THE COLLAPSE OF A REGIME OF STATE TERROR: ISRAEL’S OCCUPATION FORCES FACE A HISTORIC MANPOWER MELTDOWN

New data from within Israel has confirmed what Palestinians have long felt unfolding on the ground: the occupation forces responsible for state terror are experiencing a profound internal breakdown. For decades they have enforced domination through raids, bombings, expulsions, torture, and collective punishment. Now, the very machinery used to impose that violence is buckling - morally, psychologically, structurally, and numerically.

According to newly released figures, the Israeli occupation state terror group is suffering the worst manpower crisis in its history. Fewer individuals within Israel are willing to continue careers within the military system that has built its reputation on aggression, siege warfare, lethal force against civilians, and the systematic terrorisation of an indigenous population.

And from a justice-based perspective, this collapse is more than bureaucratic trouble - it is a long-overdue reckoning.

A DISINTEGRATING MILITARY APPARATUS: THE NUMBERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

Internal assessments show a dramatic rupture within the ranks of the occupation forces:

• 1,300 missing lieutenants and captains
• 300 missing majors

This is not a small gap. These are the backbone ranks responsible for command, logistics, and every active component of the occupation structure.

A Collapse in Willingness to Serve

• Only 63% of officers say they intend to stay - down from 83% just a few years ago.
• Among non-commissioned officers, willingness to remain has fallen to 37%, a catastrophic drop from 58% in 2018.

This means the occupation system is losing both the commanders and the experience that uphold its operations of suppression.

Mass Departures

This month alone, an estimated 600 career personnel filed early retirement requests - a mass exit rarely seen in modern militaries.

The occupation forces are not just shrinking; they are haemorrhaging.

THE MORAL COLLAPSE: AN ARMY OF STATE TERROR PAYING THE PRICE FOR ITS OWN VIOLENCE

For decades, the Israeli military establishment has cultivated itself as an enforcer of domination through:

• Bombing densely populated civilian neighbourhoods
• Executing unarmed Palestinians during raids
• Destroying homes as collective punishment
• Using white phosphorus in civilian zones
• Killing journalists like Shireen Abu Akleh
• Targeting medics, including clearly identified medical teams
• Mass detentions, torture, and degrading treatment
• Enforcing an apartheid regime between settlers and native Palestinians
• Night raids on children, including beatings, blindfoldings, and interrogations without lawyers

These actions are not unverified, they’re common knowledge now. They are documented by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and Israeli veterans themselves who have confessed to what they carried out.

When an institution strikes terror against a civilian population part of its operational identity, the psychological consequences inevitably circle back.

THE SUICIDE EPIDEMIC INSIDE THE OCCUPATION FORCES

Long before this manpower crisis, there were signs of deep internal decay. The occupation army has historically suffered one of the highest suicide rates among Israeli institutions, and studies have repeatedly shown that:

• Most suicides occur among those serving in or returning from active duty in occupied territories.
• Many soldiers expressed guilt, trauma, moral injury, and psychological collapse after being ordered to carry out acts described as “brutal,” “inhumane,” or “indefensible.”
• Some could not live with the memories of what they were ordered to do to Palestinian civilians.

This is the unspoken truth: the occupation does not only destroy Palestinian lives.

It destroys its enforcers too.

The rising suicide trend is not random - it is a direct consequence of maintaining a system built on domination, suppression, and state-led terror.

And now, Israelis themselves are fleeing service to avoid becoming part of it.

WHY THIS CRISIS IS A TURNING POINT FOR PALESTINIANS

From a justice perspective, the breakdown of the occupation forces is not merely an internal Israeli story - it is a crack in the foundation of a violent structure that has oppressed an entire nation for generations.

A Weakening Grip on the West Bank

With fewer officers and NCOs, the capacity to sustain raids, checkpoints, home demolitions, and armed settler escorts diminishes.

Reduced Ability to Sustain Large-Scale Assaults

Manpower shortages directly affect battalions responsible for Gaza operations, border surveillance, urban operations, and siege enforcement.

A Crisis of Legitimacy

When even Israelis refuse to carry the burden of enforcing occupation, it fundamentally challenges the narrative of a “moral army.”

A Moment for International Pressure

A military apparatus in crisis is more vulnerable to political, economic, and legal pressure.

THE OCCUPATION FORCES HAVE CRUMBLED NOT JUST STRATEGICALLY - BUT MORALLY

For decades, Palestinians have survived a system that sought to break them through fear, brutality, and the machinery of a military empire. But despite massacres, walls, checkpoints, airstrikes, siege, and dispossession, the Palestinian people remain.

The occupation forces responsible for state terror, however, are now experiencing what all unjust systems eventually face:

• internal decay
• loss of faith among their own ranks
• identity crisis
• collapse of morale
• psychological implosion
• a shrinking pool of people willing to enforce oppression

Oppression lasts only as long as the oppressor can maintain the machinery.

And today, that machinery is breaking apart from the inside.

CONCLUSION - A FUTURE SHAPED BY JUSTICE, NOT MILITARY POWER

The data emerging from Israel does not just reveal a workforce shortage. It reveals the cracking of an institution built on systemic violence. The occupation forces responsible for state terror are diminishing because the moral cost, psychological burden, and sheer injustice of the system they uphold have become too heavy, even for those benefiting from it.

This is not simply good news for Palestinians - it is a sign that justice is slowly, inevitably asserting itself.

Occupation is unsustainable.

State terror is unsustainable.

Oppression is unsustainable.

And now, finally, even the enforcers of that oppression are walking away from it.