MIDDLE EAST: Israeli army back to basics after Lebanon bruising

Record ID: 396641

  • Title: MIDDLE EAST: Israeli army back to basics after Lebanon bruising
  • Date: 10th July 2007
  • Summary: (W2) NORTHERN BORDER, ISRAEL (FILE) (REUTERS) ISRAELI SOLDIERS WALKING ALONG BORDER ISRAELI SOLDIER IN TANK ON BORDER MORE OF ISRAELI TROOPS WALKING ALONG LEBANESE BORDER HELICOPTER/ ISRAELI SOLDIERS ON BORDER
  • Embargoed: 25th July 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVAAERCBSR2BN37Y722RBPUX955F
  • Story Text: Nearly a year ago, Israel struck Beirut airport and blockaded Lebanese ports after Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border attack, today the Israeli army is returning to intensive basic training, analysts say.
    A year after suffering surprise setbacks against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, Israel's armed forces are poised once more for a major conventional war.
    Tens of thousands of conscripts and reservists have been training with an intensity which has not been seen in Israel for decades, flush with emergency funds from a government which speaks openly of possible new conflicts with arch-foes Syria and Iran.
    "Ashkenazi is under no illusions, an army is not measured by the type of slideshow it can put on, but by the training of its people," said Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld.
    Few doubt that the Jewish state retains the Middle East's mightiest war machine, but the chastening experience against Hezbollah has highlighted special challenges for Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, commanders and analysts say.
    He has had to shake up an Israeli top brass that has grown too used to easy wins against Palestinian militants and forgotten how to marshal sweeping ground, sea and air assaults on more formidable foes.
    "As long as the war against the Palestinian organizations, call them Islamic Jihad, call them Hamas, call them terror, doesn't really matter, all of them are very weak, very small. As long as they keep fighting on can you really prepare fighting someone who is very much stronger, like the Syrians," said van Creveld.
    There is also a drive to purge a recent doctrine arguing that Israel's advanced, hands-off battlefield technologies can deliver victory without tanks and troops seizing deep territory.
    Hezbollah exploited Israel's lack of tactical preparedness during the 34-day Lebanon war. Israeli commandos, importing a method used in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, converted abandoned Lebanese homes to command posts -- only to suffer serious casualties when Hezbollah fired rockets through the walls.
    Neither was Israel's armoured corps spared. Several tanks were destroyed in lookout positions, by Hezbollah squads using missiles unavailable to the Palestinians. On one occasion, a tank ran over and killed two soldiers in an accident that underscored Israeli forces' lack of coordination under fire.
    Israel lost 117 troops and 41 civilians during the war with Hezbollah, a figure dwarfed by the Lebanese death toll of around 1,200 with 4,400 wounded. And though the Iranian-backed Shi'ite group claimed a "divine victory" after a U.N.-brokered ceasefire, few doubt that the Jewish state retains the Middle East's mightiest military.
    Israeli concern, then, is for preserving the ability to win "asymmetric" conflicts decisively enough to avoid casualties on a scale that would sap support for the citizens' army while leaving the leadership in a position to dictate truce terms.
    "The backlash of the Lebanon war is felt all over the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces). The IDF is going through a major change mostly in going back into basic, in going back into soldiership and the basics of fighting," said Israeli military analyst Alon Ben David.
    "They have more means, more resources to acquire equipment, to invest in training so the IDF is seriously taking the mission, or assignment to prepare for another war very seriously," he added.
    In sometimes weeks-long drills on the occupied Golan Heights or vast Negev desert bases, division-strength military units have practised overrunning enemy posts and villages with the sort of lightning manoeuvres that Israel used to carry out in its 1948 and 1967 wars against regular Arab armies.
    "An army has two jobs: waging war or preparing for war," said Ashkenazi, a career infantryman who took over the military in February with orders to knuckle down on troops perceived as has having lost their morale and menace.
    The need to prevail quickly in a future war seems especially urgent to Israeli strategists given the country's vulnerability to ground-to-ground missiles, something exploited by Hezbollah rocketeers and adopted by Palestinian militants in Gaza.
    Israel's top-selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported over the weekend that 3.3 million citizens have no access to bomb shelters despite home-front preparations under way since Iraq fired dozens of Scud rockets in the 1991 Gulf war.
    Israel's war footing vis-a-vis Syria comes, paradoxically, as both sides talk of a possible resumption of peace talks that stalled in 2000 over Damascus' demand for a return of the Golan.
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