This was not your ordinary American request. Visits to Israel by high-ranking US officials, from the president on down, are generally extremely well-planned. Every second is measured, every minute planned, and the timetable scheduled months in advance; huge preparatory delegations survey the area and prepare a special dossier for the president, secretary of defense or secretary of state on everyone whose hand they'll shake during the visit. And yet, during US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s visit to Israel, the Americans threw a curveball: Hagel, they said, would very much like to meet Israeli soldiers — to talk to them, to look into their eyes, to learn about the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) first hand, to reach out and touch it.
Hagel's schedule was already packed from start to finish. The Americans proposed shoehorning this visit on Tuesday morning, April 23, in between a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hagel's trip to the airport for his flight to his next stop. The office of Defense Minister Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon delegated this task to the IDF, which came up with an improvised, though brilliant, solution. The Oketz Unit, the Israeli canine special-forces unit, considered the best of its kind in the world, is right on the route. There was one problem: the route is Highway 443, the convenient and quick alternative to Highway 1, the main road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. But Hagel did not go to the Oketz Unit via Highway 443, because the eastern part of the road passes through territory that was captured in 1967. The US-Israeli entourage traveled down Highway 1 as usual, and then cut across to Ben Shemen Forest, within the Green Line, where Oketz soldiers and their dogs were waiting.
