A former head of Israel’s government urban renewal authority, attorney Elazar Bamberger, says a wave of developers may now move into northern peripheral cities because the state is finally putting real money behind evacuation-reconstruction projects. His comments follow three recent government decisions that are expected to give the Government Authority for Urban Renewal about 1.5 billion shekels to subsidize nonviable projects in frontline communities and Galilee cities.
Bamberger said this is a turning point because, for the first time, the state is not only planning renewal complexes but also allocating the budget needed to carry them out. In 2022, he said, the data showed that urban renewal in the periphery was almost nonexistent, not because there was no need, but because the economics did not work. Developers avoided advancing plans, and often did not enter these cities at all. The authority therefore built a two-step model, state planning of evacuation-reconstruction complexes, followed by a government commitment to subsidize them later.
He said the authority has already advanced dozens of projects in Kiryat Shmona, Safed, Tiberias, Beit She'an and Shlomi, even when many did not meet profitability tests. The new decisions include more than 700 million shekels for border communities near Lebanon, hundreds of millions more for renewal and rehabilitation programs there, and about 265 million shekels for cities including Tiberias, Safed, Acre, Nazareth Illit, Karmiel and Afula.
Under the plan, the money will not go directly to developers but will be used as matching grants for projects that fall short of the required economic threshold. The authority will publish calls for proposals and companies will compete for the work. Bamberger said some schemes already have advanced planning and could move faster, but even then the process will still take years before construction permits and actual building begin. He added that the importance of the decision is the full chain it creates, planning, budget and execution, while stressing that success will depend on turning the policy into projects on the ground. The current authority chief, Yuri Gemerman, will now be responsible for pushing the projects ahead.
