This study offers a profile of current Israeli strategic doctrine. By strategic doctrine we mean a central core of generally shared organizing ideas concerning a given states national security problems. It is the means-ends chain that a state believes will best achieve security for itself. Israeli strategic doctrine is not to be found in any comprehensive formal statement by the Israeli government. Rather, the view of Israeli doctrine developed in this report has been culled from prior studies of the Israel Defense Forces IDF, articles and books by Israeli civilian and military decisionmakers, Israeli practice in crises and wars, and the current force posture of the IDF. The study is divided into three sections the conditioning factors affecting the doctrine, the intermediate level political-military elements of the doctrine, and the operational elements of the doctrine. These are interrelated. Political-military and operational elements reflect and address the conditioning factors identified. Operational elements serve as the means to the political-military elements or ends of the doctrine. The highest-level political ends of a strategic doctrine, associated with a given states foreign policy, are not addressed here. Such a task is beyond our mandate, though a comprehensive examination of the relationship between those aspects of Israeli strategic doctrine discussed in this report and Israeli foreign policy would certainly be a useful exercise.