In one of Israel’s most difficult periods, the western Negev is trying to look beyond recovery. At the “2026: From Frontline to Growth” conference, held by ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth in partnership with Sapir Academic College, senior female figures from academia, high-tech, and government discussed how regional rehabilitation can serve as the foundation for a new generation of Israeli high-tech.
The recurring themes included artificial intelligence, human capital, physics, space and advanced technology. But behind them stood one central question: Can the South become Israel’s next growth engine?
Dr. Gail Gilboa-Freedman, dean of the Faculty of Technology at Sapir Academic College and an expert in AI, said the establishment of the new faculty is not merely an academic move, but part of a broader regional vision.
“The Faculty of Technology has both a time and a place,” she said. “The time is 2026, after the most horrifying disaster Israel has experienced, which I hope will be the last, and amid a technological revolution unlike anything we have seen before.”
Gilboa-Freedman said the new technology faculty in the western Negev is meant to be far more than just another academic institution. “My role is to bring technology into every positive initiative taking shape in this region,” she said. “To identify areas of growth and pinpoint, like a laser beam, where technology can become part of that regional growth.”
She also addressed the upheaval artificial intelligence is creating in academia and the labor market. “If once there was a revolution and then we waited 100 years for the next one, today, science is accelerating. Students are encountering one wave of change after another, during their studies and later in the workplace. Within a single career, people can now experience several technological revolutions.”
The south does not need pity
A central message from the panel was that the Negev should not be treated with pity or framed as a periphery in need of rescue from central Israel. “High-tech needs us,” Gilboa-Freedman said. “It is battling for its place in the global AI value chain, and what high-tech needs now is infrastructure, space and talent, all of which the south can offer."
She said that the Negev has a significant advantage because it can connect technology to real-world problems. “There is no real geographic reason to keep using the word periphery,” she said. “The idea that the center needs to ‘help the periphery’ should disappear from the conversation.”
Hilla Haddad Chmelnik, former director general of the Innovation Science and Technology ministry and co-founder of the aerospace startup Moonshot Space, offered a similar view. “The State of Israel has no right to exist without high-tech, and high-tech has no right to exist unless Israel knows how to use its human capital,” she said.
Haddad Chmelnik said Israel has already exhausted much of the potential in the center of the country, and that the future lies in the south and the north. “This is not about the south asking for help,” she said. “The south is what high-tech needs.”
She also warned that Israel could miss one of the world’s great technological revolutions if it fails to act quickly. “Humanity is heading into space,” she said, referring to the commercial space industry. “Israel has everything it needs to play a major role there,” she said. “I hope our wars and internal issues do not cause us to miss this enormous opportunity.”
But for Haddad Chmelnik , the real key to high-tech growth in the Negev begins in the education system. She said that work by the Perlmutter Committee for increasing human capital in high-tech found that matriculation in physics is one of the strongest indicators of future earning power and integration into high-tech.
“When we examined Israel's south and north, we found there were no physics graduates,” she said. “None. And without physics graduates, there will be no high-tech workforce.” She added that Israel cannot build the south’s technological future by trying to persuade workers from the center to relocate.
Orna Hozman-Bechor, who has served as director-general of several government ministries, drew a parallel between current efforts in the Negev and the establishment of the medical faculty in Safed more than a decade ago.
“We established the medical faculty in Safed against all odds,” she said. “Everyone opposed it. The Council for Higher Education, the Education Ministry, the Health Ministry, the Finance Ministry. All it takes is one person crazy enough to believe in it.”
She said local leaders should not wait for the state to lead the process. “You don’t need to wait for the state to put in the money,” she said. “Start moving the process yourselves.”
The panel also included Yana Voldman, CEO of agri-tech company PhenoRoot, which develops technology for studying plant roots using robotics, computer vision and artificial intelligence. “We allow, for the first time, the ability to see, measure and understand what is really happening to the plant beneath the surface,” she said.
She added that the technology makes it possible to better understand how plants absorb water and nutrients, and how their resilience can be improved.
Despite the differences between the panelists’ fields, the message repeated throughout the discussion was the same: the future of Israeli high-tech will not be determined only in Tel Aviv or Herzliya.
For them, the Negev is no longer a "periphery", but a region with the potential to become a new technological powerhouse, if government, academia and industry join forces.