The makeshift path runs between the isolated town's fence and cabbage and lettuce greenhouses. We follow the soft sand dunes characteristic of the area, driving between ground folds, hidden from military cameras that web the region, swiftly passing lemon and orange orchards planted in desert soil, alongside potato and carrot fields carved into the yellowish sand. Locals call this area "the Mubarak plot" – the agricultural fields here kiss the Egyptian border, literally brushing against it.
Until recently, farmers could move freely in "the Mubarak plot," but since Oct. 7, military authorization is required to enter. About 650 feet before the fence, we climb a small dune, offering a panoramic view: to the south stands the IDF's "Sinai" border post, to the north the skyline of Gaza's Rafah appears, and slightly closer, Egyptian Rafah's outermost buildings are clearly visible. To the west stretches the tall, heavy border fence with Egypt, and on its other side stands a massive Egyptian watchtower, resembling a castle from Game of Thrones. Beyond that, just sand and more sand.
"The path we just drove on is known to security forces and police, though that doesn't stop smugglers from using it occasionally," says the resident who guided our tour, requesting anonymity. "Once, when we placed spikes on the path to prevent smugglers from accessing the fence, they simply stole them and continued onwards."
Recently, he updates, smuggler vehicle traffic has significantly decreased. It turns out they've replaced their off-road vehicles with large drones, which launch deep from within Israel, easily hop over the border fence into Sinai, and return laden with drug packages. High-tech. "Other than that, the Egyptian border in this area is quiet, we haven't had any special incidents," he adds, "The IDF maintains constant readiness here."
We Told You So
Welcome to the Wild West – Bnei Netzarim. One of Israel's three westernmost communities and the southernmost and youngest town in the Eshkol Regional Council. To reach it, you must drive the entire length of the famous Route 232, then turn left and continue to the end. In short – the end of the world, left turn, literally.
About 1,000 residents live here in this agricultural community, founded in 2008 by former residents of the Netzarim settlement, positioning themselves just half a mile from the Egyptian border, near Sinai and the Haluza sands.
It's a town with somewhat unique DNA: a moshav that operates like a kibbutz community-wise, an ideological town along the 1967 lines affiliated with Rabbi Thau's Har Hamor Yeshiva, with a history that unfolds the story of Jewish town in Gaza and its break, all at one of the country's most remote corners – which doesn't stop residents from enjoying high standard of life coupled with a sense of mission and pioneering spirit.
Even from the community's entrance plaza – adjacent to the kindergartens, basketball court, and swimming pool – the massive Egyptian border tower is clearly visible on the other side of the fence. But besides that, a tour of this tiny town doesn't reflect its frontier location. There are single-family homes, interlocked stone sidewalks shaded by trees, ample parking, and playgrounds. Only the desert sands and shrubs, persistently invading every corner, remind us we're not in a Tel Aviv suburban neighborhood.
Yet the border – actually, two borders – are present here. "We live with two borders," says Tzurit Yarhi, a local resident. "When ISIS was active in Sinai and the Egyptian military fought them with IDF assistance, we constantly heard sounds of war. We saw mushroom clouds beyond the border, and occasionally shells even spilled over here. On the other hand, while our town is slightly more than 4.3 miles from Gaza's border, whenever there was a round of fighting with Hamas, it reached us too. We didn't get hit like the border communities, but we definitely experienced rocket falls and sirens."
Q: Are you worried about these borders today?
"The IDF is now in Gaza, so we're less concerned about that border. But it sits somewhere in our minds that what happened on Oct. 7 could happen from Egypt's direction too. We saw the military's intense deployment along the Egyptian border at the war's start, ensuring no one there would think of joining Hamas' 'celebration.' We constantly ask ourselves, and the military, whether Israel isn't operating under misconceptions regarding this border as well."
Yarhi welcomes us into her bright home, wearing a head covering and a black dress. The backyard features a large pergola and lawn, while a wicker basket in the dining corner holds oranges freshly picked from the family orchard in "the Mubarak plot." She's 55, born in Ramat Magshimim in the Golan Heights ("exactly on the other side of the country"), who moved with her husband Asaf to Netzarim in the early 90s, then the most isolated town in Gush Katif. After the disengagement, the couple, along with about two-thirds of the Netzarim community, decided to resettle in the Haluza sands, Israel's southwestern corner, establishing Bnei Netzarim.
Ideals and Quality of Life
The memory of Gush Katif's Netzarim never faded in the Yarhi household. But about six months ago, amid the war, it literally knocked on their door. "When we lived in Netzarim, each family had a wooden sign with their name hanging outside their home, as is customary in moshavim," Yarhi recounts. "We hung our sign on a post outside the house, but when one of its rings broke, we placed it on the windowsill instead. On the day of our evacuation from Netzarim, when we had to leave our home under the disengagement plan, everything was very rushed and we forgot to take the sign. I deeply regretted that."
