RSS
Resuscitating Israel’s Destitute North Should Begin Now
People rush to a soccer field hit by a Hezbollah rocket in the majority-Druze northern Israeli town Majdal Shams Photo: Via 924, from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law
The deadly conflict between Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Israel has entered a new phase, as the threat of all-out war between the Jewish State and the Lebanese terror group looms.
Amid escalating tensions, Israel and its supporters can take immediate steps to equip Israel’s most vulnerable northern border communities with sorely needed defenses, paving the way for their eventual renewal.
Kiryat Shmona — Israel’s largest evacuated northern town and the economic hub of the northern Galilee — should be prioritized.
The Israeli government updated its longstanding war goals last week, vowing to return tens of thousands of displaced Israelis from northern communities to their homes. The announcement was followed by an unprecedented attack on the Hezbollah terror network, whereby thousands of personal communication devices belonging to Hezbollah members — beepers and walkie-talkies — appeared to be remotely detonated in what may be the biggest and most wide-spread simultaneous counter-terrorism precision strike in history.
Hezbollah began attacking Israel on October 8, 2023, forcing Jerusalem to evacuate over 40 communities along its northern border, while the Jewish State was still counting its dead and struggling to establish the number of missing persons from Hamas’ invasion and massacre in Israel’s south on October 7.
Hezbollah has been openly planning a similar attack and invasions of Israel for years. Mass evacuations of Israel’s northern border communities were the only way to ensure that other massacres and hostage scenarios would not play out along its border with Lebanon.
Given the lessons learned from October 7, and the IDF’s state of high readiness in the north, it is unlikely that Hezbollah could carry out an October 7-like invasion today. But the majority of Israel’s over 1.5 million residents remain vulnerable to Hezbollah rockets; terrorists in Lebanon have fired over 7,500 rockets at Israel since the war began.
Over the past decade, Tehran has spent billions of dollars building Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal. Today, the terror group is estimated to have more than 150,000 rockets, the vast majority of which are short-range rockets that would exclusively target Israeli border communities. Yet the most vulnerable communities in the north — including Kiryat Shmona — lack the means to withstand this threat.
Kiryat Shmona is situated in a lush green valley, surrounded by Lebanese territory on three sides. In 2021, the city celebrated a newly-launched innovation center — a venture capital funded food-tech research and development hub, which promised tens of thousands of jobs in the coming years. Before the war, there were 90 start-ups in Kiryat Shmona. Today, the majority of those companies have moved their operations south, away from the rocket fire — a devastating blow to the regional economy.
According to Ariel Frisch, Kiryat Shmona’s deputy director of security, the town’s population was 25,000 before the war, but only had sufficient bomb shelters for 50% of the residents. A school principal in normal times, Fricsh said that his town had absorbed over 750 direct hits on infrastructure since the war began, damaging homes, schools, and kindergartens.
A small number of Israelis have returned to their border communities, willing to face the rocket fire in order to regain some sense of normalcy. However, many others have no plans to return to the north. A poll conducted by the Kiryat Shmona municipality indicated that 14% percent of residents would not return to the town. A further 34% said that their decision to return would depend on the security outlook. The bottom line: providing security to Kiryat Shmona is critical to the town’s survival and to the future of the northern Galilee.
Israel must strengthen the ability of Kiryat Shmona to withstand rocket attacks, providing a safer alternative for the people who are ready to return home. The growing community of Sderot, near the Gaza border, is evidence that — if adequate protections are in place — many Israelis are willing to live under the threat of rockets (although it remains to be seen if this trend will continue in the long-term after October 7). But Jerusalem can take key steps now to help make that happen by investing in a more formidable security infrastructure.
The best short-term solution is to install what Israelis call miguniot — Hebrew for standalone concrete boxes with metal doors that residents can truck into Kiryat Shmona and place close to a home, business, or school, providing limited but essential protection from projectiles.
Domestically manufactured miguniot that are built in various sizes for different capacities, are advertised for sale on the Internet for anywhere between $7,000 and $40,000 and can be delivered within three weeks.
The utility of miguniot is limited though: Israelis in border communities only have 15 seconds to reach them in the face of incoming fire. Accordingly, Israelis must position miguniot strategically to be effective.
The better solution for hardening communities in the mid to long-term is building additions of reinforced concrete safe rooms attached directly to homes, schools, clinics, and other public spaces that residents can reach even faster. These safe rooms can be air-conditioned and wired to the home’s electricity, making them suitable for sheltering in place for longer periods of time.
Safe rooms are a more expensive, but more effective solution, and costs can range between $27,000 and $60,000 per unit. They also take longer to build, involve an architect and permitting, and require a team that is willing to work onsite to construct the safe rooms.
Israeli leaders should embark on a campaign to raise money for both types of these shelters, or find another way to allocate the funds immediately. Even if Hezbollah is trounced in a future war, the rocket threat isn’t going anywhere. Jerusalem should galvanize Diaspora Jewry and other supporters of Israel to help.
The work of hardening Kiryat Shmona must begin now. Lessons learned from Sderot and other communities that have thrived under rocket fire for over a decade in Israel can be applied. The longer Kiryat Shmona and other towns remain empty, the harder it will be to bring life back to the entire region.
Enia Krivine is the senior director of the Israel Program and the FDD National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow her on X at @EKrivine.
The post Resuscitating Israel’s Destitute North Should Begin Now first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
IDF Denies Troops Fired on Civilians After Incidents of Settler Violence
Illustrative. Israeli troops during counterterrorism activity in Tulkarem, northwestern Samaria, September 2024. Photo: IDF.
i24 News – The IDF released a statement after an incident during which Israeli soldiers opened fire on Israeli civilians in the West Bank on Saturday night, denying that the trooped fired live ammunition.
