Israel calls up reserves to confront 'intifada'

The Israeli military has called up four additional reserve battalions to take part in operational activities in the West Bank starting from December, according to Haaretz on Friday.

The Israeli newspaper reported that, in 2016, the Israeli forces will "call for many other such battalions".

According to Haaretz, the Israeli General Staff "is preparing for the possibility of deploying as many as 70 reserve battalions on unplanned operational activity in the West Bank next year, at a cost of some 300 million shekels ($77 million)".

The newspaper reported that the General Staff doesn't know how long confrontations with Palestinians will last, and are working under the assumption that "many months will pass before the violence ebbs".

The military correspondent of Haaretz, Amos Harel, wrote that current events in the West Bank seems to be "a war of attrition" and that "the working assumption is that many months will pass before violence subsides".

"In the second intifada, Israel also failed to win a decisive victory, though by the end of five years of conflict, it had achieved a good approximation of one," Amos wrote.

Palestinians in September protested against repeated incursions by Israeli civilians and troops into Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest site.

During the protests, clashes erupted between Palestinians and Israeli troops, spreading throughout the West Bank, leading to an uprising that has been unofficially described as a "third intifada". Several Israelis and dozens of Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of October.