The Future of War: Israel Takes Global Lead on Military Innovation With New AI Division, Iron Beam Laser System

David Swindle

A part of Iron Beam laser anti-missile interception system, developed by Israel, is seen in this handout image obtained by Reuters on Sept. 17, 2025. Photo: Israel Defense Ministry/Handout via REUTERS

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced this week a revolutionary reorganization of the technology and artificial intelligence capabilities of the Jewish state’s military, unveiling new plans to prepare for future warfare with cutting-edge advancements.

Israel’s major defense overhaul, unveiled on Tuesday, comes in preparation for the deployment of the long-anticipated “Iron Beam” laser interceptor system, which will be delivered to the military at the end of the month.

Under the name “Bina” — Hebrew word “intelligence” — the IDF has chosen to shut down its Lotem Unit from the C41 Corps, replacing it with the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Division and the Spectrum Division. The latter will focus on communications and electronic warfare with an emphasis on threats from Iran, China, and Russia.

The AI Division will grow through merging other sections within the IDF, including Mamram (the abbreviation for the Center of Computing and Information Systems) and software development units Shahar and Mitzpen. This consolidation of AI-development related divisions intends both to intensify security and avoid accidentally duplicating research efforts. The project will align with Israel’s Project Nimbus cloud computing program supplied by Amazon and Google.

The IDF also announced the ICT Division, which will focus on satellite warfare in outer space.

According to the military, about 50 percent of the new divisions are composed of women soldiers, with female officers comprising 40 percent of the senior command including two of the five top leadership positions.

Brig. Gen. Yael Grossman now heads ICT and the Cyber Defense Division, and Brig Gen. Racheli Dembinsky will head the Spectrum Division. Others in leadership positions include Chief Signals Officer Brig. Gen. Omer Cohen and Maj. Gen. Aviad Dagan.

“I have no doubt that the world is heading towards a space war, especially after the US and China defined space as a possible war arena,” Dr. Moshik Cohen, CEO for defense technology company AIPEX which focuses on missiles, told the Israeli publication Globes.

“Rival powers are already using it on the battlefield,” Cohen continued. “The Chinese have developed a way to detect stealth aircraft using satellites, and the Russians have jammed GPS signals from US satellites, which have dropped thousands of smart bombs on earth and blocked satellite communications for the Ukrainians. At the same time, the US is promoting Golden Dome, which will consist of a network of low-flying satellites able to perform military missions such as intercepting ballistic and hypersonic missiles and blocking enemy communications.”

Dagan said that the new divisions aspired to use technology to “turn one tank into 100 tanks, one soldier into 100 fighters.”

On Monday, meanwhile, Danny Gold, the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development, revealed that the military would soon receive the “Iron Beam” laser interception system, a project a decade in development.

“With development complete and a comprehensive testing program that has validated the system’s capabilities, we are prepared to deliver initial operational capability to the IDF on Dec. 30, 2025,” Gold said. “The Iron Beam laser system is expected to fundamentally change the rules of engagement on the battlefield. Simultaneously, we are already advancing the next-generation systems.”

Created by Rafael Advanced Systems Ltd., the Iron Beam is intended to supplement rather than replace Israel’s Iron Dome and other air defense systems, focusing especially on smaller targets. As long as the weapon maintains a power source then it cannot run out of ammunition. However, the system does not function optimally in situations with clouds or low visibility.

The IDF chose to rename the laser weapon from Magen Or (Light Shield) to Or Eitan (Eitan’s Light) in honor of Cpt. Eitan Oster, a member of the Egoz Commando Unit killed in October 2024 while fighting the Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon.

Brig. Gen. Benny Aminov also announced this week an Israeli breakthrough in countering enemy drone attacks.

“We are now working on interception solutions using drone-based systems that enable response to swarm scenarios while accelerating the development of new directed-energy weapons,” Aminov said. “The issue of low-altitude threats is an example of a challenge that requires our defense establishment to fundamentally change its operational approach, responding within compressed time frames, spiral development, accelerating testing during the development process, and bridging small defense-tech companies with major defense contractors.”

