JERUSALEM: Nearly all Israelis evacuated from their homes near the Gaza Strip in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack have returned, Israeli authorities said Thursday.
More than 80 percent of the southern Israeli region’s 50,000-plus population have moved back by July, with 3,700 more people returning since, according to the government agency tasked with reconstruction and rehabilitation of the border communities affected by the deadly attack.
Israeli authorities had offered evacuees from the Gaza border area accommodation in hotels paid for by the state, but that arrangement expire on Thursday.
Residents of 10 kibbutz communities that were badly damaged in the Hamas attack will be given temporary housing for at least another year in various locations, Israel’s Tekuma Authority said in a statement.
A handful of other communities that are very close to the Gaza border have been declared unsafe due to the threat of rocket fire from the Palestinian territory, it added.
Their residents are still entitled to accommodation paid for by the government, while some have rented apartments elsewhere in the country.
On Tuesday, the Israeli defense ministry announced a pilot project to improve security along the Gaza border, with investments in fences, drones, command center and “specialized” communications infrastructure.
The Hamas attack which triggered the ongoing war in Gaza resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Militants also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 40,005 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.
The war has drawn in Iran-backed Hamas allies in the region, including the powerful Lebanese group Hezbollah, whose militants have been trading near-daily fire with Israeli forces since early October.
Tens of thousands of residents on either side of the Israel-Lebanon have been displaced by the violence, and the vast majority have yet to return.
Israel says most evacuees back in Gaza border area
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Israel says most evacuees back in Gaza border area
- Israeli authorities had offered evacuees from the Gaza border area accommodation in hotels paid for by the state
- Residents of 10 kibbutz communities that were badly damaged in the Hamas attack will be given temporary housing for at least another year in various locations
Halt to MSF work will be ‘catastrophic’ for people of Gaza: MSF chief
- MSF slammed the move, which takes effect on March 1, as a “pretext” to obstruct aid
- “Ceasing MSF activities is going to be catastrophic for the people of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” he said
GENEVA: Israel’s ban on Doctors Without Borders’ humanitarian operation in Gaza spells deeper catastrophe for the Palestinian territory’s people, the head of the medical charity told AFP on Monday.
Israel announced on Sunday that it was terminating all the activities in Gaza and the West Bank by the organization, known by its French acronym MSF, after it failed to provide a list of its Palestinian staff.
MSF slammed the move, which takes effect on March 1, as a “pretext” to obstruct aid.
“This is a decision that was made by the Israeli government to restrict humanitarian assistance into Gaza and the West Bank at the most critical time for Palestinians,” MSF secretary-general Christopher Lockyear warned in an interview with AFP at the charity’s Geneva headquarters.
“We are at a moment where Palestinian people need more humanitarian assistance, not less,” he said. “Ceasing MSF activities is going to be catastrophic for the people of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.”
MSF has been a key provider of medical and humanitarian aid in Gaza, particularly since war broke out after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The charity says it currently provides at least 20 percent of hospital beds in the territory and operates around 20 health centers.
In 2025 alone, it carried out more than 800,000 medical consultations, treated more than 100,000 trauma cases and assisted more than 10,000 infant deliveries.
It also provided more than 700 million liters of water, Lockyear pointed out.
‘Impossible choice’
Israel announced in December that it planned to prevent 37 aid organizations, including MSF, from working in Gaza for failing to submit detailed information about their Palestinian employees. The move drew widespread condemnation from NGOs and the United Nations.
It had alleged that two MSF employees had links with Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which the medical charity vehemently denies.
“If Israel has any evidence of such things, then they should share that evidence,” Lockyear said, insisting that “there’s been no proof given to us.”
He decried “an orchestrated campaign to delegitimize us,” calling on other countries to defend efforts to bring desperately-needed humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“They should be speaking to Israel, pressuring Israel to ensure that there is a reverse of any banning of humanitarian organizations.”
Lockyear said MSF, which counts around 1,100 staff inside Gaza, had been trying to engage with Israeli authorities for nearly a year over the requested lists.
But it had been left with “an impossible choice,” he said.
“We’ve been forced to choose between the safety and security of our staff and being able to reach patients.”
‘Can only get worse’
The organization said it decided not to hand over staff names “because Israeli authorities failed to provide the concrete assurances required to guarantee our staff’s safety, protect their personal data, and uphold the independence of our medical operation.”
Lockyear insisted that was a “very rational” decision, pointing out that 15 MSF staff had been killed in Gaza during the war, out of more than 500 humanitarian workers and more than 1,700 medical workers killed in the Strip.
Lockyear highlighted that without independent humanitarian organizations in Gaza, an already “catastrophic” situation “can only get worse.”
“We need to increase massively the humanitarian assistance that’s going into Gaza,” he said, “not restrict it, not block it.”
