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<\/a>\n\t\tDried up fishponds in Emek HaMaayanot, April 2026. (Courtesy)<\/p>\n
One of the officials spearheading the project is Itamar Matiash, who helms the regional council. The 49-year-old, elected to the position two years ago, lives in the religious kibbutz of Tirat Zvi, though he has a mixed religious-secular household and does not himself wear a kippah.<\/p>\n
Matiash came to the world of local government after many years in education and work with at-risk populations. A battalion commander in the military reserves, he is far removed from the wheeler-dealer profile that characterizes some other Israeli elected officials.<\/p>\n
He speaks passionately about the council he runs and his dreams for it. One of his biggest dreams, called \u201cTapuz\u201d \u2014\u00a0 a Hebrew acronym for \u201cRegional Photovoltaic Corporation\u201d \u2013 is beginning to come true.<\/p>\n
The high evaporation rate and the cost of water severely hurt the economic viability of fishponds, and so thousands of acres of ponds were shut down.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe amendment to the Water Law hit the valley hard,\u201d said Matiash, referring to a legislative measure passed nine years ago that ended up indirectly spurring the solar project.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey created a uniform water tariff across the country,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut this is the hottest place in Israel, with the possible exception of Gilgal,\u201d a small community located deep in the scorching Jordan Valley, considered the hottest spot in Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of the heat and evaporation, growing an acre of bananas here costs four times as much as it does in Emek Hefer\u201d on the Mediterranean coast, he said. \u201cThe high evaporation rate and the cost of water severely hurt the economic viability of fishponds, so thousands of acres of ponds were shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the fish gone, the question of what to do with all those ponds festered.<\/p>\n
\u201cNear Kibbutz Mesilot, there was a pond that caught fire because they had turned it into a junkyard,\u201d Matiash recounted. \u201cThese lands absorbed chemicals and salts, so they are not suitable for returning to agricultural cultivation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t For some time, the ponds just stood there, scattered across the valley, some gradually becoming overgrown with weeds, creating a scenic blight and, moreover, wasting land.<\/p>\n The proposal to repurpose the pond areas took shape gradually. When Matiash was elected to office, he found a brilliant idea struggling to make its way through an obstacle course of bureaucracy and competing interests.<\/p>\n According to the NIS 1.5 billion ($500 million) proposal, approximately 1,000 acres of abandoned fishponds will be filled with solar panels that will generate 500 megawatts of clean electricity, equivalent to the output of one of Israel\u2019s largest power plants. Another 500 acres will undergo rewilding \u2013 a process of returning land to nature.<\/p>\n The economy will benefit from clean and cheap energy; the natural habitat \u2013 at whose expense the fishponds were originally built \u2013 will benefit from bodies of water that will serve migrating birds; and the regional council\u2019s communities, located in one of the country\u2019s most economically challenging locales, will take in a handsome passive income from sales of electricity to the grid.<\/p>\n Among the project\u2019s beneficiaries are local fish farmers, who will receive funding and support to establish technologically advanced facilities for their industry that are expected to be up to 100 times more efficient than the ponds.<\/p>\n \t But in Israel, the fact that everyone stands to profit from something doesn\u2019t mean it will happen.<\/p>\n \u201cFor four or five years, this was caught in the mud because not everyone was really benefiting and not everyone was talking to each other,\u201d said Matiash.<\/p>\n The holdup stemmed from a disparity created in Israel\u2019s early years, when pioneers at kibbutzim were allocated prime land and water rights, while later waves of immigrants \u2013 mostly from Middle Eastern and North African countries \u2013 were sent to lower-income towns like Beit She\u2019an as well as moshavim, or agricultural communities, with far fewer resources.<\/p>\n In our council, we have everything: secular and religious kibbutzim, moshavim, right-wingers, and left-wingers.<\/p>\n \u201cThere has been a bleeding wound here since the founding of the state. In our council, we have everything: secular and religious kibbutzim, moshavim, right-wingers, and left-wingers,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen immigrants came to the moshavim in the 50s and 60s, most of the land had already been allocated to the kibbutzim, the means of production had been allocated, the water had been allocated. The water association belonged only to the kibbutzim. For years and years, the moshavim lived with a feeling of discrimination, and rightly so.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe began to fix that,\u201d Matiash continued. \u201cToday, the water association is owned by all the communities. The senior citizens\u2019 association is owned by everyone. We decided that in the case of Tapuz, we would take the 4,000 dunams [1,000 acres] and treat them as if they were 4,000 shares.<\/p>\n \t \u201cEach moshav will get 280 shares, and each kibbutz will get 170. That means that over the next 25 years, a moshav will receive NIS 1 million shekels [$332,000] in passive income every year, and a kibbutz something like 600,000 shekels [$200,000].\u201d<\/p>\n Matiash said the kibbutzim agreed to the arrangement. He added,\u00a0\u201cAnd the moshavim signed that they have no further claims against the kibbutzim.