The missile attack from Iran did not miss Haifa. The direct hit on the ZAN compound, and the alarms that shook the neighborhoods, the Carmel, and the downtown area, clearly demonstrated: Haifa is on the front line – no less than Tel Aviv or Ashdod.
These events must be a turning point. Urban renewal is no longer a planning issue – it has become a top-level security, health, and social mission.
The battalion commanders saved many lives – only for those who were Shelter (or shelter)
In the reports published after the attack, a clear pattern emerges: being in a combat zone reduced the risk of critical injury by 80% or more.
But in thousands of old apartments across Haifa – in Hadar, the lower city, Bat Galim, the old Romma and Neve Paz – protection is lacking and the situation puts tens of thousands of people at risk of death. There are no protected spaces, no constructive reinforcement, and sometimes there is nowhere to escape.
Some of the buildings, which were built until the 80s, have shelters, but elderly people cannot reach them and choose to remain in their apartments. As such, many elderly people are among the victims of the missile attacks across the country.
The reality on the ground: Most of Haifa is old and exposed
About 60% of the buildings in the Haifa metropolitan area were built before 1980, without requiring a fire department. Many of the buildings suffer from years of neglect, crumbling infrastructure, steep stairs – and above all, an inability to protect their occupants in an emergency.
Urban renewal = protection, safety, community resilience
Below is the updated data regarding the number of apartments in Haifa and their security status:
The total number of apartments in the city of Haifa is approximately 122,333 apartments.
The number of apartments without a municipal building permit (below the protection criterion) is approximately 98,327–98,600, which is approximately 80% of the total number of apartments.
Therefore, according to the data we have, only about 24,000 apartments (20%) include standard fire alarms and appropriate protective measures.
Significant conclusions:
A very high percentage (about 80%) of apartments in Haifa are unprotected, and therefore their residents are more exposed to missile threats.
This is a clear existential challenge, which must also be addressed in the context of urban renewal and the addition of municipal police stations, against the backdrop of the fear of repeated attacks.
Clearance-build projects are not just “affordable real estate” – they allow for:
- Receiving a new apartment, with a modern and reinforced construction standard, with a standard building code.
- An elevator is accessible to every tenant.
- Shelters and advanced safety systems.
- An upgraded, clean, bright and protected living environment.
- Underground parking (usually), which relieves parking congestion from the street.
- And no less important – a real sense of security.
Urgent call to residents: Don't wait for the next rocket
If you live in an old building without a municipal building management system – join an urban renewal project now. Don’t wait for the state to come knocking on your door. Contact the building committee, be part of a local initiative, contact the tenant manager – because in times of emergency, only what is done in advance – truly saves lives.
Now is the time to act – together.
Every tenant who expresses consent, every building that begins a process, every committee that unites – brings the entire city closer to the finish line: a modern, protected city, with a strong civic heartland.
The responsibility lies primarily with the city captains.
It's no secret that Haifa has made almost no progress in urban renewal. Years pass and vast neighborhoods await change.
Among the neighborhoods known for their enormous number of buildings that were hastily built in the 60s to accommodate thousands of immigrants:
Carmel Tzarfati, Kiryat Eliezer, Neve David, Ein Hayam, Shaar Aliyah, Neve Sha'anan, Kiryat Haim, Kiryat Shmuel.
Strong municipal leadership is required to lead these important projects.
An existential need in Haifa = a municipality that functions for the residents and not for the municipal employees, the mall owners, and the representatives of power in the polluting factories.
When there is a municipality that functions for the residents:
A. Public shelters will be built
B. Invest in new (and durable) public buildings
C. They will ensure that contractors build in neighborhoods that need renewal, not just in Carmel.
D. They will ensure that the city provides real emergency evacuation plans and not a sketchy 'we opened a shelter in the parking lot..'
But until then…
We will continue with urban traffic control.
And reassuring messages from the municipality: 'Follow the instructions of the Home Front Command'
Thank you very much, what would we do without it?
A failure of the Haifa Municipality and its mayors for generations, who only promise and do PR but almost nothing happens on the ground.
We and thousands of other residents signed up in the coastal neighborhoods, of course with signatures, developers, and submitted plans, some of whom have been waiting between a decade and 20 years, and the municipality time after time rejects the plans and does not approve building permits here.
In my opinion, in the coastal neighborhoods there are between 1%-2% of buildings that have been approved for renewal (one building at Europa Exit and another 2 or 3 buildings that are on the way to being built in Neve David).
