Just 138 yards too far from the Gaza border, towns are denied post-Oct. 7 state support
As their immediate neighbors receive rehabilitation funds from the national Tekuma Directorate, four communities are suffering the same effects from the war, without the support
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
It’s a five-minute drive from Moshav Mivtachim to Moshav Talmei Eliyahu in southern Israel.
Both are located east of Route 232 — their sole paved access road — within a cluster of seven agricultural cooperatives called the Tzohar cluster under the Eshkol Regional Authority.
Residents of the seven villages use the same public services and send their children to the same schools.
However, a series of government decisions (Hebrew link) dating back to 2004 have created an uneven playing field by allocating special aid to communities whose houses are within seven kilometers (4.35 miles) of the Gaza border.
Because they are within the line, Mivtachim’s residents, like those of Yesha and Amioz, have long qualified for benefits such as property tax discounts and daycare subsidies (depending on their income). Since the 2014 Gaza war, all of Mivtachim’s homes have had protected rooms.
By contrast, in Talmei Eliyahu, Sde Nitzan, Ohad, and Tzohar, the closest homes to the Gaza fence are 7.126 kilometers (4.44 miles) away — just 138 yards too far east to be eligible. In Talmei Eliyahu, only a quarter of the houses have protected rooms.
Mivtachim is set to get millions of shekels of aid from the Tekuma (“Rebirth”) Directorate — the government agency charged with helping rehabilitate the Gaza border area following the devastating October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel in which Hamas-led terrorists slaughtered some 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 to the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, nearby Talmei Eliyahu will receive no such funds.
The seven-kilometer cut-off point was based initially on the range of the types of missiles being fired from Gaza.
But even before October 7, missiles reached Talmei Eliyahu and caused serious injuries, according to Shlomit Plotkin Ben-Zaken, who represents the Gaza border cooperatives in the Moshavim Movement, an umbrella group of cooperative villages across Israel.
When establishing the Tekuma Directorate to rebuild the communities worst affected by the invasion, the state “just took the old criteria, which was the easiest,” she said Plotkin Ben-Zaken.
Pitched battles
Off Route 232, the Tzohar cluster’s internal roads first pass Yesha, Amioz, and Mivtachim.
On October 7, Hamas terrorists fought pitched battles with locals at the junction that leads to the cluster and managed to slip into Mivtachim, where they occupied two homes.
The village had only five IDF-issued guns, one one which was locked away. Gil Avital, Lior Ben Ya’akov, Itay Nachmias, Tal Maman, and Dan Asulin from Mivtachim and Yesha’s security teams were killed in fierce gunfights.
Their bravery saved the residents of Talmei Eliyahu, where the only three members of the security team with IDF-issue weapons blocked the villlage’s main gate with their cars and guarded the community for 23 hours until a small contingent of soldiers arrived. Rockets fired from Gaza killed two Thai farmhands and injured one seriously.
In addition to those killed fighting, Mivtachim lost two people — Hen Ben Avi and Dor Nachum — who were murdered as they tried to escape from the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im; three others from the cluster were killed fleeing the rave as well.
The residents of the entire cluster were trapped because Hamas terrorists took over Route 232. Talmei Eliyahu’s secretary, Ronit Ben Romano, recalled taking knives from the kitchen to protect four families hiding in her safe room.
The IDF had taken guns away from Mivtachim 18 months before October 7, and from Talmei Eliyahu 10 days before, for fear that they would be stolen.
Immediately after the carnage, thousands of Thai farmhands flew home, leaving farmers throughout the area reliant on volunteers.
Expansion plans
Before October 7, both villages had ambitious expansion plans.
Talmei Eliyahu hoped to double from 60 families to 120. It will soon start marketing the plots of land it had designated for that purpose.
Mivtachim, home to 150 families, already had 92 plots ready for development, all of which had been “snapped up after three months,” according to Galil Nachum, head of the cooperative village’s committee. “We were going to start building after the High Holy Days [in 2023],” he said — right after the war began.
Four families still want to build at Mivtachim. But four have canceled, and the rest are uncommitted.
After residents were evacuated in the wake of the Hamas onslaught, many of the men from the area’s communities returned quickly to their farms to work and guard while their wives and children remained in temporary accommodation elsewhere.
Liraz Assor, who lives in and works for Mivtachim, and who belongs to one of the four families still committed to developing a plot there, described several cases where the men couldn’t persuade their wives to return.
“Living separately in this way has caused not a few divorces,” said Assor.
Mivtachim, Yesha, and Amioz are set to benefit from some of the NIS 14 billion ($3.9 billion) the government pledged to the Tekuma Directorate over five years to rehabilitate the city of Sderot and the 46 rural communities within seven kilometers of the Gaza Strip.
Last year, the directorate budgeted NIS 1.13 billion ($344 million) for education, health, social welfare, culture, youth, and more, according to its most recent report, covering April to September 2024. Another NIS 431 million ($115 million) was to go to agriculture, NIS 67 million ($17.8 million) to tourism, and NIS 29 million ($7.7 million) to boost the regional economy, business, and employment. A further NIS 856 million ($227 million) was earmarked to improve community security, due to be completed by the end of next month.
Like other farmers within the seven-kilometer range, Mivtachim’s residents will qualify for grants to replace equipment such as tractors. New zoning plans will enable them to erect facilities such as packing houses in addition to the net houses and greenhouses that characterize this cluster of moshavim.
Sixteen months after the carnage, the challenge of rebuilding communities is daunting, according to Ben Romano and Assor.
Assor is now getting paid by the state to work as a community coordinator. While this is commonly a paid position on kibbutzim, which operate as structured communities, in moshavim it has typically been filled by a volunteer.
Ben Romano does not receive a state paycheck and voluntarily coordinates the residents of Talmei Eliyahu while the Moshav Movement tries to raise funds for a paid position. She lost four months of work at Ben Gurion University immediately after October 7, visiting and supporting evacuated residents, figuring out their needs, and dealing with state bureaucracy while looking after her family. She and two of her three children regularly see a psychologist. Because they are not recognized as victims of terror, they have to pay for the service themselves.
Both moshavim report economic troubles and farmers who have gone bust, but compensation, when it finally arrives, will only be available to Mivtachim.
Nachum said the Tekuma Directorate had promised Mivtachim NIS 16 million ($4.4 million) over five years for its physical needs. The moshav has already signed a contract to build a massive playground.
Ben Romano, who believes the aid should be given based on the harm suffered, or at least be distributed by the local authority, has tried to convince everyone from the director of the Prime Minister’s Office and several ministers to the chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee of the unfairness of the situation. Everyone empathized, she said, but so far, nothing has changed.
She, therefore, felt she had no choice but to petition the High Court on behalf of the four moshavim over the boundary. After securing several delays, the state was ordered to respond by March 2.
Ben Romano said she worried that the gaps in funding would affect interest in Talmei Eliayu’s new housing plots and that farmers over the seven-kilometer line would find it hard to compete with their neighbors within that line because the costs were so different. “People are clinging on with their teeth,” she added.
Amit Ifrach, the Moshav Movement’s secretary general and chairman of the Israel Farmers Association, said the movement was working with the Knesset, the government, and the Tekuma Directorate — as well as with donors — to ensure that all the communities located close to Gaza would get fair support.