Protest outside Israeli Cabinet meeting calls on PM to reject ‘pathway’ to ‘Palestine’

Akiva Van Koningsveld, Amelie Botbol

A protest calling for Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria outside the weekly Cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, Nov. 23, 2025. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

Right-wing Israeli groups protested outside the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday, calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resist pressure to include a “pathway to a Palestinian state” in a Gaza peace plan.

The protest—led by the Sovereignty Movement, the Tekuma Movement and other NGOs advocating for Jerusalem to keep control of Judea and Samaria—included coalition lawmakers and activists, Israel National News reported.

“Israel cannot entrust its security borders to hostile elements. Only sovereignty—full control from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the Jordan [River]—will secure the state’s future,” according to the Sovereignty Movement.

“Instead of paving the way to a terror state threatening the heart of the nation, we must advance the vision of sovereignty,” the group stated. “Together, we will ring the bell outside the government meeting.”

Religious Zionism Party lawmaker Ohad Tal, who participated in the rally, told JNS: “I urge Prime Minister Netanyahu to state clearly that Israel opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state—now or in the future, under any conditions.

“A Palestinian state poses an existential threat to Israel. The only viable alternative is Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” the Knesset member said.

.MK Ohad Tal speaks at a protest calling for Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria outside the weekly Cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, Nov. 23, 2025. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

In a joint statement arranged by the United States on Nov. 14, eight nations working toward ending the war against Hamas terrorism in Gaza expressed support for Washington’s proposed International Stabilization Force that is expected to provide security in the Strip.

According to the statement, signed by Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan and Turkey, the process also “offers a pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”

The joint statement appeared to go further than President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which Jerusalem has approved, by not leaving Palestinian statehood up for debate.

Religious Zionism lawmaker Simcha Rothman, who spoke at the rally, told JNS the gathering served as a “call for the government, the prime minister and the Cabinet ministers to move forward on the path to sovereignty, because the Knesset has already stated this is the way to go.”

Rothman referenced the Knesset’s July 2024 resolution, which passed by a wide majority and opposed unilateral international recognition of a Palestinian state.

“Our call is to make this an urgent task for the government and not postpone it, because while I don’t believe a Palestinian state is an imminent danger, if we aren’t proactive and don’t advance sovereignty, we will find ourselves confronting what the U.N. Security Council described as a pathway to Palestinian self-determination and a Palestinian state,” he said.

“If we want to prevent that, we must act on the ground — as [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich is doing by building 50 new communities, and roads and farms [in Judea and Samaria]—but it’s not enough. We need to address it in the Cabinet, in the international arena, and apply Israeli sovereignty,” Rothman said.

MK Simcha Rothman speaks at a protest calling for Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria outside the weekly Cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, Nov. 23, 2025. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

Jerusalem will not allow a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Netanyahu said Nov. 16, responding to criticism from coalition partners.

“Our opposition to a Palestinian state on any territory west of the Jordan River exists, is firm, and has not changed in the slightest,” Netanyahu stated.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also declared that the Jewish state would “not agree to the establishment of a Palestinian terror state in the heart of the Land of Israel, at point-blank distance from all of its population centers and with topographical control over them.”

Hamas Quietly Reasserts Control in Gaza as Post-War Talks Grind On

Reuters and Algemeiner Staff

Palestinians buy vegetables at a market in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, November 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

From regulating the price of chicken to levying fees on cigarettes, Hamas is seeking to widen control over Gaza as US plans for its future slowly take shape, Gazans say, adding to rivals’ doubts over whether it will cede authority as promised.

After a ceasefire began last month, Hamas swiftly reestablished its hold over areas from which Israel withdrew, killing dozens of Palestinians it accused of collaborating with Israel, theft or other crimes. Foreign powers demand the group disarm and leave government but have yet to agree who will replace them.

Now, a dozen Gazans say they are increasingly feeling Hamas control in other ways. Authorities monitor everything coming into areas of Gaza held by Hamas, levying fees on some privately imported goods including fuel as well as cigarettes and fining merchants seen to be overcharging for goods, according to 10 of the Gazans, three of them merchants with direct knowledge.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, head of the media office of the Hamas government, said accounts of Hamas taxing cigarettes and fuel were inaccurate, denying the government was raising any taxes.

