‘We’ve been cast aside’: As housing subsidies end, thousands of evacuees return to Gaza border towns

Some 3,700 people from communities near the Gaza border area are returning to their homes today following the government’s decision to no longer pay for their accommodations in hotels, the Tekuma Authority says in a statement.

The final date for state-funded accommodations is August 15 following several extensions of the accommodation period, says a spokesperson for the Tekuma Authority, which is the government’s arm for rehabilitating the Gaza border area.

The return follows the High Court of Justice’s decision to reject a petition by some residents of Sderot, who argued in it that they are too traumatized to return to the city, where terrorists murdered dozens of people on October 7.

One of the petitioners, Binyamin Pinchasov, tells i24News that he and the other petitioners feel abandoned.

“It’s like we’ve been cast aside, it’s like we don’t exist, nobody takes care of anything for us,” he says.

Out of the 3,700 individuals, 1,900 are from Sderot and the others belong to local regional councils, including Sha’ar Hanegev (730) and Eshkol (400). Residents of those locales have also petitioned the High Court of Justice, which has not intervened against the decision to end their state-funded accommodations.

The bulk of the population of Sderot, a city of about 30,000 residents, is back home and has been living there for months. Currently, only about a dozen severely hit communities, including Be’eri, Kfar Aza and Nahal Oz, remain evacuated with government-funded accommodations as their communities undergo renovations and reconstruction.

“The return of residents to their homes in accordance with a cabinet resolution from June 16 is being done after prior notice and in the absence of security threats preventing the move,” Tekuma Authority says in a statement.