PREPARING FOR WAR

By LISA BEYER/TEL AVIV

It was late one night this fall, and the soldiers were sleeping. Suddenly alarms began to sound across their bases on the Golan Heights. By the hundreds, members of the Israel Defense Forces spilled out of their barracks, speeding toward their assigned tanks. Engines roared to life, maps were unfurled, and within minutes two full tank brigades were rolling out. The armored leviathans rumbled to the Syrian front and onto ramps built long ago as battle stations, many of which were overgrown with weeds from disuse. Once there, the troops parked and waited, peering anxiously into the night for the Syrian attackers.

This time they didn't come. Nor did the Syrian army appear during a repeat exercise weeks later. But the full-dress rehearsals on the Golan, unprecedented in recent years, show just how nervous Israeli commanders have become about the possibility of a genuine Syrian assault. That danger had been more or less dismissed in the previous five years as the two countries engaged in serious, if fitful, peace talks. Today, once again, Israel sees war as an immediate threat.

The new climate of increased tensions with Arab states following hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's election in May has forced Israeli commanders to face an urgent question: after 14 years without a full-fledged war--the longest such period in the country's history--is Israel ready for battle? The answer, many officers privately concede, is, not quite. So the military is moving rapidly to a war footing. "In the last few years, because of the peace process, we took some chances," says a military official. "But now the possibility of war is up, so we have to build up to face that."

Concerns about Syria began to escalate in August, when officials in Damascus started threatening to use force to reclaim the Golan, the Syrian plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 war. Syrian President Hafez Assad was plainly frustrated by the policies of the new Israeli government of Netanyahu, who, unlike his two immediate predecessors, rules out a return of the strategic high land in exchange for a comprehensive peace treaty.

Soon after the menacing statements from Syria, Israeli defense officials say, they noticed that Assad was training his forces more aggressively, emphasizing attack rather than defense strategies. Most ominously, he moved his 14th division, an elite commando outfit, from Beirut, where it protects Syrian interests in Lebanon, to positions close to the frontier with Israel. Syrian officials say the recent activity is defensive and insist they have no plans to strike. Moreover, many Arab analysts accuse Israel of playing up the war talk as a means of diverting attention from the paralysis in the peace process since Netanyahu came to power. "This is a propaganda ploy," says a senior Egyptian official.

Still, right or wrong, the Israelis are convinced that Assad has a scheme in his head: to use special forces to grab and hold a small piece of the Golan Heights, creating a crisis that would compel the U.S. to intervene and restart negotiations, presumably resulting in Syria's recovery of the Golan. Because Assad understands well that his forces are inferior to Israel's, no one thinks he would provoke a full-scale war. But that might still be the result, were Israel to respond to a limited land grab, as it has threatened, with a disproportionately severe counterattack. Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai has talked of retaliation that could topple Assad's regime.

Then there is the question of who, among the Arab states bordering Israel, might come to Syria's aid. The Israelis think they can count on Jordan, which made peace with Israel in 1994, to stay out of the fight, despite strains in relations over Netanyahu's tough policies. But Israel's confidence in Egypt is shakier. Two weeks ago, President Hosni Mubarak said that in the event of an Israeli attack on Syria, Egypt would not "stand idly by." Given popular feeling in Egypt against the Netanyahu government, it was perhaps an inevitable, if insincere, remark. If Egypt did not go to war when Israel attacked Lebanon in 1982, notes a senior Arab diplomat, it is unlikely to volunteer help with a Syrian attack on Israel today. Even so, the Mubarak comment has Israeli commanders re-examining their options on the western front.

In response to Assad's moves, the Israelis have increased their intelligence gathering and are planning and rehearsing their responses to a Syrian offensive. In addition to taking regular troops through their paces, as in the two major tank exercises held recently, commanders are perfecting plans to call up reserves, who make up the bulk of the military. In headquarters across the Golan Heights, the lights scarcely go out any more as officers work through the night.

Despite their noisy maneuvers on the Golan, the Israelis are not convinced that Assad has got the message about the consequences of any misadventure. Says an official: "It's not a question of what he does tomorrow or next month. The point is, there is no question that Assad is, step by step, preparing the military option very seriously."

Thus Israeli commanders are working to undo the complacency that has taken root in the military over years of relative calm. First, Defense Minister Mordechai wants to restock military stores, such as ammunition, spare weapons and parts, which have fallen, he says, to "irrational" levels. The military is asking that its $9.5 billion annual budget be topped off with an additional $1 billion to finance further purchases of materiel and increased training of the troops.

The condition of existing equipment, especially in reserve units, is also an issue. Because of insufficient maintenance, many of the tanks, armored personnel carriers and jeeps the military keeps in storage are not combat ready. "In some places," says a high-ranking reserve officer, "it reminds me of the way things were before the 1973 war," when an Arab invasion caught Israel miserably unprepared. Now the army is ordering a sweeping inspection program. "Before these frantic checks," says a logistics officer, assessing the condition of the armored vehicles in his brigade, "70% wouldn't get to their destination. Even now, in a case of war, 50% won't get to the front." Obviously, there is much more to be done before Israel's concerned defenders get any rest.

--With reporting by Aharon Klein/Tel Aviv and Scott MacLeod/Paris

With reporting by AHARON KLEIN/TEL AVIV AND SCOTT MACLEOD/PARIS