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A year after suffering surprise setbacks against Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas, Israel's armed forces are poised once more for a major conventional war.
Tens of thousands of conscripts and reservists have been training with an intensity not seen in Israel for decades, flush with emergency funds from a Government which speaks openly of possible new conflicts against arch-foes Syria and Iran.
"An army has two jobs: waging war or preparing for war," said Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, a career infantryman who took over the military in February with orders to knuckle down on troops perceived as having lost their morale and menace.
Few doubt that the Jewish state retains the Middle East's mightiest war machine, but the chastening experience against Hizbollah has highlighted special challenges for Ashkenazi.
He has had to shake up an Israeli top brass that has grown too used to easy wins against Palestinian militants and forgotten how to marshal sweeping ground, sea and air assaults against more formidable foes. There is also a drive to purge a recent doctrine that argues Israel's advanced, hands-off battlefield technologies can deliver victory without tanks and troops seizing deep territory.
Hizbollah exploited Israel's lack of tactical preparedness during the 34-day Lebanon War. Israeli commandos, importing a method used in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, converted abandoned Lebanese homes to command posts - only to suffer serious casualties when Hizbollah fired rockets through the walls.
Neither was Israel's armoured corps spared. Several tanks were destroyed in lookout positions by Hizbollah squads using missiles unavailable to the Palestinians.
"Taking on the Palestinians has been a low-intensity war.
"This is not an enemy that has anything like our arms or support systems," said Nissim Houri, a reserve lieutenant-colonel whose regiment fought in Lebanon and has trained for Syrian scenarios.
"What happened in Lebanon, and what we can expect to happen against Syria, is more like high-intensity warfare, with both sides throwing combined military forces against each other. That has meant a 180-degree shift in our preparations."
Israel lost 117 troops and 41 civilians during the war compared to the Lebanese death toll of around 1200.
Israel is concerned to preserve the ability to win "asymmetric" conflicts decisively enough to avoid casualties on a scale that would sap support for the citizens' Army, while leaving the leadership in a position to dictate truce terms.
In weeks-long drills on the occupied Golan Heights or at vast Negev desert bases, division-strength military units have practised overrunning enemy posts and villages with the sort of lightning manoeuvres that Israel used to prevail in its 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars against regular Arab armies.
The need to win quickly in a future war seems especially urgent to Israeli strategists given the country's vulnerability to ground-to-ground missiles, something exploited by Hizbollah rocketeers and, on a smaller scale, by militants in Gaza.
- REUTERS
