Home Sweet (not) Home: The displaced residents of northern Israel

‘People who come and see us here think, ‘Ah, you’re having a lot of fun, staying at a five-star hotel,’” Shlomi resident Shelly Dadia said. “They think we’re on a vacation.”

On October 16, Dadia was given two hours to get ready to be evacuated from her home in the northwestern town of Shlomi, on the border of Lebanon near the Mediterranean Sea. She was sent to the Dan Jerusalem Hotel, along with what would eventually be almost 1,500 of her fellow townsfolk. She arrived with her little dog, Sheleg.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based terrorist group, had already opened up the northern front by attacking Israeli border communities on Sunday, October 8, the day after Hamas had staged its surprise attack on the now infamous Black Saturday of Oct. 7, killing at least 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, initiating the Hamas-Israel war.

A "rare combination of nature, community, and city," its website says, Shlomi was founded in 1950 by Jewish immigrants from Tunisia and Morocco, on a site where a Palestinian village once stood. Al-Bassa was destroyed during the 1948 War of Independence, and its residents were expelled. Hezbollah attacked Shlomi with rockets on Independence Day in 2005 and 2006; another attack two months later led to the 2006 Lebanon War. It was attacked again in April 2023.

Dan Jerusalem Hotel

“DESIGNED AROUND a series of beautiful patios, the Dan Jerusalem Hotel sits on the historic slopes of Mount Scopus, overlooking the famous Jerusalem skyline and the rolling Judean Hills,” its website says to entice potential guests. “Located in a tranquil setting away from the bustle of the city center, the hotel… features a selection of gourmet restaurants, a bar that complements over 500 beautifully appointed guest rooms and suites, and spacious public areas. A heated indoor pool and a fully equipped spa offer a wide range of health and beauty facilities.” 

Sounds like a great place to get away for a while – a little while – until the northern heat cools down.

“With its choice of indoor and outdoor venues for meetings, conferences, and seminars, this hotel is ideal for small or large events and family celebrations,” the website adds.

Well, a large event this is – about a sixth of a mid-sized northern town all coming together at a fancy hotel in Israel’s historic capital. And they are mostly families – but they don’t have much to celebrate right now.

“There was an arrangement that if, God forbid, there would be a war, an emergency government program would be activated,” Dadia said. “Everybody will go to a different place. The religious would go to one place; others would go someplace else.” 

Yosef Tzarfati also arrived with his little dog, Shimshon. He was two years old when his parents and sister moved to Shlomi. “In the beginning, most people from Shlomi went to Jerusalem,” he said. “We didn’t get to choose where to go; it was decided for us by the Shlomi Local Council. But everybody knew where they were going to go. The residents of the local retirement home went first to Tiberias.” Other people went to hotels there and in Haifa.

“They called us and said we had two hours to get ready to go,” said Tzarfati, who walks with crutches. “Rockets had already been fired, and there was a lot of noise. The army was already there – they had come on Oct. 7, right after Hamas’s massacre.”

“Some people went private on their own,” Dadia added. “Everybody left except for the local security forces and some people who had to stay to work in the factories.”

I met Tzarfati in a local mini-market where he had gotten a job as a cashier. His friend Herzl Shriki, also a hotel “guest,” was also working there as a manager, telling me that today was his last day on this job. He told me about his community that was “vacationing” discreetly nearby. He is there with his wife, Yehudit, and daughters Tamar (20) and Agam (18).

Great at first, but it’s not home

The general feeling among the evacuees is that it was great at the beginning, but they thought that they would only be there for a short time. Now they just want to go home.

Ofri Moyal, 24, is still at the hotel with his oldest brother, Daniel. They came at the beginning of the war with another brother, Eden, and their parents, Orly and Yitzhak, who were born in Shlomi. Aiden and their parents moved back five months ago and are renting in a community near their hometown. 

“I’m a young guy. Originally, I thought I would only be here for a week or so. But when you’re here for nine months, you feel like it’s not yours anymore,” he said. 

“My parents went back, each to their work and activities. I want to go ahead in my life and progress. But this whole thing has held me back. I don’t have any sense of certitude, so I can’t advance. Everything is temporary right now: I can’t start something and then continue it.” 

He works a little with kids but said it’s not enough. “So, I have to pass the time here most of the time.”