ANALYST SEES HAMAS ENTRENCHING

The authorities were only carrying out urgent humanitarian and administrative tasks whilst making “strenuous efforts” to control prices, Thawabta said. He reiterated Hamas’ readiness to hand over to a new technocratic administration, saying it aimed to avoid chaos in Gaza: “Our goal is for the transition to proceed smoothly.”

Hatem Abu Dalal, owner of a Gaza mall, said prices were high because not enough goods were coming into Gaza. Government representatives were trying to bring order to the economy – touring around, checking goods and setting prices, he said.

Mohammed Khalifa, shopping in central Gaza’s Nuseirat area, said prices were constantly changing despite attempts to regulate them. “It’s like a stock exchange,” he said.

“The prices are high. There’s no income, circumstances are difficult, life is hard, and winter is coming,” he said.

US President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan secured a ceasefire on October 10 and the release of the last living hostages seized during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.

The plan calls for the establishment of a transitional authority, the deployment of a multinational security force, Hamas’ disarmament, and the start of reconstruction.

But Reuters, citing multiple sources, reported this week that Gaza’s de facto partition appeared increasingly likely, with Israeli forces still deployed in more than half the territory and efforts to advance the plan faltering.

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2 million people live in areas controlled by Hamas, which seized control of the territory from President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) and his Fatah Movement in 2007.

Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think-tank, said Hamas’ actions aimed to show Gazans and foreign powers alike that it cannot be bypassed.

“The longer that the international community waits, the more entrenched Hamas becomes,” Omari said.

US STATE DEPARTMENT: HAMAS ‘WILL NOT GOVERN’

Asked for comment on Gazans’ accounts of Hamas levying fees on some goods, among other reported activities, a US State Department spokesperson said: “This is why Hamas cannot and will not govern in Gaza.”

A new Gaza government can be formed once the United Nations approves Trump’s plan, the spokesperson said, adding that progress has been made towards forming the multinational force.

The PA is pressing for a say in Gaza’s new government, though Israel rejects the idea of it running Gaza again. Fatah and Hamas are at odds over how the new governing body should be formed.

Munther al-Hayek, a Fatah spokesperson in Gaza, said Hamas actions “give a clear indication that Hamas wants to continue to govern.”

In the areas held by Israel, small Palestinian groups that oppose Hamas have a foothold, a lingering challenge to it.

Gazans continue to endure dire conditions, though more aid has entered since the ceasefire.

THEY ‘RECORD EVERYTHING’

A senior Gazan food importer said Hamas hadn’t returned to a full taxation policy, but they “see and record everything.”

They monitor everything that enters, with checkpoints along routes, and stop trucks and question drivers, he said, declining to be identified. Price manipulators are fined, which helps reduce some prices, but they are still much higher than before the war began and people complain they have no money.

Hamas’ Gaza government employed up to 50,000 people, including policemen, before the war. Thawabta said that thousands of them were killed, and those remaining were ready to continue working under a new administration.

Hamas authorities continued paying them salaries during the war, though it cut the highest, standardizing wages to 1,500 shekels ($470) a month, Hamas sources and economists familiar with the matter said. It is believed that Hamas drew on stockpiled cash to pay the wages, a diplomat said.

The Hamas government replaced four regional governors who were killed, sources close to Hamas said. A Hamas official said the group also replaced 11 members of its Gaza politburo who died.

Gaza City activist and commentator Mustafa Ibrahim said Hamas was exploiting delays in the Trump plan “to bolster its rule.” “Will it be allowed to continue doing so? I think it will continue until an alternative government is in place,” he said.

In Gaza, It’s Déjà vu All Over Again

Shoshana Bryen

A Red Cross vehicle, escorted by a van driven by a Hamas terrorist, moves in an area within the so-called “yellow line” to which Israeli troops withdrew under the ceasefire, as Hamas says it continues to search for the bodies of deceased hostages seized during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in Gaza City, Nov. 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alk

Eleven years ago, the 2014 Hamas rocket war against Israel ended in a ceasefire.

