How unequal shelter access puts Israel’s Arab and Bedouin communities at greater risk

LONDON: As Iranian rockets shook East Jerusalem in mid-June, Rawan Shalaldeh sat in the dark while her seven-year-old son slept. She had put him to bed early and hid her phone to prevent the constant alerts from waking him, hoping sleep would shield her child from the terror above.

“The bombing was very intense; the house would shake,” Shalaldeh, an architect and urban planner with the Israeli human rights and planning organization Bimkom, told Arab News.

While residents in nearby Jewish districts rushed into reinforced shelters, Shalaldeh and her family in the Palestinian neighborhood of Jabal Al-Zaytoun had nowhere to go.

“East Jerusalem has only about 60 shelters, most of them inside schools,” she said. “They’re designed for students, not for neighborhood residents. They’re not available in every area, and they’re not enough for the population.”

Her home is a 15-minute walk from the nearest shelter. “By the time we’d get there, the bombing would already be over,” she said.

Instead, her family stayed inside, bracing for the next strike. “We could hear the sound but couldn’t tell if it was from the bombs or the interception systems,” she recalled. “We couldn’t sleep. It was terrifying. I fear it will happen again.”

That fear is compounded by infrastructure gaps that make East Jerusalem’s residents more vulnerable. “Old homes in East Jerusalem don’t have shelters at all,” she said. “New homes with shelters are rare because it’s extremely hard to get a building permit here.”

Israeli law requires new apartments to be built with protected rooms. However, homes built without permits are unlikely to follow the guidelines, leaving most without safe space.

The contrast with West Jerusalem is stark. “There’s a big difference between East and West Jerusalem,” Shalaldeh said. “In the west, there are many shelters, and things are much easier for them.”

Indeed, a June 17 report by Bimkom underscored these disparities. While West Jerusalem, home to a mostly Jewish population, has about 200 public shelters, East Jerusalem, which is home to nearly 400,000 Palestinians, has just one.

Even where shelters do exist they are often inaccessible. The municipality’s website fails to clearly mark their locations, and many residents are unaware they exist. Some shelters even remain locked during emergencies — especially at night.

The report concluded that the current infrastructure is grossly inadequate, leaving most East Jerusalem residents without access to basic protection during attacks.

Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem hold temporary residency IDs that lack any listed nationality and must be renewed every five years. Unlike Arab citizens of Israel — often referred to as “48 Arabs” — or residents of southern Israel, they do not have Israeli citizenship.

For many Palestinian and Arab citizens of Israel, the 12-day Israel-Iran war in June laid bare a deeper inequity — one that extends beyond conflict and into the fabric of everyday life.

“I haven’t spoken with any of my friends in the north yet, but I saw videos on Instagram,” Shalaldeh said. “Arab families tried to enter shelters and were prevented — because they’re Arab.”

The war, she said, exposed an uncomfortable truth for many Arab citizens of Israel. “After the war, many realized they’re not treated like Israelis — even though they have citizenship, work in Israel and speak Hebrew.”

“There’s an Israeli policy that tries to blur their identity. But the war opened a lot of people’s eyes. It became clear they’re not equal, and the issue of shelters was shocking for many.”

One town where this inequity became alarmingly visible was Tira, a predominantly Arab community in central Israel with roughly 27,000 residents. Though well within the range of missile attacks, Tira lacks adequate public shelters.

“Most of the few shelters that exist are outdated, insufficient, or located far from residential areas,” Fakhri Masri, a political and social activist from Tira, told Arab News. “In emergencies, schools are often opened as temporary shelters, but they only serve nearby neighborhoods and can’t accommodate everyone.

“Many homes do not have protected rooms, and this leaves families, especially those with children or elderly members, extremely vulnerable.”

When sirens sounded during the attacks, panic set in. “It was the middle of the night,” Masri said. “Many of us had to wake our children, some still half asleep, and scramble for any kind of cover.

With official shelters scarce, families resorted to improvised solutions. “People ran into stairwells, lay on the ground away from windows, or tried to reach school shelters — if they were even open or nearby,” he said.

