Special report: Israel’s border communities vulnerable to infiltration

Israel’s border communities are a risk for infiltration due to the Defense Ministry and the IDF’s failure to properly fund, coordinate and plan a proper security system, State Comptroller Yosef Shapira wrote in a special report published on Tuesday.

“For many years, communities under fire have not fully received the full security support they are entitled to based on their classification,” the report said.

“In addition they received less than what was operationally necessary to upgrade and maintain their security apparatus,” the report said.

It focused on the 900,000 Israelis who live in 407 communities in conflict areas along Israel’s borders with Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza as well as all West Bank settlements.

Shapira issued the report as Israel prepares for a possible Iranian attack from Syria and continued infiltration attempts along the Gaza border as part of the Great March of Return.

The Defense Ministry and the IDF have said they are working on addressing the issues raised in the report, which focused on the period from November 2016 until July 2017. In some cases, the study period was extended until January 2018.

According to Shapira, the IDF published a 2013 report to correct deficiencies in security to those communities highlighted in comptrollers report from 2012.

The full 2103 plan was never implemented or fully funded. Nor were all the necessary security adjustments made for the threat of terror tunnels to the Gaza border or for the impact of the knife intifada on the West Bank communities.

At issue was some NIS 473 million which was never given to the borderline communities and even a 2017 plan to make up that gap has now been reduced to NIS 364 million.

The bulk of this sum, NIS 254 is needed for West Bank settlements, another NIS 43 million for the Gaza border, 15 million for the Syrian border, six million for the Lebanese border and 25 for the Jordanian and Egyptian borders.

As a result, for example, they received only 28% of the “orange lightning” devices they were budgeted and only 63% of the communications equipment that was designed to them. No date has been set for when the equipment will be available.

The absence of such communications equipment makes it difficult for the settlements security team and the IDF to coordinate their activities to best deal with a terror threat.

Among the issues was a discrepancy between the needs as defined by the Defense Ministry’s settlements unit, which covers all 407 communities and that of Military Intelligence.