Middle East Monitor / November 14, 2022
Weapons are stolen from Israel’s military bases every week, Itzhak Brik, former chief complaints officer in the Ministry of Defence, said yesterday.
Commenting on the theft of some 70,000 bullets and 70 grenades from the Israeli military base of Tznobar in the occupied Golan Heights, Brik told Ynet News that the thefts are among the army’s “big failures”.
He noted that not all the burglaries are being reported and some may have gone unnoticed because the army does not count the weapons at its disposal or does not know about them.
“All that is reported by the media is leaked information about burglaries that the army could not prevent,” Brik said, stressing that the army does not wish to reveal details of the burglaries.
He accused the Israeli army of not doing enough to protect the weapons due to the lack of human resources, noting that in 2019, the army created a guarding system for its military bases, but nothing happened.
“They invested millions in arms warehouses, but these warehouses were abandoned,” he added.
The Israeli army has for years struggled with weapons being stolen from its bases across the country, mainly in the Negev/Naqab, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Many of the weapons stolen in recent years were taken by soldiers along with civilian contractors who work on the bases, the newspaper added.
Israeli authorities fear that the stolen weapons, which include machine guns, grenades and explosives, may end up in the hands of criminal organizations or the Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank.
