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Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Events in Egypt May Lead to Changes in IDF

Events in Egypt May Lead to Changes in IDF

January 29, 2011

January 29 2010-Militant Islam Monitor-Western and Israeli defense analysists failed to predict the scale of the change taking place in Egypt and are unprepared as to how to deal with it.

The events are regarded to be as momentous as the Islamic revolution in Iran and the Israeli Egyptian peace accords.

According to Amos Harel of the Israeli paper Haaretz the unstable Egyptian situation bodes ill for Israel and may necessitate a complete revamping of the Israel Defense Forces.

"From the perspective of the IDF, the events are going to demand a complete reorganization. For the last 20 years, the IDF has not included a serious threat from Egypt in its operational plan.

In the last several decades, peace with Cairo has allowed the gradual thinning out of forces, the lowering of maximum age for reserve duty and the diversion of massive amounts of resources to social and economic projects.

The IDF military exercises focused on conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas, at most in collusion with Syria. No one prepared with any seriousness for a scenario in which an Egyptian division would enter Sinai, for example.

If the Egyptian regime falls in the end, a possibility that seemed unbelievable only two or three days ago, the riots could easily spill over to Jordan and threaten the Hashemite regime. On Israel's two long peaceful borders there will then prevail a completely different reality."http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/egypt-riots-are-an-intelligence-chief-s-nightmare-1.340027

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1/30/11 Update:

"There's no question that Israel has sustained a major intelligence failure.

Only last week the incoming director of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, presented his regional outlook for 2011. Nowhere in his address was there mention of a possible upheaval in Egypt or instability in Mubarak's regime.

"We dedicate a great deal of resources to monitoring Egypt, therefore we - of all people - should have seen this coming," said an intelligence officer who took part in the meeting. "We are examining what failures led to our misreading of the situation."

He added that the government expected that protests that swept the Middle East since the initial rumblings in Tunisia would not affect Egypt to any great extent...In the Hebrew-language daily Yediot Ahronoth, Israel's former ambassador to Egypt, Eli Shaked, wrote: "Things do not look good for Israel and the moderate Arab states. The developments from here on are not going to be good for our peace with Egypt and stability in the region."

A Foreign Ministry official said the best assessment was the headline splashed across the front pages of two of Israel's leading papers: "A New Middle East."

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/30/2042368/egyptian-upheaval-a-complete-surprise.html#

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