\u201d<\/p>\n The next nut to crack was Beit She\u2019an, the city surrounded by the largely rural council. For years, there has been ongoing, highly charged friction between the city\u2019s residents and the members of nearby Kibbutz Nir David over the right to access to the Asi Stream, which flows directly between the kibbutz\u2019s homes.<\/p>\n That dispute birthed the \u201cFree the Asi\u201d movement, a massive national social justice campaign<\/a> that came to epitomize Israel\u2019s ethnic and class divide, pitting the working-class \u2013 predominantly Mizrahi residents of Beit She\u2019an \u2013 against the wealthier, predominantly Ashkenazi kibbutz members.<\/p>\n Matiash understood that if Beit She\u2019an did not enjoy the fruits of the Tapuz project, there would be no project to speak of. Justice had to be done \u2013 and it needed to be apparent to everyone.<\/p>\n \u201cNoam Jumaa, the mayor of Beit She\u2019an, is a friend,\u201d said Matiash. \u201cWe talk about everything, we air everything out; sometimes we disagree, but in the end, we reach understandings.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTogether we went up to Yanki Quint, the outgoing head of the Israel Land Authority, and told him how important it was for us to advance the project,\u201d he recounted. \u201cHe said he wanted to dictate the way the revenue would be divided between us. We told him, \u2018Don\u2019t interfere.\u2019 We built a mechanism under which, of every shekel that comes into the council, half goes to Beit She\u2019an.\u201d<\/p>\n \t \u201cThe state tells us it wants to strengthen the eastern frontier, but pushes us to fight with each other. We decided not to fight. In the end, everyone recognized that this was a unique national framework,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAt first, the Israel Land Authority planted boulders in the middle of the road that made it impossible to move forward, but what started as a major row turned into a real friendship with Ruth Afriat, head of the [authority\u2019s] business division, who has just recently completed her term, and this project became her baby,\u201d Matiash added. \u201cWe understand that if Beit She\u2019an isn\u2019t strong, the valley won\u2019t be strong, and in Beit She\u2019an, they understand the same about us.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, the country\u2019s leading environmental group, also came into the picture.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they started building the fishponds in the middle of the last century,\u201d said Assaf Zanzuri, the environmental organization\u2019s planning director, \u201cthey were built over natural wetland areas, and wiped them out. Still, they served as an artificial substitute for the wet habitats that had existed here in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n Our concern was that these alternative water sources, which provided some response to the needs of migratory birds and wildlife, would also dry up.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we realized that the ponds were gradually going to disappear because of the state of the industry, our concern was that these alternative water sources, which provided some response to the needs of migratory birds and wildlife, would also dry up,\u201d Zanzuri explained.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we understood that an agreement had been signed to dry out 1,000 acres of fishponds for solar development, we raised our concerns with all the relevant parties,\u201d he added. \u201cWe studied the marshes and wet habitats that used to exist here and how they could be rehabilitated and restored to nature.\u201d<\/p>\n Dan Alon, CEO of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, spent many hours in Matiash\u2019s office before reaching an agreement: Alongside 1,000 acres of ponds whose floors will be covered with panels, 500 acres will be returned to nature. The rewilding and its maintenance, will be funded by the project\u2019s developers.<\/p>\n \t The Beit She\u2019an Valley is part of the Syrian-African Rift Valley, one of the most critical migratory pathways on the planet, serving as a bottleneck for millions of birds traveling between Europe, Asia and Africa twice a year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe restored nature will support millions of migratory birds,\u201d said Alon. \u201cThis is a model that transforms reality. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first project of its kind in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n The Society for the Protection of Nature\u2019s buy-in created a rare situation. It isn\u2019t every day that an Israeli project receives everyone\u2019s blessing: the national government (including the Energy, Agriculture, Finance, and Environmental Protection ministries), the local government, institutions (including the Israel Land Authority and the Planning Administration), and green activists. Talk about a New Middle East.<\/p>\n This project, Matiash hopes, will function as a locomotive to which more carriages can be attached, giving the region added momentum. The expected reservoir of megawatts is already drawing interest from major data centers, he said, and he hopes to use the restored water bodies to boost the council\u2019s tourism sector, where he admitted the area is \u201cbadly lagging behind.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n\t\tAn active fishpond in Emek HaMaayanot, April 2026. (Aviv Lavie\/The Times of Israel)<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n\t\tAn active fishpond in Emek Maayanot, April 2026, (Aviv Lavie\/The Times of Israel)<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n\t\tHead of the Emek HaMaayanot Regional Council Itamar Matiash (Courtesy)<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n\t\tThe Asi Stream flowing through Kibbutz Nir David in northern Israel, August 9, 2020. (Menachem Lederman\/Flash90)<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n\t\tMigrating Gray Cranes at the Agmon Hula Lake in the Hula Valley in northern Israel, November 16, 2017. (AFP Photo\/Menahem Kahana)<\/p>\n