And until they approve, they do so without responsibility. The prices of new apartments in the coastal neighborhoods have risen sharply, around 2 million or more shekels per apartment. Why approve developers to increase the price of apartments by 6 times? Respect the residents and our city. They will be able to profit even from increases of 4-3 units or approve a renewal of construction density as is happening in all the cities of the Krayot region - if it is happening like mushrooms after the rain in their area, and everyone is profiting, why don't we see it in the coastal neighborhoods?
The war with Iran has indeed created an immediate need to protect residents. I hope that the Haifa Municipality will shorten the decision-making process in vulnerable neighborhoods regarding evacuation and construction. There is no need for bureaucratic awkwardness. Time to approve plans. Thank you and take care of yourselves.
On the subject of urban renewal:
Once a well-organized plan is submitted to the local authority for approval, why does it take 8 months for one authority to receive approval, while in the Haifa Municipality it takes many years???????
This is a project of the same size.
Maybe the workers will sit in Haifa and not move until
They should not issue payment requests to all the relevant parties in one letter!!!!!!
Even changes to the city plan, when required, can be shortened.
When you work hard!!!!!
In Haifa, people work very well…
So instead of counting how many unprotected apartments there are, let's work hard on the applications that have been submitted...
Approvals are received after residents
They were so full of bitterness that they even forgot that they had submitted an application….
Maybe the Iranians will move something….
This is what happens when corruption rules. The plan was to protect as many apartments as possible. What came out of it was a corrupt municipality and corrupt developers/contractors. They only saw money in their eyes. The neighborhoods that really needed protection did not participate in the celebration. The project will not bring in millions for them. Large buildings in "cheap" neighborhoods were not treated
For example, the urban renewal plan for the coastal neighborhoods, the municipality and the Urban Renewal Administration, need to recalculate the course, and instead of promoting plans for high-rise buildings without recognition, which will take years to be implemented and inhabited, we should simply promote a plan for constructive reinforcements and adding dimensions to every apartment built before the 80s. A process that is quick to implement and will provide protection for tenants in this generation and not in the next generation... (assuming that there are no hidden interests vis-à-vis the developers, and the only desire is to ensure the safety and well-being of the tenants).
The municipality must understand the plight of the city's residents and allow for movement and not bog the city down with old and dangerous construction.
Wake up there!!
The truth is that the existential need is to build standard public shelters throughout Israel, and of course there are 200 missing in Haifa.
All the renewal with bomb shelters – people in Masada Tikva who were in bomb shelters have already died from a direct missile hit. The bomb shelter is effective against the front and ineffective against a direct missile hit – to stop such a missile, you need a meter of concrete or asphalt + soil, and that is only available in public underground shelters.
We need to invest in every public building, even kindergartens, in a shelter 2 stories underground. It will cost millions more shekels, but it will save human lives in a country surrounded by ballistic missiles aimed at it. The Haifa Municipality has not built public shelters since the Second Lebanon War. This is not an omission, it is a real crime.
A failed municipality that includes a huge millstone of operating expenses and salaries for inefficient management of the city of Haifa is creating deficits and bringing the city to the brink of bankruptcy. The solution is to burden the projects for urban renewal, the evacuation of construction, excessive areas of commercial buildings that generate expensive property taxes and will remain empty due to a huge surplus of commercial spaces. This is good for property taxes and to satisfy the millstone of wasteful and inefficient city management – and on the other hand it lowers the price of apartments, creates neighborhoods with a poor quality of life, increases overcrowding – and the result is slum neighborhoods that will be the urban default of the coming decades and will destroy the city of Haifa.
