The construction industry in Israel during wartime is always like an earthquake of magnitude 8 on the Richter scale, but it will always be damaged in the long run. The damage to the industry in the short term requires a rapid recovery and return to business as usual, despite the difficult situation in the rear, due to a number of factors that we will expand on later, despite the fact that a war does not allow for a normal and regular process of managing and executing construction and infrastructure projects on a regular basis, which will inevitably lead to economic damage in large companies up to bankruptcy of small contractors.
The reasons for the freezing of construction and infrastructure projects during wartime:
Lack of management and supervision channels in the project - due to the large mobilization of the reserve system, which today constitutes the core of activity in the business sector and the main segment in the construction industry. This fact undermines the ability to continue the project or, alternatively, to replace them in real time with alternative manpower.
Workers - the world of construction in Israel is based on foreign workers, Arabs of Israel, Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza. During a war, the territories are closed to all workers from the West Bank and Gaza, Arabs of Israel are afraid to wander around Jewish settlements, and foreign workers are afraid for their safety and quickly a large part of them return to their country. Just to clarify, on the eve of the "Swords of Iron" war, 90,000 Palestinians worked in the industry, about ten thousand of them from Gaza. Alongside them there are another 18,000 foreign workers. 4,000 of the foreign workers returned to their countries with the outbreak of the war, and the industry fears that if the construction ban continues, more workers will prefer to pack up and find work in their homeland. In other words, the security situation has already dealt a painful blow to the industry, and the closure of sites for a long time could turn out to be a fatal blow.
Raw materials - difficulty in importing materials from industry due to the closure of sea and air ranges does not allow the advancement of projects and their occupation at the level of construction materials and at the level of equipment.
These three facts require government intervention and cannot be ignored for even a short time, due to the fact that this is an industry that affects the long term at the strategic level, both in creating housing and public infrastructure for the residents of the state and in the economic life of the State of Israel.
given this, the assumption is that if Israel does not act quickly and launch an operational emergency plan to help contractors, both in the economic and in the level of guidelines and powers, their collapse is expected to be no less than a few weeks, with an emphasis on the collapse of small construction companies.
Security arguments will always justify the freezing of the market, but the intervention of the government leadership is required in providing solutions that will allow security for residents alongside the continuation of work by workers from the West Bank or at least Arab workers from Israel and foreign workers from different countries.
On the civil side, I believe that this is the place to create more cooperation between small companies in order to allow the continuation of projects in the world of construction and infrastructure, and to search for creative solutions in providing a response to the management and supervision of projects through alternative manpower until the return of reservists and find a way to advance the projects.
In World War II, known as one of the most difficult wars in history, Churchill made a point of reminding his government that if the rear did not take care of the economic side of the state and the continuation of the existence of culture, then there would be no justification for the return of the soldiers from the front.
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