Укрепление периферии

Security and protection

• •We will ensure security for every resident, regardless of where they live. There is no development without security. A resident living under threat of extortion and violence, and a child studying in an unprotected classroom, will not build their future in the place - and will not attract others to it.
• •Personal security - we will advance a comprehensive plan to strengthen personal security, governance and the restoration of law and order. We will establish dedicated enforcement units for illegal weapons, protection rackets and organized crime in the north and the south, ensure enforcement of traffic and road safety laws, advance complementary legislation and regulatory updates in the field of insurance, and provide mechanisms of protection, support and confidentiality for citizens facing threats, extortion and violence. More in the Yashar! plan for internal security, governance and restoring law and order to the streets.
• •Closing the protection gaps - we will complete the protection of communities in the north, the south and the border areas through a budgeted and binding government decision with clear timetables. We will immediately protect housing units, kindergartens, schools and clinics within 0-9 km of the northern border, and move the completion of protection in the north up from 2035 to 2030. We will bring forward the budgetary rollout for protection of dense construction, leverage protection for urban renewal, and update the level of protection of education and health institutions in the north to the high level practiced in the western Negev - protection adjacent to every homeroom classroom and functional continuity of health institutions in an emergency.
• •Resilience and functional continuity - we will ensure functional continuity of essential services and infrastructure in an emergency - electricity, water and communications - including independent local energy networks, so that communities in the periphery can continue to function even in wartime and disaster.

Incentives for growth

• •We will work to update the existing incentives map, which relies mainly on income tax and property tax (arnona) discounts by community and sometimes creates competition and distortions between neighboring authorities and contradicts regional development approaches. As part of updating it, we will work so that it rewards the creation of quality employment, investment in human capital and regional growth, and is updated according to the economic resilience index.
• •We will expand the tracks of the Law for the Encouragement of Capital Investments and the high-wage employment tracks. We will establish regional branches of government ministries and hybrid workspaces in the anchor cities, so that good work will not require a daily commute to the center.

Education as a force multiplier

• •We will turn the education system in the periphery into a regional engine of excellence, identity and belonging, leadership, opportunity and attraction. Education is the reason families stay - or leave - and it is the tool that allows children of the periphery to realize their full potential.
• •We will transfer more management and budget authority in education to the authorities, alongside professional support, measurement and accountability, and we will anchor budgets for regional five-year education plans connected to the region's employment and demographic needs. We will transfer the informal education budget to the authorities and increase it. We will expand the educational response in the afternoon hours and encourage extended school day programs adapted to working parents.
• •We will attract and retain the best teachers and principals: retention grants - similar to the Eilat model - for those who choose to work and live in the periphery, a separate salary table for principals that rewards complexity and meeting targets, and dedicated recruitment programs for the region.
• •Regional centers of excellence - we will establish study tracks and cross-authority regional centers of excellence in fields such as technology, artificial intelligence, cyber, sciences, humanities, arts and entrepreneurship, in cooperation with local industry, academia and the community. We will budget technological learning spaces inside schools, which will serve students in the morning and serve as shared workspaces for local entrepreneurs in the evening - so that students can intern at local startups already in high school, and entrepreneurs will enjoy advanced infrastructure in the heart of the community.
• •We will connect schools to local industry and prioritize place-based learning, in which students solve real problems of the community or local industry as part of their studies. We will strengthen the colleges and academia in the periphery as regional anchors of knowledge and employment, and promote short professional certificates (Micro-credentials) adapted to the needs of employers in the region.

Yashar! Strengthening the Geographic Periphery and Regional Development

• •Yashar! will lead a change in approach: the state will take responsibility for the periphery. State resources will be directed to comprehensive regional work plans, built together with the local authorities, that encourage cooperation instead of competition and are conditioned on meeting targets.
• •Instead of each authority struggling alone for a factory, a road, a hospital or a culture budget, we will strengthen whole regions. We will plan housing, transportation, employment and services together, and ensure that every resident of the periphery receives what many today must move to the center to get: good work, quality education, health services, security, culture and community.

