Abirim Colony
July 14, 2025
Sa’ar Colony
July 14, 2025Gesher HaZiv is a kibbutz located in the north of the occupied Palestinian territories, in the Western Galilee, along the coastal highway between the settlement of Nahariya and the Lebanese border. The kibbutz was established on the lands of the depopulated Palestinian village of al-Zeeb, in the district of Acre.
It was founded in 1948 by two groups: the first composed of 120 members of the Habonim Labor Zionist youth movement from North America, and the second comprising former members of Kibbutz Beit HaArava, who had been evacuated on May 20, 1948, during the ongoing Zionist ethnic cleansing war. The kibbutz was named both in memory of the 14 Palmach members killed during the “Night of the Bridges” operation in 1946, and after the ancient Phoenician-Arab village of Achziv, whose ruins now form part of a seaside national park. The name “Achziv” (meaning disappointment in Hebrew) reflects both the failure of the 1946 operation and the settlers’ disappointment over their forced evacuation from Beit HaArava. Despite this, the kibbutz quickly developed into a successful agricultural settlement.
In July 1998, Gesher HaZiv became one of the first kibbutzim to join the wave of privatization. Facing mounting collective debts, a majority of members voted in favor of adopting a differential income policy. As a result, many of the kibbutz’s economic branches were sold, and several community services were either fully shut down or converted to a user-pay model. The homes within the kibbutz were subdivided and became the private property of each resident family.
In 2004, the kibbutz began absorbing 200 new settler families into a newly built residential complex. As of 2021, the population of the kibbutz stood at 1,593 settlers.
Sources:
Due to the limited availability of Arabic sources, Hebrew-language sources were used: the Hebrew website of the settlement / Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics.
Village of al-Zeeb – Palestine Remembered.