Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) and landmines pose a global hazard with substantial commercial and humanitarian effects. IMAG was founded with a clear mission statement: To bring together the toughest International clearance standards with commercial limitations and facilitate Israel in becoming free of mines.
“For some people, war is not over even after a peace treaty. Landmines keep killing people and tearing societies apart years after a conflict has ended. They continue to instill terror, to stop people returning to their normal lives and of refugees to their own homes, to strip entire regions of a fair chance of economic development, and to hinder the prospects of reconciliation and stabilization.” FEDERICA MOGHERINI, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
The state of Israel is a small and highly populated country that has known conflict for the better part of the current and previous centuries. As a result, significant and valuable areas became unusable due to UXOs, mine-fields and ERWs. The total amount of land which is intended for Demining or BAC clearance operations is estimated by local officials at over 300 Km², larger than the combined area of Israel’s 4 largest cities.
Effective clearance of these areas is crucial to Israel, first and foremost, to eliminate the risks emanating from them to civilians and to answer the country’s growing need for land resources designated for housing, infrastructures, agriculture, construction of renewable energy projects and more.
In February 2010, Daniel Yuval, a 10-year-old, was enjoying the snowy fields with his family on a calm and sunny weekend when an explosion of a mine amputated one of his legs and changed his life.
After his injury, Yuval, only 11 years old at the time, stood a front of a national campaign raising awareness to Mine Action. A year later, in 2011 a new Demining Bill came into effect.
The bill called for the establishment of INMAA (Israel National Mine Action Authority) and placed INMAA as the regulator in charge of clearing all mines and UXO hazards in areas that are no longer deemed necessary to Israel’s security.
All INMAA clearance operations are carried out by civilian clearance contractors coupled with independent supervision contractors.
Following the legislation of the Demining bill and the formation of a demining market in Israel, IEOD founded a subsidiary company – IMAG Israel Mine Action Group Ltd.
IMAG was established based on the existing capabilities and know-how of IEOD with the goal of carrying out Demining & BAC projects contracted by INMAA. Significant resources were invested into learning from international humanitarian experience and SOP’s and adapting those to meet with the local requirements and challenges.
Today IEOD / IMAG is the largest and most experienced demining contractor in Israel with the highest number of state contracts awarded and m² cleared.
Our goal for the next decade is to take our domestic experience and hard-earned capabilities and expend them to International markets.
Assets and capabilities deployed in IEOD projects:
Manual Detection:
- Garett Recon Pro Metal Detectors,
- Garrett CSI Pro-pointers,
- Ebinger Large Loops
- Ebinger Magnetometers.
- Ebinger vehicle – towed and man-carried Magneto metric carts with post processing capabilities.
- Ebinger TR Systems.
- Geotech GPR/MD dual mine detectors.
Mechanical Demining:
- Armored JCB 40ton excavators.
- Armored backhoe loaders.
- VTN screening buckets SB and DSG series.
- Remu screening buckets
- ArmTrac flail systems.
- Towed sifters.
- MineWolf MW370
- Mechanical Soil Separation: Screening and Crushing equipment for separating contaminated soil into particle fractions and identifying the threats in each fraction.
