The past week brought tragic news, with Israeli citizens killed in Ramat Gan, Tamra, Rishon Lezion, and Bat Yam during Iranian missile attacks that caused unprecedented destruction across the country. Entire buildings were damaged, and many apartments were reduced to rubble. In some cases—such as the Tel Aviv high-rise where residents were saved by a reinforced security room—an even greater tragedy was narrowly avoided.

Twenty years after the launch of the National Outline Plan 38, which was supposed to provide a solution to reinforcing buildings against both earthquakes and security threats, far more structures should already have been fortified with state-approved reinforced security rooms installed. Everyone involved in the project – known by its Hebrew acronym, TAMA 38 – agrees that it has been a failure. For 20 years, and notwithstanding the ever-increasing threats against Israeli citizens, which have reached a peak in the past few days, the state has not been able to fulfill its promise to reinforce Israelis’ homes or to launch new residential construction projects in areas where there is no economic incentive to do so. Among the factors which impeded full implementation of the plan was opposition from local council leaders in the center of the country, who argued that the lack of a betterment tax in Israel prevented them from providing additional services to residents of their towns.

Around five years ago, the National Planning and Building Council decided not to extend TAMA 38 and to replace it with a series of alternative arrangements. Nonetheless, in 18 local councils, the plan was extended until May 2026. Instead of TAMA 38, the council opted for alternative plans, which allow for public housing construction and levying a betterment tax. The three local authorities which did not renew TAMA 38 were Tel Aviv, Bat Yam and Bnei Brak, even though up to 40 percent of the TAMA 38 permits were issued in those cities, with Tel Aviv responsible for 30 percent.

“Just two or three months ago, a drone hit an apartment in Tel Aviv that wasn’t reinforced and one person was killed. I really hope I turn out to be wrong, but that could just be a foretaste,” said a resident of Kfar Shalem in southern Tel Aviv at a meeting of the Knesset’s Internal Affairs and Environment Committee in September last year. The meeting was convened to discuss the decision by the three abovementioned local authorities not to extend the TAMA 38 plan.

“In the south and east of Tel Aviv there are neighborhoods in which it is far less easy to advance the TAMA 38 plan because property developers are automatically attracted to the city center and the northern quarters, where apartments sell for between 70,000 and 80,000 shekels per square meter – and not 30,000 shekels,” the resident added. “We also have more launches here. The apartments literally shake with every interception. When they say that it doesn’t help here with the security issue because it will only happen in six years from now – that’s not true. If they were to approve a permit for TAMA 38, even if we were to be evacuated in six or 18 months from now [as part of a demolition and rebuilding plan], we would be getting rental assistance for a different apartment. It does provide a solution. Maybe not in the immediate term, but in the short term. Apart from that, and as others here have said, we don’t live in Switzerland and we’re not going to turn into Switzerland any time soon. It’s your responsibility as the government to ensure that we are secure.”

“Extending TAMA 38 is critical to ensuring that a larger portion of the population receives at least minimal reinforcement in times of war,” says Yaakov Amidror, former National Security Advisor

At the same meeting of the Internal Affairs and Environment Committee, Lior Shapria – deputy mayor of Tel Aviv – claimed that less than 10 percent of the TAMA 38 permits issued in the city were for its southern neighborhoods, but added that security should not be a consideration when dealing with the TAMA 38 plan. “In case anyone here had any doubt, TAMA 38 is an economic incentive and not a reinforcement incentive,” he said. “It is designed to deal with the issue of earthquakes and along the way they added the issue of reinforcement – but it’s an economic incentive and it is wrong to come along today and link it to the war situation.”

Wrong or not, this position also gained the support of Michal Meir, the municipal engineer in Bat Yam – the city adjacent to Tel Aviv which sustained a hugely damaging missile strike this week. At a meeting last September, Meir argued that although approximately 5,200 apartments in her city had been approved under the TAMA 38 plan, the initiative had also created significant and persistent problems—partly because many of the buildings were already in poor condition. “We drafted a comprehensive urban renewal plan, and the goal is not about collecting betterment taxes,” she said at the meeting. “It’s about finding ways to meet all of the public’s needs. We surveyed every single plot.”

Later in the meeting, a resident stated that he had brought a message from Yaakov Amidror, a former major general who served as National Security Advisor from 2011 to 2013 and remains an informal adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the resident, the message was: “Extending TAMA 38 is critical to ensuring that a larger portion of the population receives at least minimal reinforcement in times of war.”

“I insisted on it, because it was clear to me that the danger was significant and that the threats we are facing are ever-increasing."

Speaking to Shomrim this week, Amidror elaborated on his position: “When I was head of the National Security Council, I recognized a major vulnerability—many apartments in Israel lack reinforced security rooms. When my term ended, I recommended transforming TAMA 38 into a national demolition-and-reconstruction project. I did so, in part, because it’s the only viable solution in the kind of war we are now facing. I believed the State of Israel had to adopt it as a national priority. Unfortunately, while the government listened, it failed to take any meaningful action. MK Matti Sarfati Harkavi (Yesh Atid), who initiated the Knesset committee meeting, now tells Shomrim that after the hearing, she contacted various bodies – chief among them the National Planning and Building Council – demanding another hearing into extending TAMA 38, but to no avail.

On October 13, 2024, some two weeks after the second Iranian missile attack on Israel, she wrote to the council chairman, Natan Alnatan, saying that “the imminent expiry of TAMA 38 and the failure to submit an alternative plan in some local authorities raises serious concerns among many residents, given the lack of adequate reinforced spaces, which prevent loss of life, especially at a time of regional conflict, which is felt very profoundly in the center of the country. In fact, since my previous letter and the escalation of hostilities with Iran, the situation on Israel’s home front is only deteriorating.”

In his last letter to Sarfati Harkavi, dated November 11, 2024, Alnatan argues that the National Planning and Building Council is a statutory and independent institution and that, “the parliamentary oversight authority of the Knesset committees over executive bodies is intended to ensure transparency, control, and accountability. However, it is not meant to replace the professional discretion of the supervised bodies or to supersede the powers vested in them by law.”

“I asked the committee chairman and the Knesset’s legal adviser to insist that the National Planning and Building Council address the issue again, as the committee requested,” Sarfati Harkavi tells Shomrim. “I insisted on it, because it was clear to me that the danger was significant and that the threats we are facing are ever-increasing, but it was wrapped up by politicians and the whole issue has been shunted to the sidelines.”

The National Planning and Building Council submitted the following response: “The TAMA 38 program did not achieve its intended goal of reinforcing buildings against earthquakes in high-risk zones. In its place, the National Planning and Building Council has advanced an alternative that provides an optimal solution for both earthquake preparedness and reinforced security rooms. It's worth noting that local authorities are already progressing with plans in accordance with this new alternative. For those authorities still formulating their plans, an extension for TAMA 38 has been granted until 2026. Furthermore, during the war, the National Planning and Building Council promoted a series of decisions to facilitate a rapid process for issuing permits for the construction of reinforced security rooms.”