Expert: Don Radlauer - 5/19/2009

Question
Hi Sir
i'm hearing on the news and my friends in israel told me
that there's a HUGE maneuver that's gonna take place in the
near future to train people,soldiers,government etc.. to
face any sudden dangers from terrorist missiles
is this a sign of any close war with Hizballah?
specially that the maneuver is on the northern borders and
that's what most followers are predicting

Answer
Dear Fouad -

I don't think that an exercise like this is any indication of an impending war. It's important to remember (A) that Israel has to (and does) carry out civil-defense exercises of various sorts on a routine basis, since we face a large number of threats and the people who deal with them need to be properly trained and kept in practice; and (B) that after the 2006 Lebanon conflict, numerous shortcomings were found not only in Israel's readiness to fight Hezbollah directly, but also in our home-front preparedness. So after a couple of years to figure out what went wrong and implement corrective measures, it's only common sense to go through some drills to try to see if the various bodies involved are in fact ready to respond better than they did in 2006. Drills are normally conducted at various scales; it's not enough to conduct small-scale drills, because you also need to ensure that inter-agency and long-distance coordination work properly, and that command structures function efficiently in dealing with large-scale, complex, rapidly-unfolding events.

That said, it's equally true that there is a very high likelihood that Israel and Hezbollah will once again be come into open conflict at some point in the future, whether because of internal Lebanese politics or because Iran needs a diversion or a retaliation. (The 2006 war, you may recall, was the result of a cross-border incident that appears to have been intended to distract the world's attention from a G-8 meeting that was scheduled to deal with Iran's nuclear program; Ehud Olmert responded more vigorously than Hezbollah expected, and the conflict mushroomed into something much larger than Hezbollah had intended for that time.) So the upcoming drill can be seen as a sign that Israel sees war with Hezbollah as something likely in the future - but not necessarily in the immediate future.

As always, I'm happy to try to answer any follow-up questions you may have.


Best regards,

-DonR