It’s nice to be in a place like this, but it’s not really your place, Moyal said. “You feel like a prisoner. They’re not doing anything bad to us, but you feel like you can’t do what you want, like [you can] at home.”

If only these people could click their heels together like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and “go home...”

Especially hard for kids

The main lobby of the hotel is cathedral-like, spanning three floors with a high ceiling; a multi-level, meter-high, color-changing waterfall; and a row of metal bust sculptures, with attractive and comfortable furniture set next to a small cocktail bar. There was a private party happening on the long, wide patio outside overlooking a vista of Jerusalem; a casually dressed family was celebrating someone’s birthday, with a big red balloon floating in the middle above the table. I asked them if they were from Shlomi; I was surprised when they said no.

There weren’t many people in the lobby, although it was early evening. There were, however, a few women trying to feed and round up several young children: They seemed like they were acting like they would be at home, not in a five-star hotel.

“The hotel is beautiful and good,” said Chagit Lankri as she tried to control and calm her children, who were late for their showers. “But we’ve been here for nine months already, v’zehu – that’s it. 

“For the last few months, we’ve been told another month, and then another month,” she said. “We left with one suitcase. We thought we’d be here a week or two, but we didn’t think it was going to be 10 months!”

Not knowing when they are going home is particularly hard, Lankri said. “The kids don’t want to go back. They like it here.” But when she asked one of the other kids if he wanted to go back to Shlomi, he said “Yes.” This boy’s mother didn’t want him to be identified or have his picture taken.

Lanrki’s husband, Asher, also came to the hotel with her and their two sons, Yanir (11) and Roi (6), but he went back North a while ago to live and work in Nahariya, the “big city” of the northern region that has about 60,000 residents and is a 20-minute drive southwest of Shlomi. Many Shlomiites have a connection to Nahariya, either having come from there or currently working there – and sometimes living there. Asher, like many of the male breadwinners, goes back to the Dan Jerusalem Hotel for weekends. 

At the beginning of the war, a lot of women arrived at the hotel without their men; they were in the army, the reserves, or stayed behind to work or man the local security forces. Now, more men have come back, but in the beginning the hotel accommodated mostly women and kids. “There were only maybe 20 people living in Shlomi then,” Tzarfati said.

“It’s hard, especially for people with families, with kids,” he continued. “It’s not simple. They’re not in their house, their kindergarten, or their school. There were a lot of problems – also for people without kids – to be away from home for so long. I’m not upset at the hotel – I’m upset at the government. The hotel staff is great, but it’s not home.”

“The most important thing is the children’s education structure,” Dadia stressed. “It’s hard for them emotionally to adjust to this. They’re not in their regular school.”

Zohar and Liat Vider came to the hotel with their three kids. “We feel like the government abandoned us. We’re paying our mortgage for nine months. We don’t know where we’re living. We live 300 m. from the border, and we can’t go home,” Zohar said. 

“We decided to go home one Friday a couple of months ago and make a little party for the kids. Home-cooked food – schnitzel, rice. We would eat at home, on our porch.” They thought of making Shabbat at home. “All of a sudden, we heard the sound of gunshots. You can’t imagine what kind of fear it instilled in us. We actually saw the bullets flying by. In the daytime. Our 19-year-old, a soldier in the Navy, said: ‘Let’s go; let’s flee from the house!’ 

“The army built a wall behind our house; on the other side of the wall is Lebanon,” he said. “There’s a rumor that there are tunnels there – much bigger ones than Hamas made – a semi-trailer could drive through them!” 

Liat said that “the kids think they’re on vacation 24 hours a day. They don’t sleep. There’s no connection between the hotel guests and the Shlomi people. They know that there are evacuees here. Sometimes they separate people in the dining rooms. If there are a lot of people, the guests eat downstairs or we eat upstairs.”

A Sasa couple joins the Shlomi’ites

Leah and Marc Hersch are from Kibbutz Sasa, one of only two collective communities left in the North, 30 km. east of Shlomi. The other is Baram. “We are a little more north than Shlomi – right in line with Hezbollah,” Leah said. 

“I came to Israel in 1977 with a group of Youth Guards (Shomer Tza’ir),” Marc said. “I was from Switzerland, others were from Italy, Belgium and Austria.” They were idealistic – came to work, go to the army. “I was a math teacher 10 years, then did salaries for workers in the Plasan survivability and protected vehicle factory.”

