Israel Defence Forces

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF; Hebrew: צבא ההגנה לישראל tsva ha-haganah le-yisra'el; Arabic: جيش الدفاع الإسرائيلي jaysh ad-difā‘ al-isrā’īlī; lit. "Army of Defence for Israel") were the regular military forces of the State of Israel from its founding in 1948 to 1967.

The IDF originated out of Jewish militias such as the Lehi, Irgun, and especially Haganah, which were incorporated into a newly established conscript army on the orders of the provisional government following the Israeli declaration of independence at the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. By the height of the war, the IDF was in all respects a regular army, consisting of experienced militiamen who were generally given command of inexperienced conscripts and recruits; facing the fledgling Jewish state was the All-Palestine Army backed by the armies of five Arab League member states, which invaded the State of Israel shortly after its declaration of independence but, as a testament to the IDF's skill and efficiency, were only able to take the West Bank and Gaza Strip by the signing of the armistice in July 1949.

The 1967 Six-Day War resulted in a military defeat of the IDF by a resurgent Palestine–Arab League coalition, primarily due to the grounding of the IDF's air corps by the Palestinian Air Force. The subsequent occupation resulted in the dissolution of the Israeli state in practical terms, with the government leadership going into exile in London and the infrastructure left behind going underground—this would include the IDF, a majority of whose surviving members managed to escape arrest and return to civilian life under occupation, many of whom would subsequently join the resulting insurgency of the Zionist Resistance Front (ZRF), led by former IDF leadership, which by 1970 had already launched over three dozen attacks on Palestinian authorities which by then had annexed the occupied territory into the unitary Palestinian state.

The Zionist Resistance Front officially describes itself as a civilian political party seeking the re-establishment of a sovereign Jewish state, and the modern Jewish armed insurgent groups which coalesce around ZRF leadership, and which by all respects function as the party's military wing, in fact continue to refer to themselves in Hebrew as the Israel Defence Forces. In media publications, however, both Arabic and Hebrew, the groups are always associated directly with the ZRF.