“Defense establishment occupies half of Israel’s land”

Amiram Oren, The spatial `price’ of security" :
http://geo.haifa.ac.il/~ch-strategy/publications/books/mehirmirhavi/mehir_mirhavi_shel_bitahon.pdf (Heb.)
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000033514&fid=942

“Defense establishment occupies half of Israel’s land”
Dr. Amiram Oren: The space occupied by military camps prevents development of urban communities. Dalia Tal 27 Nov 05 17:31

“Almost half of Israel’s land is taken up, directly or indirectly, by the defense establishment,” geo-strategic expert Dr. Amiram Oren said today at a seminar entitled “The territorial cost of defense” at the University of Haifa.
Oren declared that it was almost impossible to find a region in Israel with no territorial conflicts between defense considerations and civilian interests. He added that the space occupied by military camps prevented development of urban communities. He said that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also had a deleterious effect on the environment, because it did not properly treat sewage, trash, and solid waste.
According to Oren, many IDF camps did not prevent oil and fuel leaks, poured waste and polluting poisons into the sea, and did not treat sewage in evaporation pools.
Oren noted that even open spaces, which should be free conflicts between military and civilian systems, were also affected. For example, the many spaces held by the IDF create a mental block, harm the concept of open space, and increase the feeling of crowding and lack of open space among groups in Israel.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on November 27, 2005

[JPN Commentary: Almost none of the information in the following, two October 19 articles from Haaretz is new. However its emergence from the small print, the back pages, and the "guest commentators" section into discussion by conservative mainstream journalists (in the case of the first article) and large spreads (in the case of the second, though the English internet version is significantly truncated relative to the Hebrew print version in the economic pages, "The Marker") indicate what I view as a growing critical discourse on Israeli militarization in mainstream Israeli media. A recent item on increased pre-military training in high schools in Israel, run by Ynet, the internet version of Israel’s largest evening paper, which could not be classified as liberal or progressive, featured the caption "Militarization" in bold print under the illustrative photo.
Each of the articles below, and all the more powerfully their juxtaposition, reveal striking parts of the routine and largely insidious workings that hold the state of Israel on its course of continued conflict while underpinning its maintenance of a bloody military occupation.
The first piece discusses the amazing fact researched by geographer Amiram Oren (and disseminated for several years now by the New Profile feminist anti-militarist movement in Israel), that nearly 50% of the area of Israel proper (within the "green line") is allocated to the military or the security forces. Half of Israel—totaling about 6,000 square kilometers—is either a military base, a firing range, a police facility or an arms factory. This, in an ostensibly land-starved state. A remarkable aspect of this reality, not discussed by journalist Amir Oren, is the fact that it goes virtually unnoticed, unremarked, and unquestioned by the majority of Israeli Jewish society. (Palestinian citizens of Israel are well versed in the state’s use of military facilities to strip their communities of land reserves and block community growth.) These data accordingly reflect an eye-opening instance of the degree to which the hold and the prioritization of all things military are normalized and naturalized in Israel.

The second piece reports on another manifestation of such naturalized militarization of the mechanisms of Israeli democracy. It focuses on the wastefulness of Israel’s security budget, representing over 18% of the state budget for 2004 and over 27%, of the government’s operational budget for that year (in which a similar percentage, about 29.5, was allocated to all social services combined). Listing a series of questionable or downright superfluous budget items, journalists Yannai Cohen and Shouky Sadeh briefly discuss the severe anomaly placing Israel’s largest single government budget beyond the jurisdiction of it’s elected representatives, insulating it from public or administrative monitoring and placing it at the exclusive disposal of a small interest group of high ranking officers and ex-officers. The huge expenditures incurred by the early retirement practices of Israel’s military (allowing personnel in their 40’s of 50’s to go on to a second career supplemented with army pensions), expected to account for 15% of the entire defense budget in another 5 years, seriously weaken any automatic assumptions that this interest group faithfully represents the interests of all Israeli citizens’ security.

