This analysis draws on findings from a January 2026 national survey conducted by the Dor Moria Analytical Center under the Haifa Format project.
Strategic failures rarely begin with intelligence blind spots. More often, they begin with perception gaps - moments when societies misread power, misjudge allies, and misunderstand the direction of geopolitical momentum. January 2026 marked such a moment for Israel. It did not introduce new threats; it exposed, with measurable clarity, how deeply public perception had diverged from strategic reality.
Only weeks earlier, Israeli public opinion reflected a familiar strategic reflex. When asked which power could neutralize Turkey’s growing influence in Syria, 55% of respondents identified the United States, while a marginal 6.4% pointed to Russia. Similarly, just 4.7% considered the deployment of Russian forces in Syrian buffer zones a realistic scenario. These figures reflected not ignorance, but outdated assumptions - assumptions that January would decisively invalidate.
The U.S. withdrawal from northeastern Syria was presented as a controlled repositioning. In practice, it removed the final stabilizing layer that had allowed Kurdish forces to function as a regional buffer. Within less than two weeks, the Syrian Democratic Forces ceased to exist as an independent military actor. Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor were lost, strategic oil assets reverted to Damascus, and Kurdish control was compressed into Hasakah province alone.
The security consequences extended well beyond territorial loss. Open-source intelligence and Western assessments indicate that between 200 and 1,500 ISIS operatives escaped Kurdish detention facilities, while the United States facilitated the emergency transfer of over 7,000 detainees to Iraqi custody. Senior U.S. lawmakers publicly warned that these developments increased the probability of ISIS reconstitution - a warning echoed by regional intelligence services.
The political dimension of the collapse was sealed on January 20, when Kurdish fighters were formally absorbed into the Syrian army as individuals rather than as a unified force. Kurdish autonomy, which had served as an indirect stabilizer for Israel’s northern theater, was effectively dismantled.
Turkey moved rapidly to capitalize on the vacuum. For Israel, this shift transformed a diplomatic challenge into a deterrence problem. Since the fall of the Assad regime, Israel has carried out over 1,000 airstrikes and approximately 400 cross-border operations inside Syria in a seven-month period - compared to an estimated 334 strikes across the previous seven years combined.
The escalation is not incidental; it reflects an explicit effort to block Turkish military infrastructure planned for central Syria, including installations capable of projecting power southward.
A technical deconfliction mechanism between Israel and Turkey reportedly exists, routed through Azerbaijan. However, this channel manages friction - it does not resolve it. Ankara’s objective of a centralized Syria under Turkish influence stands in direct opposition to Israel’s security doctrine, which relies on fragmentation and buffer zones to limit hostile force concentration.
January also overturned assumptions about Russia. Despite being largely dismissed in December’s public discourse, Moscow demonstrated its unique capacity to function as a multi-directional channel. Survey data reflects this recalibration: 46.4% of Israelis expect relations with Russia to remain unchanged in 2026, the highest stability expectation across all foreign-policy vectors. By comparison, only 23.4% expressed similar confidence regarding the United States.
The most consequential shift, however, occurred inside Israeli society. For the first time since consistent polling began, domestic socioeconomic and political concerns (35%) surpassed Iran (25.8%) as the primary perceived national threat - a 9.2-point gap. Among secular Israelis (44.2%) and Arab citizens (43.5%), internal instability dominates threat perception. Only among traditional respondents does Iran retain primacy (33.1%), while religious respondents distribute concern across domestic fragmentation, Iran (27.5%), and rising antisemitism (17%).
This fragmentation matters. A society divided over its threat hierarchy cannot easily sustain unified deterrence logic. The traditional mobilizing power of external threats is weakening, not because those threats have disappeared, but because internal cohesion has eroded.
January 2026 did not change Israel’s strategic environment - it clarified it. The American withdrawal strengthened Turkey. Kurdish forces collapsed. Russia reemerged as a functional intermediary. And Israeli society entered a phase where internal instability rivals external danger in perceived urgency.
Bridging the gap between perception and reality is no longer an academic task. It is now a strategic necessity.
Rachel Avraham is the CEO of the Dona Gracia Center for Diplomacy and an Israel-based journalist.