Yevul

Yevul belongs to the South District and Beersheba subdistrict and falls under the jurisdiction of Eshkol Regional Council; its official locality code is 1232.[3] It is classified as a moshav affiliated with Ihud Hakla’i.[1] Its location near the Egyptian border and south of Gaza places it within the agricultural communities of the Gaza periphery.[4]

Eshkol Regional Council shares a 40-kilometer border with the Gaza Strip; that measurement concerns the council as a whole, rather than Yevul itself.[2] In November 2023, Yevul was included among communities situated between four and seven kilometers from the Gaza-border fence, and resident Ami Markeles put the moshav’s distance from the fence at approximately 5.5 kilometers.[8]

Sources give different establishment years for Yevul: an Encyclopedia.com table lists it as founded in 1987, while the government’s 2022 locality file records 1981.[1][3] After the 2005 Gaza disengagement, former residents of Netzarim moved to the area following an initial period in temporary accommodation.[5] A group of 100 Netzarim families had been housed in student dormitories at Ariel University Center; two months later, most moved south to form what was described as the Yevul community near the Israel–Egypt border.[5] The remaining families’ move to temporary housing took nearly seven months, and former Netzarim residents continued to face difficulties obtaining permanent homes.[5]

In December 2006, visitors attending a solidarity gathering in the Halutza Sands area met Gaza evacuees who had gone to live in Yated and Yevul.[9] Kibbutz Movement executive secretary Ze’ev Shor praised the settlement effort as “the true pioneering of the year 2006.”[9]

After October 7, 2023, Yevul residents stayed at a hotel near the Dead Sea alongside residents of Kibbutz Be’eri.[4] Resident Meir Rosenzweig described educational activities for children and mutual support as evacuees built a community life in temporary accommodation.[4] Reflecting on the support they received, he said, “Israel has given us so much love. It gave us a sense of life.”[4] Another resident, Yehuda Hayat, said the trauma of October 7 brought back difficult memories of the Yom Kippur War.[4]

Lisa Levy, who volunteered to lead a temporary school for Yevul’s displaced children, described a community of about 100 families, roughly half of whom had initially reached the ANU youth hostel in Masada, with others still arriving.[10] In her account, families had spent 30 hours in protected rooms without electricity or communications, and community members knew people who had been killed or taken hostage.[10]

Discussions in November 2023 considered a possible gradual return for communities in the four-to-seven-kilometer zone around Gaza.[8] Markeles said that recently opened educational frameworks at the evacuation location had given children a routine, and that he wanted to return only after the fighting ended, even if that took a year.[8] Security officials described preparations to enable some communities to return in early 2024, with efforts then concentrated mainly in the northern Gaza periphery.[8] They made any return conditional on security assessments, adequate infrastructure and conditions, and involvement by local authorities; Eshkol Regional Council said a gradual framework would let communities and individuals choose their pace.[8]

In 2024, Yevul was among the communities whose rehabilitation plans had been approved under the Tekuma Authority’s recovery program. The report said budgets would be allocated for the approved plans and that work had already begun in some participating communities.[6]

Yevul had 149 inhabitants on December 31, 2004.[1] Official population figures recorded 354 residents in 2020 and 352 in 2022.[11][3] A November 2023 description of the farming community gave a substantially higher approximate figure of 700 residents.[4] These figures concern different reporting dates, and the available accounts do not reconcile the difference between the official 2022 count and the November 2023 estimate.[3][4]

A youth village intended to bring young people into agriculture was beginning to be established in Yevul in May 2025, in partnership with the Agriculture Ministry and the Kedma association.[7] The project was planned to offer housing, community life, and agricultural training while connecting participants with jobs on farms in the region.[7]

During the community’s displacement after October 7, a temporary school operated at the ANU youth hostel in Masada under Lisa Levy, who had previously managed a school.[10] She agreed to lead the school on a Friday, traveled south on Sunday, and opened it the following Wednesday morning.[10] Levy and a teacher from northern Israel mapped the children’s ages and needs, assembled volunteer staff, and arranged facilities and equipment.[10]

Folding tables arrived within two and a half hours of being requested, the moshav supplied laptops, and an olive-grove area at the hostel became an outdoor “forest school” space.[10] Children were grouped by age range, with emotional, social, and community support emphasized alongside learning.[10] Activities drew on the surroundings and the pupils’ circumstances: elementary pupils studied the formation of salt crystals in the Dead Sea, while older pupils practiced spoken English by filming interviews.[10] Levy described adapting the program as it developed; some teenagers were not emotionally ready to study, while others responded positively to the creative freedom and group setting.[10]

A personal account from the COVID-19 period described children from one Yevul street gathering around a mulberry tree in resident Yuval Reitman’s garden.[12] Reitman wrote that, after several modest years, the tree produced a heavy crop and children ate its ripe fruit daily for more than a month and a half.[12]

On October 18, 2026, residents gathered for the dedication of a Torah scroll brought by Mitchell and Rosemarie Klipper through Jewish National Fund-USA’s Be Inscribed program.[13] The gathering took place amid the continuing effects of October 7 and the ensuing war, and community member Ofir Reuven expressed appreciation for connections with Jewish communities abroad.[13]