In February this year, IDF soldiers fighting in Gaza near the remains of Netzarim found the Yarhi family's wooden sign. After a logistical saga, the sign was returned to its owners and now sits in their living room in Bnei Netzarim. "The sign waited for us in Gaza for 19 years," says Yarhi, "We were extremely moved to get it back."
Q: Do you have a 'we told you so' feeling now that Israel is forced to return to Gaza?
"Obviously. Everything we said back then happened, sadly. We said if the IDF wasn't in Gaza – Hamas would take control. We said there would be rockets from Gaza hitting Ashkelon, and they laughed at us. We said the communities near Gaza would become like Netzarim and endure constant rocket fire."
Q: Do you hope to return to Netzarim?
"I support Jewish settlement in Gaza. In my view, Gaza is part of Israel. Beyond that, the greatest revenge and punishment we can give to the people of Gaza is to take their land. But we built Bnei Netzarim here. This isn't a temporary settlement but a permanent one we built with our own hands. We certainly hope Netzarim will be rebuilt, but we won't uproot ourselves from our home again."
She's a social worker, mother of eight, and grandmother to 13. "Among the veteran families in Bnei Netzarim, we're considered a small family," she says, almost apologetically. "A few years ago, they checked the average number of children here, and it was 6.6 per family, double the national average."
Large families are the backbone of Bnei Netzarim. The small founding nucleus has been joined over recent years by more and more families, all from the Religious-Zionist community, more specifically – the Hardal [Ultra-Orthodox nationalist] sector. "New families are absorbed here every year," says Yarhi, who serves as the moshav's unofficial spokesperson. "To live here, you need to be accepted into the community association, and if you want to farm, you need to join the agricultural association. Most families are absorbed into the town after renting for a year, then they need to decide whether to build a house here."
Q: What attracts them here?
"First and foremost, ideals. These are people who want to live in the border region because it's the border region, want to live in town because it's town, and want to live in the Negev because it's the Negev. But within that ideology, they choose to live here because it's a religious, Torah-oriented Hardal community. There aren't many such communities in the Negev." The voting data from the last elections reinforces her words: about 92% of Bnei Netzarim residents voted for Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionist Party.
Another attraction for Hardal families to Bnei Netzarim is education. Even in this domain, it turns out, state borders intrude. "When they built the first kindergarten in Bnei Netzarim, the Defense Ministry required that the building's windows not face the direction of threat, as they require for every kindergarten near Gaza," Yarhi explains. "The issue is that for us, the threat comes from both Gaza and the Egyptian border. The result is that the first kindergarten built here is almost completely windowless."
Since then, kindergartens have become plentiful in Bnei Netzarim. About 60 infants up to age 3 attend private daycare centers, and beyond that, this tiny town operates four Education Ministry kindergartens for ages 3-6. Bnei Netzarim also has two elementary schools through eighth grade, one for boys and one for girls. "These are religious state schools with a Torah emphasis, meaning they include core subjects and are under Education Ministry supervision, but are very Torah-focused and gender-separated. For high school, the children go to religious boarding schools." The vast majority of Bnei Netzarim youth enlist in the military or national service.
Despite – or perhaps because of – the distance from central Israel, education in Bnei Netzarim is considered high quality, and the quality of life here is relatively high. "We have a swimming pool operating in summer, sports fields with sports and art classes, afternoon Torah study for children, a grocery store, a clinic, and a dental clinic. On one hand, we're an isolated town; on the other, all the services you need are right here."
Q" Deluxe town living.
"Absolutely."
Q: And how many synagogues are there here?
"One synagogue," she surprises us, "where everyone prays following the cantor's tradition. My children, for example, know how to pray the Kabbalat Shabbat service in both Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions. Only during the High Holidays do we separate into Ashkenazi and Sephardi services, because it's hard to give up the melodies from childhood."
"The Greenhouses Are My Mitzvah"
Across the road from the Yarhi family lives the Ozen family. The father, Eliyahu, greets us in a buttoned shirt and work pants, wearing a large kippah and sporting a thick beard. On the bookshelf in the dining corner sits the Talmudic tractate Bava Batra, and on the table are cookies baked by his wife, Rivka.
He's 63, father of ten – the youngest being 18-year-old twins – and grandfather to 34. His father was among the founders of Netivot, where he was born, and he himself is among the founders of both Netzarim and Bnei Netzarim. "We're descended from the family of Don Joseph Nasi, who was among the founders of Tiberias," Eliyahu explains, "I claim that establishing towns is in our family genes."
