One of the things that stands out most when visiting the hotels to which thousands of Israelis have been evacuated over the past three months is the fact that so many of these internal refugees are wearing pajamas. In the middle of the day, men, women and children wander round the lobby in their nightwear. It could be that they feel just as home in the hotel as they would in their own living rooms, but it seems more likely that the real reason is that they simply don’t feel like there’s any point getting dressed.

Shomrim met Y, a widow in her 50s, last week in the lobby of the Leonardo Hotel in Jerusalem, not far from the eastern part of the city. She was also wearing pajamas. She talked about the suffering and the frustration she felt, how hard it has been to live in a single hotel room for three months, so far from home and seeing the same people in the hotel day after day. There is one incident that she cannot get out of her mind. Two weeks ago, she was sitting in the hotel lobby when she saw the representative of the evacuees handing out vouchers. The representative was one of the people evacuated from their homes, who had volunteered to handle various bureaucratic issues that arose with the hotel or the various government bodies. When Y. asked what the vouchers were for, she was told that they were a 100-shekel credit note for Café Ne’eman, a long-running chain of bakeries in Jerusalem.

“I wanted one, too,” she tells Shomrim. “I went up to her that night at dinner and said, straight out, that I heard there are 100-shekel vouchers for Café Ne’eman. And what was her response? She said: ‘You’re a widow, you don’t get one. You haven’t got a husband to sit there with. It’s only for couples with children.’ I was furious and my brother even more so. I said to myself that the Good Lord would punish her for humiliating a widow. And after all that, I still have to see her every day in the hotel.”

The evacuees’ representative, for her part, explained that the donor had stipulated that the vouchers were for couples, so that they could sit and drink a coffee or eat a pastry after dropping their children off at school. Slightly more sympathetic language would probably have ensured that the incident ended differently but it’s also possible that the heated exchange between the two women is the result of spending so long as internal refugees, disconnected from everyday life and unsure of how long the situation will last.

A few days earlier, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Hayarkon Street in Tel Aviv, we met with Mor Shneor and Liora Amirgulov, two young women who were evacuated from their homes in Sderot. Liora has two young children and Mor was recently married. Their husbands stayed in Sderot as they are both considered essential workers. A small number of Sderot residents have already returned to the southern city, while others are in discussions with officials over the possibility of returning at the end of next month; the government has only promised to cover the costs of hotels and rented apartments until the end of February. Meanwhile, the mayor of Sderot, Alon Davidi, has asked the government to extend payments until the end of May – something officials have said is being considered.

Little wonder, therefore, that these two young women are contemplating spending the Passover holiday, which starts on April 22, in a hotel. “We’ve started to joke about how we need to stockpile matzot,” says Liora, “but the truth is that I wouldn’t object to celebrating Pesach here. People are really concerned and worried about returning to Sderot. We heard all the shooting that Saturday morning of October 7,  and wherever you go in the city, you’re reminded of who was murdered and exactly what happened. You can see bullet holes everywhere and the city is full of memories. So, it's not such a bad idea to spend Passover in the hotel. It also gives the kids a little emotional peace and quiet.”

“I do not envy any of the families who had to be evacuated to a hotel for more than one week,” says R., a welfare worker with the Jerusalem municipality. “The situation now in the hotel is not easy because the people left there are the people who really need to stay longer.”

‘I Don’t Envy Any of the Families’

Since October 7, some 125,000 Israelis have been evacuated from their homes. Of them, 57,000 are in hotels, 50,000 in rented apartments and the rest – residents of the Gaza border area kibbutzim that were attacked more than 100 days ago – will spend at least the next year on other kibbutzim or in neighborhoods across the country. Some of the evacuees in hotels are from those border communities and are severely traumatized by the events of October 7. Others are from northern Israel – places that became uninhabitable almost overnight.

The situation today could not be more different than during the first weeks of the war, when news outlets and social media platforms were inundated with feel-good stories about the many donations that Israelis made to soldiers and evacuees alike. For those evacuees still in hotels, the whole issue of donations has a less pleasant side, which is generally ignored. There are two reasons for this. The first is people taking more than their fair share, at the expense of others. The second reason is that hotels often house groups of evacuees from different communities and when donations arrive specifically and exclusively for one of those communities, the others can only look on in envy and frustration.