The data collected and reported by each of these articles offer probing views of the degree to which Israeli military/security organization(s) control the resources of the state while largely neutralizing its organs of democracy. That this goes virtually unremarked by most Israelis, testifies no less to the degree to which consciousness is militarized in Israel. — RM]

Substitute for the West Bank: `Training Bloc’
By Amir Oren
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/635749.html October 19, 2005
It had already become a tradition no less sacred than the customs of the holiday itself, a gift the people receive from its army: "During the days of the holiday, the Israel Defense Forces’ training areas will be open to visitors." For those with a discerning ear, this subtly confirms that many areas in the state are closed to its citizens.
The geographer Amiram Oren does not suffice with subtle hints. In an illuminating article ("The spatial `price’ of security"), published this month by the Geostrategy Cathedra of University of Haifa, he describes in detail, with maps, the land allocated for security use in Israel. In his previous incarnation, as an officer in the IDF General Staff’s Planning Division, Dr. Oren was involved in charting the military infrastructure and permanent deployment of units, bases and facilities.
According to his inventory, the security establishment controls nearly half of the territory within the Green Line. About half of the country is in the hands of the IDF and its partners (intelligence, police, industries). One-tenth of the area of Israel is built up. Of the remaining nine-tenths, a third is dedicated to training areas. Bases, facilities and industries take up another sixth, including areas where civilian use is restricted due to land, air or naval activities conducted on or near them.
In a state that fights over every scrap of land, as long as the land is located outside its borders, this constitutes terrible wastefulness. Every evacuation of a settlement, every change the width of a pencil tip in the path of the separation fence between the West Bank and Israel entails deliberations and agony, even when only 100 meters are involved.
And, at the same time, thousands of kilometers are handed over to be exploited in territory where there is no dispute over sovereignty. This territory, totaling about 6,000 square kilometers, could be called the "training bloc." It is the archipelago of the IDF, with a large central island in the Negev.
Six thousand square kilometers is also about the size of the West Bank. The formula is obvious: Israel within the Green Line is large enough to assimilate all of the future concessions in the West Bank. It has a southern bank, a military bank, which will absorb everything that is ejected from the east of the Green Line.
Ariel Sharon takes pride in succeeding last year to get President George W. Bush to affirm the need to consider the facts on the ground created by the West Bank settlement blocs. (To be more precise, Condoleezza Rice was the one to sign this affirmation, on behalf of Bush.) This does not include all of the blocs, and does not include Jerusalem, and requires land swaps. It is impossible to know what Israelis would say if they were presented with the choice of terraces in Judea or dunes in the Negev, but one can assume that, from monetary considerations alone, it would be best to seek such a deal in order to save the tens of billions required for building new communities and compensating the settlers.
Israel will not be able to avoid the question of where land can be taken to give to the nascent Palestinian state in exchange for the land populated by the settlers. Directly or indirectly, the land reserves will be found in the training areas. Directly, as in the example of the Halutza dunes, south of Gaza, or indirectly, if areas adjacent to Mount Hebron are evacuated and their civilian equivalent is taken from the training areas.
With proper and frugal management, the security establishment can already suffice with a much smaller area than it now controls.
With some effort, despite the problems of takeoff and landing paths, the air force and testing base in Palmahim could be evacuated and Israel’s main international airport could be built there. Land forces could be hosted at naval and air bases, and redundant command centers could be cut, such as that of the Land Forces Command, which maintains offices at both the Kirya in Tel Aviv and Kastina, near Kiryat Malachi. There is no real need to maintain separate training grounds for the IDF and the industrial development and testing units. More intelligent operation of these areas (including civilian management) during the weekends, along the model of lending them to the American army for training in the Negev, would cram an identical amount of training into a smaller area. The development of computers and simulators also justifies cutting back the mania for real estate.
Geography, not the lust for conquest and not the voracity for Palestinians, propelled Israel to expand. Between the Kadesh operation [1956 Suez campaign] and the Six-Day War, the armies became better armed. The General Staff was horrified to discover in its calculations, and even more during war games, that the armies of Egypt and the Eastern Front (commanded in the war games by the head of the Southern Front, major general Abraham Yoffe) could defeat the IDF (commanded in the war games by the head of IDF operations, major general Yitzhak Rabin). The war games indicated that Israel needs two security belts: an inner one, without armor, in the Sinai, West Bank and Golan, and an outer one, with warnings provided by forces moving toward this belt (and Iraqi expeditionary forces approaching the Jordanian border). The collapse of these "red lines" generated the Six-Day War. The peace with Egypt and Jordan, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the weakening of Syria has changed the strategic reality into a tolerable one. With proper security arrangements, Israel could draw back to the armistice lines, and the land it loses could be returned to the IDF from Israel’s internal reserves.

