Yaalon at the ceremony
Yaalon at the ceremonyPR -- Ariel Hermoni

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Thursday that the threats Israel faces have not diminished, but have become “elusive, sophisticated, very dangerous.”

"In the coming years, armies will be replaced by terror organizations that are trained, armed from head to toe and ruthless, which will challenge us along the borders from near and far, in an attempt to hurt us with terror and rocket fire.”

Yaalon spoke at a ceremony for naming a street after Amnon Shahak z”l, the former IDF chief of staff who died recently, Givat Shmuel, near Tel Aviv.

"Coming to the assistance of the fighters in the field of combat on the ground, air and sea,” he added, “will be arrays that will help the IDF maintain a meaningful technological advantage over the states and organizations that surround us. Capacities that we began to develop during the days in which Amnon was chief of staff, and today they bring us to record heights and summits.

"We do not enslave ourselves to technology – we use it and fit it to the new reality in which battles of army versus army, of the type we last met 40 years ago, in the Yom Kippur War, are becoming less relevant.

"These changes will help the fighters operate with greater efficiency, while making use of the personal and technological advantages that will give them many options for deciding the battle in a quick and crushing way. That is why we will make sure not to detract from the building of our force, and we will continue to invest in it, because this is what will maintain Israel's qualitative advantage.”