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Email: vip@news1.co.il Iron Swords War The biggest evacuation in the country’s history [צילום: דוד כהן, פלאש 90]
The evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents from the southern and northern borders makes it possible to draw a number of lessons for the next case – whether the reason will be security or whether it will be due to a natural disaster. The War of Iron Swords led the government to order the evacuation of settlements near the front lines and their absorption in frameworks throughout the country. At the same time, additional settlements and residents were evacuated independently. The data of the National Emergency Authority (Emergency Authority) shows that by November 1, 253,000 residents were evacuated or vacated. 94,000 were evacuated or evacuated to the community, 88,000 were evacuated to hotels and 70,000 evacuated independently. This is the largest evacuation of citizens in Israel since the establishment of the state. This process accompanied in many difficulties for the residents, the economy and the Israeli society.
In this article we will review the criteria and plans for the evacuation and absorption of residents formulated before the war and how they were applied during it. We will also propose alternative criteria for evacuating the population in emergency situations in the future in light of the lessons learned on October 7. The premise is that the State of Israel will decide to evacuate a population due to risk of life or if they are left without a roof over their heads. Evacuation should not be carried out for other reasons, for example for the well-being of the residents.
A decision to evacuate a population should be made by the government on the recommendation of the army in a security case, and on the recommendation of the police in the case of a civil disaster. The decision to evacuate (or not to evacuate) should be made solely from substantive considerations, intended to focus the state’s resources in times of emergency and make it easier for it to deal with evacuation demands that come from settlements that do not meet the criteria.
Organized evacuation of the population will be carried out by the IDF (Home Front Command) and the local authorities according to the nature of the event and the decision of the political level. The evacuation is complemented by the absorption, which should be carried out by the Passover Division (Evacuation, Aid, Victims), which belongs to the Ministry of the Interior. His role is to prepare the reception facilities for evacuees (schools, public institutions, boarding schools, and hostels, hotels) during normal times, and to operate them during emergencies. Other parties involved in the care of evacuees are various government ministries, such as education, health and welfare. Above all of these is Rachel, which belongs to the Ministry of Defense, and whose job it is to coordinate between the bodies and give the national envelope to the evacuation and absorption process.
As can be understood, there is no single body in Israel with responsibility and authority for planning in advance and the actual management of the evacuation process, and several bodies deal with the issue – a complex array, which burdens the planning of the process and certainly its execution. The obvious conclusion is that the IDF, as the “operational demander” for the evacuation of a population during war, will be responsible for formulating the evacuation plan, while the Israel Defense Forces, Pesach, and the government ministries should adapt to this plan and back it up at the national level. However, in a considerable number of Cases – the actual situation was the opposite.
The evacuation plans for evacuees from Kibbutz Nir Am in Tel Aviv [צילום: מרים אלסטר, פלאש 90]
In the last eight years, the IDF and the government formulated a number of plans to evacuate the population in times of war or natural disaster. As a general rule, the evacuation of residents should be carried out to public (mainly schools) or private reception facilities (hotels, hostels and guesthouses) throughout the country.
• “Aid to localities around the Gaza Strip for the years 2004-2006” (government decisions from July and August 2004). These decisions defined for the first time the area surrounding Gaza for the purposes of routine economic and social support, and included the city of Sderot and 44 localities in the regional councils Shaar Hanegev, Ashkelon Coast, Negev Fields and Eshkol, which lie within seven kilometers of the border fence with Gaza. This definition of the Gaza Envelope will later also guide the evacuation plans for the area during a security emergency. The rationale for establishing the seven kilometer criterion concerned the estimated range of Hamas rockets and missiles at the time.
• “Guest hotel” (Government decision from July 2012) is intended to respond to an organized mass evacuation of up to 300,000 people and their reception due to a security emergency or natural disaster (without defining the distance from the border). The evacuation will be carried out by the IDF or the local authorities (depending on the nature of the event). As part of the preparation for an emergency scenario, the Ministry of the Interior was tasked with locating reception facilities throughout the country that comply with the protection guidelines of the Home Front Command. The order of priorities for receiving evacuees was: first, in the infrastructure of schools and public institutions , and if necessary, the reception will be extended to boarding schools and hostels and even hotels. The local authorities were required to prepare for the reception of an evacuee population to the extent of 4% of their population.
• A hotel program (2015-2018) was formulated in cooperation between the IDF and the Ministry of the Interior and was intended to respond to the evacuation and absorption of 75% of the residents of the settlements within four kilometers of the border of Gaza, Lebanon and Syria (60,000 residents) for a limited period of time due to a security emergency. A hotel program has never It was not brought to the government’s approval and does not provide a response to cities in this range.
• The Safe Distance Program (2015) was designed to evacuate and absorb the population from settlements near the fence in the south and north of the country following a security emergency: 25 settlements within four kilometers of the border of the Gaza Strip and 50 settlements in the Galilee within five kilometers of the border of Lebanon. The reference threat that the plan is intended to deal with is a warning of an attack on the border settlements by firing from a steep runway, anti-tank missiles, snipers, or ground or underground infiltration by terrorists.
• The Meshab Rukh plan (which is in draft status) was drawn up by the Ministry of Defense in 2022 and aims to provide a budget to the local authorities in the Gaza Envelope and Sderot in order for them to take their residents out for “Reenon” (“civilian response to leave for truces”) during war. The decision regarding the activation of the program should be made if the IDF recommends not to activate “Safe Distance”. The program was implemented during Operation “Guardian of the Walls” in May 2021 and Operation “Dawn” in August 2022.
The actual evacuation with iron swords evacuees from the north protest in front of the Ministry of Finance [צילום: דיר פזואלו, פלאש 90]
Since the beginning of the Iron Swords War, the Israeli security establishment and government have mainly implemented the “Safe Distance” plan. The “guest hotel” program was not activated at all and therefore the local authorities were not required to take care of the evacuees. However, certain authorities took responsibility and took care of evacuees who were evacuated to hotels in their area (such as Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Eilat). In other cases, such as the Tamar Regional Council (a small council), there was objective difficulty in handling a large population that was evacuated to Dead Sea hotels.
The government’s decision of October 12, 2023 retroactively approved the evacuation of the population located within the four kilometer range (15,800 inhabitants) of the Gaza Strip fence, in accordance with the “safe distance” program that began in practice on October 7. In addition, a financial grant was provided to residents living within 0-7 kilometers of the Gaza fence who decided to evacuate independently.
The government’s decision of October 18 retrospectively approved the decision of the security establishment to evacuate settlements within two kilometers of the border in the north (27,000 inhabitants), in accordance with the IDF plan “Safe Distance North”. In addition, the decision authorized the Minister of Defense to establish plans for the evacuation of the population in settlements within a range of 5 2 kilometers. By virtue of this authority and in accordance with the IDF’s recommendation, the Minister of Defense instructed on October 20 to evacuate the residents of Kiryat Shmona (23,000 residents) and the residents within 2-3.5 kilometers (October 22, 11,000 residents). Today, a large majority of the settlements within a 3.5-5 kilometer range have been evacuated independently, although it was decided not to evacuate them, but 3,000 residents remained in their homes.
The government’s decision from October 19 is intended to help evacuate two distinct groups among the residents of Ashkelon: residents living in buildings without a protected apartment or floor space (24,000 residents) and the elderly and those without a stable family background (3,000 residents). This assistance, in the form of lodging and hospitality services, was determined in light of the particularly large number of rockets and missiles aimed at Ashkelon in the first weeks of the war.
The government’s decision from October 23 retroactively approved the evacuation of the residents of Sderot (31,000 residents) and settlements within a range of 4-7 kilometers from the Gaza border (17,500 residents) as part of the “Meshab Ruh” program.
The evacuation period has been extended several times and as of this writing it has been determined that evacuees evacuated to hotels will be able to stay in them until July 7, 2024 (except for Ashkelon residents, whose evacuation date ended in November 2023). Alongside this, the state allows the return of residents to the surrounding settlements, and an increasing number of residents choose this option.
As of the writing of this article, 253,000 citizens have been evacuated or evacuated independently. Recently, the process of returning residents to the Gaza Strip began. The issue is in dispute between the residents themselves and between them and the heads of the authorities. There are residents who want to return and others who oppose the return referring to security, financial or emotional considerations. There is an objective difficulty for the authorities to provide all services to their residents – which makes it difficult to return.
