Christian Embassy investing over $5 million in restoring Gaza border communities
By David Parsons, ICEJ Senior Vice President & Spokesman

A special delegation of over 50 global Christian leaders with the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem toured the Gaza border communities on Tuesday and held a ground-breaking ceremony with representatives from Kibbutz Be’eri to completely rebuild their youth activity center destroyed during the October 7 massacre.

As the battered Israeli communities along the Gaza border slowly start to rebuild, the Christian Embassy is funding a series of major building projects which will help these communities recover and draw back evacuated families to their homes. The list of current ICEJ projects includes: 

* Rebuilding the destroyed youth activity center in Kibbutz Be’eri;

* Remaking a retirement home into an elderly care and activity center in Kibbutz Be’eri;

* Renovating a damaged kindergarten to serve as a children’s trauma center in Kfar Aza;

* Turning an abandoned building into an innovative music therapy center in Kfar Aza;

* Restoring and expanding an animal therapy petting zoo in Kibbutz Urim;

* Building a new greenhouse classroom at an agricultural tech school in Sde Nitzan, and

* Building three large bomb shelters for a new trauma center on Sapir College campus. 

The total costs of these building projects will come to well over US$ 5 million. These funds are being collected from Christians worldwide who want to help these farming villages reclaim their homes and lives.

Many of the evacuated families experienced traumatic events in their own homes, and those chilling memories will not be easy to overcome. One key to the rebuilding process will be to offer a wide range of community activities and services that will make living back in their villages more attractive. The Israeli government has established a special fund to help rebuild the homes of those affected, but each community must now find the resources needed to help restore their public community buildings.

Over the past 15 years, the Christian Embassy already assisted many of these villages in the Western Negev with more than 160 mobile bomb shelters, dozens of fire-fighting vehicles, and other emergency aid. This has built up a relationship of trust between these Israeli communities and the ICEJ.

“This is the most ambitious series of building projects the Christian Embassy has ever undertaken at any one time, and it presents a truly unique opportunity for our Christian supporters around the globe to have a timely, tangible impact here,” said ICEJ President Dr. Jürgen Bühler.

“We have already invested much in these border communities over recent decades, in terms of portable bomb shelters and fire-fighting equipment. But now they need us more than ever and we are determined to stand with them in rebuilding their communal life together. We especially are seeking to provide trauma care facilities and to meet the special needs of the most vulnerable – the children and elderly,” Bühler added.