Jerusalem | Sunday
THE Israeli army said on Saturday it had opened bureaus in nine major cities throughout the world in case it needed to call up Israelis travelling or living abroad for military service.
An army representative said offices in Johannesburg, Frankfurt, Bombay, Bangkok, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Los Angeles and New York had been established to recruit reservists and bring them home to serve ”in the event of a real emergency situation.”
She said Israeli reservists living abroad for over a year or on holiday abroad would be eligible for recruitment.
Most Jewish men in Israel are drafted at the age of 18 for three years and called up for annual reserve duty until age 51. Female soldiers serve one year and nine months at present. Though it is rare for them to serve reserve duty, the army has recently decided some women would begin to do so, the representative said.
Israel is facing a 10-month-old Palestinian uprising against its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in which over 600 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed.
Asked whether the new recruitment offices were a sign that Israel was preparing for the possibility of fighting more intense than the current low-level warfare, the representative said: ”We have to be prepared for every eventuality.” – Reuters