TEL AVIV Ñ The strain on Israel's military is showing.
"The standing army is being torn apart," Defense Minister Binyamin
Ben-Eliezer said. "They are working 24 hours a day. Soldiers are standing
hours on guard duty."
Military sources said the army has cancelled all exercises amid the
intensified fighting with the Palestinians. Israeli officers on leave have
been asked to return to replace the scores who have been wounded or killed
in battle over the last four months.
The result has been a severe shortage of manpower and a strain on
resources for the standing army. Israeli leaders have resisted pressure to
call up reserves to avoid raising tension with neighboring Arab states, Middle East Newsline reported.
"We are not built for a war of attrition," former Defense Minister Moshe
Arens said. "There is an awareness that we must bring this to a conclusion."
Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz said the military employed 20,000
soldiers in last week's raids of Palestinian refugee camps and cities in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip. The soldiers were taken from infantry, armored and
engineering units.
The strain has been also felt in the intelligence corps, exhausted by a
shortage in funding and personnel. As a result combat units have had difficulty obtaining Arabic-speaking officers to accompany Israeli
military raids of Palestinian cities and refugee camps.
Manpower has also been stretched by the increase in military checkpoints
around the West Bank. In many cases, the army has expanded personnel at
checkpoints to the size of a company and constructed massive fortifications
to protect the soldiers.
The General Staff has obtained permission from the government for a
partial mobilization. The effort seeks volunteers among the Israeli
unemployed to perform guard duty around Jewish settlements in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip as well as along the old 1967 border. Israeli reservists in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been sent notices to report immediately
for duty.
Military sources said the conflict with the Palestinians has come at the
expense of other threats to Israel. They include an attack by Hizbullah from
the north and the prospect of an Iraqi missile strike.
The sources said the military has concluded that Iraq could launch
missiles with chemical warheads if the United States attacks Baghdad. They
said the intensification of the Palestinian insurgency is meant to support
Iraq and prevent U.S. efforts to form an Arab coalition against the regime
of Saddam Hussein.