In the ensuing years, Israel and the United States should have learned something about “ceasefires” as opposed to “peace.” President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan, however, has the flaw that every single such plan has had (in the territories and in Lebanon): the failure of anti-terror forces to control territory and enforce the rules. In the absence of that, Hamas has reemerged and is rearming in Gaza.

As I wrote in 2014: 

The Hamas rockets have, for the time being, stopped; the current cease-fire is holding. The tunnel threat, a strategic one most Israelis had not understood until several days into the war, has been alleviated; many Hamas rocket manufacturing facilities have been destroyed; a substantial percentage of the Hamas arsenal has been used up; and Hamas achieved none of its strategic goals — not large-scale Israeli casualties or physical destruction, an airport, a seaport, or the opening of border crossings. Israeli children have returned to school and, after a brief dip, the Israeli economy is expected to grow for the year.

Those were the days of “mowing the grass.” Eliminating the visible threats.

As I asked at the time:

To the extent that the Israeli public wanted the destruction or elimination of Hamas, or an end to the rocket threat, it was doomed by its unreasonable expectations. Americans suffer similarly. Having understood the Islamic State [IS] as a threat not only in Syria and Iraq, but also to our interests and potentially to our own country, they want it gone. The question for the American government, as it is for the Israeli government, is: “How do you defeat an armed ideological movement with a territorial base if you are unwilling to fight in that territorial base?”

President Barack Obama spoke of “degrading, dismantling, and destroying” ISIS. He never said how — and neither has President Trump.

Try this:

Control of territory and the ability to subject one’s enemies to enforceable rules is the only known mechanism for ending, rather than managing, a war. Despite the Western propensity for “peace processes” and negotiations, it is hard (impossible?) to find a historical example of one side simply agreeing to give up its mission, arms, ideology, or interests without a forcing mechanism — military defeat.

We don’t like to talk about “winners” and “losers,” preferring to “split the difference” or find a “win-win” formula. But “peace” itself was defined by Machiavelli as “the conditions imposed by the winners on the losers of the last war.” There are different iterations of “peace,” depending on whether the winners institute good or bad conditions. There can be a cold peace, a warm peace, or the peace of the dead. The peace that followed WWI contained the seeds of WWII; the peace after WWII produced the German economic miracle.

Even when wars aren’t “won,” control of territory and enforceable rules can make the difference between long-term success and failure – the US military has been in South Korea since the 1953 Armistice, allowing a democratic, technologically advanced society to emerge despite the continuing threat from the impoverished, heavily armed, and dangerous North. The withdrawal of American forces from South Vietnam within months of the armistice there allowed North Vietnam to capture territory and impose a communist government on a single Vietnamese entity. Although NATO faced Russia across the Fulda Gap, there is no denying that the Allied presence also enforced anti-Nazi rules in West Germany.

October 7, 2023, brought about a change in Israeli military thinking. A ceasefire is no longer enough. Hamas, in Israel’s view, has to be disarmed and ripped out of the territory in a verifiable and enforceable manner. The IDF is making plans to reassert itself across the yellow line. The US appears more interested in bringing Turkish troops into Gaza, a move rejected not only by Israel but, oddly, by Egypt. Qatari troops are no better. Both are Muslim Brotherhood partners of Hamas.

As I wrote:

The enemies of Israel and the West are similar. Ideological similarities aside, both are vicious and absolutist, and neither plays by Western rules regarding women, children, religious diversity or war crimes. Both rely on the relative gentility of their adversaries — Israel and the West — to protect them from ultimate defeat. Thus far, theirs is the correct bet.

Or at least it was.

The difficulty now will be bringing the US and Israel to the meeting point. President Trump was there. He called for, “Hell to rain down on Hamas.” But now he appears to have changed his mind. Talk, negotiate, promise, offer, talk some more. This simply provides time for Hamas to rearm and reassert itself among the people of Gaza. And Hamas is using the time.

The US and its allies have to acknowledge the original flaw in the plan — both in 2014 and 2025. Without a military presence determined to uproot and destroy Hamas in whatever manner the military deems necessary, “peace plans” and “ceasefires” are simply wishes and, with due respect to Yogi Berra, “Déjà vu all over again.”

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly magazine.