The state takes responsibility

• •We will stop passing responsibility between ministries. A single government address will lead the field, with a comprehensive, long-term view, authorities, budgets, indicators and operational responsibility. Every shekel will be measured against results.

A region, not a single authority

• •Neighboring authorities will work together in multi-year development contracts with the state. The tools will be adapted to the ability, characteristics and needs of each region and of the relevant authorities.

Quality of life and a proper space of opportunity for everyone

• •A family does not choose where to live and raise its children only according to the workplace, but also according to education, health, security, transportation and community. We will set a binding standard for services and plan a complete living space - in the city and in the village.

A single coordinating address

• •We will concentrate the authorities, budgets and execution capabilities under a single government address that will lead professional, continuous and measurable regional development. The Interior Ministry will become the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, and will also receive the tools of the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee. This way the Negev and the Galilee will receive a stronger address, with strategic knowledge, authorities, budget and responsibility for results.
• •The ministry will concentrate the government's work with the local authorities, build professional expertise in regional development, develop a system of oversight, data collection and measurement, coordinate between government ministries and reduce duplication. It will also lead a national strategy for regional development, with targets and milestones, to be approved by the government. Every year the ministry will report to the Knesset on the progress of the various programs.

Measurement, targets and enforcement

• •We will make measurement the core of the policy and not an appendix. The Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development will set clear regional and municipal targets, oversee compliance with them and make continued government budgeting and support conditional on them.
• •Measurement will rest on four axes: quality of life, access to services, quality employment and economic growth. Alongside the accepted socioeconomic indices, the Central Bureau of Statistics will develop and manage a regional economic resilience index, which will measure the region's economic activity and the economic capacity of the region and its authorities, in order to identify where real growth is created and what the real needs of each region are. We will measure results and not outputs: door-to-door travel time to centers of employment, health and education; housing units actually built and occupied, rather than plans approved on paper; and the migration balance of young people and families to and from the region.
• •The index will be published once a year, and the data will be open to the public. It will serve as the basis for the development contracts, for the allocation of government resources and for updated strategic planning. A region that does not meet its targets will receive in-depth support and new tools, and programs that do not achieve their targets will be reviewed and updated accordingly.

Regional development contracts and cooperation between authorities

• •We will promote a model of multi-year development contracts between the state and groups of local authorities and/or regional clusters. The contract mechanism will serve as the default for regional development. Instead of each authority acting alone, neighboring authorities will jointly formulate regional work plans - centers of employment, transportation, health, education, infrastructure, culture and spatial development - and the state will support them professionally, fund the plan according to compliance with targets and measure the execution. The authorities will have flexibility in choosing how to reach the targets.
• •We will give authorities an incentive to work together. For example, authorities that jointly establish new industrial and employment zones will share the revenues from them, and every authority in the cluster will have an interest in the success of the entire region. To ensure the ability to execute, every cluster will include strong authorities alongside weak ones. We will work to promote cooperation between the urban and rural sectors and to integrate the Arab authorities.
• •We will support building the execution capabilities of the clusters themselves, and developing new and updated models of 'regional agencies' that promote cooperation among local government, the business sector, philanthropy and academia.

A binding standard for public services

• •We will set a binding national standard for access to public services, measured by reasonable distance and travel time from home and by the regional space - and not by a single authority. Every resident should know that within a reasonable distance from home they will have health, education, public transportation, culture and leisure services. Today, in many places, basic services are too far away, too thin or nonexistent.
• •The ministry will map the access gaps in every region, at the level of the authority and of the region, and will build together with the authorities a complementary plan - so that a whole region builds its basket of services with an integrated view, and not as a piecemeal division of budgets.
• •Health - we will move from permanent shortage to smart regional deployment. We will establish forward emergency and triage centers in areas where the time to reach a hospital may cost lives, strengthen community clinics and set a binding service standard (SLA - a duty to meet a service level) for the health funds, alongside a budgetary sanction. We will attract doctors and staff through retention grants and a family absorption package.
• •Public transportation - we will define a minimum service level - frequency, hours of operation and travel time - connecting every community to the anchor city, to centers of employment and to services, including from a small community and outside peak hours.
• •Culture, leisure and community - we will turn the anchor cities into regional centers of culture and leisure, expand the deployment of community centers, youth movements and cultural institutions, and correct the allocation of culture budgets so that they are not concentrated almost only in the center. Cultural and community life are part of families' ability to choose to stay, to belong and to build a good life where they live.

