Abstract: The Home Front as a Battlefront

The Second Lebanon War marked a peak in the confrontations being waged on the civilian home front. The home front has always suffered attacks, but it is evident that since the Gulf War, the second Intifada in 2000-2004, and up to the latest war in Lebanon, the Israeli home front has become a major front, and in some cases the only front, of confrontation. Another change that has taken place in recent years is the ongoing nature of the confrontations and their shifting intensity.

This reality, in which the home front is in constant danger and suffers multiple attacks, requires a different approach and renewed thinking in a broad range of policy realms, including organizing the agencies tending to the home front in routine and emergency situations; revising the IDF combat doctrine; preparing and training citizens from psychological, mental, and practical standpoints; and changing budget priorities in general and the defense budget in particular.

Confrontations on the home front have many economic consequences, most of which also affect the state budget and its allocation. These include the direct and indirect costs of the confrontations, the need for a special home front budget in “civilian” ministries, defining a level of economic activity in emergencies, and defining the confrontation line.

The main phenomenon addressed by the team is the incremental process of privatizing security on the home front. The civilian nature of the confrontations and the lack of a proper response on the part of the government compel citizens who are under threat to increase their expenditure for personal security. This phenomenon has the following undesirable consequences for the economy, state, and society in Israel:

• The most basic obligation of the state, to ensure the security of its citizens irrespective of their economic ability, is impaired.
• National security is a public good, and therefore – for reasons of economic efficiency – the government must provide it. Leaving it to the private market is liable to cause an inefficient allocation of security components.
• A level of security that is dependent on the economic ability of individuals could exacerbate existing social gaps and cause them to take on existential significance. Moreover, the worsening of the gaps and lack of security due to an inability to finance it cause severe damage to Israel’s national resilience.
• The dependence on private resources to finance security leads to intervention by donors and non-profit associations that come to the aid of residents who are having trouble managing on their own. These sources act without a clear policy, and at times in contravention of the government’s stated policy.
  

In order to minimize this occurrence as much as possible, the research team recommends the following steps:

1. Defining a level of security which would enable residents to maintain a reasonable daily routine over time, with similar chances of survival in all regions of the country, both as a declaration of intent on the part of the government and as a tool for determining the security measures required for putting this definition into practice.
2. Measuring private expenditure on security versus government expenditure (in aspects of home front security) as a tool for examining citizens’ needs and gaps in the level of security between different populations.
3. Examining all aspects of security on the home front, while distinguishing between realms of government authority that would not be privatized, and activities of a technical nature, for which the desired level of governmental involvement will be determined.
4. Establishing an effective system of supervision, particularly regarding activities that would be carried out by extra-governmental agencies and in cases of a “captive” or vulnerable target population.
   

The second issue addressed by the team is the definition of the confrontation line and outlying localities as they currently exist. Localities included in this definition are eligible for a broad range of aid programs and economic benefits. This definition, which was made at a time when most confrontations were waged at the front lines and localities near the border suffered from a relatively high level of danger, does not provide a suitable response for a situation in which localities situated far from the border are also subject to ongoing threat and multiple attacks.

The effort to cope with this definition’s incompatibility with reality leads to political and media pressures to include particular localities within this definition. The response that can be offered to this problem consists of temporary solutions that are not based on clear and equal criteria. In practice, a situation is created whereby localities that deserve assistance do not receive it, and vice versa. This phenomenon leads to inefficient allocation of budgets and jeopardizes the local and national economy.

In order to achieve the required compatibility between the definition and the realization of its goals in the existing reality, the research team recommends the following:

1. Canceling the condition of geographical distance from the borderline.
2. Establishing clear eligibility criteria for inclusion in the definition.
3. Forming a permanent mechanism that will update the list of eligible localities for each predefined period of time.
   

To replace the condition of geographical distance, the team proposes three alternatives:

1. Referring solely to the component of damage (in retrospect).
2. Creating and regularly updating a list of relevant localities.
3. Creating a dynamic map of confrontation regions, on several levels.
4. The team also proposes taking into account differential damage in specific economic sectors.

With regard to the organizational change required in dealing with the home front, the team would like to emphasize the need for an integrating agency that would assume responsibility for such functions relating to the home front, and calls for its immediate establishment. Instating responsibility for the home front and providing a responsible authority that would work hand in hand with local authorities during emergency situations is seen by the team as a correct and proper measure.

Combining the resources of the central government with the abilities of local authorities can guarantee an optimal response as far as the residents are concerned. For this purpose, it is first necessary to verify the economic and administrative ability of the authorities to meet this task and provide a complementary response to authorities that may find it difficult to implement it.