Remember please, this is a General Question. Play nice.
On NPR just now, did a story about inequality of Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. The story flatly stated ‘There are no public bomb shelters in Arab sections of Israeli cities outside of Haifa.’
Wow! If true, that is shocking. On the other hand, I cannot believe it to be true. Can our Israeli Dopers fill me in?
Bonus question, what is a bomb shelter ‘like?’
This seems way wrong, somehow. Seems to me that if I lived in the Arab section of some Israeli city, I’d dig myself a bomb shelter, and the authorities be damned.
Not even any PUBLIC bomb shelters? After the First Gulf War, I’d sure want one.
I can tell you that in Ramat Aviv, behind my flat, there was a public bomb shelter. It was a small, locked, concrete building (about the size of a larger toolshed, but lower) that presumably opened onto an underground space. I didn’t see any in predominantly Arab neighborhoods, but also didn’t see them around a lot in Jewish neighborhoods, either. I don’t know how many public vs private shelters there are in Israel.
In this article it says:
I imagine this may not apply to the “occupied territories”.
Here is another link detailing Israeli civil defense preparedness. EMERGENCY WAR CIVIL DEFENSE PROCEDURES IN ISRAEL
Here’s another interesting lpage on Israelu civil defense strategy
I’m pretty sure this isn’t true. If there are cases like that, it’s probably because Arab neighborhoods tend to be older and denser. Putting aside space and money for a shelter in a new neighborhood is easy, while installing one in an existing neighbourhood can be tricky from a legal, financial and beaurocatic standpoint, especially if it involves buying up property and tearing down buildings. This isn’t limited to Arabs - I live in an old (pre-WW2) Jewish neighborhood, and I haven’t seen any puplic shelters near my house (nor do I have one in my building - if things start going pear-shaped around here, we’re moving in with my inlaws. My FIL is a structural engineer, and he built himself a shelter that could shrug off bunker-busters).
As for Arab-majority towns and cities… you have to understand that building and maitaining bomb shelters is the responsability of the respective municipality. If, say, the Nazereth city council - elected to office by Arab voters - decides not to allocate funds to bomb shelter construction, then Nazereth won’t have bomb shelters. Not that anyone expected Nazereth to need bomb shelters.
All excellent answers, thank you all.
Although it occurs to me that if I were an Israeli Jew… how would I feel about letting an Arab into my bomb shelter?
He might be a suicide bomber, after all.
Maybe, but when the air-raid sirens start you don’t stop to ask for ID or check peoples’ bags.
What are the odds that a suicide bomber would be wandering the streets, fully armed, waiting for moissiles to fallm any way? Not very high, I’d think.
Low odds now, but it would be a brillian terror tactic: have a couple of suicide bombers run into shelters with a crowd when the alarm goes off. I imagine if people were scared to go into their public shelters, the economy would take quite a hit if a lot more people stayed home.
okay, let’s make things a little less dramatic :
Every residential building contructed in Israel since the 1960’s has a “bomb shelter” built into it.
In the rest of the world, this is simply known as a basement.
But it doesn’t sound quite as exciting if you phrase it that way.
paul, before you find it too “shocking”, it would help if you understood something about Israeli society. In most places, Arabs and Jews live in totally separate worlds. The countryside is dotted with Arab villages and towns, in which there is not a single Jewish resident.
In most of the larger cities, which were built after Israel became an independent country in 1948, people live in small apartments (condominuims, actually, since most are owned, not rented) in multi-story buildings. These buildings usually have a basement, which can be used as a shelter in time of war, but usually gets filled up with old bicycles and broken kitchen chairs 
. The inhabitants are typical of the western world–a nuclear family of 2 parents and their kids, and usually Jewish.
Arab society is organized differently.In most of the Arab villages and towns, people do not live in apartments; they live in larger houses on private plots of land, not high-rise buildings. Extended families ( 3 or more generations ) typically live together under one roof. None of the neighbors are Jewish.
Technically, the building codes require that every building in these Arab areas also has to have a shelter. But this is rarely enforced.
Now, for all of Israel’s history, it has faced wars with Arab neighbors. But everyone agrees that the Arab towns and villages are not exactly the main target of the Arab armies that attacked in 1948, 1967, 1973, or the scud missiles attacks of 1991. So, you don’t have to be “shocked” that they have no bomb shelters. It just sort of worked out that way.
Okay, so what about the large cities and public shelters? Do arabs live in segregated (maybe not by law, but by custom) ghettos? If so, are there public shelters only in Jewish neighborhoods?
see post number 6 above.
Huh? What is “T&A City”? I can’t tell from that post anything more than it’s large enough to have areas the residents call neighborhoods, nor whether Arab and Jewish segregation is the norm. How big ARE “large” cities?
'Scuse me, I know next to nothing about Israeli culture or geography, other than being able to find it on a map. And that they don’t get along with their neighbors.
T&A City is Tel Aviv.
And/or, their neighbors don’t get along with them (viz., “Drive all Jews into the sea,” etc.).