Planning a living space

• •We will plan together and simultaneously the components of the living space - housing, transportation, employment and services, so that every new or renewed neighborhood in the periphery will be built with its transportation, educational institutions, centers of employment, commerce and green spaces - and not as a disconnected neighborhood. For more detail - see the Yashar! plan for planning the living space.
• •Housing and urban renewal - we will prioritize strengthening and renewing the centers of existing cities instead of new, disconnected neighborhoods on open land. We will subsidize urban renewal in the periphery, in places where it is not economically worthwhile for developers, and use the need for protection to accelerate it. A new neighborhood will be advanced only with a closed budget for infrastructure, and with employment and commercial areas that will ensure revenues for the authority. Without such a budget, every new resident becomes a burden on the authority. Planning institutions will be measured by apartments built and occupied, not by plans on paper. For more detail - see the Yashar! housing plan.
• •Transportation - we will prioritize projects that shorten travel time from the periphery to centers of employment, health and education. A new residential area will be planned in advance for connection to the mass transit network, and communities that have grown in recent years without a proper transportation solution will receive a supplement. We will complete the legislation of the Metropolitan Authorities Law, devolve the management of public transportation to the authorities and update the mechanisms for planning intercity lines - so that transportation in the periphery operates as a single regional network. We will create solutions for the transport of cargo and goods, by advancing freight trains and connecting them to industrial zones, and arrangements concerning truck traffic. For more detail - see the Yashar! plan for transportation and road safety.
• •The rural space - we will remove planning, land and regulatory barriers to allow communities, moshavim and kibbutzim to grow and absorb the next generation - expansions, continuation-generation housing, low-rise dense construction, and preservation of open spaces and of the character of the settlement.

Investing in growth engines

• •We will invest in growth engines, alongside the long-term incentives, that will create employment and income over time and enable the independence and prosperity of the periphery. In every regional development contract the region's growth engines will be defined according to its advantages, and the government will direct investments, infrastructure and human capital to them. We will promote engines adapted to local and regional culture, that relate to the comparative advantages of each region, for example:
• •Agriculture - we will increase support for agriculture and ensure stable, certain and long-term support that will be based on strengthening the regional agrotech centers and expanding the permitted uses of farm plots for tourism and rural commerce.
• •Energy and national infrastructure - we will open the transmission grid in the periphery and remove barriers to establishing agrivoltaic fields and technological infrastructure. We will set a principle of fair distribution, under which part of the revenues from national infrastructure will be directed to developing the region in which it is located.
• •IDF bases - we will complete and accelerate the move of IDF units to the Negev, and leverage it for housing and employment for the families of career personnel and for clusters of defense industry around the bases.
• •Small businesses and entrepreneurship - we will expand state-guaranteed loans and the business support centers, and encourage high-tech companies to open research and development centers in the periphery. We will ensure that within the Innovation Authority's tenders, dedicated resources will be allocated to developing knowledge-intensive industries in the periphery, with an emphasis on leveraging the periphery's local strengths.

Developing leadership and management capacity in the periphery

• •We will budget long-term support for the periphery authorities to build a managerial and leadership infrastructure at three levels: the elected level (heads of authorities and council members), the professional level (directors-general, engineers, treasurers, heads of fields and departments and human resources managers) and the regional level (the management of the cluster or region, on which the execution of the development contracts will rely). We will particularly strengthen the financial backbone - the treasury and financial management - as the foundation for responsible budget management, transparency and financial resilience.
• •We will attract and retain quality human capital: we will adjust the senior salary table, develop a differential compensation model according to meeting targets, and grant retention grants to professionals who choose to move, work and lead in the periphery.
• •We will expand cadet programs and training tracks for professions suffering from recruitment and retention failures in the periphery authorities - engineers, planners, finance and regulation personnel - and promote professional mobility between the authorities and the civil service. We will place special emphasis on weak authorities and authorities in Arab society.