“I do not envy any of the families who had to be evacuated to a hotel for more than one week,” says R., a welfare worker with the Jerusalem municipality. “The situation now in the hotel is not easy because the people left there are the people who really need to stay longer. They’re mainly evacuees from the north and people on welfare. We knew that the pressure cooker would only get more intense – and that’s exactly what’s happening. But we are still providing solutions all the time.”

One of the uglier manifestations of this pressure – violent brawls – has been seen in almost every city that evacuees have been sent to, from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, from Netanya to Eilat. The authorities are aware of the problem. On January 4, the Welfare Ministry published a document that was supposed to provide an overview of the situation in the evacuees’ hotels: “Everyone feels like a refugee. Internally displaced, disconnected from the workplace, surrounded by massive uncertainty about tomorrow … There are signs of exhaustion, impatience and instability among many of the evacuees because they have been forced to live in close proximity to others and they do not have private family space. In some of the hotels, basic societal norms have broken down and there are repeated incidents of vandalism. At the same time, because they are living in such chaotic conditions, there has been an increase in the risks posed to children and youth.”

The same documents contained a bleak message for residents of northern Israel: “While some residents of the South can expect a housing solution within the next two months and some communities will (hopefully) be repopulated early in 2024, residents of the North are likely to spend at least several more months in hotels, given the uncertainty surrounding developments on the northern front,” the document states.

Indeed, although all of the evacuees are suffering from some degree of uncertainty, it seems that it is more acute for those displaced from the North. “Residents of Sderot are carrying with them a very real trauma and people from Kiryat Shmona are dealing with the highest levels of uncertainty imaginable,” says Ella Roim, a social worker with Tel Aviv Municipality, who has been working with displaced Israelis at the Orchid Hotel in Tel Aviv and helps them with their emotional issues.

Roim is one of a team of people who go from hotel to hotel, helping evacuees: representatives of various government ministries who answer questions about the evacuees’ rights; social workers from the evacuees’ hometowns; and even reservist soldiers from the Home Front Command. The IDF recently announced a significant reduction in the number of Home Front Command reservists, much to the chagrin of the evacuees. According to the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, the decision was taken because of changing needs.

At the Orchid Hotel, for example, there are evacuees from Sderot and from Kiryat Shmona – and there have been clashes between the two groups. During Hanukkah celebrations, there were arguments over which group got to light the large menorah that had been brought to the hotel lobby. “The uncertainty brings a lot of frustration to the surface,” Roim confirms. “You see more people getting angry. How long can they live with this uncertainty? Will I ever go back to work? Should I start looking for a job in Tel Aviv? We have also seen regression among children because of this. And, at the parents’ request, I talk to them.”

According to Roim, “Some of these families are all sleeping in one room – which is tough, to say the least. A family, for example, with a father and a big brother and two younger adolescent sisters. They all need their own space. Apart from that, there’s the issue of boredom for those who do not work. Others are unwilling to leave the hotel premises, for a variety of reasons, partly because of the trauma they went through. We try to organize as many activities as possible and we encourage people to get out. In the past few weeks, we’ve seen more of a return to routine. Those who can work remotely are back at work; others have started to find work locally, in shops or wherever than can find temporary employment.”

“The uncertainty brings a lot of frustration to the surface,” Roim confirms. “You see more people getting angry. How long can they live with this uncertainty? Will I ever go back to work? Should I start looking for a job in Tel Aviv?"

‘It’s Hard When the Donations Arrive’

Suzie Dahan and Tami Azran, both single mothers from Kiryat Shmona, are staying at the Leonardo Hotel in Jerusalem – two of the thousand of people evacuated from the northern city. Suzie has two small children, both under the age of six; Tami has five children, the oldest of whom is in the 12^th grade. Last Sunday, they sat together, chatting in the hotel’s lobby. They started with small talk, but quickly moved on to talk about the difficulties they were experiencing – and then others joined them. The conversation quickly turned into shouting; they were not arguing about anything in particular – just a raucous exchange of views that echoed through the lobby.

