Former NATO Analyst Jacques Baud On Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
This doctrine was developed by Daniel Bethlehem, legal advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu and then to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It postulates that states are entitled to preventive self-defense against an “imminent” attack. The difficulty here is to determine the “imminent” nature of an attack, which implies that the terrorist action is close in time and that there is a body of evidence to confirm it.
In February 2013, NBC News released a Department of Justice “White Paper” defining “imminent:”
The imminent threat of a violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have proof that a specific attack against American persons or interests will take place in the immediate future.