ISRAELI LEADERS went out of their way yesterday to allay Arab fears as the country launched its biggest ever civil defence drill.
“Turning Point 4”, which lasts five days, is designed to test the readiness of the military, emergency services, local councils and civilians to concurrent simulated attacks on different fronts.
On Wednesday, sirens will sound throughout Israel and people will be required to make their way to a bomb shelter or other sheltered area.
But the drill raised tensions in the region, already high over Iran’s nuclear drive and the ongoing efforts by Iranian-backed militant groups in Lebanon and Gaza to build up their arsenals.
Hizbullah forces in Lebanon went on heightened alert in response to what they termed Israel’s war games.
Syrian president Bashar Assad, during talks in Damascus with visiting French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, condemned “the ongoing Israeli threats to ignite wars and undermine the stability in the region”.
Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri said the Israeli exercise contradicted efforts to reach comprehensive peace in the region.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the drill as an annual and routine occurrence planned months in advance, stressing that the exercise had not been scheduled in reaction to any “irregular security development” in the north or elsewhere. “Quite the contrary,” he said.
“Israel wants peace, quiet and stability – but it is no secret that we live in a region that is subject to threats of rocket and missile attacks.”
Israel initiated annual civil defence drills after the 2006 Lebanon war, when an estimated 300,000 residents of the north fled their homes in response to Hizbullah rocket attacks.
Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who served an 18-year jail term for revealing details of Israel’s nuclear plant at Dimona, began serving a three-month prison sentence yesterday.
Mr Vanunu, a former technician at the Dimona plant, was released in 2004 on condition that he remained in Israel and did not meet foreigners.
He was sentenced to three months’ community service after meeting a Norwegian woman, but a Jerusalem court sentenced him to prison after refusing his request to carry out the community service in Arab east Jerusalem. Mr Vanunu said outside the court that the Israeli authorities would not succeed in silencing him.