(JNS) A new government plan announced on Nov. 9 to strengthen career soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces is being met with heavy skepticism by former military officers, one of whom has told JNS that “a whole new model” is needed to retain quality personnel among the career personnel.

The plan, backed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and initiated by Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, allocates NIS 3.25 billion (more than a billion dollars) over five years for a range of benefits. These include grants for spouses who lost income, housing assistance, academic benefits, and a “digital wallet” worth thousands of shekels for welfare and leisure.

The program also promotes unique housing solutions and benefits for personnel purchasing homes, “out of an intention to strengthen the economic security of those serving and encourage the continuation of a long and significant service.”

Netanyahu described career personnel as the backbone of the IDF, stating the decision will “increase the assistance we provide in housing, studies, and special benefits, for our personnel and their partners.”

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir welcomed the program, saying that career service personnel “are those who choose to dedicate their lives to the country’s security, to defend the sectors, to command in combat, and to take on the heavy load, day and night.”

He added, “Alongside them are their families who form an anchor of strength, resilience and support, those who enable them to serve and lead in the most complex moments.”

Brig. Gen. (ret.) Hanan Geffen, a former commander of the IDF’s elite Unit 8200 intelligence unit, raised doubts about the new plan.

“The problem is, in an era in which they cut reserve brigades and divisions, they also changed the entire career path,” he told JNS, referring to deep structural reforms made about a decade ago.

“Most people actually get a notification when they reach the rank of major, maybe, promotion to lieutenant colonel, they are told, ‘You are not entering the career path, you have no pension, you will receive at most a severance grant of one month times the years you were in [service], and goodbye.’ At age 35 or even close to 40, with a family and children, he finds himself without employment, competing in a market he was not trained for. This is the result of where we are today,” Geffen said.

He explained that while officers in high-tech, cyber and computer fields have no problem, as they gain experience and jump to the private sector, this is not the IDF’s main problem.

“The army today is going to enlarge regular combat frameworks; it needs commanders in the junior and intermediate ranks. So let’s say at the junior ranks of captain, people will still receive some grant,” he said, “but when you need intermediate ranks, captain, major and maybe even battalion commanders, to whom you don’t promise long career service and you don’t promise any long-term economic security, then when he reaches the rank of captain and makes a decision, his wife tells him, ‘Leave now,’ because no one is assuring him that at 30 or 40 you won’t have to look for a job.”

Geffen dismissed the new benefits as impractical. “What we are seeing today is a worthless package. When someone looks at this seriously, who can compete for a housing benefit? To give a grant for psychological assistance or a grant for a wife who stopped working? These are things that are impossible to implement,” he said.

Geffen argued that the only real solution is to fundamentally change the career personnel model, including paying pensions to those who retire in their early 40s.

“If they decide that we really want a larger career army, with an intermediate rank that is more professional, they will need to change the entire career service system and go back [to the older system],” he said.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Dr. Sasson Hadad, a former financial adviser to the IDF chief of staff and an ex-head of the Budget Division at the Defense Ministry, told JNS that the plan is a tactical move to avoid costs, but will have negative long-term consequences.

“The problem of improving the quality of career soldiers has, in my understanding, become critical. What is proposed is a package of non-wage benefits,” he stated, aimed at matching public service sector conditions like police, while reducing the costs from such a move.

The move is also aimed at reducing pension obligations during the bridging period (the period in which officers retire before retirement age) and social contributions, as this is not part of the salary, according to Hadad.

He said the plan fails to address the primary challenge: retaining high-quality officers.

“The first question is whether the good and high-quality ones will stay? And I ask another question: How will they know who to give it to, meaning, how to identify and differentiate the good and high-quality ones in order to give it to them? As it looks today, everyone who stays will receive [the benefits], and those who stay will be the ‘army addicts’ or those whose options outside the IDF are less good. It does not seem that the gap between the private market and the IDF will narrow.”

Hadad noted that while performance measures were introduced in the United States and the United Kingdom, military salaries were pegged to the best in the private market as well.

Want more news from Israel?
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates