Evacuees may stay in hotels until July, government says, but will receive reduced repopulation grant
Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter

Evacuees from the south may remain in state-afforded accommodation until July, the government says, but those who do will be eligible for a lower repopulation grant.
The decision made Thursday extends by four months the eligibility to state-funded hotels of southern evacuees from communities situated within 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) of the border with the Gaza Strip, who were evacuated because of rocket fire from Gaza following the outbreak of war on October 7.
Returnees who move back during the first week of March will receive a grant of NIS 15,360 ($4,300) per adult and half that sum per child, and up to NIS 62,000 per household.
After that, the grant on offer will be halved each week down to a minimum of one-eighth of the full sum, according to the decision, which has not yet been published but whose details were confirmed to The Times of Israel by a repopulation official.
Several mayors from the evacuated southern region are critical of the deal and say they are lobbying the government to extend eligibility to repopulation grants.
The decision also ends accommodation subsidies for many evacuees — about 100,000 in number, roughly evenly split between northerners and southerners — who prefer not to stay at hotels. No end date is set for the state-afforded accommodations of evacuated northerners.
The funding of NIS 200 per adult and NIS 100 ($56 and $28) per day to those evacuees is limited to locales at special risk, as determined by the army. The official says the government will set up a committee to consider extending funding for special cases.
Tourism Minister Israel Katz in a statement says that the plan “gives clarity until the end of the school year.”