The Hersches were the only ones who came to the Dan hotel; most Sasa residents went to Tiberius. “In appreciation of everything I got for free, I wanted to give back,” he said. “I helped prepare students for mathematics, for matriculation (bagrut), both in a school here in the hotel and privately. It’s important for everyone to either work or volunteer – to have something to do while they’re here. Otherwise, it’s hard.”

“The hotel is trying to accommodate the kids, because they know that they don’t like the food here so much,” Leah said. “There are no kitchens in the rooms, so the parents came to them and asked if they could give them food that the kids will like – schnitzel, chips – and the hotel agreed. They do activities and programs for the kids.”

“Also, for Passover,” Marc said about the hotel doing extra to help them. “We heard that a lot of hotels sent people out so they could have more guests and make a lot of money. The Dan Hotel said we’re not going to send you out – we’re going to make the Seder for you like it should be.”

They described an incident that happened in the hotel at the beginning of their stay. “Suddenly, there was an alarm. The kids were downstairs; the parents didn’t get there yet. There was an Arab manager of the dining room – he took all of the kids to the safe room, gave them candy, and got them to calm down until their parents came. 'They’re like my own kids, he said. It’s a story that really moved us amid all of the craziness.”

“Some people are rightly upset and nervous about the whole situation, and want to find somebody to blame things on. But it’s not fair to blame it all on the hotel, which is doing a great job hosting us.” 

“It’s hard for the kids; it’s very high energy for the parents,” Leah said as we looked at the mothers trying to control their kids. “Everybody thought it was going to be temporary. We left with just one suitcase. During the Second Lebanon War, we left for three weeks.” 

Some schooling for the youngsters was arranged at the beginning of their stay, but they weren’t all learning so well and were placed in neighborhood schools as a solution.

“Parents are trying to give the kids food, but they don’t want it. It’s very stressful when little kids don’t want to eat,” she said. “It’s not like being at home; they’re not eating their own mother’s food.” A mother on the other side of the lobby was running after a kid, trying to feed him with a spoon.

BESIDES BEING a harried mother, Lankri is also a kindergarten teacher for one- and two-year-olds from Shlomi. “We are four staff for 10 kids. The hotel is making it easier for us.” What do the kids do after kindergarten hours or in general? “They play, they go to the pool. Not so much else, though. They go crazy; they don’t find themselves. It’s not simple to be in a hotel for 10 months. Everybody wants to go back home.”

Paradise of the North

Shalom Chayut, 58, was born in Shlomi. He’s here with his wife, a married daughter, and a single daughter; another married daughter lives in Nahariya. He is a grandfather of four.

“Shlomi is the paradise of the North,” he said. What does he do all day now? “I roam around Jerusalem. There’s not too much to do here, otherwise. My son-in-law is a barber here. He only works a little and basically roams around like I do. It’s hard now, but the harder situation is going to be later. When we go back, it’s going to be a lot of psychological counseling. It won’t be like it was before.”

Chayut worked in a factory making stainless steel products for the pharmacy industry. Until he was sent here. “I haven’t worked there for about nine months,” he lamented. “The government said they would pay the factories, but I don’t think they did. I got paid for the first six months and then I got unemployment for another three. I don’t know what’s going to happen from now on. Why didn’t they pay the company the money they gave me for unemployment? I would have gone back to work there.”

Michal Ochayon is Dadia’s sister. She has lived in Shlomi for 14 years. Now she lives just 150 m. from the Lebanese border. “It was hard to take my three kids out of their structure, out of their place, their home,” she said. “They didn’t want to go learn when they first came here. My eldest daughter, 21, is in the Navy, and I have a son who is 18, and another who is 16. They didn’t want to go to programs or to school. They didn’t connect to it at all. We offered them psychologists.

Afek is her 18-year-old son. His birthday was on October 16, the day Shlomi was evacuated. He’s going to the army next year. “It’s not simple, not simple,” he said. “But we get used to it – slowly. I have another year. 12th grade, matriculation. I found an arrangement – the Lady Davis School in Katamon. There are other kids from the North there that I know. I lost a lot these last nine months…” “But,” his mother interjected, “in another nine months, he’ll do it all.”

The group started discussing schools. One mother said her youngest son hasn’t learned the whole year. Someone was interested in the school for someone’s else’s child. Another said that transportation is provided to get there. Someone else said about a different school in Rahavia that kids have to take a public bus.

