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JERUSALEM — Since Hamas rampaged through Israeli communities on Oct.7, the government here has promoted a simple message: Guns save lives.
Using rhetoric redolent of gun rights advocates in the United States, hard-right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir has pushed to loosen firearm licensing requirements and create more civilian “standby teams” to harden communities against a repeat of the deadly surprise attack.
“In the right hands, a weapon can save lives. The war demonstrated this — whenever weapons were present, disasters were smaller,” he said in late October. “A gun can save a family, and an assault rifle can save a building. A weapon can protect you, your family, your street and your country.”
Under an expedited processing system, Ben Gvir’s ministry in the past two months has received more than 256,000 applications to carry private firearms, it said in an update last week. The ministry received around 42,000 for all of last year.
Ben Gvir’s approach has led to some turmoil inside the government and out. The head of the National Security Ministry’s firearms division resigned on Sunday after Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Ben Gvir had put loyalists without the necessary legal authority or training in charge of approving gun licenses. Critics, meanwhile, warn the guns could fuel anti-Arab violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel, a growing concern.
Jewish Israeli volunteers across Israel and West Bank settlers are arming themselves, training and forming groups to patrol the streets. U.N. officials report surging settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern that U.S. assault rifles sold to the Israeli government could add to the mayhem.
“Israel’s long-standing policy is that the hand is light on the trigger when it comes to Palestinians,” said Dror Sadat, a spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, which tracks settler violence against Palestinians. “Dozens of them have been killed over the years without posing any danger, including women and minors.”
Firearms, often slung across the backs of young Israelis completing their mandatory service requirement in this heavily fortified country, are a common sight in cities and settlements. After Hamas and allied fighters streamed out of the Gaza Strip to kill around 1,200 people in Israel, commanders called up 360,000 reservists, many of whom, when they’re off duty, tote their rifles while taking their kids to the playground or on coffee dates with friends.
Private gun ownership was rising before the war. But since Oct. 7, interest has exploded — a shift for a country in which citizens traditionally have trusted the army and police to protect them, and where relatively strict controls have limited the proliferation of firearms.
Before the war, to be considered for a gun license civilians had to live or work in an area deemed to be under heightened security risk, submit a health declaration signed by a physician, undergo training and demonstrate they knew how to use a gun safely. The license limited bearers to one gun and 50 bullets.
The push to relax the rules reflects the deep fear that has permeated Israeli society after the surprise Hamas assault. The army took hours to respond, leaving men, women and children largely defenseless against the militants.
In the aftermath, accounts emerged of volunteer security teams in some kibbutzim fending off Hamas attackers and saving lives. The teams, known in Israel as “kitat konenut,” have long been active in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and in Israeli communities near the Gaza border, where they act as first responders to security threats.
For advocates of wider access to gun ownership, the accounts served as vindication of their cause — and helped build support for lowering barriers to firearms access.
Armed civilians ‘not going to take any chances’
Ben Gvir has championed arming civilians. The pro-settler extremist — he has acknowledged chanting “death to Arabs” as a younger man, though says he no longer does — pushed to increase the geographic area in which private citizens may obtain licenses, expedite the licensing process and arm civilian security teams.
By the end of October, 600 of these groups were up and running across the country, according to the national police commissioner. Fifteen were in Jerusalem.
Washington Post journalists watched an aspiring civilian security team train in Jerusalem in October. The 15 men, who were applying for government support, practiced with their newly issued walkie talkies in the basement of a luxury apartment building. Then they made their way to an underground parking garage to yell, stomp and run in formation with toy handguns.
A civilian security team trains with toy handguns in an underground parking garage in Jerusalem on Oct. 31. (Video: Jon Gerberg)
In Jerusalem and Haifa, armed volunteers described Palestinian citizens of Israel as a fifth column.
“You can feel the tension on the street,” said Eliyahu Gev, who organizes training sessions in Jerusalem. “The terrorist attacks, they come from that group, the group of the Arabs.”
“We are dealing with an enemy that we cannot identify, we can’t mark,” Gev said. “They are integrated here in medicine. They are doctors. They work. They contribute to the community. But the situation is that we can’t know who they are or what they are.”
