Photo: Dov Bernstein

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The Temporary Home of Be’eri

Visiting the new town now hosting the community

BY RABBI ARON WHITE

The attacks of October 7th left tens of thousands of people homeless. Communities were destroyed, the Gaza envelope became a war zone, and overnight tens of thousands of people had to evacuate to the unknown. A year later, many of those communities have returned home, but many still cannot. In September of this year, Rabbi Aron White visited the kibbutz of Chatzerim, where a new neighborhood has been built to house the community of Be’eri. The project, spearheaded by the WZO’s Rural Growth and Development Division (Chativa LeHityashvut), headed by Mizrachi’s Gael Grunewald, is one of many such new neighborhoods built in the past year – providing temporary homes to those whose homes are yet to be rebuilt.

As I drove from Be’er Sheva to the kibbutz of Chatzerim, I passed Israeli Air Force bases, JNF forests planted in the desert, and newly added signs leading to “Shchunat Be’eri” (Be’eri neighborhood). In January, this was an empty sand dune on the edge of an existing kibbutz. Six months later, it had transformed into a large neighborhood with 300 homes, multiple kindergartens and schools, and most importantly, dozens of families already settled.

Be’eri was one of the worst-struck kibbutzim on October 7th. With over 1,200 residents, it is the largest kibbutz in the Gaza envelope and became a symbol of the horrendous events of that day. 101 members of the kibbutz were murdered, and a further 31 were taken hostage – at the time of writing, 12 remain in captivity, of whom 7 are no longer alive. In January of this year, I visited Kibbutz Be’eri with a Mizrachi UK mission, standing inside the burned homes and destroyed pathways of the previously idyllic locale.

When the army regained control of Be’eri and evacuated the residents, many were temporarily housed in hotels by the Dead Sea. While some communities have been able to return to their homes, for Be’eri this is still not possible, and that temporary stay in hotels stretched from weeks to months. Their kibbutz became part of a closed military zone for months, and it may take years to rebuild. Over 150 homes were destroyed, burned, or made uninhabitable on that day. Beyond the physical destruction, residents say that the trauma will also take time to heal. On an individual and communal level, it’s not easy to return to the site of such an atrocity. How does a family move back into the home where their family members were murdered? How does a community walk the familiar paths of their town, now full of memories of unspeakable horrors?

In September, I had the opportunity to visit the new, temporary community built for the residents of Be’eri in Kibbutz Chatzerim. Chatzerim is five minutes from Be’er Sheva and 50 minutes from Be’eri. The kibbutz is famous for running Netafim, Israel’s world-famous drip irrigation technology company. Despite their geographic differences – Be’eri being in the verdant fields of the Gaza envelope compared to the desert surrounding Chatzerim – the two kibbutzim are remarkably similar. Both were founded on the same day, Motzaei Yom Kippur of 1946, as part of “the 11 dots,” an organized operation to settle the Negev. Both kibbutzim are relatively large, with about 1,200 residents. And both represent the curious mix of the old and the new in the 21st-century kibbutz – they remain fully collectivist, with all salaries going to the kibbutz and clothes and other amenities being split equally, while also running large, modern companies. Be’eri runs one of Israel’s most high-tech printing operations, producing specialized items like passports and government documents, while Chatzerim runs Netafim.

Photo: Dov Bernstein

I traveled to Chatzerim with Gael Grunewald, one of Mizrachi’s representatives in the World Zionist Organization (WZO), who is intimately involved with the project. Gael currently heads the Rural Growth and Development Division (Chativa LeHityashvut) of the WZO, which for decades has developed villages and towns in Israel’s periphery – the Negev, the Galilee, and Judea and Samaria. Following the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, this division was also involved in building new towns to house the 8,500 Israelis forced from their homes. As a department experienced in building towns across Israel, it was tasked by the government with constructing seven temporary neighborhoods across Israel in the past few months to temporarily house kibbutzim. The kibbutzim of Ruchama and Shefayim are hosting Kfar Aza, Mishmar HaEmek is housing Nachal Oz, and Chatzerim is hosting Be’eri.

Arriving in Chatzerim, we were met by two members of Kibbutz Chatzerim who have been leading the project. Ran Shivek heads the economic side of the kibbutz, so all construction projects run through him. Osi Moritz is a school principal in the nearby kibbutz of Beit Kama, who was taking a sabbatical last year. She has spearheaded the communal aspect, preparing Kibbutz Chatzerim for welcoming Be’eri into their community.

The new neighborhood is on the outskirts of Chatzerim and contains 300 homes built in the past few months. It is so large that we used a golf cart to tour the area. Driving around, it’s almost impossible to believe that only a few months ago this was literally empty desert. Ran explained how the project began: “Our first meeting about this project in the kibbutz was on October 11th,” he says. “Two members of our kibbutz said that these kibbutzim in the envelope won’t be able to return home for a long time, and we have to build them somewhere temporary to live. A few days later, we had our first meeting with members of different kibbutzim. By October 15th, we had an architect’s rendering of what the new neighborhood might look like. We didn’t have a budget, didn’t know how we would build something like this, but we had started to make a plan for what it would look like.” To me, it is mind-boggling that anyone had the presence of mind to think about this plan in the first week of the war, when the whole country was still reeling, and the IDF had only just finished neutralizing the terrorists in the Gaza envelope.

