Gedera was founded in the winter of 1884 by members of the Bilu movement, to the south of the Arab village of Qatra. The Bilu movement was established in the year 1882 in the city of Kharkov in Ukraine, by a group of young intellectuals whose aim was to establish agricultural settlements in the Land of Israel. They started off as a group of about 50 young single students, and in time their numbers grew. In June 1882, a group of them sailed from Odessa to the Land of Israel and landed in Jaffa. Some of them went to Mikve Israel, others to Jerusalem and others to Rishon le Zion. Later on, nine of them decided to establish a new settlement which would eventually become Gedera, established on a tract of village land purchased for Bilu by Yehiel Michel Pines, of the Lovers of Zion, from the French consul in Jaffa. The first pioneers arrived at the site during the festival of Chanukah. In 1888, Benjamin and Mina Fuchs built Gedera's first stone house. In 1912, a group of Yemenite immigrants settled in Gedera.