16,000 students still evacuated from north, 90 schools damaged – official
Hundreds of northern schools lack adequate protected spaces from rocket attacks, but renovations might not be finished until next year, Home Front Command officer says
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
Some 16,000 students are still evacuated from northern Israel, and over 90 schools in the region have been damaged from rocket fire or military activity, according to Dr. Orna Simchon, head of the Education Ministry’s northern district.
Speaking Tuesday at a discussion on the issues of education in the north at a meeting of the Knesset’s Education, Culture and Sport Committee, Simchon noted that eight new schools have been built for evacuated students and six more are in various stages of construction, but the building has been delayed as workers must comply with restrictions implemented by the Home Front Command in response to the escalation against Hezbollah.
“There are many challenges and this period is complex, but I also grew up with Katyushas [rockets],” Simchon acknowledged, while pledging that “we will stand up and return education to the north; the residents will return, studies will resume, and we will respond to the educational gaps and mental [health] needs.”
Present at the meeting was Col. Yaron Visosser of the Home Front Command, who said that in the northern district, there are 268 educational institutions located between 3.5 kilometers (the limit of the evacuation zone) and nine kilometers from the Lebanon border without adequate bomb shelters. Communities closer than 3.5 kilometers have been evacuated since last year.
Of these schools, “about half” are currently being renovated to provide enough protected spaces for students and staff, he said. Protecting the schools is expected to “be completed by the end of the year, or the beginning of next year, subject to events and security constraints,” he predicted.
At the beginning of the war, the state evacuated border communities within 3.5 kilometers of Lebanon, but the rest of the north has also been under “a scenario of rocket fire,” said Yoram Ibn Tzur of the Upper Galilee Regional Council, resulting in a “black or white” situation where evacuees “get everything and those who stayed behind get nothing.”
Residents of the north have long complained that the initial evacuation orders resulted in the communities closest to the border receiving governmental assistance in relocating, while those outside the 3.5-kilometer zone were expected to carry on with their lives while still being subjected to rocket attacks.
Ibn Tzur then got into a heated argument with MK Katrin Shitrit-Peretz (Likud) over budgetary support for northern communities and whether the Finance Ministry or local authorities are responsible for distributing rehabilitation funds. As a result of the confrontation, Shitrit-Peretz left the meeting.
The government has yet to create an official, organized plan to rehabilitate the north. Tekuma, the organization set up by the state in order to coordinate the rehabilitation of southern Israel after the devastating October 7 assault, was established in December.
The meeting was attended by a group of northern parents and students, who uniformly complained about the educational situation in the north. For most of the last year, “we studied in trailers, every time there was an alarm we were asked to go to an open space because there was no protection,” two students from Katzrin said.
Since moving to distance learning two weeks ago, “18 schools contacted me… they don’t study for more than three hours a day,” said Omri Lerner, head of the Eastern Galilee Parents’ Association, who added that “the State of Israel doesn’t act” to fix the situation.
At the end of the meeting, Education Committee Chairman MK Yosef Taieb (Shas) said that he would make “an urgent appeal” to the government to address issues around non-evacuated northern communities in the conflict zone.
Taieb also said he would request from the Home Front Command the latest figures on protected spaces and bomb shelters in the education system, including budgetary data.
Some 60,000 northern residents have been evacuated since November 2023, dispersed to various locations across the country, some living in hotels the entire time. Their safe return to their homes and the rehabilitation of the north have been hot-button political issues, and one given by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a prime motivator for the two-week-old Israeli offensive against Hezbollah.