This comes at the heels of arson incidents by settlers against Palestinian villages, with clashes breaking out. The IDF said that its soldiers had come under attack on Friday as they entered the area of Kafr Malik, the site of the disturbances, by Israeli civilians. “The undermining of the rule of law and the use of violence by a radical minority harm security and stability in the area.”
The IDF later said that “an initial investigation indicates that IDF forces did not fire live ammunition at Israeli civilians in the area. It should be clarified that the battalion commander’s force operating in the Baal Hatzor area of the Binyamin brigade did not fire live ammunition at all.” On the other hand, the civilians claimed this was false, posting a video that showed shell casings on the ground right next to where the troops were deployed.
Meanwhile, the police requested the remand of six individuals, two of whom are minors, to be extended in connection with the incident.
The IDF later said that, “in another area within the sector, stones were thrown at a military vehicle near the site of the clash by masked individuals from an ambush. The force responded with a warning shot of three bullets.” A possible connection “between this incident and the claim that an Israeli civilian was injured by live fire” is being investigated.
After the incidents late last week, the IDF issued an unusual directive for soldiers to exercise special vigilance and also prepare for scenarios involving nationalist incidents perpetrated by Israeli citizens. The directive was issued after a military vehicle was set on fire inside a Jewish settlement, the tires of an armored David vehicle were punctured, and a community policing caravan near the community of Beit El was also set on fire.
“The security establishment system is highly alert,” a security official told i24NEWS. “We are seeing an escalation on the ground – and if you cannot leave a military vehicle in a Jewish community without it being burned in the sector, it is a sign that the situation is dangerous.”
The post IDF Denies Troops Fired on Civilians After Incidents of Settler Violence first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Israel Orders Evacuations in Northern Gaza as Trump Calls for War to End
US President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in ceremony of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, May 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
The Israeli military ordered Palestinians to evacuate areas in northern Gaza on Sunday before intensified fighting against Hamas, as US President Donald Trump called for an end to the war amid renewed efforts to broker a ceasefire.
“Make the deal in Gaza, get the hostages back,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform early on Sunday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to hold talks later in the day on the progress of Israel’s offensive. A senior security official said the military will tell him the campaign is close to reaching its objectives, and warn that expanding fighting to new areas in Gaza may endanger the remaining Israeli hostages.
But in a statement posted on X and text messages sent to many residents, the military urged people in northern parts of the enclave to head south towards the Al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis, which Israel designated as a humanitarian area. Palestinian and U.N. officials say nowhere in Gaza is safe.
“The (Israeli) Defense Forces is operating with extreme force in these areas, and these military operations will escalate, intensify, and extend westward to the city center to destroy the capabilities of terrorist organizations,” the military said.
The evacuation order covered the Jabalia area and most Gaza City districts. Medics and residents said the Israeli army’s bombardments escalated in the early hours in Jabalia, destroying several houses and killing at least six people.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, relatives arrived to pay their respects to white-shrouded bodies before they are buried.
“A month ago, they (Israel) told us to go to Al-Mawasi (in Khan Younis) and we stayed there for a month, it is a safe zone,” said Zeyad Abu Marouf. He said three of his children were killed and a fourth was wounded in the Israeli airstrike.
“We ask God and the Arabs to move and end this occupation and the injustice taking place against us,” Abu Marouf told Reuters.
NEW CEASEFIRE PUSH
The military escalation comes as Arab mediators, Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, begin a new ceasefire effort to halt the 20-month-old conflict and secure the release of Israeli and foreign hostages still being held by Hamas.
Interest in resolving the Gaza conflict has heightened following US and Israeli bombings of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
There has also been rising concern over how aid is being distributed to Gazans in the ruined enclave. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed over the past month in the vicinity of areas where food was being handed out, local hospitals and officials have said.
A Hamas official told Reuters the group had informed the mediators it was ready to resume ceasefire talks, but reaffirmed the group’s outstanding demands that any deal must end the war and secure an Israeli withdrawal from the coastal territory.
Hamas has said it is willing to free remaining hostages in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to still be alive, only in a deal that will end the war. Israel says it can only end the war if Hamas is disarmed and dismantled. Hamas refuses to lay down its arms.
The post Israel Orders Evacuations in Northern Gaza as Trump Calls for War to End first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Russia Launches Largest Drone Attack Yet Against Ukraine, Kills F-16 Pilot
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
i24 News – Ukraine’s Air Force said that Russia launched 537 drones and missiles against targets throughout Ukraine overnight between Saturday and Sunday, in what what described as the largest attack of the war.
Poland activated aerial defenses and scrambled jets as the six-hour onslaught continued. One Ukrainian F-16 pilot was killed as Kyiv attempted to intercept the missiles and drones, with 475 shot down.
“Tragically, while repelling the attack, our F-16 pilot, Maksym Ustymenko, died. Today, he destroyed seven aerial targets,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
“Ustymenko did everything possible, but his jet was damaged and started losing altitude,” the air force said, as quoted in Politico. “He died like a hero!”
The cities of Cherkasy, Lviv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Kyiv were targeted.
The Russia attack came after Ukraine attacked the Kirovske airfield in the Crimean Peninsula, targeting air defenses, drones, and even destroying several helicopters and an air defense system.
The post Russia Launches Largest Drone Attack Yet Against Ukraine, Kills F-16 Pilot first appeared on Algemeiner.com.