The Israeli army has opened bureaux in nine major cities throughout the world in case it needs to call up Israelis travelling or living abroad for military service.
An army representative said offices in Johannesburg, Frankfurt, Bombay, Bangkok, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Los Angeles and New York had been established to recruit reservists and bring them home to serve "in the event of a real emergency situation".
She said Israeli reservists living abroad for over a year or on holiday abroad would be eligible for recruitment.
Most Jewish men in Israel are drafted at the age of 18 for three years and called up for annual reserve duty until age 51. Female soldiers serve one year and nine months at present. Although it is rare for them to serve reserve duty, the army has recently decided some women would begin to do so, the representative said.
Israel is facing a 10-monthold Palestinian uprising against its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in which over 600 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed.
Asked whether the new recruitment offices were a sign that Israel was preparing for the possibility of fighting more intense than the current low-level warfare, the representative said: "We have to be prepared for every eventuality."
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, while accepting that extra observers from the CIA would be allowed into the country, repeated Israel's position that it was against "internationalisation" of the conflict by allowing foreign observers to become involved in ways other than those already scripted in existing agreements.
"If you have a group of observers, it may be a beginning of internationalisation," Mr Peres told reporters yesterday.
"The US are here anyway on the invitation of the Palestinians and the Israelis, and we have never limited the number of the Americans who think it is necessary to meet the challenge."
Mr Peres said Israel had not been approached by the US with a request to increase the number of CIA personnel. "We shall wait for the approach," he said.
A truce drafted by the CIA director, Mr George Tenet, has been derailed by almost daily bloodshed since it was drawn up on June 13th. Israel maintains that the G8 call for foreign monitors on Saturday did not deviate from the peace plan by a committee headed by former US senator Mr George Mitchell.
An Islamic Jihad militant died yesterday from gunshot wounds after an attack by an elite Israeli border guard unit near the West Bank town of Jenin. A Palestinian boy was killed by Israeli machinegun fire after in clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip, a hospital official said.
Rifat Al-Nahal (15) was shot in the back during the clashes at Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt. His death brings to 51 the number of people killed since a ceasefire was declared on June 13th.