Sderot mayor and Upper Galilee council head slam lack of concrete plan to ensure safety along borders

Mayor of the southern city of Sderot Alon Davidi and the head of the northern Upper Galilee Reginal Council Giora Zaltz tell Channel 12 that neither of them is prepared to bring their displaced populations back to their homes until there is a concrete plan in place for their safety.

“There’s nothing to discuss on the subject of people returning home until the Israeli government tells the residents what’s happening and how they’ll protect them,” Davidi says.

He adds that even though the IDF has control over the northern part of the Gaza Strip for now, eventually the troops will withdraw and the threat to Israel will return unless something changes.

In the north, Zaltz warns that if Israel “doesn’t significantly harm Hezbollah’s ability to act,” the war against the terror group will have been lost, and “on a national level, the north, as well as the south, will be taken 30 years backward.”

He says that after almost three months of war, there is still no government body dedicated to overseeing civilians from northern Israel, thousands of whom have been displaced.

“We want to come back to our industry, to farming, to high-tech and to education,” Zaltz says. “We will come back but we don’t deserve to continue living in this enormous fear.”

He adds that “if the government doesn’t start to assume responsibility for the north and the south we will be in a very very bad place.”