Northern rehabilitation czar says there’s no central database tracking location of evacuees

The government currently has no central authority keeping track of the whereabouts of the tens of thousands of residents of the north who have been displaced by the fighting, the official tasked with overseeing the rehabilitation of Israel’s northern communities tells a joint hearing of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense and State Control Committees.

“Currently, there is no body in the State of Israel that has information on where the people are,” says Navy Vice Admiral (res.) Eliezer Marom, whose appointment was approved by the government last week.

Announcing the establishment of a new information center for the displaced, Maron explains that “people move all the time.” Keeping track of their whereabouts is a basic prerequisite for any attempts to return them to their homes or reopen schools.

“We have an obligation as a state to give them the conditions to return home,” he declares.

During the special hearing on the protection of the residents of the north, lawmakers and residents slammed the government’s handling of the crisis.

“There is no routine, it is impossible to live under nonstop fire. There is no time to waste,” says State Control Committee chairman MK Mickey Levy.

Momi Bar Kalifa of Moshav Manot, a town near the Lebanese border that has not been evacuated, rails at lawmakers and claims that his community had been abandoned.

“When you come to visit us, the army does not give you permission to move around even with an armored vehicle. But our children? No problem moving there all day,” he yells.

“We live in terrible hardship, without a livelihood, without camps for children, forced to collect charity to survive. For months we only hear talk, receive visits as if we are a petting zoo, but there are no real solutions. Children are locked up in their homes without the possibility of summer camps. We came to hear practical and immediate solutions and no more empty promises.”