As Iran and Israel engage in lethal confrontations, numerous Israelis seek refuge while grappling with a disrupted sense of safety. For a week, Iranian missiles have been targeting Israel’s Occupied Territories, and despite the claimed effectiveness of Israel’s air defense systems, they appear to have been ineffective in intercepting them. This situation has compelled residents in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other cities to seek refuge in shelters whenever the alarm sounds. To the dismay of Israeli citizens, shelters across the Jewish State are filled to capacity, whilst older neighbourhoods are severely lacking shelters, forcing residents to share overcrowded safe rooms. A growing phenomenon has been reported regarding shelters’ takeover and shelters’ use as a storage room.
“Of the 12,601 public shelters in Israel, 2,494 of them, about 20 percent, are not at all fit for use. Another 25 percent, which is 3,146 shelters, are at a low level of suitability. This means that almost half of the public shelters in the country do not provide proper protection.” (Source: The Hottest Place in Hell)
In Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem, stairwells have turned into temporary sleeping quarters. The Israeli military’s Home Front Command has relocated hundreds of individuals to hotels after buildings that sustained damage were classified as uninhabitable. Israel Hayom reported that about 40% of Tel Aviv residents live in buildings without modern safety-compliant shelters, with many older structures lacking adequate protection. Amid rising Iranian threats, Tel Aviv and Haifa face a severe shortage of bomb shelters. Residents in the capital expressed feeling unprotected, stating that neighbours are closing their shelter doors to them. Arab communities within the Green Line face significant shortcomings in rocket attack preparedness due to long-term neglect, including a lack of adequate shelters. Many view this as discrimination in the Israeli air defense system, which often designates Arab towns as ‘open areas,’ excluding them from active protection during crises.
“There’s no real safety for us,” a man said. “Not from the missiles, and not from the people who are supposed to be our neighbours.”
Reportedly, for certain Palestinian citizens of Israel – approximately two million individuals, constituting about 21 percent of the total population – opportunities were abruptly closed off, not due to the impact of explosions or Iranian ballistic missiles, but rather by their own neighbours and fellow citizens, who refuse to let them in. Palestinian citizens residing in Israel have historically encountered systemic discrimination across various sectors, including housing, education, employment, and state services. Even though they possess Israeli citizenship, they frequently experience treatment akin to that of second-class citizens, with their loyalty being consistently scrutinised in public discussions.
Apartheid and Institutionalized Racism
It’s perhaps no surprise that in the Zionist apartheid state, there is a critical shortage of bomb shelters for Israel’s substantial Arab and Bedouin communities. In the northern city of Tamra, four women lost their lives due to the absence of public shelters or fortified structures, highlighting the perilous deficiency in safety measures. A newly released report by the Israeli nonprofit, Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights, published on Tuesday for the first time, examines the state of civil defense in Arab towns, Bedouin villages, and East Jerusalem. The results indicate a systemic failure and biased planning policies that have led to a drastic lack of shelters, thereby putting residents’ lives at risk. The report concludes that Israel’s official state policy is to disregard any protective measures in Arab communities – a serious and ongoing failure which the Israel government does not appear to at concerned about.
As the conflict persists, the volume of grievances is rising, not just within the Arab and Bedouin populations but throughout the entire state. Due to negligence, the current system is inadequately equipped to deliver a prompt response to an issue that could, in real-time, be a question of life or death. When the next alarm rings, and it inevitably will, far too many individuals will once again be left at the mercy of fate…
Shuki Sadeh reports for Shomirim...
The neighbours took over the shelter – and there’s nothing they can do: “Leave me alone, this is my house”
Data obtained by guards this week indicates hundreds of cases of shelter takeovers – 175 in Haifa, 178 in Tel Aviv and more than 600 in Jerusalem.
“The neighbour explained that he had expensive things there. When he opened it, we saw that he had built a drywall there,” says a resident in Jaffa. In Jerusalem, a man turned the shelter into a studio apartment that he rents out. The police, municipalities and the Home Front Command are having difficulty responding, and the remaining residents remain exposed to the missile threat.