Eliyahu, who studied at the Mercaz Haרav Yeshiva ("Roni Alsheikh was my study partner, Avi Maoz studied with me there and we've stayed in touch since then, I greatly respect him and that's why I voted for Religious Zionism"), was already a farmer in Netzarim and established organic farming there. He later became Netzarim's secretary. "A year and a half after I was appointed secretary, discussions about the disengagement began. The role transformed from treasurer to de facto leadership position, leading our policy regarding the disengagement."
After the disengagement, he was among the first to push for resettlement near the Egyptian border, a decision encouraged by the rabbis of Har Hamor Yeshiva–- "our teachers and rabbis," as Eliyahu calls them. "The disengagement was an unimaginable loss, like losing a child, a hole in the heart beyond measure. But one of the most beautiful things that happened was that about a week after the disengagement, when we could barely breathe, the Netzarim community asked itself what its next mission would be - and established Bnei Netzarim. Looking back, we were larger than life then."
Sirens? A Rare Event
After sampling the cookies, Eliyahu takes us to his greenhouses, where he grows lettuce, cabbage, and cherry tomatoes. His pride and joy in his field's yield is evident. In the cherry tomato greenhouse, the plants are arranged in neat rows and columns, well-pruned as if on parade, with heavy clusters hanging from them. Behind one of the beds, Thai voices can be heard – Thai workers engaged in harvesting. "I support Hebrew labor, wish that was the situation here," Eliyahu scratches his beard, "but if I want to harvest tomatoes, I have no choice but to rely on Thai workers."
In Bnei Netzarim too, Eliyahu pioneered agriculture, being the first to establish a greenhouse in the town. "The soil here is pure gold," he explains, drawing a line in the sand with his foot. "It's aerated soil that's neutral in terms of minerals. Some soils have excess nitrogen, others excess salts, and as a farmer, you have to struggle to balance that. Here, I determine exactly what goes into the soil with a computer keystroke." Eliyahu looks proudly at his greenhouses. "This is my mitzvah," he says, "when you grow cherry tomatoes here, your sins are forgiven."
The vegetable supply grown by Eliyahu and his fellow farmers in Bnei Netzarim was affected after Oct. 7. "It's no coincidence that vegetable prices rose at the start of the war. The western Negev produces 70% of Israel's potatoes, 40% of its onions, and that's just a partial list. We're essentially the country's vegetable storehouse."
That morning, the town was bombarded, with shells falling inside it and in the nearby greenhouse areas. The local emergency response team had only five long guns that day, and the local security coordinator rushed to the nearby military post demanding army weapons. After quick approval from the brigade commander, he received 20 M16 rifles from the soldiers at the post. Shortly after, a report came in about a group of approximately 100 attackers on motorcycles making their way from Gaza toward Bnei Netzarim along the Egyptian border. The group was ultimately eliminated by tank fire from tanks dispatched from the Nitzana area far to the south. While the attackers never reached Bnei Netzarim, they did infiltrate the nearby communities of Yated and Pri Gan.
Bnei Netzarim residents evacuated that evening along with all area communities. "There was an order for everyone to leave, partly because there were concerns that attackers from Gaza would infiltrate Israel through Egypt,'" says Eliyahu. However, of all the communities in the Eshkol Regional Council, Bnei Netzarim was the first to return home. "I went to our rabbis in Jerusalem at the Har Hamor Yeshiva and they said if possible, we should return immediately. We came home after just three weeks. For four months, we were here alone."
Q: Is there something romantic about being here alone, at the edge of the country?
"There was no pastoral atmosphere here. There was a war atmosphere, with terrible explosions. Aircraft flew overhead on their way to strike in Gaza, and the army filled every corner here in overwhelming numbers. The regional brigade commander set up his headquarters here. However, there were no sirens. Apart from the first day, the only time we had a siren during the war was during one of the Iranian salvos. Everyone came out of their houses to see the explosions over the Dan region.
"During the period when ISIS was being eliminated, we saw bombs falling from planes and hitting areas in Sinai from here. There were serious explosions. But since ISIS is gone, that's ended. Nevertheless, the border is still defined as dangerous and approaching it is forbidden. This isn't a peace border. The working assumption is that Egypt is also an arena that could ignite. There are many Egyptians who aren't great supporters of Israel. Therefore, we only approach the border in coordination with the army, and ensure there's an open eye on us."
Q: You're close to both Gaza and Egypt. Are you concerned about security?
"I don't know that feeling - concern. My daughter says I'm the only person in Israel who didn't experience a crisis on Oct. 7, that everyone's traumatized except me. Maybe it's denial, could be, I haven't delved into my own psychology."
