Defense Ministry to reinforce Sderot bomb shelter windows after death of child

By Judah Ari Gross 14 February 2022, 6:55 pm

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Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.

A ministerial committee has signed off on a proposal to reinforce bomb shelter windows in the town of Sderot, Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s office says.

Ido Avigal, who was killed in his home in Sderot by a rocket fired from Gaza, May 12, 2021. (Twitter)

The moves some eight months after a child, Ido Avigal, was struck and killed by a piece of shrapnel that penetrated the reinforced window in his family’s bomb shelter, during fighting in May.

The program is due to cost NIS 57 million ($17.5 million) from the Defense Ministry budget.

Those funds will be made available directly to residents of Sderot who will be allowed to use them to install thicker, 32-millimeter steel panels on their bomb shelter windows, Gantz’s office says.

This program will only be made available to residents of Sderot, not to any other communities in the area of the Gaza Strip, and it will only apply to larger, multi-story buildings in the town.

The military’s investigation into Avigal’s death found that more powerful explosives and different types of rockets being used by terror groups in the Strip required the thicker steel plates.

The scene of a direct rocket hit on a building in Sderot, southern Israel, in which Ido Avigal, 5, was killled, on May 12, 2021 (Sderot Municipality)

The defense minister, whose office proposed the funding scheme, hailed the adoption of the program, saying it was part of a wider effort to improve the country’s physical defenses.

“This latest decision, along with the upgrading of fortifications for daycare centers, along with other processes we are conducting comes from an understanding that a strong and prepared home front will allow the IDF to carry out its operational mission,” Gantz says.