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Olmert reassures Syria, Lebanon over missile drill

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sought to reassure Syria and Lebanon yesterday that Israel did not want a major missile attack drill to worsen tensions along its northern border.

“The goal of the exercise is to check the authorities’ ability to carry out their duties in time of emergency and for preparing the home front for different scenarios,” Olmert said at the start of a weekly Cabinet meeting.

“There is nothing else hidden behind it. All the reports on tension in the north can be moderated and cooled down. We have no secret plans,” he said.

The army said five-day nationwide exercise simulating air and missile attacks on cities, including by non-conventional weapons began yesterday.

Over the next few days emergency sirens will be sounded across the country and schoolchildren will practice entering shelters and protected spaces in the event of chemical and biological weapons attacks on Israel. The emergency services will also for the first time broadcast on TV tutorial videos explaining how to act during an attack.

The planned exercise comes after local media last week reported heightened tensions along Israel’s heavily guarded border with Syria and days after Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora put his armed forces on alert.

Siniora also asked UN peacekeepers tasked with monitoring the border, “to be careful” that Israel will not use the maneuvers “to launch operations capable of increasing tension,” a statement from his office said.

Israel has repeatedly said the drills are purely aimed at preparing emergency services and civilians to respond to an attack.

“As far as I know the Syrians know this and there is no need to give the exercise a different interpretation,” Olmert said, adding: “We are interested in negotiations for peace with the Syrians. They know exactly what our expectations are, we know their expectations, and if the circumstances allow this, that is where we would like to head.”

The last round of negotiations between the two neighbors broke down in 2000 over disagreements over the strategic Golan Heights plateau, which Israel seized in the 1967 war and annexed in 1981.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak earlier said that “the northern front is particularly volatile, but we don’t want any degradation and the other side knows it and we also think that the other side doesn’t want a degradation.”

Barak said, however, that his nation was “ready to confront any development.”

Barak said the exercises were primarily aimed at “learning lessons” from the Second Lebanon War in 2006, during which more than 4,000 rockets fired by the Hezbollah militia slammed into northern Israel.

An official investigation of the war harshly criticized Israel’s military and political leadership for failing to protect civilians during the 34-day conflict.
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