GIVATAYIM, Israel — An Israeli exercise this week is aimed at gearing up for a possible missile or terrorist attack, but it has muddled Israeli efforts to calm fears of an approaching war.
As part of the drill, which started Sunday and ends tomorrow, sirens sounded across Israel yesterday and emergency crews hustled actors with simulated shrapnel wounds out of an elementary school on stretchers.
“This is an exercise that is testing the preparedness of the home front of the state of Israel,” said Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai after watching students at Ben Gurion Elementary School take cover in a basement bomb shelter yesterday.
Israel’s neighbors, however, interpret the drill as a signal of hostile plans, and Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora placed forces along the border on alert during the exercise.
Moreover, as the Ha’aretz newspaper cited a Lebanese report purporting that Israel was jamming Lebanese cell-phone signals as part of the exercise, the No. 2 leader of Hezbollah several days ago suggested that the exercise is part of new plan to attack Lebanon.
“These drills are part of preparations for war because Israel is always in a warlike situation,” Sheik Naim Kassem told a rally south of Beirut, according to the Associated Press.
Israeli spokesmen said the exercises are simply an effort to avoid repeating the unpreparedness of their 2006 war against Hezbollah.
The exercise comes, however, as a series of reports during the last week on purported troop movements and weapons buildups has spurred Israeli and Arab declarations escalating tensions rather than defusing them.
On Monday, Israeli National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer threatened Iran with destruction if Israel is attacked.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told the government-run Al-Thura newspaper that Damascus’ concern about an approaching war was enhanced by the drill.
“If Syria is the target of all of this, know that we are following the drill and are also developing our capabilities and our plans to face the Israeli maneuvers,’ ” he said, according to news reports.
Shlomo Brom, a former Israeli army planning director, said the recent tension has led Syria and Lebanon to misinterpret the exercise.
“One of the lessons of the war in Lebanon was the inability to take care of the civilian population,” and much effort has been invested in improving this ability, he said.
“This authority is supposed to coordinate a very complex system involving bureaucracies under different ministries. There was a real need to exercise it to see how the system developed was operating.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.