Israel is building a mock Arab town at a military base in southern Israel for millions of dollars -- part of a new sales pitch to foreign armies to teach them how to fight insurgencies.
Later this month, the Israeli military is hosting an arms show and seminar on "low-intensity conflict" for defense officials from 20 countries.
The campaign comes as the country moves into the 42nd month of its current round of fighting with the Palestinians.
However, some experts wondered how Israel could market "success," since it has failed to halt attacks by Palestinian militants and is considering withdrawing unilaterally from parts of the West Bank and most of the Gaza Strip.
In recent years, Israel has emerged as one of the largest exporters of weapons and defense systems in the world. Israeli security sales reached US$4 billion in 2002 before falling to US$2.8 billion last year, Defense Ministry Director General Amos Yaron told a Cabinet meeting Sunday.
Captain Jacob Dallal, an army spokesman, said the Israeli military has learned valuable lessons the Palestinian uprising, or intifadeh.
"We think this [experience] is interesting for other countries because it has become the main method of warfare in our time," Dallal said. "For better or worse, Israel has been a pioneer in the field in terms of methods and doctrine in dealing with a prolonged conflict fighting terrorists."
The mock Arab town is going up at the Tseelim army base in southern Israel, Dallal said.
Security officials say it will contain four distinct neighborhoods -- a complex of high-rise buildings, a crowded commercial district, a marketplace, and a low-rise, agricultural-type environment. They say the neighborhoods are designed to replicate conditions in a typical Middle Eastern setting.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say the town will be fitted with laser technology and video cameras to analyze soldiers' performances, including firing guided missiles from helicopters and checking the trajectory of tank shells.
Construction should be completed within two years, the officials say.
Later this month, Israel's military will sponsor an international conference on intifadeh lessons and an arms show.
Items on sale will include early-warning systems, bomb discovery and removal devices and night-vision scopes.
Thirty-eight lectures are to be delivered at the three-day conference, including on "protecting roads and settlements" and "deception, communications and intelligence operations in low-intensity conflict."
The event will be attended by defense officials and academics from 20 countries in North America, Asia and Europe, Dallal told a news conference Monday.
"It's a new world out there in terms of combat operations, and there is a lot for foreign armies to learn to adopt," he said.
Methods Israel has adopted include vastly expanded use of snipers, use of drone aircraft to present field commanders with real time intelligence, and deployment of state of the art radar to identify enemy firing positions.
Some military analysts don't think Israel has much to offer.
Military historian Martin Van Creveld of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem said that instead of winning the conflict -- as Israel's army chief claimed last July -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's recent announcement that Israel will unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip proves the opposite.
"I can't understand if they're so successful why they're going to get out of the Gaza Strip," he said.
He said Israel's continuing in-ability to stop Palestinian suicide bombers was a clear indication of the shortcoming of Israeli military tactics, despite the Israeli military's seeming success in dealing with day-by-day missions. Since September 2000, the conflict has claimed 2,688 lives on the Palestinian side and 930 lives on the Israeli side.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing