After the cease-fire: who prevents protection from the residents of Ashkelon?

The security establishment has demonstrated sophistication in fighting the Islamic Jihad, but as far as the protection of the conflict line settlements in the Gaza Strip and in the north is concerned, the shenanigans and the bureaucracy rule.

The government has indeed allocated hundreds of millions of shekels for protection, but what happens to those who try to get a construction permit for MMD? Read and not believe

Liat Ron

08/08/2022

Monday, August 8, 2022, 2:01 p.m. Updated: 2:22 p.m.

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Missile interception in Ashkelon skies.

Why don't a quarter of the city's residents have protection solutions, even though there is a budget for this? (Photo: Reuters)

In the last few days, when the alarms sounded in Ashkelon, a quarter of the city's residents had no hiding place from the missiles.

Most of the 12,000 housing units where there is no MMD are in the old neighborhoods of the city, in old tenement houses, where low-income families live.

After a decade of fighting during which the city was included in the range of missiles from the Gaza Strip, the government realized that there was an acute need to build MMDs in order to save Haim, and last March approved a dedicated budget of NIS 320 million for the construction of fully funded protected areas or for the provision of loans to finance self-construction.

Half a year has passed since then, also another round of fighting, but the money has not passed.

The Islamic Jihad may not have succeeded in harming the citizens of Israel, but the one who is endangering their lives is the Israeli regulation.

Residents of the south hide in the stairwell during a missile attack, during the "Dawn" operation.

Only bureaucracy separates them from a protected space (Photo: Reuters)

Dream, politics and the next round

The Ministry of Housing and Finance are quarreling between themselves, the "Committee of Agreements", which is shared by the coalition and the opposition, which has the authority to decide whether the Finance Committee will meet during the transitional government, has not reached an agreement regarding its meeting to approve the budget of the administration that is supposed to distribute the money, in short, a dream and politics.

What is no less worrisome is the fact that even if the money had passed "smoothly", it is assumed that at least another year would have passed, until they would have cut the film for the first new MMD in Ashkelon, a year during which another round of fighting could have broken out which the residents would have gone through without Protection.

The reason: even though an abbreviated procedure for building MMDs was announced, the planning director insists on an exhausting bureaucracy that delays the construction of the protected areas.

The following figure is alarming: in the past year, only about 20 MMDs were built in Israel by the Home Front Command, out of more than 1,000 that were supposed to already be in use. The abbreviated approval procedure of the planning director, which was supposed to take up to three months, became a tangle of forms and approvals, which ends, at best, after six months, and at worst - more than a year. Building the protected areas is the easy part.

, says that since the money to build the shelters is not yet in the Ministry of Housing, the municipality has not yet started the approval procedures.

And not only in the south: those who are still trampled under the wheels of the planning director's bureaucracy are the heads of the authorities in the north, who are trying with all their might to get the "Northern Shield" program going and feel like Sisyphus who sees the door of the MMD from afar, but is unable to reach it.

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in cooperation with her

The Mayor of Ashkelon, Tomer Glam hosts Defense Minister Benny Gantz on a tour of the city, about 8 months ago.

The approved budget has not yet reached the Ministry of Housing (Photo: Walla! system, Ashkelon Municipality)

Will the MMAD be opened from the north?

The "Defense of the North" program, which was budgeted at five billion shekels over a decade, was launched more than a year ago and in phase I is supposed to protect 21 settlements adjacent to a fence, most of which do not have protected areas within a warning distance.

Moshe Davidovitch, the head of the local council of Meta Asher and the chairman of the Frontline Settlements Forum, and who is pushing for the implementation of the plan, is discouraged by its ridiculous rate of progress.

"There is no problem with the budget, but with the actual implementation of the plan," he says. "The money is already in the hands of command The rear, and instead of everything moving forward at a fast pace, obtaining a building permit takes between six months and a year... even when the Planning and Construction Committee in the North District has a person who is close to the matter, this does not help.

"I am chairman of a regional committee and chairman of a local committee, and we are doing everything on our part to speed things up, but we encounter terrible regulation from the planning director. The engineering supervisor at the Ministry of Defense sat with me and her hands were tied.

They must approve a long, and sometimes unnecessary, list of dozens of items in front of external bodies and bring it to the planning manager, when approval of such an item takes 60 days.

Why not exempt the Ministry of Defense from this tedious process, first build and then get the approvals?"

Moshe Davidovich, head of the local council Meta Asher and chairman of the Conflict Line Settlements Forum. He misses performers like the late Ariel Sharon (photo: courtesy of the photographers)

Longing for Eric Sharon

You don't need to be a civil engineer to understand the headache involved in approving the construction of an MMD, just by reading the list of requirements of the planning manager in the "abbreviated licensing" procedure. You

start by opening an application for licensing, an up-to-date measurement of the lot, photos of the building and the lot, handing over an information file to the planning and construction committee , submission of a hard copy by the settlement committee, proof of ownership, opening an application in a shortened route, completing the information file requirements, and returning to the local committee, and this is only the second stage. In the fifth stage, which requires the Home Front Command's approval, everything stalls.

"What help is it that the Home Front Command has And the IDF executive companies that won the tenders for the establishment of MDMs that are waiting for the green light to start work, when the one who is holding them back is the regulation?", Zoam Davidovich is furious. "I worked alongside the late Ariel Sharon. In '96, first they built the Hivil buildings and then We gave them permits, if at all.

"When the IDF wants to establish a base, it bypasses all the procedures and builds it within a month.

Dimensions have a security significance no less than that. Why don't the dimensions be excluded from the Planning and Construction Law and make WALs, committees for residential construction, like then, in the days of Sharon, who were authorized to approve residential construction plans in an abbreviated procedure.

What are you waiting for?

Will a disaster happen?".

Chairman of the Finance Committee, MK Alex Kushnir.

He discovered that in Israel it is easier to pass a budget than to establish an MMD (Photo: Reuven Castro)

A green route for MMD?

Despite the facts on the ground, the planning director insists that the abbreviated licensing procedure be completed within a maximum of three and a half months, and transfers the responsibility to the local planning committees, as if they are stalling the procedure.

If, God forbid, an unprotected resident is harmed because of unnecessary bureaucracy, the officials of the administration will have to give an account of the matter to the investigation committee that will be established.

, who was behind the transfer of the money to protect his city with the Minister of Finance, Avigdor Lieberman, explains that the Finance Committee cannot convene and approve the 900,000 shekels required for the establishment of the computer system of the Ministry of Housing, which is supposed to manage the distribution The money and guarantees that the defense budget for Ashkelon is strong and exists, "An unprecedented decision to protect Ashkelon like the one we passed requires a procedure that takes time and five months is a relatively short time."

MK Kushnir undertakes to help resolve the bureaucratic blunder in front of the Ministry of Planning and to speed up the construction of the MMADM in the North and South.

"Unfortunately, we are witnessing that excessive regulation is clogging up the construction approval processes. There is no reason for the granting of a permit for the construction of MED to take six months. I will work as much as I can to create a green route for the construction of MED for the residents of the north and the residents of the city of Ashkelon, following the government decision that I led last March."

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• Ashkelon

• dimension

• Protected Space

• Asher headquarters

• Alex Kushnir

• Ministry of Housing

• Ministry of Finance