Trepidation and elation: Hundreds of evacuees from Shlomit return to their village near Gaza border

By Canaan Lidor 28 February 2024, 5:15 pm

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Canaan Lidor is a former Jewish World reporter at The Times of Israel

Oz Sasson, a member of Shlomit's security team who was wounded fighting terrorist on October 7, and his wife return to their community on February 28, 2024. (Courtesy of the General Secretariat of Shlomit)

Traveling in a convoy of cars, some 500 people are making their way from a hotel near Jerusalem to Shlomit, a town near Gaza whose 82 households were evacuated on October 7.

The population of Shlomit “has fears and concerns about security, but is also elated to be back,” Yitzhak Elnekaveh, a 38-year-old father of five, tells The Times of Israel over the phone. Shlomit is one of several evacuated communities that have returned to the south in recent weeks.

Elnekaveh says he’s concerned over the prospect of an IDF withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which he fears would leave Shlomit and other border-area communities vulnerable to another attack by the Hamas terror group.

Residents of Shlomit during a Tu Bishvat event on February 11, 2017. (Courtesy of the General Secretariat of Shlomit)

“Only a permanent presence — military or otherwise — in the Gaza Strip can ensure security here,” says Elnekaveh, a lettuce farmer whose family was among the 18 founding households of Shlomit, a religious-Zionist village established in 2010 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) from the border.

Shlomit now has 15 orphans, the children of four of its members who were killed fighting terrorists in neighboring Pri Gan. Some houses in Shlomit require restoration following rocket hits from Gaza, Elnekaveh says, estimating it will take months to repair the damage.

The government is expected this week to extend the eligibility of evacuees for state-funded accommodations, though potentially at the expense of benefits offered to returnees.