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7 million Israelis rehearse for war
Vif you will it, it is no dream
PHOTO: AP
By anshel Pfeffer
On Monday, Defence Minister ehud Barak acknowledged that the governV isrAel is launching its largest-ever ment had received “signals” of concern emergency drill next week, but the from Arab countries over israel’s intengovernment insists that it is a routine tions, but said that “this a routine exerexercise. cise which was planned months ago, Next Tuesday, sirens will sound we have one of these every year”. throughout israel, and the entire popuAccording to intelligence assesslation will be requested to take shelter ments, israel’s closest enemy, syria, has in “protected spaces”. about 50,000 missiles that are aimed The nationwide alert will be the high at israel, and hizbollah in lebanon has point of the Defence Ministry and iDF 20,000. home Command’s exercise, “Turning While the published scenarios for Point 3”. the exercise are missile strikes from the All the emergency and rescue serv- north and terror attacks, iDF officers ices, both military and civil, will take have confirmed that the threat from part in the exercise. it begins on sunday iran figures in all their plans. “We are with a session of the Cabinet, which will planning for all eventualities,” said a practise its own special senior office in the iDF’s emergency procedures. home Command, “but A particular emphawe are not talking pubsis will be put on the colicly about iran right l nazis on the operation between the now.” railways p3 iDF and local authorities, last week, the israeli l hsa outrage which have been granted Air Force conducted its deepens p4 broader-than-normal own annual big exercise responsibilities for keepwhich involved all its ing key services running. squadrons and airbases. Among the scenarios are a multiple Air force officers in off-record briefings missile attack on haifa and a chemical- stressed that the squadrons did not warfare strike in eilat. All hospitals will carry out long-range missions, which practise for receiving patients injured would have been perceived as a prepain a chemical attack, and the home ration to attack targets in iran. Command’s rescue battalions will praclast year, the air force conducted a tise on a building that will be demol- large-scale exercise over the Aegean ished specifically for the exercise. sea in a move that was interpreted as in preparation, every family in the a dress rehearsal for an attack on the country has been supplied with guide- iranian nuclear installations. The air lines on how to select and equip a “pro- force’s assurances did not put all minds tected space” at home, and how many at ease and on Friday, Ma’ariv published seconds there are to reach it in case of a story headlined: “The Air Force is emergency. special information packs Training for War with iran”. have been prepared for the Arab and To which one air force officer said: Charedi communities, including leaf- “Of course we are training for war, that lets in Yiddish. is what armies do.”
inSiDe
Strictly Orthodox men harvest wheat outside Mevo Horon last Monday, in preparation for Shavuot
analysis anshel pfeffer
Iran is not on the radar — yet V There is more than a hint of disingenuousness to the protestations that last week’s exercise of the entire israeli Air Force and next week’s national home Front drill are both routine annual exercises. Armies, of course, routinely carry out exercises — but part of that routine is to play out certain scenarios, and it is those scenarios which give an indication as to the army’s intentions and concerns. so what can we learn from the scenarios in these two exercises? For a start, iran, as a geographical entity, does not feature in any of them. The air force squadrons did not simulate long-range bombing attacks on iranian nuclear infrastructure. Neither will any of the cities or towns pretending to be under attack next
week be “hit” by a missile fired from the vicinity of Tehran or isfahan, let alone by a nuclear missile. There are simple reasons for this. The annual air-force exercise is meant, among other things, to test the capability of the various squadrons and bases to operate under attack and cooperate with each other. There was no need to use the exercise for training runs on the Natanz reactor — the strategic squadrons are busy doing that all year round as it is. As for the home-front exercise, israel has declared so many times that it will never allow iran to achieve a nuclearmilitary capability that it is not about to practise for such an eventuality, and certainly not with the entire israeli public looking on. That does not mean that iran is not in the crosshairs of the planners of these exercises. Many israeli intelligence analysts
believe that it is highly unlikely that iran would actually use a nuclear device against israel. Their main worry is that if such a device were to exist in the iranian arsenal, it would provide Tehran’s proxies in the region with a nuclear umbrella that would embolden them to attack israel with the slightest provocation. Those proxies are syria, hizbollah and hamas, with tens of thousands of missiles aimed at israeli cities and iDF bases. iran, which supplied or financed most of these missiles, also sees them as a safeguard against an israeli strike. An attack by these latter missiles is the primary scenario to be played out in the two exercises. No future israeli operation against iran’s nuclear installations will be complete without also taking care of the shorter-range threat.