Wednesday, September 19, 2007
I'm told the Givati is a southern brigade, yet here they are training on the Golan Heights against...what, Syrian formations...? Interesting priorities... IDF resumes military exercises on Golan
Hundreds of armored vehicles and thousands of soldiers participated in the three-day exercise which was scheduled to be completed on Thursday.
The exercise saw the implementation of a wide-range of lessons learned from the failures of the Second Lebanon War and involved infantry units, armored forces, Engineering Corps and the Air Force.
Ahead of the exercise, the IDF Foreign Liaison Office in the Northern Command asked the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) deployed in on both sides of the Israeli-Syrian border to update Damascus about the upcoming exercise. The officials explained that UNDOF was regularly updated about large-scale IDF training exercises in the Golan Heights and asked to relay "claming" messages to the Syrian military.
Lt.-Col. Ronen Morali, deputy commander of the Givati Brigade, told reporters Wednesday that the exercise was the culmination of a long training period which has prepared his soldiers for "any challenge ahead."