The missile attacks of the past week have further exacerbated the problem of the lack of protection on the home front. In addition to unprotected apartments and a shortage of shelters, there is another problem: taking over shelters in apartment buildings. Anna Ulitsiki, 39, from Jaffa, posted a video on a local Facebook group in which she showed a neighbour locking the shelter. “Please help me. Neither the police nor the municipality helped me with this,” she wrote. Another neighbour added that the neighbour has been keeping the shelter as a storage room for three years, while his brother has taken over the garden and built a shack there.
IMAGE: A shelter in Jerusalem after it was partially evacuated. Photo: Shuki Sadeh
“Even before October 7, we asked him to leave,” says Ulitsiki. “He explained that he had expensive things there and could not open the shelter. When he did open it, we saw that he had built a drywall there, which made the shelter really small, a meter by a meter. Only after many requests during the war did the neighbour open the shelter and remove the wall. “He still has a lot of things there, and that’s why it’s crowded. These are heavy things that are difficult to take out ourselves, but we are also afraid to put them outside for him, so that he doesn’t say we stole from him.”
According to data from last week provided to the guards by municipalities, hundreds of requests were received for taking over shelters – 175 in Haifa, 178 in Tel Aviv, and more than 600 in Jerusalem, of which 237 are still being processed. Taking over properties in shared buildings by bullies is not a new phenomenon, but now, in times of war, it has become more common when neighbours are looking for a place to hide and come across an intruder who has lived or brought objects into an area that is supposed to be used by everyone.
IMAGE: A shelter packed with belongings, this week in Jerusalem. Photo: Shuki Sadeh
The Civil Defense Law requires residents to remove non-emergency items from the shelter, and the local authority can itself evacuate with 15 days’ notice. In the event of a special emergency, the military can order an immediate evacuation. However, in many cases – especially when it comes to shared properties – the authorities have difficulty enforcing the law.
The law does allow other uses of the shelter, but this is conditional on obtaining a license from the local authority, which in many cases does not happen, certainly when it comes to private entities that make other uses of private or public shelters. In a special emergency, the military can immediately cancel the additional use of the shelter.
In one of the neighbourhoods of southern Jerusalem, a shelter that was supposed to serve 16 families fell into disuse after a tenant, a contractor by trade, took over. He removed the thick door of the shelter, replaced it with an iron door, put on his equipment, and locked it. Even before October 7, the tenants noticed a leak from the shelter, broke open the door, and discovered that, because of the leak, the walls of the shelter had begun to crumble. Thus, a war of iron swords caught them defenseless.
IMAGE: The shelter in Jerusalem that the tenant-contractor took over
“The first night of the drones (April 2024) was one of the scariest of my life,” says Alon (a pseudonym), who fears identification. “The whole family, me, my wife, and the four children, huddled together between the retaining walls of the apartment and prayed for the best. It was frustrating. I felt like I had failed to protect my children.” On Friday morning, Alon and his wife decided to move into his mother’s house.
He said that other families travelled like them, but some continue to hide inside the apartment or in the building’s stairwell, even though it is a stairwell with external walls that provide no protection. “This is a person who put 15 families at risk. There is really no one to turn to. The Home Front Command said that because it was sabotage, there was nothing to be done. The police know him as a violent person, a criminal, who has been in prison. The municipality also has nothing to do.”
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IMAGE: The scene of a fall this week in central Israel. Photo: Reuters
“It was like this the whole war,” says one of the neighbours. “There were all kinds of garbage, junk, and iron. Everything was old. Nights like drones, Houthi alarms, we were in a stairwell. This is the first time we’re in a shelter. They’ve been preparing for the attack on Iran for 20 years, couldn’t they prepare the shelters?”
“I Am Disabled, Where Will You Take Me?”
On social media, there are those trying to help, like former MK Abir Kara, who tweeted about the issue and contacted officials in various municipalities to handle specific cases. He estimates that there are hundreds of such cases.