Others simply fled to their cars or huddled outdoors, hoping distance from buildings would offer some safety.

“It was chaotic, frightening, and it felt like we were left completely on our own,” Masri said. “The fear wasn’t just of rockets — it was also the fear of having no place to run to.”

Underlying this crisis, he argued, is a deeper pattern of state neglect. “Arab towns like Tira were never provided with proper infrastructure or emergency planning like Jewish towns often are,” he said. “That in itself feels like a form of discrimination.

“It makes you feel invisible — like our safety doesn’t matter. It’s a constant reminder that we’re not being protected equally under the same state policies.

“We are not asking for anything more than what every citizen deserves — equal rights, equal protection, and the right to live in safety and dignity. It is a basic human right to feel secure at our own home, to know that our children have somewhere safe to go during an emergency.”

Masri, who has long campaigned for equal emergency protections, called on the Israeli government to end discrimination in shelter planning.

“Treat Arab towns with the same seriousness and care as any other town,” he said. “We are people who want to live in peace. We want our children to grow up in a country where safety is not a privilege but a right — for everyone, Jewish and Arab alike.

“Until that happens, we will keep raising our voices and demanding fairness, because no one should be left behind.”

The picture is similar for the roughly 100,000 Bedouin who live across 35 unrecognized villages in the Negev and Galilee regions, often in makeshift homes that provide little protection. Many of these villages are near sensitive sites targeted by Iran.

One such village is Wadi Al-Na’am, the largest unrecognized village in Israel, home to about 15,000 Bedouin residents in the southern Negev desert.

“When we say unrecognized, it means we have nothing,” said Najib Abu Bnaeh, head of the village’s emergency team and a member of its local council. “No roads, no electricity, no running water — and certainly no shelters.

“During wars, people flee the villages. They hide in caves, under bridges — any place they can find.”

After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, the army began installing a small number of shelters in unrecognized villages. But Abu Bnaeh said that these efforts have fallen short.

“In our village, they built two structures,” he said. “But they have no ceilings, so they don’t protect from anything.”

He estimates that more than 45,000 protective buildings are needed across all unrecognized villages.

As the head of Wadi Al-Na’am’s emergency response team, Abu Bnaeh leads a group of 20 volunteers. Together, they assist residents during missile alerts, evacuating families to shelters in nearby townships such as Segev Shalom and Rahat, and delivering food and medicine.

“We train people how to take cover and survive,” he said. “We also help train teams in other villages how to respond to injuries, missiles and emergencies.

“The best way to protect people is simple. Recognize the villages. Allow us to build shelters.”

Even recognized villages face issues. In Um Bateen, officially recognized in 2004, basic infrastructure is still missing.

“Although our village is recognized, we still don’t have electricity,” Samera Abo Kaf, a resident of the 8,000-strong community, told Arab News.

“There are 48 Bedouin villages in northern Israel. And even those recognized look nothing like Jewish towns nearby.”

Building legally is nearly impossible. “The state refuses to recognize the land we’ve lived on for generations,” she said. “So, we build anyway — out of necessity. But that means living in fear; of winter collapsing our roofs, or bulldozers tearing our homes down.”

Abo Kaf said that the contrast is obvious during her commute. “I pass Beer Sheva and Omer — trees, paved roads, tall buildings. It’s painful. Just 15 minutes away, life is so different.

“And I come from a village that is, in many ways, better off than others,” she added.

With each new conflict, the fear returns. “Israel is a country with many enemies — it’s no secret,” Abo Kaf said. “Every few years, we go through another war. And we Bedouins have no shelters. None.

“So not only are our homes at risk of demolition, but we also live with the threat of rockets. It’s absurd. It’s infuriating. If something doesn’t change, there’s no future.”

Michal Braier, Bimkom’s head of research, said that no government body had responded to its report, though many civil society organizations have supported its findings based on specific cases.

“There are stark protection gaps between high- and low-income communities,” she told Arab News. “And most Arab and Palestinian communities rank low on socio-economic indicators.

“This is a very neo-liberal planning and development policy that, by definition, leaves the weak behind.”