Refuge gap in Israel: the Arab community, much more unprotected from bombs

JerusalemAnti-aircraft sirens have been setting the pace of daily life in Israel for a month. With the war against Iran, thousands of people spend hours underground, in shelters, schools, car parks or stations, while missiles cross the sky. But not everyone has the luxury of having a shelter nearby.Israel has an extensive network of public shelters and mandatory reinforced rooms in many buildings, but this is not evenly distributed. The data is stark: only 37 of the country's 11,776 public shelters are located in Arab municipalities, even though this population accounts for more than 20% of citizens, according to the Israeli organization The Abraham Initiatives and the Home Front Command itself, the unit of the Israeli army responsible for shelter and emergency management. Furthermore, eight of these have been deemed unfit for use.Inequality becomes even more evident when comparing nearby localities. In the Jewish city of Ofaqim, there are approximately 150 public shelters for a population of about 40,000 inhabitants. In contrast, in Rahat, the largest Arab city in the country, with over 75,000 inhabitants and also located a few kilometers from Gaza, there are none, according to the Israel Democracy Institute.

In Jerusalem, the difference is visible. A quick search on shelter location apps, like Bomb Shelter Locator, makes this clear: in East Jerusalem there are around 60 shelters for nearly 400,000 Arab residents. A few minutes away, in West Jerusalem, there are hundreds of public shelters and a large presence of buildings with reinforced rooms.For years, Israeli human rights organizations such as Bimkom, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Sikkuy-Aufoq, or Injaz; research centers like the Knesset's Research and Information Center and the Israel Democracy Institute; initiatives such as AJEEC - Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation, as well as reports from the Ombudsman's Office have denounced this situation, which has returned to the forefront with the current war. All point in the same direction: discriminatory planning policies towards Arab communities, decades of disinvestment, and political decisions that have not allowed for proactive development of protection infrastructure in these localities.“The gap is the result of prolonged negligence, the failure of public policies, and structural discrimination”, Jafar Farah, director of the Mossawa Center, one of the main civil rights organizations defending Arab citizens in Israel, explains to ARA. “There has been a lack of governmental and municipal action to build shelters, along with an unequal distribution of public resources and urban planning restrictions that also limit the construction of buildings with protected spaces. All this points to a systemic inequality in planning and resource allocation”.Unprotected housing and precarious infrastructure

According to Farah, inequality translates into greater exposure to risk: not only due to the lack of shelters, but also because of the distance to protected areas, the precariousness of infrastructure, and the situation of many unrecognized communities. The most extreme case is that of the Bedouin people of the Negev, in southern Israel, where more than 150,000 people live in shacks and provisional structures, without any protection or authority to manage these shortcomings. When the sirens sound, many take refuge under bridges or in holes dug in the ground.The different entities agree on a central idea: the responsibility lies with the state, especially with the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Home Front Command. In Israel, there is a legal framework that implicitly supports this right to protection: the Civil Defense Law of 1951 obliges the construction and maintenance of shelters, and the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty recognizes the right to life and physical integrity.In a statement to the newspaper The Times of Israel, the Home Front Command has reiterated that urban planning approval depends on local authorities and that cities are responsible for maintaining shelters, thus leaving the issue in municipal hands. In practice, however, the burden often falls on families, and only some can afford to build a private shelter at home, provided they obtain the necessary permits.Faced with this situation, the institutional response remains limited. Although in recent years the Netanyahu government has adopted some measures, such as the installation of about 80 protective structures at bus stops and about fifty more near community centers in the Negev, several groups consider them insufficient. Furthermore, in the Arab towns in the north, particularly exposed to Hezbollah rockets and with less reaction time to seek shelter, no significant action has been taken.