Millions in Israel 'lack gas masks, bomb shelters'
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Israel is ‘completely unprepared’ to cope with the consequences of a war, a lawmaker in charge of home front preparations has said, as tensions rise over a possible confrontation with Iran.
Zeev Bielsky, who heads the parliamentary committee for home front preparedness, accused the Israeli government of ‘wanton disregard’ saying the country faced a dire shortage of both gas masks and bomb shelters.
"Today, only 60 per cent of Israelis - 4.5 to 5 million people - have gas masks," he said, adding that some 400,000 households in Israel do not have access to a bomb shelter.
"There are currently 1.7 million citizens without any protection from bombs, or shelters," he said.
"We must be prepared at any moment for any possible scenario, and today we are completely unprepared."
Bielsky, a lawmaker from the centre-right opposition party Kadima, said the gas mask shortage was the result of the government's failure to allocate sufficient funds to the two Israeli factories that produce the masks.
With the current state of turmoil in the region, "and especially in light of the condition in Syria, it is wanton disregard that the government is not providing this basic product, which every citizen should have," he said. In January, Israel's air force chief - then head of the military's planning division - warned that Syria possessed "huge stockpiles of chemicals, biologicals (weapons), strategic capabilities that are still going into Syria."
The future of those weapons is uncertain, if President Bashar al-Assad's embattled regime is toppled, Major-General Amir Eshel said.
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