Israel celebrates the 70th anniversary of its existence April 19, and it is not a cliche to say that circumstances have never been better for the Jewish state. “The state of Israel's strategic balance sheet is the best it's been since the establishment of the country,” said Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot in a conversation with Al-Monitor a few weeks ago.

Eizenkot explained his perspective: "We have a strong, powerful army with a great advantage over our enemies. I do not detect nowadays that any of our enemies wants to carry out a direct assault on the State of Israel. … The campaign [between wars] is very intensive and communicates the superiority of our army. In the Middle East, [we enjoy advantage through] intelligence superiority, aerial superiority, operational superiority and informational superiority and by the fact that we are viewed as a very powerful state that can act with high precision. The IDF works around the clock in order to promote our security interests and prevent our enemies from achieving advanced capabilities. The fact that Israeli citizens have been enjoying peaceful lives throughout the recent years testifies to the success of our method."

Yet despite this, on April 17 the IDF canceled its F-15 squadron's participation in the international Red Flag–Alaska, the international military drill in the United States. Tension along Israel's northern front is increasing with the anticipation of an aggressive Iranian response to an attack attributed to Israel on T-4, an Iranian military air base in central Syria that operated unmanned aircraft. The IDF destroyed a drone on Feb. 10 after it crossed into Israel along with the caravan unit operating it. It later emerged that it had been an armed drone assault, as explosives were found on it. Eizenkot called the episode a “watershed event, the first time that Iran demonstrated its operational capacities within the state of Israel.” It was an earth-shaking moment for Israel and led to a chain of events that threatens to set the region on fire.

This is an example of the Israeli paradox. On the one hand, Israel is, truly, a military and economic powerhouse. Its existence is not shrouded in doubt, and there are no forces threatening its existence. On the other hand, at any given moment, one of its battlefronts could burst into flames, leading to all-out war. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has raised this likelihood in Cabinet discussions and has even commented that he thinks that this scenario will, ultimately, come to pass: a multi-front war that will erupt between Israel and all the players on the northern front (that is, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah), and then Hamas will join the fray.