Fifty-four percent of the 60,000 residents of northern Israel who were evacuated from communities amid the outbreak of war in 2023 said there is a high chance they won’t return, according to a report on Tuesday from State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman that largely blamed the premier.
Some 60,000 residents were evacuated from northern towns on the Lebanon border shortly after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, onslaught in southern Israel, amid fears that Hezbollah in Lebanon would carry out a similar attack, and increasing rocket fire by the Iran-backed terror group.
Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis in solidarity with Hamas.
Hostilities on the northern border largely ended in November 2024, after two months of open war, with a ceasefire agreement.
Englman said, “The ongoing delay in formulating a government policy to address border communities is a fundamental deficiency in the government’s treatment of the residents, many of whom have experienced considerable suffering.”
The report also found that 54% of middle school students in the Eastern Galilee region suffered significant emotional harm amid the evacuation.
Furthermore, only 65% of the NIS 940 million ($269 million) allocated to northern communities in May 2024 had been transferred by July of that year, the comptroller wrote. In August, the government decided to reduce the budget by 14% to NIS 804 million ($230 million).
In the report, the comptroller said that the responsibility for caring for northern residents was transferred from the Interior Ministry to the Finance Ministry, which in turn transferred it to the Prime Minister’s Office. Tasks to be carried out within one to three months from May 2024 were not completed four months later.
The comptroller recommended that the government expedite a comprehensive and systematic response to the rehabilitation of northern communities. He said that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich should have acted decisively to implement the rehabilitation plans.
In his report, Englman noted that compared to the 54% of northern residents who said they will likely not return to their former communities, only 13% of evacuees from the south said the same.
The comptroller said responsibility for “this difficult outcome [in the north] falls first and foremost at the doorstep of the Prime Minister’s Office.”
He singled out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the PMO’s then-director-general, Yossi Shelley, who now serves as the ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.
The PMO “failed” at “formulating a long-term plan for the rehabilitation of communities in the north and preparing for the return of evacuated residents to their homes,” Englman wrote.
He also singled out Eliezer Marom, who was appointed in July 2024 to oversee the rehabilitation of northern communities, and resigned from the role in December.
In response to the comptroller’s report, MK Ze’ev Elkin said Tuesday, “I agree that we must expedite the approval and implementation of the government decisions to rehabilitate and develop the north as much as we can, and work determinedly in this direction.”
The New Hope lawmaker said he had “led a series of government decisions” to that effect, whose funds had already been transferred for implementation.
Upper Galilee Regional Council head Assaf Langleben said that whereas “the Israel Defense Forces are working day and night for the security of the residents of the north, the government of Israel is giving up on the Upper Galilee without a fight.”
Responding to the report, Langleben said: “The government promised big plans, and it changed and replaced those constantly. At the end of the day, almost nothing materialized. This is not how a state operates that wants to return its residents home.”
He called for budget funds to be transferred to local authorities, saying: “We know exactly what to do and how to do it. I’m sorry to say, as of now, everything is built on us soliciting philanthropy from the public in Israel and abroad.”