Israeli army back to basics after Lebanon bruising

JERUSALEM, July 9 (Reuters) A year after suffering surprise setbacks against Lebanese Hezbollah 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 Hezbollah has highlighted special challenges for Ashkenazi, commanders and analysts say.

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 on 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.

''Ashkenazi is under no illusions, an army is not measured by the type of slideshow it can put on, but by the training of its people,'' said Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld.

Hezbollah 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 Hezbollah fired rockets through the walls.

Neither was Israel's armoured corps spared. Several tanks were destroyed in lookout positions, by Hezbollah squads using missiles unavailable to the Palestinians. On one occasion, a tank ran over and killed two soldiers in an accident that underscored Israeli forces' lack of coordination under fire.

''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,'' he said.

DETERRENCE Israel lost 117 troops and 41 civilians during the war with Hezbollah -- a figure dwarfed by the Lebanese death toll of around 1,200 -- which ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire and the Iranian-backed Shi'ite group claiming a ''divine victory''.

Israeli concern, then, is for preserving 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 sometimes weeks-long drills on the occupied Golan Heights or vast Negev desert bases, division-strength military units have practiced 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 Hezbollah rocketeers and, on a smaller scale, by militants in Gaza.

Israel's top-selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that 3.3 million citizens have no access to bomb shelters despite home-front preparations under way since Iraq fired dozens of Scud rockets in the 1991 Gulf war.

''In the updated war scenarios the army is already taking into account situations where reservists are deliberating what to do: To head for the Golan Heights, or to take the family to safety,'' wrote Yedioth correspondent Alex Fishman.

''In the best of cases, Israel will have operational weapons systems against rockets in three-four years -- maybe.'' Israel's war footing vis-a-vis Syria comes, paradoxically, as both sides talk of a possible resumption of peace talks that stalled in 2000 over Damascus' demand for a return of the Golan.

''Undoubtedly we should examine these (Syrian overtures) but only from a position of power,'' Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilna'i told Israel Radio.

''We must work on the principle that 'he who seeks peace, should gird himself for war'. We are getting back to the basics, to the formulas that worked for us in the past.'' Reuters SKB DB0844