Earlier this week, the Israeli government body devoted to rehabilitating southern Israel in the aftermath of October 7 approved the outline for the physical restoration of more than one-third of the affected towns in the area around Gaza. The kibbutzim of Re’im, Kerem Shalom, Nirim, Nahal Oz, and Ein HaShlosha have a budget of 133 million shekels ($36 million) assigned to their rebuilding.
Those five kibbutzim make up just half of then ten hardest hit. The outline for restoring the other five hardest-hit kibbutzim—Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Holit, and Kissufim—is expected to be released in the coming weeks. Those kibbutzim expect that the restoration costs will be in the hundreds of millions of shekels.
The total investment of the Tkuma Directorate, the relevant government body, is expected to be about 1.5 billion shekels ($400 million).
The compensation outline of the directorate functions as an expansion of the Tax Authority’s compensation fund. In some of the affected towns, the additional funds beyond the Tax Authority’s compensation are more than 400% of the basic compensation. This is in accordance with the rehabilitation plan that each town has formulated in cooperation with the Tkuma Directorate.
In the ten most affected towns, a decision was made not to require residents to directly claim damages with the Tax Authority. For those towns, which are expected to receive between 9.2 million shekels ($2.5 million) in the case of Kerem Shalom and to 45.5 million shekels ($12.2 million) in the case of Nahal Oz, the budget transfer includes the relevant Tax Authority compensation. Together with the funds from the Tkuma Directorate, those budgets are supposed to cover rebuilding the localities and repairing houses, public buildings, and utilities that were damaged or destroyed.
Additional budgets of between 1.2 million shekels ($320,000) and 2 million shekels ($540,000) will be sent to the kibbutzim of Yad Mordechai, Sa’ad, and Gevim and the moshavim of Ein HaBesor, Yesha, and Yevul. The goal of those transfers is to upgrade and renew the infrastructure of the localities as part of a wider state process of investing in and developing the towns around Gaza, including those that were not physically harmed in the October 7 attacks.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Leah Schwartz.
