Six army battalions called up under emergency orders to meet growing threat on Egypt, Syria borders
“The army needs a better ‘answer’ than in the
past to the threat,” he said, citing Egypt’s deteriorating control over
the Sinai, marked by an upsurge in Bedouin smuggling of weapons and
other goods. He also spoke of the growing threat of terrorism from
Sinai, as exemplified by an infiltration last August in which eight
Israelis were killed.
The IDF has
issued emergency call up orders to six reserve battalions in light of
new dangers on the Egyptian and Syrian borders. And the Knesset has
given the IDF permission to summon a further 16 reserve battalions if
necessary, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.
An IDF spokesperson said intelligence assessments called for the deployment of more soldiers.
According to 2008′s Reserve Duty Law, combat
soldiers can be called for active reserve duty once every three years,
and for short training sessions during the other two. Rising tensions between Israel and Egypt and the ongoing unrest in Syria caused the army to ask the Knesset for special permission to call up more soldiers, more often.
The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee
approved the request recently, enabling the IDF to summon up to 22
battalions for active duty for the second time in three years. Already,
the army has called up six of them.
“This signifies that the IDF regards the
Egyptian and Syrian borders as the potential source of a greater threat
than in the past,” the former deputy chief of staff, Dan Harel, said on
Wednesday night.
The Syrian situation was also highly
combustible, Harel said, “and it could explode at any moment… and pose a
direct challenge to us.”
Maariv said the army had to decide whether to
cancel training sessions for enlisted soldiers or to summon additional
reserve units, and it chose the latter; canceling training would mean
soldiers would not be prepared in the case of an all-out war.
The IDF spokesperson said all the letters
summoning soldiers for reserve duty were sent after the IDF received the
approval of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for the larger
call-up.
One of the reservists summoned told Maariv he
hadn’t expected his call-up letter until next year. Leaving home for
more than three weeks is something you have to prepare for, he noted.
Activists from the Reserve Soldiers Forum said
they were disappointed time and again by the way the IDF treated its
reserve soldiers. The law was supposed to help reservists, but it has
been repeatedly bypassed and ignored, they said. “At the end, all that
will remain of the law will be its title.”
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