“We squabble and argue every day,” says Tami. The kids fight among themselves and that spills over to the grownups. We feel like we are not getting any answers here.” Suzie speaks about her problems: a son with special needs who needs care; she needs a computer and can’t get one; and her children need some new toys. Tami is worried about her oldest son. Instead of going to school, he spends his days sitting in the lobby with his mother.

Tami and Suzie are joined by Efrat Ben-Shitrit, a community worker from the Kiryat Shmona branch of the National Association of Community Centers. She is one of the evacuees herself and is a resident of the same hotel. She spends her days visiting the various hotels where the evacuees are staying, offering them whatever help she can. “The residents here need resilience, a sense of security and job security,” she says. “They have to know that, if they need it, they will have enough money to buy new shoes. New clothes. They don’t have this fundamental sense of security. That’s also because we’re here and we have no idea how long we’ll be here. We’re living from day to day.”

"The residents here need resilience, a sense of security and job security. They have to know that, if they need it, they will have enough money to buy new shoes. New clothes".

This daily routine also includes some rather unpleasant incidents. Evacuees staying at the Olive Tree Hotel, which is adjacent to the Leonardo, told Shomrim about an incident when one young man exposed himself to a group of teenage girls. In another case, a young man harassed a schoolgirl. Both of these harassers were evicted from the hotel.

Another incident at the Leonardo occurred when an evacuee almost pushed a clothes dryer on top of a volunteer during an argument over access times to the laundry room. According to an eyewitness, the volunteer injured her shoulder when she tried to put the dryer back in its place and is still in pain.

There are plenty of other examples: a brawl broke out, for example, at the Dan Panorama hotel in Tel Aviv between evacuees from Sderot and those from Kiryat Shmona. One resident of Kiryat Shmona who saw the whole thing told Shomrim that it all began when care packages that were supposed to be for Sderot residents alone were delivered to the hotel. When two evacuees from Kiryat Shmona asked for one of the packages, there was an aggressive commotion. Across the city, at the Orchid Tel Aviv, there was also a mass brawl last weekend. The instigator has also been ejected from the hotel.

“It’s hard when the donations arrive,” Roim confirms. “There has to be a systematic way of dealing with the issue. At one stage, when donations arrived, they were not distributed via the social workers. That drove me mad. If a donation arrives – toys for the kids, say – some people  take a lot of them, so some people would go without. We decided to step and handle the distribution; it also helped us understand who these people are and the range of ages we were dealing with. But even now, somebody could come and put a donation in the tent outside the hotel – and one of the evacuees will take an excessive amount.”

‘We Have to Pay for Parking, too?’

At the  beginning of the war, the Zippori hotel in Jerusalem housed evacuees from four communities adjacent to the Gaza border. They have now been relocated to other hotels in the city. There was an incident at the hotel, when there was still massive rocket fire from Gaza, where people loaded their vehicles with parcels of clothes from the Fox fashion chain – which they had bought at a discount of 90 percent – and took them back to their homes. “It didn’t look good and it didn’t feel good,” says one person who witnessed the incident. “There were no clothes left for others.”

I., an evacuee staying at the Leonardo hotel, explains how he has been experiencing everything. “It is all kinds of small incidents,” he says, “but they build up and become something larger – and that adds to the anguish. A few days ago, for example, somebody organized for a magician to come and entertain the children and he brought some toys with him. Someone took 40 toys. The community liaison asked him why and he just said, ‘I’m allowed to.’ He just took them. When the war broke out, a friend called me and said that he had 500 pairs of shoes, up to size 34. I told him to bring them to the hotel. Volunteers stepped in to help and we decided that, to avoid a problematic situation, we would distribute the shoes on a different floor of the hotel every hour. We thought that would be the fairest way. When it was my floor’s turn, I saw an elderly woman leaving with 15 pairs of shoes. I asked her what she was doing. She told me they were for her grandchildren. I offered to help her and I put the shoes back in the pile. I told her that she should call the children’s parents and that each parent could take enough for their kids.”

"What difference does it make between who is from Kiryat Shmona and who is from Sderot? The government has to handle it all".

