Today, two months since Ministry of Defense director general Major General (res.) Udi Adam ordered the suspension of the tender for building the new IDF intelligence campus in southern Israel, it was learned that the Ministry of Defense was preparing for the publication of the tender next month.
Publication of the tender according to the timetable established in advance for this plan will take place simultaneously with a dialogue between the various government ministries, principally the Ministries of Defense, Finance, and Transport, concerning development of new transportation infrastructure in southern Israel. The aim is to facilitate mobility for 25,000 soldiers who will serve at the new army bases in the Negev in the coming years.
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee today discussed the planned move of intelligence and computer units to two special new campuses to be built in Beer Sheva and near Omer, where thousands of soldiers, non-coms, and officers will serve. Construction will cost billions of shekels. The cost of construction of the intelligence campus is projected to reach NIS 10 billion.
During the discussion, the Ministry of Defense received backing from Ministry of Finance director general Shai Babad, who said that the solution to the transportation problem for thousands of soldiers who will serve in the intelligence campus was to enable them to travel from the center to the south within a reasonable time of up to 90 minutes in each direction. The Ministry of Transport previously said that there was no justification for the plan to build an additional railway line in addition to the existing one, and that alternative transportation arrangements could be found.
"I met with senior IDF officers and Ministry of Defense officials, who told me that they saw problems with the existing proposals," Babad explained. "There is justice in this demand, because if officers have to spend hours on the road every day, it is not viable in the long term, and this problem will continue to haunt us several years from now."
During the discussion, figures were presented to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee indicating that almost half of all those serving in the intelligence and computer campuses would travel there every morning from the central region and return at the end of the day, while 23% would come from the Sharon area. This will require advance preparation of transportation infrastructure and allocation of a suitable budget. The Ministry of Defense believes that the solution for the transportation problem is construction of an additional railway line from the center to the south reaching the area of the intelligence campus in order to enable soldiers at the campus to reach it in a reasonable span of time.
A defense source asserts that any alternative will cumulate in a situation in which a soldier or officer serving in the campus will have to spend five hours a day on the road. One possibility discussed today by the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is a fleet of hundreds of buses transporting thousands of soldiers from the railway station in Lehavim to the future intelligence campus.
The Ministry of Defense opposes this proposal, because it already operates 500 buses to transport soldiers from Beer Sheva to the training center at the Negev Junction and other distant bases. The Ministry of Defense asserts that operating additional shuttles amounting with hundreds of buses will lead to 1,500 buses filling the roads in the south on Sundays and Thursdays.
Adam told the Committee, "People working in cyberspace like what they do, but if they are told that they have to spend five hours a day on the road, they will consider other options available to them." The background for his decision two months ago to halt publication of the tender for building the intelligence campus was the dispute with the Ministry of Transport concern construction of another railway line.
The two ministries have yet to reach agreement, but the Ministry of Defense is nevertheless preparing to go ahead with the tender for building the campus, following progress in recent days in the plan to construct the computer center. Two consortia have reached the financial closure stage, in which they will have to prove that they possess the financial capability to build and operate the campus. One of the consortia is composed of Minrav Holdings Ltd. (TASE: MNRV) and Electra Ltd. (TASE: ELTR), while the other consists of Shikun & Binui Holdings Ltd. (TASE: SKBN) and Africa-Israel Investments Ltd. (TASE:AFIL).
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on November 1, 2017
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