![IDF soldiers in desert exercise [file]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sQgqFoFj9ISJ1DRzDYjhTTOTTY6MBXh3MNCz0-FLHO0HoUEM-smpKsc5yXI10PT9Bqxj7X8AeBy_D8NZ_pb-_M9-vIfeIzdgeoENpZczeMGK3uoYH8-2gFoSw3sQ=s0-d "IDF soldiers in desert exercise [file]")
Photo by: Marc Israel Sellem PM: Rethink defense needs in wake of Arab Spring
Monday, 28 November 2011
Israel will hold a series of exercises over the coming months preparing the country for potential biological, chemical and radioactive attacks. One of the exercises, called "Dark Cloud," will be held in January and will be the first time the Israeli defense establishment and emergency services simulate a radioactive "dirty bomb" attack in northern Israel.
The exercise will be held in Haifa and will simulate a radioactive dirty bomb attack in the city and will involve the IDF's Home Front Command, Israel Police and other emergency services. Road blocks will be setup throughout the city and hospitals will also be tested for their level of preparedness for such an attack.
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Later this week the Defense Ministry will hold its annual "Orange Flame" exercise simulating a biological terror attack against Israel. The drill will be held in the North and will involve hospitals in Tiberias, Afula and Nazareth. Mock patients will arrive at the hospitals with various symptoms and doctors will need to diagnose and determine the biological agents that caused the symptoms.
The Defense Ministry has a special branch responsible for preparing the country and its emergency services for a non-conventional terrorist attack.
These exercises are part of the ministry's annual training regimen, but there is concern among Western countries and Israel that terrorist groups are working to obtain chemical and biological agents, possibly from unstable Middle Eastern countries such as Libya and Syria .
Syria is reported to have a significant arsenal of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, sarin and VX gas.
Libya was also discovered to have an arsenal of chemical weapons, but those are believed to be under government control.
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The Jerusalem Post -11/28/2011 01:03
Talkbacks (1)
Ill winds blowing through the Arab Spring will force Israel to rethink its overall security needs, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu indicated at the cabinet meeting on Sunday, a day before Egypt was due to start its parliamentary elections.
Discussing the management of the country’s finances, the prime minister said Israel faced pressure on its economy from “threats and dramatic geopolitical changes occurring here in the region.”
While Netanyahu did not want to “go into details,” he said it was clear that after 30 years of constancy in Egypt and regional stability as a result of the peace treaty with Cairo, the current changes would “certainly raise various questions, and this is – of course – in addition to the missile and other threats to the State of Israel.”
According to government sources, Netanyahu was gingerly referring to the need to recalibrate the country’s resources and increase defense spending to deal with possible regional threats Israel has not had to face since the peace treaty was signed in 1979.
“There was a lot of talk about where the Arab Spring was going,” one government source said, explaining Netanyahu’s rather opaque public comments about the country’s security needs. “But it appears now that it is not going in a good direction.”
Noted the source, who was in the cabinet meeting, “There were elections in Tunisia, and the Islamists won. There were elections in Morocco over the weekend, and the Islamists won. People here are very concerned about Egypt. It looks now as if the revolution is going in a certain direction. Wherever the Arabs vote, the Islamists are winning.”
The source said that while during times of economic crisis in the 1990s, funds had not had to be diverted to deal with threats coming from Egypt, this was no longer the case in these volatile days of what Netanyahu has referred to in recent weeks as “unprecedented regional instability” and the biggest shakeup in the area since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago.
As a result, the source said, Netanyahu was hinting to his ministers that there was a need to invest heavily in defense so various new regional challenges could be met.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz did not dispute that the defense budget needed a boost to face the current challenges, but said it received an additional supplement of NIS 100 billion over a number of years as a result of findings of the 2007 Brodet Commission report, which looked into defense spending. He said the report had taken terrorists, missiles and a nuclear threat into consideration, and the recommended supplement was adequate to cover the current regional situation.
Steinitz also pointed out that when he was chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee five years ago, he had warned that the country could soon find itself facing a security threat from Egypt.
“We are rightfully concerned,” he said. “We still don’t know what will happen in Egypt.”
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