Asia

Home page

Asia

Netanyahu: Israel to preempt any attack on civilians

29 May 2013 18:46 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Israel will make sure to preempt any attack targeting its population centers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

"Right now, Israel has the world's most advanced home front defense. It is also the most threatened state in the world," Netanyahu said during a visit to a military drill simulating a chemical missile strike on a residential neighborhood in Jerusalem.

Citing "a cluster of new threats" that continue to mount on Israel's frontiers, Netanyahu said, "We are in a changing reality.. . To meet these threats, we are investing great efforts and are holding many drills."

Israel's military and rescue forces on Sunday launched a nationwide drill aimed at testing their preparedness to cope with an unconventional weapons attack on the home front.

The four-day exercise, named "Steadfast Home Front 1," simulated hundreds of missiles, some armed with chemical warheads, fired from Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip toward the greater Tel Aviv area and major cities across the country.

The IDF Home Front Command and the Home Front Defense Ministry oversaw the event, which was also designed to test civilians' response to an unconventional attack. As part of the drill, two air-raid sirens sounded across the country on Monday, alerting civilians to seek refuge in protected areas wherever possible. A similar drill, held in mid-2011, saw millions of Israelis rushing to neighborhood bomb shelters and cramming inside home-based, reinforced rooms.

The army was careful to emphasize that this week's drill, which commenced Sunday at southern farming communities bordering Egypt, was not related to current tensions with Syria.

"It is mostly intended to reach out to the civilian population, to make sure that they are aware of the threats around us, to know what they need to do in case of emergencies," Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, told reporters in a conference call on Saturday night.

Speaking to Home Front Command soldiers and officers on Wednesday, Netanyahu said the government "would have to invest more resources and promote new laws" in order to bolster the protection of the home front.

"We will do whatever is needed, in both organization and legislation, to defend Israel's citizens," Netanyahu said. "The protection will never be hermetic, but it is possible to defend our citizens."

Israel's security establishment assesses that tens of thousands of missiles and rockets stockpiled by the Syrian military, Lebanon 's Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza could shower down on Israel's urban centers in a multi-pronged assault, effectively turning the entire country into a front. Official figures project hundreds of fatalities, thousands of wounded and devastating damage to strategic infrastructure.

Seeking to downplay fears that a chemical attack was underway, Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan said over the weekend that Israel and Syria are not headed toward a war.

"The scenario in which Syria uses chemical weapons [against Israel] is more likely than in the past, but is defined in low probability," Erdan told Israel Channel 2's "Meet the Press" on Saturday.

"Our enemies know that the use of unconventional weaponry will entail a very harsh and destructive response."

Erdan also said that the Israeli home front is prepared "better than ever before," noting that since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, when Hezbollah lobbed some 4,000 rockets at northern Israel, "huge advancements" have been made in the cooperation between emergency services and government agencies in dealing with emergency.