Israel Begins Nationwide Emergency Drill

Israel yesterday began its biggest emergency drill, a five-day, nationwide exercise that will include simulated chemical and biological attacks amid heightened tensions with Syria.

Local authorities, government offices, security and rescue teams, and the educational system are all participating in the training exercise, the Israel Defense Forces said in an e-mailed statement this weekend. The drill is being led by the recently founded National Emergency Authority together with the Home Front Command, it said.

Israel faced criticism for its lack of preparedness for the two-month Second Lebanon War in 2006, during which some 4,000 rockets hit the country. Border tensions rose last week as the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz said Israel was concerned that movements by Syria's armed forces may lead to an attack. Israeli officials later denied they were worried, Haaretz said.

"Clearly this drill was planned well in advance, so to link it to day-to-day situations is not sensible," the chairman of the political science department at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, Gerald Steinberg, said by telephone. "Experience has shown that sometimes drills and exercises turn into operations as was the case with Syria in 1973 when it launched the Yom Kippur War. Since this matches their behavior, they're naturally suspicious," Mr. Steinberg said.

Prime Minister Olmert of Israel stressed yesterday that the exercise was only a drill and not part of any larger operation.

"All reports about heightened tension in the north are exaggerated; we have no secret plans," Mr. Olmert said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting today. "I would like to make it unequivocally clear that this is a routine drill. The State of Israel is not intent on any violent confrontation in the north."

As part of the exercise, a 90-second siren will sound across the country at 10 a.m. tomorrow, according to the statement. At the same time, schools, Home Front Command bases, government offices, and public institutions will practice entering protected spaces, the statement said.

A field exercise to be held April 8 through April 10 will simulate potential scenarios.