Going to School on the Israelis' Experience

By Paul Kerstein

August 09, 2005 — CSO —

Security experts go to school on Israel, and for good reason. The Israelis have as much experience as anyone in dealing with security threats over the past four decades. El Al Airlines passengers got used to preflight security interviews decades before most American travelers.  Leaders from law enforcement, transportation agencies (including New York City’s transit union) and executive protection teams from the United States and other countries routinely consult Israeli police and security forces about strategies and tactics. (The International Association of Chiefs of Police, in a recent training bulletin about dealing with terrorist threats, cites the Israelis’ work in developing a suicide bomber profile.)

Even the security teams at major American shopping malls are taking cues from the way Israelis. The Wall Street Journal noted that IPC International Corp., a mall security vendor, takes lessons from the Israeli approach to shopping mall security to watch for suspicious behaviors among patrons, for example, those appearing to walk-off distances, or toting video cameras aimed in the wrong places (architecture, not people).

Israel is front and center this month with a current events case study.  The country’s plan to withdraw of 9,000 of its citizens from the Gaza Strip by August 17 (the number of people relocating includes those in a few West Bank settlements) takes both external and internal threats into account, according to The New York Times. The risk management effort includes physically handling the Israeli settlers who resist removal, patrolling buffer zones between Israeli and Palestinian areas and stationing police in major cities inside Israel to clear streets of protesters. 

The preparations for this move are prodigious, and have been under way for months. Near the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Army built a sprawling military base with tents for a force of 40,000 soldiers and police because the mission involves the temporary merger of military and police forces under a joint command, The Los Angeles Times reported. The effort is both low- and high-tech. As soldiers and police prepare to assemble 17-member teams to remove residents house by house, technicians are setting up software programs to track the evacuation in real-time, the newspaper said.

A key factor for the security forces is the wrenching, emotional turmoil wracking Israeli society over the settlement evacuations. The military closed the Gaza border this past weekend as citizens protesting the removal of settlements sought to infiltrate the Army’s security lines. An Israeli soldier who was absent without leave killed four Israeli Arabs on August 4 on a bus in the Israeli Arab town of Shfaram; he in turn was killed by a mob responding to the attacks. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denounced the soldier’s rampage as a terrorist attack, as did the leading spokesman for the Israeli settlers’ movement.

As part of its training, Israeli forces have gone through role-playing exercises where those playing protesters hurl insults and other verbal abuse onto the soldiers, and practice passive resistance to being moved, reported the newspaper Haaretz. “The primary conclusion reached in this exercise, in contrast to simpler exercises held previously, was that evacuating an entire settlement would be a long and complicated task,” the newspaper said.

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