“Let the Plans Begin” – A Plea for the Long Term Security of Israelis

By Geoffrey Clarfield

In the winter of 1980 I had the privilege of teaching Israeli adults English conversation at a private night school in Jerusalem. One of the discussions, inevitably, focused on security.

As a client centered teacher I asked students what security in the modern state of Israel meant for each one of them. I wrote their responses on the blackboard (yes, this took place before the internet) and cleaned up the grammar of each phrase.

The last student to express his thoughts on the matter smiled, opened his jacket, pointed to his holstered handgun, and said, in lovely Israeli accented English, “This is my personal security.”

He was right. After the pogrom of October 7 the Israeli government has finally understood that every responsible Israeli adult who can, should be trained in the use of small arms and carry one in a car, purse or knapsack as so many terrorist Jihadis who have attacked innocent Israelis on the streets of that country have been mowed down by civilian arms carriers with solid military experience and training.

Clearly there are other more long term levels of security which must also be preemptive, for when a major nearby Islamic dictatorship continuously announces it is dedicated to “death to Israel,” and there is incontrovertible evidence that they are developing atomic bombs which they promise to use, then one must take preventive measures.

That is what this latest episode is all about-destroying Iran’s nuclear capacity, reducing it or at best causing regime change whereby a democratic government will give up its quest for nuclear arms and once again join the process for peace and prosperity in today’s middle east. Although the conflict is in its early days, one hopes for timely success.

In the meantime, the Iranian mullahs and their military servants have had no qualms about sending barrages of missiles to Israel’s most densely populated centers. Their goal is, like the Nazis during WWII,  to destroy populations of what they consider “undesirables” meaning Israeli citizens and sadly they have succeeded to a small degree.

Each Israeli death from Iranian missile fire is a personal, familial, communal, and national tragedy. Israeli citizens should not be paying the price for the acts of this rogue regime. NATO governments have been aware of what the Iranians are doing and intending to do.

They have stood by idly, or as in the case of the Biden administration, actively obstructed or forbid Israel and its military from defending itself against Iran and its proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. This is moral cowardice.

And so one, long term way to protect Israelis is to decentralize the population and to do so in as many ways as is safely possible. What would just a small part of this entail?

The first would be to break down the century old Israeli prejudice that it is most prestigious to live in one of Israel’s three large cities-Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or Haifa (Beer Sheva being a close fourth).

Apartments are more expensive in these three cities, but jobs are easier to find and then there is the joy and sophistication of living in 21^st century cities with 21^st century shopping, restaurants, and cultural life. When you live in a nice neighborhood in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or Haifa, as an Israeli you have “arrived.” This will be hard to change but it must.

The corollary of this is that when you live in the towns or villages between these cities, although land and apartments are cheaper, there are fewer decent schools for your children, little in the way of diversified shopping and restaurants and a reduced cultural life.

And then the kind of people who for various reasons must live in these communities are often not the most worldly or stimulating. I know this for a fact for I once spent a full year in the  most beautiful but tiny town in the Negev Desert¸ Mitspe Ramon.

Although this town has now turned into a growing haven of talented artistic types it is still home to lower middle-class residents whose grandparents were expelled from Islamic lands in 1948, and who have never got over that trauma. So many of them are still “on the dole.”

Many of these permanently dependent families on government subsidies have become super religious, for it is only the religious parties who care for them and their children and, who not surprisingly, demand their vote during national elections as a quid pro quo.

Although they are building them there are not enough trains or lite rail in Israel, allowing someone from the Golan or the Galilee to commute to Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem of even Beer Sheva.

And then there are no significant rewards or financial incentives for young couples who want to move out of the big cities, work (successfully) online and raise their children in communities where neighbors look out for each other.

It should therefore not be difficult for large Israeli companies committed to a more secure distribution of population throughout the land, to consider moving some operations to small towns and villages.

Israel is such a small country (the size of New Jersey), and this would stimulate social interaction between successful middle and upper-class dwellers of Israel’s big cities and the statistically demonstrable middle to lower middle-class status of the dwellers in Israel’s more “remote” towns and villages.

Government policy and government subsidies would have to change, for a more effective decentralization of the state of Israel and its inhabitants to become a priority.

For example, since 1968 there are still only 20,000 Jewish citizens who live in and protect the Golan Heights which is legally part of Israel proper. As they say, “If you cannot use it, you may lose it.”  And one reason people do not move there is that there is no train and not one regional hospital for its permanent residents.

While we are on the topic why not relocate some of Israel’s big-ticket education and research institutions to smaller places? Princeton New Jersey is a good example of a small town with spectacular institutions of higher learning that attract world class people.

Katsrin in the Golan Heights could become the Princeton of the North. It just needs the public and private investors to make it happen. The Jewish people and the people of Israel have these resources.

Then there is taxation. Thousands of young Israeli men and women who have recently served hundreds of days risking their lives in the reserve, fighting Hamas or Hezbollah deserve guaranteed or highly subsidized mortgages to move their families to these villages.

These young couples and their families  need tax deductions to construct the requisite underground bomb shelters (which during times of peace can be converted into concert halls and club houses for the young and the elderly.)

And then there is cultural life-plays, films, concerts, conferences, and lectures. All of these are centralized in Israel and with a little government subsidy can be brought to the towns and villages of “rural Israel.” Certainly, the National Lottery could push some funds this way.

Then there are the islands that everyone has forgotten about since the 1990s. Hidden away in the bowels of the Technion is a plan for the construction of large offshore islands to receive Israel’s expanding population-“mini” Singapores off the shores of the Mediterranean. This is not science fiction and should become part of the national infrastructure plan.

Finally and sadly, if some new enemy of the Jewish state decides to send its missiles to terrorize Israel once again, a more equitable spread of the population reduces risk while a bigger investment in “underground Israel” will protect the population and give them some quality of life while the threat is ongoing.

The current building of “security” rooms in apartments and houses is necessary but clearly insufficient. Israelis must dig deeper for their future security. This should not be a problem in a nation of archaeologists and who knows what may be discovered in the process?

Israel joined the high-tech nations of the West when during the 1990s Bibi Netanyahu freed the economy from its over bureaucratized socialist restraints that had outlived their usefulness.

In planning an Israel for the 21st century the Israeli government, public institutions such as universities, colleges, and research institutes, along with the private sector and infrastructure entrepreneurs can, if they decide to, create a network of communities and cities in Israel that could and should be the envy of every country in the Mediterranean.

To make this work there is a need for both top-down and bottom-up consultative and participatory methods, focus groups and the like to make this happen.

One must remember, that by the 1990s Israel had not developed an official national infrastructure plan since the late 1950s! Luckily, the department of architecture and urban planning at the Technion took it upon themselves to develop an 18-volume comprehensive plan that was soon adopted, lock, stock, and barrel by the Israeli parliament a few years before 9/11.

To create a viable development and settlement plan for 21^st century Israel, there is a need for a substantial change of attitude of both entrepreneurs, educators, and the government.

What is needed is a commitment to more than a bit of long-term planning for the nonmilitary in a country like Israel that faces periodic security threats. This is possible.

Finally, it is now clear that the communities on the border of Gaza that were invaded and despoiled during October 7 did not have enough guns, guards, trained personnel and back up to defend themselves against invasion, rape, murder, pillage, and hostage taking.

A stronger, more numerous and better equipped civil guard (a classic decentralization technique) could have prevented and pushed back these barbarian invaders and took the fight across the border into Gaza. So much for the “what ifs” of history. This is a lesson that must be learned.

So, “Let the plans begin!”

First published in the Times of Israel