Recovery after 7 October: Party positions in the 2026 election

Putting the budget for resilience centers into the base budget and extending the model set up in Ofakim to more local authorities, and signing the regulations that pay a guardian raising an orphan whose parents were both killed in a hostile act, as Naama Lazimi (no. 2 on the list) demanded in the Knesset; a national concept for community defense that would regulate the powers, resources and operating model of the rapid response squads; and increased oversight of civilian guns. Members of the list filed bills:

• to set up an authority to commemorate the events of 7 October and the Swords of Iron war
• for an adjustment grant to the spouses and parents of a hostage whose body was returned
• for legal aid without a means test for those applying for recognition as suffering from combat stress
• for burial in a military cemetery of soldiers who took their own lives after their service because of combat stress
• to rebuild the Tnufa region in the north

No details of the steps were found.

Members of the list filed bills proposing:

• to expand benefits and allowances for bereaved families, widows and orphans
• to recognise as soldiers fallen in battle discharged soldiers and reservists who were murdered in a hostile act during the war
• to set up an exceptions committee for recognising the fallen
• to deny benefits to a family member who was estranged from the person who died
• to regulate the use of a deceased person's sperm for having children
• to fund medical studies for combat soldiers

Legislation to set up a fund with an annual budget of about 1 billion shekels, outside the base budget and protected from cuts, from which the parts of the programme would be funded; setting up a national emergency authority for post-traumatic stress for regular and reserve soldiers; long-term financial and rehabilitation support for those who returned from captivity and their families; and stronger support for bereaved families, for those harmed by the war and for the communities that were hit.

הציונות הדתית (Religious Zionism): including the rehabilitation of wounded IDF soldiers in the defense establishment's multi-year plan, as agreed, and a pledge to rebuild Nir Oz and bring its residents back home. Members of הציונות הדתית (Religious Zionism) filed bills:

• to recognize as soldiers who fell in battle those who had been discharged from regular service, had completed active reserve service or are serving in the career army, and were murdered in a hostile act in the Swords of Iron war
• to use the biometric database to identify the fallen and the missing in a mass-casualty event
• to set principles for future deals to free captives and missing persons
• to widen the state's exemption from tort liability towards former prisoners and detainees over terrorist activity

Speeding up the rebuilding and construction plans in the communities on the confrontation line, so that residents can return to normal life, and grants, loans and tax cuts for urban renewal in the north, according to Yaakov Asher (no. 1 on the list), who also supported an amendment to the law to speed up the development and rebuilding of communities in the Northern and Southern districts; compensation for residents of the north and the south, according to Moshe Gafni (no. 120 on the list, a place with no realistic chance); and aid for the whole town of Ofakim and not only part of it, as Gafni asked. Members of the list filed bills proposing:

• a permit to employ a foreign worker for bereaved families
• to extend the time within which victims of hostile acts can claim benefits

Setting up a state commission of inquiry that would investigate the massacre, the decade before it and the conduct of the war, and setting, after consulting the president of the Supreme Court and subject to that consultation, that the commission will have five members; a broad programme of care and rehabilitation for bereaved families, captivity survivors and people with post-traumatic stress; and rebuilding, strengthening and reviving the communities of the western Negev and the north. Members of the list filed bills proposing:

• to refund expenses to relatives of released captives who are hospitalised or need close supervision
• to raise the one-off aid for mental rehabilitation and couples therapy for combat reservists to 5,000 shekels
• to give a support package to reservists serving in the system that handles the fallen

A five-year plan for the return of the evacuees to the north that would close gaps and upgrade the infrastructure, not only direct grants to residents, as Oded Forer (no. 4 on the list) said in the committee for strengthening and developing the Negev and the Galilee; and, according to Avigdor Liberman (no. 1 on the list), renewing the protection programme in the north. The platform adds wider mental-health and social support for teenagers, more available professional treatment in the public system, and training teenagers in mental-health first aid. Members of the list filed bills proposing:

• to increase commemoration benefits for families of soldiers who fell in the war
• to grant citizenship to a family member of a fallen soldier
• to fund a testimony and heritage trip for pupils to the sites of the events of 7 October

A national authority for mental resilience and trauma under the Ministry of Health, which would bring together government treatment, standards and budgets; a funded community resilience unit in every city and council, with an educational psychologist or a social worker expert in trauma full-time; a grant of 4 million shekels to every hostage who returned and to the family of a hostage who was murdered; and a "חוסן לישראל" (Resilience for Israel) system for all those wounded in the war, including from the civilian home front. Members of the list filed bills proposing:

• a grant to hostages who returned and to families of hostages who were murdered
• to apply the law on payments to released captives to everyone kidnapped by a terror organisation
• to set up a state commission of inquiry into the events of 7 October
• to set up a national authority for mental resilience and trauma
• a parenting hour at work for widowers and widows of fallen soldiers in the first year of mourning

Further bills they filed deal with:

• relief for rebuilding the Tkuma region in business licensing, planning and building, and exemption from land appreciation tax and purchase tax on a property right in place of a destroyed home
• working procedures for the security cabinet
• extending the deadline to apply for funding for candidates in local elections who had difficulty meeting it because of the reserve call-up

In the next Knesset, a law that would recognize hostages' families as victims of an abduction, give them a special legal status and set a long-term rehabilitation track in law, as Yitzhak Kroizer (no. 6 on the list) pledges. Yitzhak Wasserlauf (no. 3 on the list) believes that the return of Metula's residents to their homes should be treated as an exception, as in the communities near the Gaza border, both in terms of security and of rehabilitation, and that work should be done for their physical and mental rehabilitation, and says he will fight for the government to give Kiryat Shmona the response it needs. Limor Son Har-Melech (no. 5 on the list) says the committee will not accept bureaucracy that delays care for those with psychological injuries. Members of the list filed bills:

• to give hostages' family members the rights of victims of hostile acts and an economic adjustment grant, and to continue the eligibility for ten years after the hostage's return
• to set a buffer zone along the border with the Gaza Strip and open-fire rules in it
• to ban the transfer of humanitarian aid to an area under enemy control as long as hostages are held there

Relief and immediate aid to local authorities harmed in the war, whose income fell and whose emergency spending rose; community rehabilitation in the north with a system-wide view, so that families who left come back; Home Front Command protection in public institutions, also in the unrecognized villages, where during the attack from Iran there was nowhere to take shelter, from existing budgets in government decisions; allowing residents to build shelters themselves; and resilience centers for residents of the unrecognized villages.

Official recognition in law of those suffering from battle shock, setting their legal status, personalised treatment, and wider rights, payments and help for them and their families. Yinon Azoulay (no. 2 on the list) filed bills proposing:

• to recognise the rights of relatives who took in children orphaned of both parents
• to ease business licensing temporarily in the communities of the Tkuma region to advance their rebuilding
• to recognise work in restaurants and tourism in the communities on the confrontation line as "preferred work"
• to set up a single state authority for those suffering from battle shock