The recommended criteria for evacuation first of all – saving lives [צילום: דוד כהן, פלאש 90]
It is important to reiterate: the one and only criterion for evacuation in a war situation should be the criterion of saving lives. Four criteria are proposed below, according to which it is correct to act, and according to which the security system should make its decisions. These criteria are supposed to prevent various pressures that could lead to further evacuation beyond the objective need:
1. Danger of ground penetration and the possibility of taking over a settlement.
2. Danger of shooting anti-tank missiles, including the more sophisticated ones, with optical homing.
3. Danger of direct sniping.
4. Intelligence information regarding specific hostile activity that seriously and immediately endangers residents.
This list does not include the criterion of firing from a steep trajectory, because Hezbollah has the ability to fire from a steep trajectory that actually covers the entire territory of Israel, so the range has no meaning. When debating about this issue, one must take into account, on the one hand, that the settlements close to the border are exposed to fire from a steep trajectory, which does not provide them with time to reach protected areas, and some of them also do not have a sufficient protected area, but on the other hand, Israel has warning and defense systems (Iron Dome and others).
The distance criterion in itself is not a criterion for evacuation, but it is required to name specific settlements as was done in the government’s decisions. However, the examination of the proposed criteria raises a high probability that settlements close to the border will be evacuated, therefore the distance from the border is specified as a common language, and nothing else.
In conclusion: It is recommended that the Israeli government and the Ministry of Defense (MoD) formally adopt the criteria presented above, when, similar to what is happening today, the decision to evacuate a population will be made by the political echelon, and the evacuation will be carried out by the IDF (home front command) and the local authorities according to the nature of the incident.
The authors are a senior researcher and research assistant at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Date: 23/03/2024 | Updated: 03/23/2024 Ariel Heyman, Alon Barkman + IDF soldiers mapped the home of the terrorist who carried out a shooting attack at the Horseshoe Junction 13:21 03/23/24 | Yoav Yitzchak
IDF soldiers tonight mapped the house of the terrorist who carried out the shooting attack at the Horseshoe Junction on Friday and caused seven casualties, and prepared the house for demolition. The IDF spokesman stated that IDF forces operated tonight in the village of Deir Ivzia in the Ephraim Brigade area to map the terrorist’s house Muj Ahed Barakat Mansur.
In addition, the IDF, Shin Bet and MGB forces arrested during the night two suspects in the city of Nablus and a wanted man in the village of A-Ram. In the city of Tulkarm in Mensha, funds suspected to be destined for terrorist activities were confiscated and another wanted man was arrested in the village of Kharbata. There are no casualties to our forces.
So far, since the beginning of the war, approximately 3,600 wanted persons have been arrested throughout the Judea and Samaria Division and the Bekaa and Valleys Division, approximately 1,600 of whom are associated with the terrorist organization Hamas.
The home of terrorist Mujahid Barakat Mansur [צילום: דובר צה”ל]
+ The concept is being tested on October 7 13:03 03/23/24 | Dr. Raphael Buchnik-Chen | for the complete list
The centrality of the concept in the colossal failure of October 7, 2023, is the subject of a dynamic polemic between experts and commentators in the Israeli media. Is it so? ▪ A comparative study between the intelligence failures of October 1973 and those of October 2023, sharpens the insight that strong tell-tale signs, even near the “Sh” hour, have the power to destroy the concept and give the military system enough to prepare to face the threat
[צילום: AP]
The lessons: how to evacuate residents next time
The public preoccupation with the horrors of the October 7, 2023 disaster established in the public discourse the immortal term – conception, to such an extent that it was snuffed out in the public domain as a common folk concept.
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At least 60 were killed and 146 injured, of which about half were seriously injured, in an attack on a concert hall in the Moscow region. The news agencies in Moscow reported that some armed men broke into the “Crocus City Hall” concert hall in the city of Krasnogorsk in the Moscow region. They opened fire from automatic weapons at the guests and threw grenades at them. In addition, the attackers threw Molotov cocktails and explosives into the hall and caused a large fire and an explosion in the place. After committing the terrible massacre, they managed to escape in a Renault car. Russia’s security forces are conducting a large-scale manhunt.
In the War Cabinet, the discussion ended (Friday, 22.3.24) with the participation of Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken, and then continued without the guest minister. In Walla it was announced that Blinken warned Netanyahu and the members of the War Cabinet today that without a plan for the day after, Israel is on its way to getting stuck in Gaza in a way that will endanger its security and international standing.
My starting point is in the book Ecclesiastes chapter 9, which believes that there are situations in which “goodness is wisdom from strength” (Ecclesiastes chapter 9, verse 15) and “goodness is wisdom from weapons of war” (ibid., chapter 9, verse 18 ). In other words, the wisdom of tiresome political negotiations, which knows ups and downs, is better than the use of all the weapons of war, which impose on us a bloody and painful reality of life, which takes human life and creates a reality of bereavement and orphans in many homes in Israel.
Yoav Yitzchak Idan Yosef Idan Yosef