“New Gaza” Rises: Anti-Hamas Militias Backed by Israel Claim Local Rule, Vow to Fight Qatar, Turkey, Iran Forces

Debbie Weiss

Smoke rises in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

As Gaza’s ceasefire holds uneasily, four Israel-backed militias fighting Hamas are moving to fill the power vacuum, pledging to cooperate with most international forces involved in rebuilding the enclave but vowing to resist any presence from Qatar, Turkey, or Iran, The Algemeiner has learned. 

The militias, mainly in southern Gaza, are not part of US President Donald Trump’s proposed plan for a technocratic administration in the enclave. 

Based in Khan Younis, Hossam al-Astal, commander of the Counter Terrorism Strike Force, said his group and three allied militias had coordinated in recent weeks to secure areas vacated by Hamas, the terrorist group that until the latest with Israel had solely ruled Gaza since 2007, and were ready to take on civil and security responsibilities once reconstruction begins.

“We are capable of building [a] government in our areas,” al-Astal said over a Zoom call on Wednesday, adding that his group already had the “human resources” to do so. 

“We are ready to cooperate with international forces and with others on the ground,” he said. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

But he went on to say that his clan would not accept any Muslim Brother-affiliated forces, citing Qatar, Turkey, and Iran. “We will view forces from those countries as hostile, and we will fight them just as we fight Hamas.”

Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood’s global Islamist network, has received military, financial, diplomatic, and political backing for years from Qatar, Turkey, and Iran.

In the Trump-brokered ceasefire deal to end the war and release the hostages kidnapped from Israel by Hamas-led terrorists, Israeli forces pulled back to a notional demarcation called the “yellow line,” marking roughly half the Gaza Strip as under Israeli control. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has begun placing yellow concrete blocks and signposts every 200 meters to mark the boundary and issued orders that anyone crossing it may be fired on. 

On Tuesday, IDF reservist Master Sgt. (res.) Yona Efraim Feldbaum was killed when Palestinian terrorists attacked troops near the southern city of Rafah. The IDF retaliated by striking dozens of terrorist targets, it said. 

Some counter-terrorism experts have argued that the rise of local militias makes both the disarmament of Hamas and the safe entry of reconstruction teams far more difficult.

Matthew Levitt, director of a counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in Foreign Affairs magazine that Hamas “will fight tooth and nail to maintain its political and military position in Gaza.”

Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner told reporters last week that “no reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls,” he said. “There are considerations being discussed now in the areas the IDF controls, as long as they can be secured to start building the new Gaza.”

The term “New Gaza” is frequently used by al-Astal, and refers to what he described as a joint framework for the territory’s governance between his Counter Terrorism Strike Force and the three allied clans led by Yasser Abu Shabab in Rafah, Rami Halas, and Ashraf al-Mansi, the latter two both in Gaza City. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are estimated to be living in those areas. 

During the Zoom call, which was organized by the Center for Peace Communications, a New York-based group that documents dissent inside Gaza, a journalist who identified himself as Ahmed al-Zakout described conditions in Hamas-controlled areas west of the yellow line. Since the ceasefire, more than 100 executions have been carried out by Hamas against Gazans accused of being collaborators with Israel, as well as large numbers of maimings. Disappearances and abductions are also estimated to number in the hundreds. 

Al-Zakout said residents in his area had initially believed the agreement announced by Trump would remove Hamas from power — and explained that hope had already collapsed. “People are very afraid,” he said. “They are shocked and disappointed to see Hamas remain here in our areas.”

According to al-Zakout, many civilians were afraid to try to reach territory on the other side of the yellow line, because they believed they could be targeted while moving. He said no authority — “not America or even Israel” — was publicly guaranteeing safe passage, and he blamed Hamas messaging for deterring people from leaving. He singled out Qatar’s Al Jazeera network as part of what he called “a propaganda effort designed to scare people away from the other side of the yellow line, to intimidate them and ensure that they stay where they are.”

“We see obvious collaboration and coordination between the message of Hamas [and] the message of Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera portrays every civilian trying to get to [the] yellow side and to safety as [an] agent and collaborator with Israel. They are spreading a lot of propaganda.”