Police are conducting a large-scale training exercise in preparation for a possible massive Arab from Judea and Samaria in September.
Hundreds of police, Border Police and special forces are participating in the exercise that police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld is a “regular standard exercise on a large scale,” according to the French news agency AFP.
September may be “D-Day” for the Palestinian Authority, which until recently has been banking on the United Nations to declare it to be an independent country based on the borders that existed from the time of the temporary Armistice Lines in 1949 until the Six-Day War in 1967.
The Palestinian Authority is divided on whether to continue the efforts following doubts it can achieve its goal considering the opposition several Western countries and the strong possibility that the United States would block the move.
A planned march by foreign Arabs from Syria and Lebanon last month and a week ago flopped, and parallel protests from Arabs in Judea and Samaria drew no more than several hundred people.
The police are not taking any chances and are preparing for a human invasion on Jerusalem and metropolitan Tel Aviv in case the Palestinian Authority Arabs are not stopped by the Israel Forces, which is responsibility for security in Judea and Samaria.
“Obviously we're taking into consideration that there might be the need ... for large numbers of police officers ... to deal with large-scale demonstrations in September," Rosenfeld told AFP.
The largest deployment of police iin Israel occurred nearly six years ago when tens of thousands of policemen surrounded Gush Katif and violently arrested or detained thousands of people protesting the eventual expulsion of 9,000 Jews and the demolition of their homes and community buildings.