The Meaning of Annapolis
By Col. DAN SMITH
[SIZE=-1]"An occupying army cannot expect to find friendsbut [it must] give the uninvolved population every opportunity to have some kind of a quality of life."[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]MGEN Yair Naveh (Ret.), Israeli Defense Force, Defense News[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+3]L[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]ast week, as participants in the latest international peace conference on Israel- Palestine prepared to wend their way to Maryland's Chesapeake Bay, in Tel Aviv senior Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officials were wrapping up a three-day headquarters exercise focusing on urban terror. Media reports said the drill was the largest in eight years to test reactions to and prevention of terror incidents. [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]MGEN Yair Naveh (Ret.), Israeli Defense Force, Defense News[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The IDF "won" the exercise, which should have heartened Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert after the debacle in summer 2006 when Hezbollah stood its ground in southern Lebanon against attempts by the IDF to break the back of the U.S. - designated terror organization. Nonetheless, "unidentified sources" who participated in the drill concluded--again--that this type of warfare is extremely costly, people-intensive, and highly interactive with the local population. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Albeit unstated, the results also pointed to the need for political, economic, and environmental action to reduce and if possible eliminate the causes of terror. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Such results, if they were conveyed to Prime Minister Olmert, would have been in line with his state of mind as he prepared for Annapolis. On November 4, he spoke publicly about the coming summit, invoking the memory of Yitzhak Rabin whose courageous steps in the 1990s toward finding a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians was cut short by an Israeli settler's bullets. (Continued)[/SIZE]
