75% more Israelis apply for gun permits

[Steven Mace]

Wednesday March 6, 2002

75% more Israelis apply for gun permits

By Etgar Lefkovits

With violence raging on the streets of Israel, the Interior Ministry has been inundated with a 75 percent increase over the last year in requests by citizens for permits to carry a weapon.

The number is expected to rise even further due to easing of restrictions to bear private firearms that is now going into effect.

According to figures released today, the ministry received 7,790 request for permits to carry arms last year compared to 4,417 the year before.

Despite the increase in requests for permits, the authorization level has remained virtually the same - hovering at about 60% both years, with 4,588 of last year's requests authorized, compared to 2,550 of those made the year before last.

In all, a total of 265,325 Israeli civilians currently have legal permits to carry fire arms.

http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/03/06/LatestNews/LatestNews.44715.html

Steve Mace

[Steven Mace]

Fear is the driving force behind the minutiae of daily life

Gun sales rise as Israelis live in dread

Suzanne Goldenberg in Jerusalem
Monday March 11, 2002
The Guardian

Israelis are rushing to buy weapons in the wake of the sudden surge in Palestinian attacks on Israeli cities and the government's decision last week to further loosen the country's already lax gun laws.

There are 340,000 legal gun owners in a population of 6.3 million but Vered Schnittman, the manager of a gun shop in the central town of Petah Tikva, says her custom has now risen 10-fold, to 60 shoppers a day.

"Everybody wants a pistol. Nobody wants to be afraid any more. I have people who have taken their pistols out of the cupboard after years, and now they are bringing them in to be checked and buy holsters. It's pretty sad," she said.

The rush on guns may be an extreme reaction, but a fortnight of seemingly unstoppable attacks by Palestinian militants has severely deepened feelings of insecurity.

"I have also started packing my pistol every day for the ride to my apartment, and I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that I feel safer," Ms Schnittman said. "I am not planning to kill anybody, that is not my idea of life, but if it's a case of him or me..."

Psychiatrists call it cognitive dissonance, the idea that ever greater use of force can crush a Palestinian uprising - despite the fact that the strategy of the Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has unleashed an even greater wave of attacks.

"The more power he is using the less safety the Israelis have, and that is why people asking for more power, more bombing, more violence," said Ruchama Martin, a psychiatrist and founder of Physicians for Human Rights.

Most Israelis confess to their own private rules for safety: they sit inside cafes and not on the patio, they size up the security guards at entrances to shopping malls to see if they are alert. At restaurants every new arrival draws glances.

People's worlds are shrinking. In affluent neighbourhoods of Jerusalem rooms are being equipped with DVD players and expensive stereos to keep teenagers at home.

At the Natal hotline, a crisis centre dealing with anxieties about the security situation, staff are taking 50 calls a day - the weekly rate until a fortnight ago. Some are traumatised survivors of attacks, or witnesses. Others are relatives of victims or those injured.

"They are worried, they can't sleep, they have flashbacks. Some have lost their appetite, and some can't stop eating. Some can't stop watching the news on television, others can't stand it," said Sigal Haimov, the hotline's director.

Others are ground down by the dozens of small calculations that inform daily life: how to gauge the safety of routine acts or journeys, how to apply such standards to children.

Many Israelis are slightly embarrassed about such strategies because they run counter to the prevailing ethos of carrying on with daily life as if nothing had changed.

"When you come to work, you just stop thinking about things. That someone could come in here and explode himself - and you - it just doesn't make sense," said Sagit Amsalem, a waitress at a cafe that was the scene of a thwarted suicide attack last week. "There are dangers in every place, and if I had to be afraid, I just would not be able to live."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,665385,00.html

Steve Mace