Defense Ministry starts NIS 1.2 billion funding safe rooms for North

There are plans to build around 1,700 safe rooms in Kiryat Shmonah alone, and around 10,000 for the entire 0-5 kilometer area.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB DECEMBER 1, 2024 13:47

THE MINISTRY of Defense building in Tel Aviv (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)

The Defense Ministry on Sunday rolled out the opening of a campaign to finance safe rooms in the North following the ceasefire signed with Hezbollah last week.

The campaign will be split up into multiple rounds, starting with towns 0-1 kilometer from the border, along with Kiryat Shmona and towns 1-5 kilometers from the border, and will later move on to include other towns and cities within 5-9 kilometers from the border.  

There are plans to build around 1,700 safe rooms in Kiryat Shmona alone, and around 10,000 for the entire 0-5 kilometer area.

At the later stage for the 5-9 kilometer towns and cities, there will be even more than 10,000 additional safe rooms, though the numbers are less set for this area given that the process is just starting.

On average, the ministry will provide NIS 132,000 for each residence to add a safe room, with a total expected expenditure of around NIS 1.2 billion.

A bomb shelter in the center of Israel is opened in preparation for retaliation from Gaza after overnight launch of Operation Shield and Arrow, May 9, 2023. (credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/MAARIV)

Conceptually, the program will involve each resident moving the process forward independently, but with the government providing the funding and also declaring an exemption from the standard bureaucratic approval process for home additions, which can easily take two years.

In a briefing, the ministry said it was unsure how long the process will take, but plans for it to start already in early 2025 and hopes that granting the procedural exemptions and the financing will move the process forward much more rapidly than the standard process would take. A later press release was less optimistic, saying the process would only start in April 2025.

Funding for school safe rooms

Separately, the ministry is granting funding and streamlining procedures for building safe areas and security solutions for schools and other such communal structures, starting again first with the 0-5 kilometer range.

NIS 250 million has been allocated for this process.

IDF Col. Yaniv Balfour and his deputy for engineering, Orna Raviv, said they were in the process of resolving special bureaucratic issues for certain non-Jewish villages in the area, including where some of the residences might have been built without a permit.

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However, they were unclear about when and how the special issues would be resolved, but they said they were committed to making all villages in the area secure.

In the past, government projects to add safe rooms in the South, both for Israeli-Jews, but especially for some non-Jewish towns, have lagged behind whatever planned timeframe was set for such projects.