Shaul Goldstein at the conference
Shaul Goldstein at the conferenceRonen Topelberg

Shaul Goldstein, CEO of Noga - Israel Independent System Operator, addressed the possibility of a shortage of electricity in the event of a future war in Lebanon at the Institute for National Security Studies conference in Sderot.

According to him, the answer to whether electricity will be supplied in Israel in case of war was negative but he added: "We will rely on Israeli ingenuity."

"Israel is an energy island and we need to supply ourselves – that is also our advantage, we are trained to work in isolation. When I took office and started to investigate what the real threat to the electricity sector was, I asked – suppose a missile hit the electricity sector and there is a power outage for one hour, three hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours and beyond. What happens in such a situation to Israel? The bottom line is that after 72 hours – it is impossible to live in Israel. People do not understand how much our lives here depend on electricity," he said.

He added: "I have 15 inspectors across the country, if there is a power outage then after 5 hours I have no phone to call him. Suppose he gets a carrier pigeon after 12 hours, that inspector arrives at a gas station but there is no fuel, no gas station works, at every station there is a line of at least 30 kilometers, if not more. You check all our infrastructure - the optical fibers, the ports, and more – we are not in a good condition. We are not ready for a real war. We live in a fantasy world in my opinion."

"The good side is that we have invested a lot in fortification using a joint team with the Electric Company. If Nasrallah wants to bring down Israel's electricity grid, he just needs to call the person in charge of Beirut's electricity system, which looks exactly like Israel's. He does not even need a UAV to photograph it, he calls a second-year electrical engineer asking him where the most critical points in Israel are. Everything is on the internet."

"Our recognition of our situation has not been internalized. If the war is delayed by one year, five, ten years – our situation will be better," he concluded.

Meir Spiegler, CEO of the Israel Electric Company, responded to the remarks: "Shaul Goldstein's statement regarding the lack of resilience of the electricity grid is irresponsible, disconnected from reality, and creates panic among the public."