My experience of living in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was that neighborhoods weren’t very mixed, similar to where I now live in the U.S., where there are distinct neighborhoods with particular socioeconomic and ethnic markers that let you know who mostly lives there. For example, stores with signs in Spanish.
So sort of an apples to oranges comparison- but in the USA think of Medicaid funding maybe. Obama offered states funding for a finite time period to increase the number of people in the state who are eligible for Medicaid benefits.
Several state governments decided to not accept the funding. They basically decided to not provide potentially life saving services. Reasons vary by state administration. But in the end you have a country with varying levels of services throughout. In Israel that applies to bomb shelters as well
I’m also ignorant, but are/ were there bomb shelters in Gaza? West Bank? Jordan? Other Middle East countries? Are there enough for every citizen and are they close enough for them?
Welcome to the site.
You have replied to a 20 year old thread,
I will answer you here by copying something I said in a different thread more recently:
Bomb shelters are a fact of life in Israel.
They have been required by law for the entire history of Israel, part of the national building code set by government at the national level. But the enforcement of the building codes is carried out at the local level, by local government. . And this is the reason for the lack of shelters in some areas.
Building permits are issued by local authorities. And building inspectors are employees of local authorities. Like every country, in Israel it is the responsibility of local government (city or county) to issue building permits , and inspect the new construction for compliance to code.
By national law, all buildings have to meet the national building code, which dictates the type of bomb shelter to be built (*see below for the history and types of shelters). . But the enforcement of that law is strictly in the hands of the local government, at the time they approve the permit for each new building or neighborhood..
Bomb shelters are expensive. And many local authorities were very lax in enforcing the building codes. Especially .in Arab towns.
The reason for this is simple: The Arabs living in villages, towns and cities where the residents are 100 per cent Arab, assumed that they are perfectly safe, and that the Arab armies who have attacked Israel in the past would never attack their town. So why build those expensive shelters?
The concept of an “Arab village” may sound strange to American ears. But it is a fact of life in Israel, There are many, many villages, towns and cities where the population is 100 per cent Arab. The language used in schools is Arabic, the biggest buildings in town are mosques, the entire local culture is Arabic. Children learn to speak Hebrew only as their second language.
And here is the important point: for the entire history of the country of Israel, with all of its constant wars, when Arab armies invaded with tanks (1948, 1967, 1973), when Arab terrorists in Lebanon and Gaza shot missiles into civilian areas, etc, etc–there has never been a military attack on an Arab town ..
So, yes, it is true that there are lots of Arabs who have no access to bomb shelters. But this is not because of some huge conspiracy by evil Israelis who deny protection to Arab citizens. It is strictly the fault of the local governments in certain areas, who for 75 years have not enforced the law and building codes, because they saw no need to do so…
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*And now…Here’s a brief history of bomb shelters in Israeli houses:
Standards have changed over the years, as military technology changed.
In the 1950’s, (age of propeller airplanes), shelters were built scattered around in residential neighborhoods, usually surrounded by a small public park or playground. The assumption was that in a war, there would be time for a couple hundred people to run down the street and pack into the underground shelter.(like the Blitz of London in WWII)
By 1960 (age of jet bombers), the building code changed, because the warning time was less. So every apartment building was required to have a large basement built as a bomb shelter, accessible from the lobby of the building, large enough to hold all the residents of that building. (In Israeli cities, the vast majority of people live in multi-story buildings). The assumption was that in a war, there would be time for everybody to run downstairs 5 or 6 storeys. and join their neighbors in the shelter.
In 1990, (When Saddam Hussein launched Scud missiles) the building code was changed again. Nowadays every individual apartment must be built with a bomb shelter room inside the apartment. The reason is that there is no long enough advance warning to run downstairs. There is only 60 or 90 seconds between the time the alarm sirens begin blaring till the missiles hit.
In Israel, all construction is with concrete–,no wood and drywall like America. So one room in every apartment is built as the bomb shelter. The room looks the same as every other room in the house, but has thicker concrete walls and ceiling. The door to the room is made of metal, not wood.(It looks sort of like a refrigerator door, and has a rubber gasket.) There is only one window, which is made of bulletproof glass, and has a metal shield that can be slid out of a slot in the wall to cover the window. The door has a double latch mechanism: one for everyday use, a second, tighter closure for use in war.. When the door and window are sealed, the room is airtight, to protect against attacks with chemical weapons. There is an air filtration system in the room which can be activated to pump filtered air into the room. The room is expensive to build, so it is usually the smallest room in the house, and is typically used as a child’s bedroom or an office..
This may seem weird to most readers here, but it is everyday life for us Israelis. It’s common to say things that would shock in English, but sound normal in Hebrew, such as saying to your kid " go to the bomb shelter and finish your homework".
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Also keep in mind that Israeli authorities are notorious for making it virtually impossible for Arabs to get building permits. And… they will tear down or bulldoze any building or one with an addition that was built without a permit. (The same goes for wells and other waterworks in the occupied territories, but that’s a separate topic).