Posted on 07/25/2005 11:32:00 PM PDT by Thinkin' Gal
Jul. 26, 2005 0:34 | Updated Jul. 26, 2005 8:58
By ARIEH O'SULLIVAN AND YAAKOV KATZ
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.
Starting Tuesday morning, the police and the army begin preparing their forces for evacuating settlers from their homes in the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria.
The training will provide the security service personnel with a variety of practical skills but will also include a heavy dose of "mental preparation."
The day starts with an address by OC Ground Forces Services Maj.-Gen. Yiftach Ron-Tal and Lt.-Cmdr. Hagai Dotan, who heads one of two disengagement command centers made up of 5,000 IDF troops and policemen. Because of the July heat, training is expected to go late into the night with afternoons slated for downtime.
Dotan will be joined next week by Lt.-Cmdr. Aharon Franco, head of the second disengagement command center, together with his 7,000 policemen and IDF troops.
Commanders for most of the units began their training last week but were cut short as units were deployed to Kfar Maimon during the three-day stand-off there between security forces and anti-disengagement activists.
The soldiers and police arrived Monday and have been organizing themselves for the tasks at hand.
The training has been split up into two segments, each two weeks long. 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.
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, mixed with 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 are 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.
Some of the training will deal with overcoming communication problems. Settlers are expected to blast loud music to disrupt the forces.
According to a new doctrine, only officers and NCO team leaders will be permitted to knock on the doors and communicate with people in a house. Soldiers are to be told not to open their mouths unless absolutely necessary.
IDF psychologists are also to give instructions to soldiers and police on how to buffer themselves from the mind games the opponents to the withdrawal are likely to play with them.
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