IDF says changed circumstances along Egyptian and Syrian borders require more troops; six battalions already summoned

The Knesset gave the IDF permission to summon up to 22 reserve battalions for emergency duty in light of developments on the Egyptian and Syrian borders, Maariv reported on Wednesday. Reservists from six battalions have already received such orders.

According to 2008′s Reserve Duty Law, combat soldiers can be called for active reserve duty once every three years, and for short training sessions during the other two. Rising tensions between Israel and Egypt and the ongoing unrest in Syria caused the army to ask the Knesset for special permission to call up more soldiers, more often.

The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee approved the request recently, enabling the IDF to summon up to 22 battalions for active duty for the second time in three years. So far, the army has called up six of them.

One of the reservists summoned told Maariv he hadn’t expected his call-up letter until next year. Leaving home for more than three weeks is something you have to prepare for, he noted.

Activists from the Reserve Soldiers Forum said they were disappointed time and again by the way the IDF treated its reserve soldiers. The law was supposed to help reservists, but it has been repeatedly bypassed and ignored, they said. “At the end, all that will remain of the law will be its title.”

Maariv said the army had to decide whether to cancel training sessions for enlisted soldiers or to summon additional reserve units, and it chose the latter; canceling training would mean soldiers would not be prepared in the case of an all-out war.

An IDF spokesperson said intelligence assessments called for the deployment of more soldiers, and that all the letters summoning soldiers for reserve duty were sent after it received the approval of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for the larger call-up. (© 2012 THE TIMES OF ISRAEL 05/02/12)