economist as the third best-performing economy for 2025, a highly unusual outcome for a country fighting a prolonged war.

That context matters, but it does not negate the core lesson Israeli policymakers have drawn from recent experience, particularly in the realm of security. The Sparta reference was not a call to accept isolation. It was an argument that Israel must become more self-reliant in critical capabilities, because it can no longer assume uninterrupted access to foreign arms or political backing.

Israel has accelerated the expansion of its defense industry to achieve that self-reliance. Doing so, however, has also required becoming an increasingly significant global supplier.

Why Independence Has Become Unavoidable

Israel’s instinct for defense self-reliance did not emerge in the absence of allies, but from repeated experience of how vulnerable that reliance can be.

In the early decades of the state’s existence, Israel could not rely on American military support at all. During the 1950s and early 1960s, its principal arms supplier was France. That relationship collapsed abruptly on the eve of the Six Day War, when Paris imposed an arms embargo on Israel.

After Israel’s victory in 1967, the United States gradually replaced France as Israel’s main strategic partner. Even then, American support was not automatic. During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, US resupply arrived only after internal debate and delay, at a moment of acute national vulnerability.

It was in this context that Israel pursued an ambitious program of industrial independence throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Indigenous platforms such as the Merkava tank, advanced missile systems, and eventually the Lavi fighter jet were........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)