Tent cities going up in Ramat Gan, Eilat to accommodate growing number of evacuees
Mayor of southern resort city says hotels, vacation apartments are full; CEO of hotel complex in country’s center says capacity capped to ensure all have access to bomb shelters
With some 200,000 Israelis displaced internally due to the ongoing war with Hamas in the south and skirmishes with Hezbollah in the north, some municipalities are setting up tents to house those forced to leave their homes as most hotels are already packed to capacity.
Israelis near the border with Gaza as well as the border with Lebanon have been forced to seek alternate housing over the past two weeks. Among them are those whose homes and communities were destroyed by Hamas’s murderous rampage and missile attacks, those the army instructed to leave and others who have fled voluntarily to escape the constant threat of rocket fire.
Many evacuees are bunking with relatives in the country’s center, or with the many families who have volunteered to open up their homes to host them. But the need remains great.
At the Kfar Maccabiah hotel complex in the central city of Ramat Gan, tents are going up to create more space for evacuated families. In Eilat, a southern resort city that has taken in many evacuated families — due to its abundance of hotels and relative immunity from rocket attacks — the mayor said such a plan was also underway.
Amir Gissin, the CEO of Maccabi World Union, told Channel 12 news on Monday that Kfar Maccabiah will provide temporary homes for 1,000 people. Families from the south are already staying at the complex, and the tents will enable people from the north — who are expected to arrive on Thursday — to stay there as well.
Gissin said the number of people staying in the tents will be limited to ensure that they all have adequate time to reach shelter if there is a rocket siren in the Tel Aviv suburb. He added that the tents are robust enough for people to remain dry in wintery conditions.
Eilat Mayor Eli Lankri said Israel’s southernmost city is working toward setting up a similar complex.
“More than 60,000 evacuees are staying in hotels and with families in the city,” he told Army Radio. “We’re starting to set up a tent complex for 400 people. We don’t know how much demand there will be — of course, it’s not a hotel, but it’s the lesser of two evils and if the war expands, it will be there.”
Lankri told Channel 12 that the hotels and Airbnb rooms in the city are all at full capacity, “and we are preparing for the next step… we are clearing four different areas in the city and we are following the situation closely.”
More than 200,000 Israelis are internally displaced, a spokesperson for the government confirmed on Sunday, with that number expected to grow.
About half of that figure were ordered to evacuate from 105 communities near the Gaza and Lebanon borders, while half left areas close to the frontlines of their own volition, the government said.
The Defense Ministry, through its National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA), said it was providing services to about 120,000 displaced Israelis ordered to evacuate from 25 communities up to four kilometers from the Gaza Strip, and from another 28 communities up to two kilometers from the Lebanon border, according to a Defense Ministry announcement.
NEMA announced Sunday morning that it would evacuate another 14 towns near the Lebanon border, comprising another 11,000 residents, and has also been working to evacuate some 23,000 Israelis from the northern city of Kiryat Shmona in recent days amid an uptick in attacks on the northern border.
