Their military is very effective in it's own way, but this comes at a cost - since the country is so small, a large-scale deployment means stripping much of the

Their military is very effective in it's own way, but this comes at a cost - since the country is so small, a large-scale deployment means stripping much of the civilian economy bare of workers. They've got a good system going for short-term large-scale deployments to stop any of the large armies that their neighbors can more easily field, but they can't afford to keep an army of that size in the field for more than something like a month or two. Large-scale occupation is logistically out of the question, before strategic and political considerations are even taken into account. They don't really have much to gain from trying to grab parts of Syria - they already have just the right amount of territory in the area to have very defensible borders. Taking more would give them territory much more vulnerable to attack, pretty much nothing in the way of natural resources, and most likely a population somewhere between neutral and hostile to manage. Not to mention that it would surely play rather poorly in the Arab world and the greater diplomatic community. Israel has done relatively well to conspicuously have no involvement in any of the Arab Spring rebellions.