At a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee hearing on Tuesday, local leaders from communities along Israel’s seam line warned of security gaps and a shortage of personnel. Committee chair MK Boaz Bismuth said a tour he held last week in the Hefer Valley, during which a terror attack took place near Kochav Yair that killed reserve Staff Sgt. Haim Klomiti, was a painful reminder that "terror is not far from us." He said the threat is "beyond the fence, beyond the road, minutes from our homes," and argued that these communities must not be pushed to the edge of the security agenda.
The open session included heads of regional and local councils from the area. Galit Shaul, head of the Emek Hefer Regional Council, warned about cuts in security manpower and said, "We cannot leave our residents without protection." She said local emergency squads alone are not enough and that communities need professional, immediately available forces for emergencies. Azhrat Gani Gonen, head of the South Sharon Regional Council, referred to the recent attack near Tzur Natan and said, "Terror does not distinguish between the Green Line and the Blue Line." She called for a coordinating body to bring together all agencies operating in the area and said the seam line is "the soft underbelly of the State of Israel" and "its narrow waist."
Kochav Yair-Tzur Yigal council head Hila Ben HaRosh said residents’ sense of security was badly damaged after the attack. She said that if the attacker had entered the community and carried out the killings inside it, the death toll would have been very different. She also said post-incident inquiries exposed many failures and showed there is no clear division of responsibility among the IDF, police, Border Police and local authorities.
The second part of the hearing was held behind closed doors with representatives from Central Command, Military Intelligence, the Shin Bet, the National Security Ministry and Israel Police, who presented intelligence and operational assessments. In the public session, police operations chief Ophir Bitton said police are regularly acting against illegal residents, transporters, hosts and employers, as well as infrastructure that supports the phenomenon, with intensified activity during sensitive periods and holidays. He said police and the IDF hold weekly situation assessments with all security bodies and local authorities, and added that the police are advancing a new regional command called "Yaal," which would consolidate stations along the seam line to strengthen operational presence and improve service to residents.