Liad Levy, 48, a tech industry professional in Haifa, has organized about 80 volunteers, some armed, to lead evening patrols.
“When you have kids and you see these atrocities on the border and then you say: ‘Okay, my neighbors, do they have weapons? And what can they do with this weapon?’” he said. “I’m not going to take any chances.”
The weapons training in Jerusalem hadn’t gone on for an hour when the men got their first mission. Two young Jewish Israeli women had just reported seeing an “Arab” man walking near their building across the street. They didn’t report suspicious or threatening behavior. But a half-dozen men, armed and shouting, ran across the street in central Jerusalem.
Lights flicked on in apartment windows. Neighbors peeked outside. Two girls in pigtails looked on with their mother. Most of the men entered the building, guns drawn. One stayed outside and prevented a journalist from filming the encounter.
For about 15 minutes, the entire block was on edge. The armed volunteers did not find the man they were looking for.
Rights activists fear ‘nonstop killing’
For settlers in the West Bank, who already had access to guns by virtue of their proximity to Palestinian communities, the Hamas attack has prompted fresh interest in acquiring weapons.
Caliber 3, a shooting range and training center in the cluster of settlements called Gush Etzion, began offering twice-daily training sessions on handling a gun for license applicants and licensees seeking a refresher. On one recent morning, men and women representing a range of ages, at the range for training, eyed handguns displayed for purchase.
U.S. restricts visas for Israeli settlers linked to extremist violence
Area settlers say private weapons are for self-defense only.
“Everybody in Israel has a nearby Arab village, and in times like this, people tend to generalize,” said Oded Revivi, the mayor of Efrat, a settlement of 15,000 a half-hour’s drive from Jerusalem. “If it could happen near Gaza to people who believed in peace, they would actually attack us.”
“Hundreds of volunteers” have joined patrols to secure the settlement, he said.
Israeli authorities have given rifles to volunteers in the Gush Etzion area, according to Shlomo Ne’eman, head of the regional council.
“After October 7, the army gave us better weapons, the kind of weapons that the army thinks are right,” Ne’eman said. He described them as “machine guns.”
“They are the weapons of the army, which gives them and takes them away depending on the situation,” he said.
Sadat, the rights group spokeswoman, expressed concern about the “extensive distribution” of weapons since Oct. 7 to West Bank settlers “who use them to threaten and attack Palestinians.”
“This policy has results on the ground, of nonstop killing and excessive use of force,” she said.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has recorded 320 settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7.
The uptick in settler violence has troubled the Biden administration, which is weighing whether to greenlight the $34 million sale of 24,000 U.S. rifles to the Israeli government. Israeli officials have told their U.S. counterparts that the rifles would be used by the national police force, but concerns remain that the country’s hard-right government will provide the arms to civilians, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive conversation. Democratic lawmakers have balked at the possibility that U.S. weapons could fall into the hands of settlers.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has raised U.S. concerns about settler violence with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the State Department. U.S. officials have not seen a “sufficient level of actions by the government of Israel that we think hold people properly accountable,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said this week.
The State Department announced Tuesday it would impose visa restrictions on people believed to have attacked Palestinians in the West Bank. The department did not say whether Israeli settler violence will push them to block the sale of the weapons.
Israeli gun-control advocates warn that the proliferation of private firearms could also beget more violence inside Israel.
Israeli police data obtained by the gun-control advocacy coalition Gun Free Kitchen Tables found that the number of homicide victims killed with guns inside Israel rose 15 percent in one year, from 117 in 2021 to 135 in 2022. The increase coincided with an uptick in new gun licenses.
“We understand where people are coming from,” said a coalition member who spoke on the condition of anonymity after previously being harassed for raising the issue publicly. “They felt totally abandoned by the state and by security forces watching what happened on October 7. But the solution isn’t give everyone a gun and every man for himself.
“By all analyses that we are familiar with worldwide, that’s exactly not the way to go.”
Hudson reported from Washington. Kevin Sieff in Jerusalem; Abigail Hauslohner in Washington; Loveday Morris in Haifa; Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia; and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.