Israel: IDF “Chicago” Pullout Drill
Jul. 26, 2005 0:34 | Updated Jul. 26, 2005 18:55
IDF, police begin mass pullout drill
By ARIEH O’SULLIVAN AND YAAKOV KATZ
IDF, police training exercise at Tze’elim base in the Negev.
For the next three weeks, the Tze’elim training base in the Negev will be buzzing with thousands of IDF soldiers and policemen as they undergo the most unusual training of their careers.
Following Tuesday’s mock drill, the IDF released a statement saying that the “evacuation” took only 20 minutes. However, fellow soldiers were playing the role of settlers, greatly reducing the realism and accuracy of the pullout operation, which is expected to be much more difficult for the IDF and police forces.
A mock settlement, referred to as “Chicago”, has been constructed, and the trainees will enact various scenarios that could arise during the evacuation. Soldiers and police will play both the parts of settlers and the forces evacuating them.
“We are beginning our major training exercise, which is the last leg in the long process we started half a year ago - a process that we’re not used to and that is difficult,” OC Ground Forces Services Maj.-Gen. Yiftach Ron-Tal announced Tuesday morning.
Ron-Tal and Lt.-Cmdr. Hagai Dotan, who heads one of two disengagement command centers made up of 5,000 IDF troops and policemen, are presiding over the Tze’elim training.
“There is no enemy here, we’re all on the same side. There is no winner or loser. We are all united,” Ron-Tal avowed.
Ron-Tal added that it took the army a “long time” to construct the evacuation plan and to ensure that “the damages [in the evacuation] will be minimal.”
Next week, Lt.-Cmdr. Aharon Franco, head of the second disengagement command center, and his 7,000 policemen and IDF troops will join Dotan at “Chicago”.
Most unit commanders began their training last week, but it was cut short as units were deployed to Kfar Maimon during the three-day stand-off there between security forces and anti-disengagement activists.
The training has been split up into two segments, each two weeks long. 5000 will participate in the first training leg, 7000 in the second. The entire preparation will be over on August 11. Army and police officers insist that the training in necessary and that the disengagement cannot take place without it. Because of the July heat, training is expected to go late into the night with afternoons slated for downtime.
The security forces on Monday received uniforms specially designed for the evacuating forces. They will wear vests with stitched-on state emblems – a menorah and the Star of David – “to show the evacuees that we do not represent our commanders, a minister or the police chief, but the Knesset and the State of Israel,” officials said.
The forces will be taught how to evacuate settlers unarmed and without using excessive force. The most they will carry, police officers have repeatedly said, “is a bottle of water and lip balm.”
The security forces will be split into teams of 17 policemen and soldiers. Police believe that a single team, commanded by either a police or IDF officer, will be enough to evacuate a single home. Senior officers have said, however, that if there were isolated pockets of heavy resistance, they would deploy numerous teams to carry out the evacuation. Some units have already been divided up, but most will be assembled later from the ad-hoc brigades that include members of nearly every branch of the IDF and the police.
To minimize injuries, the teams have also been split up into four smaller squads of four, based on the calculation that it takes four people to evacuate a single settler, with two carrying the arms and two carrying the legs.
According to a new policy, only officers and NCO team leaders will be permitted to knock on the doors and communicate with people in a house. Soldiers will not converse unless absolutely necessary. “We will arrive early in the morning, we’ll knock on the door, and we won’t discuss with the settlers why we’re evacuating them, only how it will happen,” Dotan explained.
Since [the scenario] in every family will be different, officers on the scene will decide how best to deal with each case on an individual basis.
IDF psychologists are also to give instructions to soldiers and police on how to deal with the often high-pressure tactics of the withdrawal opponents.
