Preparing for battle with Hezbollah
The ‘Post’ joins the officers of the 7th Armored Brigade as they use the West Bank to simulate Lebanese combat in built-up areas
The steep, green hills southwest of Hebron were peppered by white large boulders, before making room for a valley, in which a Palestinian village was nestled. Approaching it was a convoy of IDF jeeps carrying officers from the 7th Armored Brigade, as well as a row of fast-walking infantry soldiers, members of the brigade’s elite Reconnaissance Company. They were all taking part in a drill designed to improve their ability to storm Hezbollah-controlled villages in southern Lebanon. The mission: To test the ability of company and platoon commanders to plot ground offensives on challenging terrain, and enter a village without exposing their soldiers to deadly Hezbollah fire. The exercise is what the IDF calls a “skeleton drill,” involving only commanding officers and a few units. The onus is on the officers – they must simulate an attack and test theories on how best to achieve their goals. The officers had left their tanks and subordinates behind at the nearby Lachish Training Center, where a brigade-wide drill was held in the morning. Now, the jeeps converged on a section of the village of Idna. The 7th Brigade is expected to be one of the wartime formations that will be called in to deliver a knockout punch to Hezbollah in a future large-scale clash. The brigade has begun a process to upgrade its fleets of tanks from the veteran Merkava Mark 2 to the cutting-edge Mark 4 models, a process that will be complete in the next two-and-a-half years. Though an armored formation by definition, the brigade includes a specialized Reconnaissance Company, which gathers intelligence and directs the brigade’s firepower, and a number of additional non-armored units. “We’re not just tanks. We’re made up of multiple forces, and operate on multiple fronts,” a brigade source told The Jerusalem Post. “We are in the process of building up power. We have incorporated an Engineering Corps battalion, and a combat assistance company that is made up of soldiers who do patrols, set up lookouts, and deploy precision firepower,” the source added. Gesturing towards the approaching village and hilly landscape, the source said, “This is just like Lebanon. Even the fence is the same color. We’re simulating a northern arena and observing this terrain, some of which is open and some of which is built up. We want to instill ground awareness into these officers.” The aim of the drill, and others like it, is to ensure that a common language exists among the officers that make up the brigade, and to make sure they are ready for a sudden conflict with Hezbollah. A kilometer before the entrance to the village of Idna, the lead jeep, containing the Brigade Commander, Col. Nadav Lotan, pulled over to the side of the road, near a row of olive trees. “See how important it is to set up a position in this olive grove?” Lotan said to a subordinate. In the same jeep, a commander of the 7th Brigade’s 77th Armored Battalion, Lt.- Col. Yair Or, closely observed the terrain. Or has been stationed in this area with his battalion for three months for routine security missions. “We’re no strangers to Idna,” he said, adding that the army makes routine arrests here, mainly of criminal suspects believed to be behind thefts of vehicles and metals. Currently, the 77th battalion is engaged in foot and jeep patrols. But in any conflict, its members would be quickly mobilized to the Lebanese borders, before storming Hezbollah positions in tanks. This hilly countryside and Palestinian village provided the stage for the battalion’s officers to think about how best to do that. “We’re taking advantage of an area in which we are operationally active in, to maintain our readiness,” Lt.- Col. Or explained. Before coming here, the officers had made plans on how to seize this patch of land. Now, they tested