This article was written in partnership with Meuhedet.
On the morning of October 8, 2023, while terrorists were still roaming the streets of Ashkelon and the full horror of the October 7 Hamas attacks was unfolding, the clinics of the Meuhedet health fund were already open.
“Even when the IDF was still fighting terrorists in the area, all our clinics were operating,” said Eyal Gabbai, chairman of Meuhedet’s board. “We were there, treating patients. It was important that people saw that we were with them. That they weren’t alone.” This instinct resulted in one of the most flexible and extensive medical responses to the October 7 attacks and ensuing war.
Meuhedet’s actions during the war didn’t occur in isolation; they mirrored its overarching ethos: to provide accessible, high-quality healthcare and foster social resilience.
Long before the conflict, Meuhedet had invested in Israel’s underserved areas and communities, with one of its key forthcoming projects involving building a comprehensive hospital in Beersheba.
Although it was planned before October 7, its importance has surged in light of recent events, as the hospital aims to tackle the enduring inequalities in the Negev.
“We’ve seen what happens when medical services aren’t distributed evenly across the country,” Gabbai said. “This hospital is part of the answer. It will bring care closer to the communities that need it most – small towns, Bedouin villages, and underserved populations. We want this to be a regional anchor, not just a Meuhedet facility.”
The hospital project highlighted a broader strategy: Meuhedet believes that strong local infrastructure is key to resilience. “The idea of building another hospital in the Negev has been around for over a decade,” Gabbai explained, “HMOs, especially smaller ones like ours, pushed for this to enhance services and create competition for Soroka, resulting in better care for all.” The last two governments acknowledged the need for another Negev hospital owned by smaller HMOs, mandating Meuhedet, alongside Leumit and Sheba Hospital, to build and operate it.
Created to both enhance and challenge Soroka Medical Center’s prominent position, this initiative will center on community-focused care tailored to the Negev’s diverse populations.
“Each community has its own needs, and that’s Meuhedet’s specialty: community-adapted service,” stated Gabbai. “When healthcare is personalized, individuals are more inclined to utilize it, thereby improving public health.” Furthermore, the hospital will serve as a platform to promote contemporary practices, such as home hospitalization, which Gabbai asserted yields better results and lower risks than prolonged inpatient care.
“Hospitals may benefit financially from keeping patients admitted, but community care is usually more convenient, has fewer infections, and is generally better for patients,” he clarified.
With a budget of NIS 4 billion, the hospital is among the most significant healthcare initiatives in decades and a key part of Meuhedet’s mission to bridge the healthcare divide in Israel. “This is part of our mission,” said Gabbai. “We’re proud to lead it toward community care, which wouldn’t have happened without our CEO Uzi Bitan and the health and finance ministries for their support.”
Meuhedet targets community care and engagement and has made integration a central pillar of its mission, working to ensure that olim are not left behind. That means supporting them as both patients and contributors to the medical system.
The health fund has long viewed integrating immigrant medical professionals as a national mission and a practical necessity. This approach gained new momentum during the current war. “For years, we’ve seen the aliyah of doctors and nurses, and the war only intensified it,” said Gabbai. “But it’s not easy to uproot your life and move to a country with a different language and licensing system.”
How Meuhedet connects professionals with job opportunities
To ease that transition, Meuhedet offers support from the first stages of interest. The health fund helps them navigate the licensing maze, connects professionals with job opportunities, and provides guidance until they’re fully integrated.
This support is strongest in cities with large English-speaking communities, such as Jerusalem, Ra’anana, Beit Shemesh, Netanya, and Modi’in, where Meuhedet provides language assistance, career placement, and occasionally financial aid.
A peer mentoring program connects experienced immigrant doctors with newcomers to facilitate their cultural and professional acclimatization. “There’s a lot of talent among olim,” Gabbai stated. “And at the same time, we’re facing shortages. It just makes sense to help integrate them quickly into the system. It’s good for everyone. So between our Zionist values and practical needs, we see this as a true mission.”
This dual focus meant that Meuhedet wasn’t starting from zero when the war broke out. Meuhedet, Israel’s third-largest health fund, faced a unique challenge: serving tens of thousands of members in the conflict zone while treating displaced people nationwide. The organization sent mobile clinics to evacuees in Dead Sea hotels and temporary shelters, and it deployed emergency medical and mental health teams nationwide.
“In addition to our regular operations, we created a parallel system that followed evacuees and treated them where they were. We didn’t know how long this would go on. We knew we had to provide continuity of care,” Gabbai said.
Gabbai doesn’t come from a medical background, but he served as director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office and spent most of his career in public service, a perspective which helped him respond to a national emergency.
“This wasn’t just a health crisis,” he said. “It was an institutional crisis, a national crisis. Our job wasn’t just to care for the sick, it was to be a source of order.”
Meuhedet’s model emphasized decentralization and rapid deployment. “There was no time to plan,” Gabbai recalled. “We understood this was a new reality, and the management, under Bitan’s supervision, started working immediately. Within two hours, we had our emergency emotional support hotlines up and running. Thousands of people reached out to us, sharing stories of horrors they witnessed firsthand, and our psychologists and social workers were there for them around the clock.”
The crisis, he said, was also a test that revealed the strengths of Israel’s health system – its reach, flexibility, and commitment; and its weaknesses – coordination, speed, and displacement challenges. “We had to make up the solutions as we went along,” Gabbai said. “But now we need to take what we learned and prepare for next time. Because there will be a next time,” he said.
“The imperative of maintaining operational continuity compelled us, at the outset of the war, to find a solution for our employees’ children – especially those of our medical teams – so that staff could still report for duty,” he said. “We opened daycare centers in cities where needed, enabling staff to drop off their children and return to their clinics, secure that their little ones were in good hands.”
As the war escalated, Meuhedet sought to formalize many wartime systems it had developed on the fly. The organization braced for the worst in the North, supplying its clinics with large generators to ensure that they stayed operational, and providing staff with emergency kits for severe wounds and injuries.
Meuhedet staff risked their lives with home visits in northern Israel, traveling on roads exposed to rocket fire. “During my visits to the North,” Gabbai said, “I encountered home-care practitioners caught in transit by rocket sirens while driving. They had to lie down in roadside ditches, stand up after a few minutes, and carry on.”
One of the most significant emotional challenges arose following the Majdal Shams soccer field disaster, which claimed the lives of 12 children. Gabbai emphasized that all these efforts highlight Meuhedet’s dedication to its members and its unwavering commitment to providing essential care. “We showed we could be agile,” Gabbai said. “Now we have to make that permanent. This isn’t over. And even when it is, there will be other crises.”
But for Gabbai, the story of Meuhedet’s response isn’t just about logistics. A health fund, he said, is not just a provider but a pillar of civil society that must function even when the state falters. “Ultimately, the State of Israel consists of individuals managing institutions. It’s not just an abstract entity. When everyone excels in his respective role, the entire system can operate effectively,” he asserted.
However, the war has exposed weaknesses in various frameworks. “There was an early sense of institutional breakdown,” Gabbai admitted. He stressed the erosion of public trust and the consequences of discord between government leaders and security officials.
“We should never have come to this point,” he said. “We need to reflect on how we got here, overhaul the system, and investigate how we were caught off guard at the war’s outset. Israelis are known for adaptability, but while individuals were brave, the system stood still. Every leader must return to his institution and rebuild it from the ground up.”
Amid urgent calls for new leadership, many speculated about Gabbai’s potential return to government. “I’m very content at Meuhedet,” Gabbai stated, “and believe I still have immense influence and many more goals to achieve here.” ■
This article was written in partnership with Meuhedet.