GALILEE.- After crossing a certain point in the north of Israel, GPS stops working on the way to the border with Lebanon.
The reason is that the Israeli Government decided to disable the system, to prevent the terrorist group Hezbollah from carrying out missile attacks that require geolocation to impact strategic points.
Lt. Col. (Reserve) Sarit Zehavi, founder and president of Alma, an independent, nonprofit research organization, said the GPS block was a decision, “because of the war.”
The organization is located in the Migdal Tefen area, in the Galilee region, in Israel, but its location is complicated due to the lack of a geolocator.
“They started doing it on October 8, when Hezbollah attacked Israel with missiles,” said Lieutenant Colonel Zehavi in an interview during La Opinión’s coverage in Israel.
He added that after the attack, The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) decided to evict about 60,000 people from northern Israel.
“We don’t know when they will return to their homes, because there are Hezbollah attacks every day,” he said. “It seems like a quiet area here, but we hear sounds of war around us all the time.”
The DFI also placed a camera suspended in a hot air balloon about which details were declined due to security concerns, but residents and visitors to the northern Galilee can view the balloon from afar.
“I won’t talk about that,” said Lieutenant Colonel Zehavi, whose intelligence work through the Alma organization has documented the presence of Hezbollah members on the border with Israel.
Cross-border hostilities in northern Israel have increased after October 7.
“The people who live here, when they saw what happened in the south, they immediately understood that we were at risk,” Zehavi said. “Everything was quiet here, but after the attack in the south, people packed their things and left; “It took a few days for the government to order the population to evacuate the area.”
According to Amnesty International, Israeli bombings in Lebanon have killed at least four civilians and 48 members of Hezbollah; while the terrorist group fired towards the Israelis, killing six soldiers and at least one civilian.
Israel’s use of white phosphorus in southern Lebanon is also being investigated.
How does help arrive in an emergency?
GPS jamming helps complicate Hezbollah’s attacks with missiles that use geolocation technology, but it also affects other systems, including cellphone maps.
During a tour in the northern area of Galilee, an attempt was made to locate different points with GPSbut Google’s system and others sent the location to the international airport in Beirut, Lebanon.
The United Hatzalah organization, which has more than 7,000 volunteers to respond to emergencies, recognizes that the lack of GPS could complicate their work, but they have special equipment to communicate and operate in the northern Galilee.
“[Tenemos] mobile communication units that if the GPS system fails on cell phones, as even happened on October 7, allows us to talk to each other,” said Karen Arieli, project manager of the organization during an interview at its offices in Jerusalem.
He explained that all volunteer staff receive training to operate the communication equipment – which is under protection – when necessary.
On October 7, members of United Hatzalah, who are distributed throughout Israel, were among the first to arrive in the south of the country, after the Hamas attack, where 1,200 Israelites died, while 244 were kidnapped, of which 133 remain in captivity.
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