Maalot Mayor Shlomo Bouchbout asked Defense Minister Ehud Barak to call off the large-scale Home Front drill today because it "makes no sense." Bouchbout said the exercise is only being held in educational institutions and will not involve the staffs of Israel's communities.

"If this is an exercise that is meant to test how the home front deals with a war situation, why don't we test the home front?"' he asked Ynet. "Are the local councils not part of the home front? Although the exercise has already begun, to this moment I have not received any notification of the Maalot-Tarshicha municipality's role in the exercise, other than testing the educational system."

"I checked the matter out and I have found that the exercise only includes educational institutions, so what is the point?", he added. "If you are going to hold an exercise, you need to test the community staffs that participated in the Second Lebanon War."