Private gun ownership in Israel increases after Hamas attacks
Two weeks ago, Zvika Arran reluctantly pulled out a gun at an Israeli state-run shooting class for those seeking firearms permits, part of a huge spike in applications since the Hamas-led attacks on October 7.
Mr Arran said he was disgusted by the idea of owning the gun which is now in a safe in his home. But his sense of security, like that of so many Israelis, was shattered when Hamas fighters overran communities near the Gaza Strip, killing an estimated 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 240 hostages, Israeli officials said.
“God forbid, if something like this happens here, I want to know I have a gun,” said the 48-year-old Mr. Arran, who lives in Eliav, a small town bordering the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “The problem is the side effects” of weapons proliferation, he added, which he called “a disaster for years to come.”
“It shows that the state has simply given up protecting us,” he added. “And it will be a disaster in terms of encouraging road violence, domestic violence and gunfire accidents.”
In Israel, a country of 9 million, about 150,000 held private gun licenses in 2021, a figure that had fallen by about 20 percent over the past decade, according to the Ministry of National Security.
But in the aftermath of October 7, Israelis submitted at least 256,000 applications for gun permits, including many who had never before considered owning a gun. Israel’s current far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has long pushed for an expansion of gun ownership, and in mid-October lawmakers signed off on relaxed gun ownership rules issued by his office.
Young adults with assault rifles slung over their shoulders are a common sight in Israel, where there are hundreds of thousands of active-duty soldiers or reservists with weapons stashed at home. But despite decades of uncertainty, private gun ownership has never reached the levels we see in the United States, as studies show a third of adults own firearms.
“Until October 7, private arms policy in Israel was fairly balanced,” said Tomer Lotan, former director general of the Ministry of National Security. “Then the authentic fears of many Israelis changed overnight.”
The Israeli government has issued 13,000 firearms permits throughout 2022, and 23,000 this year through October 7. But after the Hamas attack, by the end of November, 26,000 new permits had been fully approved in less than eight weeks, while another 44,000 Israelis had received weapons permits. “conditional agreement.”
Eligibility for a firearms permit depends on one’s age, military or national service experience, occupation and place of residence. Some cities are considered more dangerous than others, which justifies ownership. The new regulations expand the number of eligible cities, reduce the required size of the national service and allow more volunteer medics and first responders to carry weapons.
Yisrael Avisar, who has headed Israel’s weapons licensing department since 2020, said plans for new regulations were drawn up in January, shortly after the government came to power, and were not a result of the war.
Mr Ben-Gvir’s ministry has pushed for an expansion of civilian ’emergency response’ patrols in local communities. “Israel is arming itself,” declared a ministry announcement broadcast on Israeli radio for weeks after the attack.
“As many citizens as possible who met the criteria should be armed,” Mr Gvir recently wrote on social media. Last week, he said at a meeting of his Jewish Power party: “If there had been more weapons in the Gaza border area, more emergency response teams, more lives could have been saved.”
The approach has drawn fierce criticism within Israel from policy experts and some lawmakers, who fear that relaxed regulations and the proliferation of weapons will lead to a rise in murders, suicides, domestic violence and even private gangs operating as militias.
“Israel will not become the United States,” Mr. Lotan said. “But we as a society will pay a high price for this proliferation of private guns: more gunfire accidents, more suicides, more children playing with guns, more daily conflicts that escalate to guns being drawn.”
Before the war started, according to Mr. Lotan, personal interviews were conducted to obtain firearms permits, which lasted about 20 minutes. Between 20 and 30 percent of applicants were rejected after the interviews, which were intended to weed out people unable to carry weapons, he said.
However, Mr Arran described a much messier process: a “20 second” phone call rather than an extended conversation. A day after completing his four-hour shooting course, he received his gun permit by email.
“They called me, but it wasn’t even an interview,” he said. “If only the rest of our country’s public services were this efficient,” he added sarcastically.
Another Eliav resident, Maayan Rosenberg-Schatz, said that she, like many other Israelis, no longer believed that the Israeli army – which took hours to arrive at some embattled communities on October 7 – was targeting them in a time of crisis. time would reach.
Two days after the attacks, she sat down with two of her young children to plan how they could escape if Palestinian attackers invaded their home.
“We talked about trying to run to the roof, and maybe escape from there,” said Mrs. Rosenberg-Schatz, 42, who had applied for a gun permit with her husband. “But at the end of the day, there is no substitute for having a gun.”
Ms. Rosenberg-Schatz, who described herself as politically center-left, said she feared the proliferating weapons would fall into the wrong hands.
“Everyone tells you they’re worried about that — but they still feel unsafe” without a gun, she added. “Suddenly we feel this fear deep in our guts, and it’s very hard to fight that.”
Palestinians in the West Bank say they fear more weapons in the hands of hardline Israeli settlers, who are already more heavily armed than most Israelis, at a time when settler violence jumped against the Arabs.
Similar fears exist in Israel. In Lod, a mixed Arab-Jewish city, residents fear an even more extreme version of the deadly inter-ethnic violence that rocked the city in 2021, said Fida Shehada, a Palestinian city councilor.
“We’re getting into a situation where anyone could raise their guns at you,” Ms. Shehada said.
Itamar Avneri, leader of Standing Together, an organization that promotes Jewish-Arab coexistence, said he had already noticed more weapons as he walked through his hometown of Tel Aviv.
“I understand the reaction, I really do, I really want to feel safe too,” Mr Avneri said. “But I see people walking around with guns and rifles, and this is not what security and safety look like.”