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Bus-sized ballistic missile debris lands in Israeli town in Samaria

“A child’s life in Samaria is no less valuable” than those in other areas of the country, said Yossi Dagan.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The safety of Israeli citizens in Samaria is being abandoned by the state, its council head charged Tuesday after a missile fragment the size of a bus fell in a central location in the region, with just chance dictating its landing in an open area.

“The fact that protection has not been provided to the central settlements borders on irresponsibility,” said Yossi Dagan. “Immediate budget allocation for fortification in the Samaria settlements should be made, similar to the model recently implemented for residents along other frontline areas in Israel, which are eligible for NIS132,000 per family for protection, based on proximity to the frontline.”

More than a hundred pieces of either Iranian missiles or Israeli interceptors have landed across Samaria in the week since Operation Rising Lion was launched to end the nuclear and ballistic missile threat emanating from the Islamic Republic.

“Every night, parts of interceptors fall on houses, yards, and vehicles,” Dagan said.

In one case, a fragment from an interceptor hit a synagogue.

Few were so massive in size as the one that fell in the unnamed village, but the danger is real and immediate, because “Judea and Samaria is the shield from the east and has become the ‘interception line’ of the State of Israel,” Dagan said.

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There are tens of thousands of residents living in young settlements with no bomb shelters and whole neighborhoods consisting of paper-thin caravans or old buildings that do not contain safe rooms.

This serious problem is actually country-wide.

In a just-published report, State Comptroller Matanyahu Engelman slammed the government over the issue, stating that a whopping 2.6 million Israelis lacked proper protected spaces.

Not only are these citizens still without safe rooms or bomb shelters, there are also issues of “malfunctioning public shelters, a lack of mapping for the population without access to protected spaces, and insufficient preparedness to support civilians once they are harmed,” he wrote.

Moreover, having blared the warning already five years ago, “budgets allocated to the issue were not utilized, and government plans were left unfunded,” he said.

Dagan noted that his region is “the frontline, for all intents and purposes,” especially since so many of its settlements are targeted by Palestinian terrorists.

“It is time the State recognizes this, including in its budget” he said. “A child’s life in Samaria is no less valuable.”

Many villages also do not have any fire brigades or emergency services nearby that could quickly provide assistance to those trapped by debris or injured if a missile explodes in their vicinity.

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This, despite the Council making numerous appeals to government authorities on the subject for years, well pre-dating the current conflict, Dagan said.