Five hundred days after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, all the evacuated residents of the country’s Tkuma Region have returned home except for those of 13 small communities that are still being rehabilitated, the government said on Monday.
The 13 locales—including kibbutzes Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nahal Oz and Nir Oz—are currently uninhabitable because their infrastructure was so badly damaged, the Tkuma Directorate wrote in a status report they published on the 500-day mark from the attack.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group representing relatives of hostages that has pushed for far-reaching concessions to Hamas to retrieve their loved ones from Gaza, called for a nationwide fast on Monday to raise awareness of the plight of those still alive among the 73 hostages the terrorist group is believed to still be holding.
The forum is planning rallies at Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square and elsewhere in Israel.
The Tkuma Directorate has spent about 7 billion shekels ($2 billion) of its 5-year budget of 19 billion shekels ($5.3 billion), it said in its status report. The 10 hardest-hit communities have received 1.1 billion shekels ($309 million).
Some 85% of the 64,000 residents of the Tkuma Region, who were almost all evacuated following Oct. 7, are back home, with only 11,000 living in temporary, state-funded accommodations.
The rehabilitation and repopulation of nine out of the 13 evacuated communities is scheduled to happen this year. Nir Oz, Be’eri, Kfar Aza and Holit may take until some time in 2026 to prepare for repopulation, the Tkuma Directorate said.
Hamas and other terrorists murdered some 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and abducted another 251.
