| Activities of the Council Chairman |
| NSC Recommendations for Preserving the Relative Technological Advantages of Israel's Defense Organizations |
On the 20th of March 2007, the Prime Minister held a meeting with senior defense officials dealing with preservation of the relative advantages of Israel's defense organizations in technological fields. During this meeting, the Prime Minister adopted the recommendations of the NSC, that were supported by the defense organizations, focusing on expanding the scope of high quality personnel enlisted into the IDF programs and support for programs aimed at the development of superior technological excellence.
At the end of the meeting, the Prime Minister adopted the NSC's recommendation and instructed the Head of the NSC to prepare a plan that would examine various activities that will help encourage brilliants youths from Jewish communities in the Diaspora to come to Israel and contribute to the state's defense organizations in a variety of roles in technological – scientific fields.
The Prime Minister also instructed defense parties to increase the integration of women into the existing high-quality programs, so that it will be possible to employ them in technological core roles and positions, and thus make the best possible use of the country's human resource potential.
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The Disengagement Plan held a major role in NSC activities during the years 2004-2005.
The Prime Minister introduced a strategic scheme for disengagement in December 2003 and immediately afterwards appointed the NSC to continue developing the idea along with other bodies. The NSC was also requested to lead the ongoing development of the idea towards its realization, while heading the steering committee which included the main Ministries’ general managers.
In this capacity the NSC published a document defining the distribution of responsibility amongst the bodies in the realization and implementation of the process. The Ministry of Justice was responsible for converting government decisions to law and the Ministry of Defense took overall responsibility for the evacuation program. The NSC also led the dialog with international bodies (principally the World Bank) regarding their involvement in the plan and during certain stages, with the Palestinian authorities.
During work on the Disengagement Plan the NSC identified additional issues that needed attention: political, security-related, legal, economic and information issues. These issues, presented to the Prime Minister and then to the Defense Committee, had to do with Gaza’s customs framework, the sea port, Gaza’s international passes, passage between Gaza and the Judea and Samaria area, passage between Gaza and Israel, termination of the Military Government in Gaza, Gaza’s borders and evacuation of settlements in Northern Samaria.
As the evacuation operation came to an end, the long and complex process of care for the settlers continued, from the various aspects of residence, education, employment, multidisciplinary assistance and other issues. This process was lead by the SELA Disengagement Authority in the Prime Minister’s Office. Throughout the whole process the NSC led issues to be examined, decided upon and policies to be determined in a variety of issues (security, international relations, economy, law, society, internal security), issues which affected and were affected by the disengagement.
The NSC has started a process of internal conclusion-drawing while participating in different national-level conclusion drawing processes, processes that took place and continue to take place within the system and outside of it. This process is aimed at learning from the way in which the system handled itself in this type of national level event, in order to better plan and manage other such national events in the future.
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