Where defense spending really goes
By Yannai Cohen and Shuky Sadeh
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/635760.html October 19, 2005
Israel’s defense spending next year will reach NIS 34 billion, according to the 2006 government approved budget. Add on NIS 11 billion from the U.S. and a few more billion hiding away in the Defense Ministry, and the total reaches about NIS 50 billion a year. Where exactly does the money go? Only a select handful of privileged know the answer.
The figures are clothed in mystery, camouflaged from the public with the right to know. Those in the know are aware that the budget is bloated, excessive and could be slashed without harming the nation’s defense, but no one has been able to clip the powerful wings of the army establishment, which takes an abnormally high amount of the national resources.
One example of where the money goes is the $640 million for the Apache Longbow attack helicopter, which some experts believe is unnecessary. Another NIS 800 million goes on the megalomaniac Merkava tank project. And the budget for the country’s secret services, Mossad and atomic energy unit is estimated at NIS 4 billion a year.
The public is naturally keen to know where its money is spent, but the Defense Ministry, unlike other ministries, runs its own budget allocation without Finance Ministry (read: taxpayer) interference. The Health Ministry, for example, requires treasury approval before conducting any transfer or economic activity, but in defense, any item of less than NIS 90 million is off limits to any external supervision. For spending above that figure, the ministry requires approval from a select parliamentary committee, which for all intents and purposes is a rubber stamp.
MK Uri Ariel (National Union) explained this conundrum. "Today we were asked to approve the transfer of NIS 600 million to the defense establishment for `development’," he said this week. "As with every approval request, this one was accompanied by a long list of clauses ending with a small item, what I call `petty cash’ and what the defense ministry calls `sundries.’ Guess what the sum is? NIS 140 million. On the same day, in the morning, I was in a hearing on the Dovrat report [on educational reform], and representatives said there’s no money. In the Knesset Finance Committee, we spent hours discussing a NIS 1 million transfer to the Health Ministry. Eventually we agreed not to sign off automatically, although we are justifiably called a rubber stamp. The meeting on the NIS 600 million lasted an hour. For health spending of NIS 3 million, we would sit for twice that length of time, and there would be many questions and arguments."
Here are some suggestions where the army could cut costs.
In April 2005, there were whoops of joy among those invited to Israel Air Force’s Ramon base. The reason for the celebration was the deal to buy what many regard as the latest word in attack helicopters: the Apache Longbow developed by Boeing, which the IDF has renamed Sharaf. But why did Boeing have to conduct an aggressive marketing campaign, flying Israel’s top brass over before the $640 million deal was signed? Maybe the answer lies in Karbala, Iraq, where in March 2003, the United States suffered heavily in a battle for the skies. Thirty Apache helicopters were attacked, two crashed, the crew of one fell into captivity, and other Apaches incurred such serious damage that they were taken out of service. A senior Israel Air Force officer, Uzi Rosen, was quoted as saying "this reinforces the recognition that combat helicopters are a passing phase."
Tanks for the memories
It was the role played by tanks in the Yom Kippur War that set off the army’s thinking. If 6,200 tanks helped win that war and that was three times the number that played their role in the Six Day War, then there must be a need for 20,000 tanks in the next war. And so plans for the Merkava tank were born. And despite the growing feeling that such a tank battle will only take place in computer games, the taxpayer is still paying NIS 800 million a year for this defense project for the next 15 years.
Problematic pensions
Then there are the 28 delegations of Israel’s forces in 24 countries worldwide that cost NIS 200 million a year, an amount a treasury official described as "the greatest scandal in an era of cheap phone calls, emails and Skype." Some 40 personnel, for example, are located in defense offices in Manhattan (not New Jersey, not Washington, but Manhattan!) when there is practically no U.S. defense industry in the city.
And then there’s the right of every career soldier to spend NIS 800 a year on sportswear, which translates to NIS 30 million a year on Nike shoes.
And let’s not forget the pensions. When Moshe Dayan was chief of staff, he encouraged personnel to retire in their 40s to keep the fighting forces young. So today, army personnel retire in their 40s with pensions paid for by the state. Although the situation has changed - all new career army recruits now must contribute to their own pension funds - the old guard still enjoys the perk even though only 14 percent of all IDF personnel are classified as "fighting" (70 percent are home front, 16 percent are support staff). But their early retirement payments grow 6 percent annually, so that by 2010, the pension cost will hit NIS 5 billion, 15 percent of the defense’s total budget.