Bulldozers raze communal structures in Kibbutz Be’eri damaged in October 7 attack
Ruins of art gallery, sewing workshop, old dining hall among those cleared out in advance of reconstruction, after earlier phase dealt with damaged private homes
Bulldozers arrived in Kibbutz Be’eri near the Gaza border on Tuesday to clear out the ruins of 110 communal structures destroyed during the October 7 Hamas attack, beginning the second phase of the community’s reconstruction.
The demolitions, which are scheduled to continue until June 17, following the completion of an earlier phase that dealt with damaged private residences.
Be’eri was devastated on October 7, when thousands of terrorists poured into southern Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, initiating a war between Israel and the Hamas terror group that is soon to enter its ninth month.
The attack and the heavy fighting to repel the terrorists, which lasted several days, destroyed much of the kibbutz.
The demolitions began a day after it was announced that four of the hostages held captive by Hamas in Gaza had been confirmed dead. Tomer Golan, of the Be’eri business authority, told Channel 12 on Tuesday that the community was beginning its recovery “with mixed emotions.”
“In the days to come, we will clear out the ruins of buildings in the heart of the kibbutz, so that we can begin to recover and to build anew,” he said.
“But the recovery itself will not happen as long as our friends are kidnapped in Gaza. It’s impossible to truly recover until those people are back here,” he went on. “This is the condition for turning a place of war and disaster into a place of optimism and recovery.”
The removal and reconstruction project, a joint effort by the leadership of Be’eri, the Defense Ministry, and the Jewish Agency’s Amigour company, began with razing the structures that once housed the kibbutz’s art gallery, its old dining hall, its sewing shop, and other local fixtures.
The gallery, which opened in 1986, was a major center for contemporary Israeli art, hosting exhibitions from many of the country’s leading artists. The gallery’s founder, Orit Svirsky, was murdered on October 7. While the center intends to ultimately return to Be’eri, it has temporarily relocated to Tel Aviv for a three-year period.
Present for the demolitions was Ben Suchman, the son of Tami Suchman, who was murdered on October 7. She had taken over the community’s sewing workshop in 1986 and turned it into a full-fledged factory, which she managed for almost 30 years until retirement.
“This is an emotional moment for me,” Suchman told Channel 12 on Tuesday. “In my eyes, this is the second stage, moving forward and developing. That’s how I want to see this — one step forward, from the past into the future.”
Golan of the business authority noted that the kibbutz intends to leave some structures as is to memorialize the events, but has not yet decided which ones. Members of the community will have to decide soon, he said.
The Tekuma Authority, the government body responsible for rehabilitating the 20-plus border communities affected by the October attack, said that more 100 new structures will be built in Be’eri before it is ready to be repopulated sometime next year.
The kibbutz is currently home to some dozens of full-time residents, mostly young people and elderly people, Golan said, noting that hundreds more come to the community to work. Before October 7, the kibbutz had a population of about a thousand.
Some 70 percent of all southern residents evacuated in the wake of the attack have since returned to their border communities; Be’eri remains one of 13 so-called “red locales” that were either too severely damaged in the onslaught or are deemed to be too risky to be repopulated for the time being.
Canaan Lidor contributed to this report.