“I rented a place and went to look for work, for schools,” Ochayon said. “I did this for my son, who is going into the army next year, so he can finish his matriculation. Here they had two small rooms; it wasn’t good. Living in a hotel is not good for everyone. For some yes, for others not.” Only about a fifth of the original 1,480 are still here at the hotel.

“My husband works in Nahariya and stays in Shlomi,” said Talya Shorek, who is here with their young son and works at the Shlomi Local Council. “He comes here Friday and Saturday. I want to go home, but I can’t.” She set up a kindergarten, one for special education kids, and an elementary school. But the money is running out for them to continue.

“We’re going to be here another year,” she said with resignation. “Because they’re not opening schools in the North.”

Shriki likes being in the hotel. And the food? Ayn ma lehagid – “nothing to say,” the Hebrew way of saying that it’s really good. “Just a little while ago, we all got together, collected money, and bought presents for all of the staff – for everybody in the kitchen, for the ones who clean the rooms, and others.

“But we want to go home.”■

In Shlomi, Shelly Dadia has an organization that helps people in need, which she has brought to Jerusalem.

Donations of clothes, shoes, and other items can be made by calling her at 050-258-7722.

Postscript: Hotel, apartment, or cash?

Upon the Defense Ministry’s announcement, on October 16, that 28 communities and townships in the North of the country would have to be evacuated, the Tourism Ministry took upon itself the task of providing temporary housing solutions for those suddenly made homeless. Some 90,000 Israelis, mainly from the northern communities closest to Lebanon, were sent to hotels around the country in a large-scale humanitarian project, the likes of which this country had never experienced.

Originally, the plan was to house evacuees in classrooms and other public buildings. But Tourism Minister Chaim Katz came up with a creative idea. Within just a few days, the ministry had set up a war room and, together with the Israel Hotel Association, quickly came up with a plan to make 50,000 hotel rooms available for those displaced.

“The government paid the full cost of the hotel accommodations, including full board,” Tourism Ministry spokesperson Anat Shihor-Aronson said. “Not only was this good for the evacuees, but it was a boon for the hotels and the hospitality industry in general, which has been suffering, particularly in the North and South near the evacuated areas, from decreased activity due to of a dearth of tourists – as always happens in wartime. Others, however, are doing really well because of the high occupancy.”

Katz and others in the government had developed two additional housing options, she said. “The first was to provide direct grants to the evacuees so that they could find and rent their own apartments and pay for basic living expenses; the second was to sponsor government apartments for them.”

Adult evacuees were allocated NIS 200 per day, plus NIS 100 per child daily, or about NIS 6,000 ($1,600) and NIS 3,000 ($800) per month, respectively, resulting in a couple with two children receiving NIS 18,000 ($4,800) a month; and NIS 21,000 ($5,600) for families with three children. 

“This is money in hand, not taxed, and doesn’t take away any other government grants,” Shihor-Aronson said.

Evacuees could now feel more at home, even though they weren’t in their own homes, and this was all meant to be temporary until the government determined they could return. “They could stay wherever they wanted – with friends or family members – and didn’t have to keep receipts or show what they spent the money on,” she said. “Most of the evacuees took this option.”

The second option was for the Tourism Ministry to pay landlords directly. The amount determined by the government for this was a little more than for the private apartments (NIS 60 more per person) at NIS 260 per adult and NIS 160 per child, or approximately NIS 25,000 ($6,700) for a family of four, and NIS 28,000 ($7,400) for a family of five. 

The drawback of this option is that all the money, as with the hotels, goes directly to the landlord, meaning that the evacuees don’t get any extra for living expenses. “Even though this is financially harder on them, some chose this option for various reasons, such as they didn’t want to have to deal with signing contracts with landlords,” the Tourism Ministry spokesperson said.

“Of the original approximately 90,000 evacuees, only about 24,000 are still living in hotels, just 2,000 are living in government-paid apartments, and the rest took the direct grant option,” Shihor-Aronson said.

Since the evacuation, the Tourism Ministry, using its additional budget for this purpose, has spent approximately NIS 4.4 billion ($1.17 b.) on housing the evacuees in hotels and government apartments. But, thanks to the ministry’s creative solutions, Israel has actually saved NIS 3.5 billion ($934 m.). ■