As violence persists, IDF to call up reservists to relieve combat troops

The IDF will start calling up hundreds of reserve soldiers to relieve active duty combat soldiers who have been deployed across the West Bank and Jerusalem to help quell Palestinian violence in the past month.

The exceptional mustering of four reserve battalions will only begin in January, according to a Monday report in Yedioth Ahronoth, but officers have already started preparing for the call-up and training to address the new threats faced by soldiers in the field.

The ongoing wave of Palestinian terror attacks, which began in late September, has predominantly involved stabbings and car-ramming attacks targeting Israeli civilians and soldiers.

The Israel Defense Forces in October mobilized six companies of troops to Jerusalem in order to beef up security in the capital in the midst of the wave of terror attacks, stationing soldiers at bus and train stations across the city and at West Bank settlements.

Combat troops currently stationed in the West Bank and across the country will be rotated out by the reservists and returned to training exercises. Trainees from the Paratrooper and Golani brigades have been deployed to guard duty in the West Bank to help beef up security near Israeli settlements.

Earlier this year, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot announced a number of measures to cut back and streamline the military, including the discharge of approximately 100,000 reservist soldiers who have not been called up for duty for several years, and a scale-back on reservist operations in favor of more intensive combat training — quality over quantity.

But in late October, after the military mobilized thousands of soldiers in response to weeks of terror attacks, Israeli media reported, without citing sources, that the IDF was already preparing for the possibility that it would have to call up reservists to help support troops on guard in the West Bank and Jerusalem if violence persisted.