For 20 years, Israeli governments of every stripe have promised to turn every city into a tech city. They announce programs, scatter grants, cut ribbons, and the gap between the center and the rest of the country only widens. The problem is not the intentions. It is the question itself. Everyone asks where the offices will sit. The real question is who has a door in.

Those who say that tech is Israel’s growth engine are right. But a growth engine does not mean the offices have to sit in every city. According to the US Census Bureau, about 1.6 million workers commute into Manhattan every day, nearly doubling its daytime population. Nobody expects every town around New York to build a Wall Street of its own, and not every city in Israel has to match the density of Tel Aviv. That is fine.

I learned this on the ground, from close familiarity with the road Sderot has traveled since October 7: security and infrastructure first, so that residents would come home with hope and a sense of a better future. Today Sderot is........

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