In one big traffic jam, without road connections between neighborhoods, in a serious default of locked-down neighborhoods, in construction monsters of new construction and especially of eviction construction in terrible slum density. This is expected to destroy the social-human fabric in Haifa and create poverty, neglect, an inability to finance the cost of maintaining apartments here, inefficient construction that relies on air conditioning and mechanical ventilation systems in light of the poor level of construction of apartments with one air direction, mainly for owners of existing apartments in build-and-evac projects, but also out of the hope of the developers that the suckers will be forced to purchase apartments of a poor standard of apartments in light of an artificial shortage of apartments, when the apartment market is regulated by the planning authorities in order to feed the public with poor quality apartments as an aid to the developers who, according to suspicion, feed the people pulling the strings in the planning authorities, in order to secure the future of their families financially. Continued
It is clear that the projects are progressing at a very slow pace, and this is in light of the desire that the faulty planning not be exposed all at once, because then the public may take to the streets and prevent the planning catastrophe and cause the victims, the citizens, to unite forces. The method is to destroy the quality of life in Haifa using the Salami method, step by step. Some of the projects of the evacuation and construction of Agayn are not signed, when developers who were selected and approved by those pulling the strings at the planning authorities, do not present the planning in advance and create a legal obligation for the innocent victims, so that they cannot escape receiving very problematic apartments - which are approved and will be approved by the planning authorities who do not care about the quality of the apartments and the quality of life, but only about filling the pockets of the right people with a lot of money. The path will lead us all to an explosion and an urban disaster that will hit the entire city of Haifa.
The city of Haifa has a failed planning system that is not based on planning considerations and not public considerations. This applies to the Haifa Municipality, the Haifa Local Planning and Building Committee, the Haifa District Planning and Building Appeals Committee (in everything related to the city of Haifa) and the Haifa District Planning and Building Committee, which will be called the "planning authorities." The planning authorities in recent decades have led the city of Haifa into transportation and urban chaos that will cause a great outcry in the coming decades, when projects will begin to be populated in about 4 years. It will turn out that we are mired in a traffic jam
Urban renewal, evacuation and construction, this is very important. Both protection against earthquakes that are coming and protection against missile fire. It is clear that a direct hit on a bomb shelter is not a complete solution. Until now, we have been exposed to missiles that include explosives on a limited scale (Saddam Hussein's missiles, etc.). Recently, some of the missiles include about 500 kg of explosives and the Iranian plan is to produce thousands of missiles carrying 900 kg of explosives - therefore, additional thinking and preparation for heavier missiles is needed - and this requires better protection for buildings and bomb shelters. The thickness of bomb shelter walls reaches a maximum of 35 cm of reinforced concrete. The old shelters included walls 40 cm thick. Continued …
Dear Mr. Menashe Shemesh,
1. You advertise yourself as an engineer, but you "forgot" to mention that you are not a structural engineer and your professional qualification does not give you the legal authority to express an engineering opinion in the field of construction.
2. Your article contains a clear bias, presenting "minor errors" and substantial "inaccuracies" in the presentation of your apocalyptic data, while making an inappropriate attempt to terrorize the city's residents to promote your business.
3. The residents of the house in Neve Sha'anan, whose photo is shown in the article, and near which the missile hit, as well as the other residents of the nearby buildings, were in shelters under their homes at the time of the incident, and thanks to this, they were saved and were not injured.
4. It is no longer a secret that the MAMD is not designed and is not intended for direct missile strikes, but despite this you persist in spreading misleading theories.
5. Any tenant who desires a building site adjacent to their apartment can quickly obtain a building permit and a month later the building site will be adjacent to their apartment.
6. It has long been known that the entire municipal and district institutional system for issuing building permits for the construction of buildings under TAMA 38 is tainted with serious falsehoods, and is based on an infrastructure that contradicts the provisions of the law.
7. Implementing TAMA 38 in luxury areas in buildings that do not require reinforcement at all constitutes a resounding failure of the TAMA's goals. It is all an economic matter of greed on the part of all those involved: tenants, developers, lawyers, the municipality and state institutions.
8. You are exploiting a state of emergency with harsh cynicism to advance your own private business.
9. Shame on you!!
You "forgot" to mention that the owners and operators of the "Hai Pe" website (who live in a building without a Bercha Cauderes BOD) are involved in several evacuation and construction projects in the French Carmel area. So this is a completely biased article.
Unnecessary and biased scaremongering.
The building in Petah Tikva, which was directly hit and damaged much more severely, with 4 fatalities, was a new building.
Any building, new or old, is not resistant to direct damage.
The photos from Galilee Street actually convey the opposite: that the building survived the missile.
If it is decided that it has become a dangerous structure, they will do what is necessary, demolish or repair.
They will demolish and build a new one, but they don't guarantee that the new one will be missile-proof either.
Shame and disgrace, all the mayors in Haifa, past and present, didn't even think about it. I've been waiting in my old apartment in Kiryat Shprinzak for over 15 years now, for the honorable mayor to start shaking things up and sign already. The main thing is the money. Why did we elect you? Don't just do it for the Carmelites, go down to the people.