A visit to two of the places that were treated illustrates that the solution is not complete. On Costa Rica Street in the Kiryat Menachem neighbourhood in southwest Jerusalem, there is a building in an old Amidar railway housing estate, which is scheduled to be demolished in about six months as part of a clearance-construction project. On the ground floor, there are rooms made of reinforced concrete, but it is difficult to call them shelters, not only because they are not underground, but also because the door is a regular door. Still, from the point of view of the residents, this is the shelter.
In one of the rooms, a man lives in a shelter that has been converted into an apartment, for which he pays 2,000 shekels in rent. He says he lets his neighbours enter with alarms, but when there was an alert, it seemed that most neighbours preferred to go to the other three small shelters.
He says that there are warehouses all over the area that people have taken over; some are used as shelters, others are not. “In times of war, the door is open, but you can’t bother people all day,” he says. “Sometimes the municipality comes, sometimes a journalist. Leave me alone. I’m disabled, and I get a disability pension. Go look for the owner of the house. I’m a disabled person. Where will you take me?”
The situation in the other two shelters is also problematic, according to neighbours in the building. One shelter was evacuated this week after the municipality arrived. But another shelter is connected to it, full of equipment belonging to the property owner, who himself lived in the building until five years ago. The bottom line is that it could have been more spacious, and until this week, the shelters were unusable.
“That’s how it was the whole war,” says one of the neighbours. “There were all kinds of garbage, junk, and iron. Everything was old. Nights like drones, Houthi alarms, we were in a stairwell. Now, for the first time, we’re in a shelter, but it could have been more spacious. They’ve been preparing for the attack on Iran for 20 years, couldn’t they have prepared the shelters?”
IMAGE: Shelter in Jerusalem that is partially evacuated this week: Shuki Sade
The shelter was evacuated this week after the municipality arrived, but there is another shelter attached to it, full of equipment belonging to the property owner, who himself lived in the building until five years ago. Bottom line, it could have been more spacious, and until this week, the shelters were unusable.
“To Solve A Takeover Problem, A Court Is Needed”
Stern Street in the Kiryat Yuval neighbourhood of Jerusalem is a street of neglected housing estates. One of them has two adjacent shelters, which have also been complained about on social media. A visit to the place and conversations with neighbours reveal that, indeed, until the war, one of them was full of equipment, which was evacuated with the help of the municipality, but the shelter next door is occupied by a tenant. The door says “Moshe Family.” We knock on it, asking to find out if the shelter is not being used by the tenants.
“Leave me alone, this is not a shelter, this is my house,” the tenant says, slamming the door, allowing a glimpse through which one can see the reinforced concrete walls that indicate this is a shelter. One of the neighbours says he has lived there for about seven years. “It would have been much nicer if there were two shelters in the building. This is not the only case in the area.”
IMAGE: The shelter in Jerusalem that a family has taken over and is living in. Photo: Shuki Sadeh
“Leave me alone, this is not a shelter, this is my home,” the resident says, slamming the door, allowing a glimpse through which one can see the reinforced concrete walls that indicate this is a shelter. One of the neighbours says he has lived there for about seven years. “This is not the only case in the area.”
According to Yossi Havilio, deputy mayor of Jerusalem and former legal advisor to the municipality, it is easier to evacuate a public shelter. “A shelter on shared property is a legal problem. The municipality has no authority. The municipality helps housing committees evacuate property, but to resolve a takeover problem, you need a court, and it’s not something that can be solved overnight.”
But public shelters can also be a problem. Naama Meshulam, a resident of Ramat Gan, tells of a man who took over a public shelter, and only after several months did the municipality evacuate him. “It’s a public shelter across from the building where I live, a place that used to be a museum.”
“Before October 7, this mentally ill man opened a fun place there, with full-volume music at midnight. We contacted the municipality, and they closed the shelter. We thought the problem was solved, but then they opened the shelter on October 7, he took advantage of the loophole and settled there again with his friends, making music, having a fire and things like that,” she describes. “We contacted the municipality again, and it was explained to us that since 50 days had passed, they already had to go to court to evict him. After a few months, they evicted him, and now the shelter is in use.”
As the war continues, the number of complaints only increases, but the existing system, it turns out, is not prepared to provide a quick response to a problem that could, in real time, be a matter of life and death.
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