Osi described some of the conceptual underpinnings that also began to take shape. “At every turn, there are many sensitivities, even in terms of how we frame this project. Are we ‘hosting’ Be’eri? ‘Adopting’ them? These were terms that didn’t seem fitting – we had to get the balance right between respecting the independence and integrity of Be’eri while recognizing that this was a community that had been deeply wounded and traumatized. We decided on ‘Kehillot Shechenot, Neighboring Communities.’ Here in Kibbutz Chatzerim, we have built a neighborhood called Shechunat Be’eri, where the community of Be’eri can live and have much of its own communal life. We have built them their own play areas, kindergartens, and are now building them their own dining room, which serves as the beating heart of a community, especially in a collectivist kibbutz. We created a dynamic that maintains the independence of Chatzerim and Be’eri in many aspects while bringing us together in others.”

Osi also explains the huge amount of work done within Chatzerim to prepare people for the influx of a new community to their neighborhood. “It doesn’t work to just have a whole community of Be’eri move in one day. While the construction was taking place, we were preparing Chatzerim for this influx. Take young children as an example – how do you prepare an eight-year-old girl in Chatzerim to meet a new friend from Be’eri, who was kidnapped to Gaza and held in Hamas captivity? This is just one of hundreds of daily interactions. And when the people of Be’eri would arrive – how would we welcome them? Do we give them their own space, so they don’t feel that we are overly doting on them, or do they want to feel that warm hug from us when they arrive? It is also really important to think long-term. When the decision to undertake this project was taken, 97% of Kibbutz Chatzerim voted for it. We knew that when the people of Be’eri first arrived, Chatzerim residents would understand and find meaning in small inconveniences, like longer lines at the local grocery store. But we had to consider the long-term impact. If our community doesn’t deeply understand the importance of what we’re doing, tensions and frustrations could arise weeks or months down the line.”

One of the ways the community has come together is through the creation of 25 different volunteer committees, each working on projects to enhance and support the new neighborhood. “There was one group of three ceramic workers who wanted to make door signs for each of the 300 new homes. They created different formats and options and sent them to the hotels at the Dead Sea so people could choose their preferences. When each family arrived, their custom door sign was given to them so they could put it on their door. Another elderly pensioner on the kibbutz unfortunately lost her daughter to cancer this year – she decided that in her memory, she was going to make plant pots for each of the Be’eri families. Her entire deck is now full of these – she has made hundreds of them, and each family who arrives can go to her deck and choose the flower pot they like most. Flowers represent hope and beauty, and that is what she wants to give to those coming from Be’eri.”

The first 75 families moved into Shchunat Be’eri in August, just in time for the start of the school year. The area containing the kindergartens (ganim) is particularly impressive. It’s hard to believe that these buildings and parks were constructed only a month before our visit, with the grass laid just ten days prior.

Typically in Israel, developing a new neighborhood – from initial planning and approval to final construction – takes 12 to 15 years. In this case, however, all these processes were compressed into just a few months. This rapid development is reminiscent of how quickly the coronavirus vaccine was created. It demonstrates that in times of crisis, the government can expedite processes and accomplish tasks at an extraordinary pace.

When the first families arrived, many of them described the first few days in a similar way, as the opening of a new chapter in their story. “Waking up here, having slept a night in a place that for now I can call home, it felt like I now have a breath of fresh air,” said one person. “When you are living in a hotel, you are getting through day by day, but not really able to feel you have your own space or sense of home. Being here is allowing us to begin processing everything we have been through,” said another resident. Another member said, “People said to us that this is our tekuma, our revival. Arriving here is not tekuma – but it is the beginning of tekuma.”

This project is remarkable in several ways. One striking aspect is the simultaneous need for both large-scale planning and attention to small details. At the macro level, there’s the enormous task of constructing hundreds of homes, along with essential infrastructure like security systems, water supply, and sanitation – all at a cost of hundreds of millions of shekels. Yet equally important are the micro-level concerns, such as providing welcoming touches like flower pots and personalized door signs. The project’s success depends on both of these elements working in tandem.

In Gael’s Jerusalem office, a map of Israel hangs on the wall. It shows yishuvim color-coded by their founding dates. This visual representation is eye-opening, revealing that despite perceptions of Israel as a fully developed country, new towns continue to emerge regularly. The events of 2024 forced Israel to rapidly create new neighborhoods to accommodate thousands whose homes were destroyed – both physically and in spirit.

Despite the circumstances, it’s deeply moving to see children at play in newly-built parks, beneath freshly planted trees, before they return to their temporary homes. For all involved in this project – the residents of Be’eri, the people of Chatzerim, IDF personnel, and even those still held captive in Gaza – true success will only come when everyone can return to their original homes. But for now at least, hundreds of Be’eri families have found a home.

Rabbi Aron White is the Managing Editor of HaMizrachi magazine.