Operation White Robe

The security operation surrounding Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Israel.

Writing ahead of the Pope’s tour, Agence France-Presse reported:

Israeli police are to mount a massive “Operation White Robe” involving tens of thousands of security personnel for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit next week, officials said on Wednesday.

Main roads and entire areas of Jerusalem will be closed and cleared of all vehicles on-and-off during the five-day visit which is to take the pope to 26 different sites in Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank town of Bethlehem.

Operation White Robe will see 60,000 police officers deployed across the country over the five days, police chief David Cohen, who will command the operation, told a press conference outside Jerusalem.

Translations of this security operation include the super-heroic “Operation White Cape,” and the wizardly “Operation White Cloak.”

(The London Times columnist Hugo Rifkind observed on BBC Radio 4 thatOperation White Robe wasn’t much of a secret code name, since it was likely to refer to one of two people: the Pope or Princess Leia.)