Lova Eliav: dialogue, relief and a school in the desert

After serving in the Haganah and British Army, Eliav helped establish Lachish and Arad.¹ He also commanded the immigrant ship Haim Arlosoroff; the Palyam archive preserves his account.² His later political dissent grew from experience of state-building, not from distance from it.

After Iran’s 1962 Qazvin earthquake, Eliav led a TAHAL delegation. Its work with Iranian colleagues covered village reconstruction, agriculture and engineering training, during Israel’s relations with the Shah’s government.³ Rebuilding created a practical reason for professionals to work across national lines.

After the 1967 war, Eliav visited refugee camps and met Palestinians. In the early 1970s, while serving as Labor Party secretary-general, he opposed settlements in the occupied territories and clashed with Golda Meir.¹ He left Labor in 1975. His new party, Yaad, also split over attitudes towards the PLO; in 1976⁠–⁠1977, Eliav took part in talks with its representatives.⁴ Recognising Palestinians as negotiating partners was itself a contested political position.

Alongside politics, Eliav worked directly with people. After Nicaragua’s earthquake, he led a delegation helping to build temporary housing.⁴ During the Yom Kippur War, he volunteered as a hospital orderly at Hadassah Hospital in Tel Aviv. He also taught prisoners and immigrants and lived in development towns.⁵ Education and care were not only matters to fund from above, but work he could do himself. In 1988, he received the Israel Prize for a special contribution to society and the state, recognising this wider work as well as his political activity.⁶

In 1986, Eliav initiated the Nitzana educational community in the Negev with support from the Jewish Agency.⁷ The community combined desert learning, work and human dignity within an ongoing educational setting.⁵ Nitzana’s website, checked in October 2026, describes programmes for different communities. At its Neve Midbar youth village, Bedouin teenagers study with an Arab–Jewish teaching staff, alongside a boarding school and agricultural farm.⁸ He died on 30 May 2010.¹ These are programmes of an institution that developed further, not all Eliav’s own direct creations. The question he left at Nitzana remains practical: how can values become relationships, learning and shared work?