At the same hotel – which, as mentioned, houses evacuees from both Sderot and Kiryat Shmona – boxes of supplies arrived one day for residents of Yakhini, a moshav located less than 5 kilometers from Sderot. This particularly enraged the Sderot evacuees. “Not one single Qassam has been fired at Yakhini,” says Y. “Now, when there’s a war on, they still decided to evacuate them. They’ve got an instructor, people brought them closets from Keter, clothes horses, shoes, blankets. I asked if I could get something, too, and they told me to forget about it, it’s for Yakhini people only. They dumped a few boxes of leftover supplies in the corridor for the rest of us.”

The anger over the different treatment of different populations is not limited to donations. Last month, Kiryat Shmona evacuees at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Center were told that they would have to start paying 500 shekels a month for parking. This might be a reduced rate, but the Kiryat Shmona evacuees can’t help but raise an eyebrow when they discover that their fellow evacuees from Sderot don’t have to pay – because their municipality decided to foot the bill for them.

“All the evacuees do their shopping right here at the Azrieli mall. We put plenty of money into their accounts. And in addition, do we have to pay for parking, too?” says one of the evacuees. Yaakov Ben-Simon, who was evacuated from his home in Kiryat Shmona, adds: “A representative from Sderot municipality came here and told people to give him their license plate national ID numbers – but only for people from Sderot. We stood by looking on. What difference does it make between who is from Kiryat Shmona and who is from Sderot? The government has to handle it all. I spent all day wandering around the hotel, bored, because there’s fighting in the North. Why should I have to pay for parking on top of all that?”

Kiryat Shmona municipality said in response that it has reached an agreement with Tel Aviv municipality over parking fees but that it does not have the authority to reach similar agreements with private companies.

Apartments Make the Desperation a Little More Bearable

The number of evacuees in hotels has almost halved since the start of the war, mainly thanks to a government program to encourage them to move into rented apartments. The Finance Ministry allocates 200 shekels a day per adult and 100 shekels for each child – money that the evacuees can use for rent and other expenses. In Jerusalem, for example, there were 20,000 evacuees in hotels across the city; now there are just 8,000.

Sapir Hasson, from Tkuma – a moshav just 10 kilometers from the Gaza border – moved out of the hotel on Moshav Migdal, where she and most of the Tkuma evacuees had been staying, to Meitar, just north of Be’er Sheva. Along with her husband and two kindergarten-aged children, she lives in a small unit with one bedroom and a living room. The unit is located in the basement of a much larger family home. Sapir says that she and her husband both work in the Gaza border area and that they needed to move closer to their places of work. As far as the crowded conditions go, she admits that the move to a small apartment has not improved the situation – but she still says it was the right thing to do.

“We mostly brought clothes because the apartment was almost fully furnished. The other apartments we saw were not suitable. They might have been more spacious, but there was no furniture and it’s a nightmare to start furnishing now,” she says. “So, we compromised: the kitchen’s tiny and it’s not really suitable for families, but what choice did we have?”

Unlike the stories of some landlords, mainly in the big cities, who bumped up the prices of their properties depending on how much money the government was giving the family, Sapir lucked out and is paying 3,000 shekels a month rent. She’s also very happy with the neighborhood. “I’ve moved to a very well-ordered and well-looked-after neighborhood. They’ve got everything here. The local gym lets evacuees in for free and there are also clubs for the children, which are subsidized. The great advantage here is that we can return to some kind of routine. The kids are back in a formal framework until 4:30 P.M., which lets me spend the day working before coming home and organizing a more normal family life. Not having a routine means that you are very deeply engulfed in the war.”

According to Sapir, her lease on the apartment is renewable each month and she is far from convinced that she wants to return to her home – even if the Education Ministry announces that schools are reopening in the Gaza border communities. “I’m living from month to month,” she says. “It depends on what format the schools reopen. I don’t want to go home and then find that my children’s routine has been upset again. This is their third educational framework this year and it’s not easy for them to get used to somewhere new each time.”

Ortal Ben-David, a mother-of-four from Sderot who was also evacuated, now lives in the West Bank settlement of Shim'a. Her lease agreement is also on a monthly basis. In her case, this ad hoc arrangement also works for the landlord. “In short, the property is on the market,” she says, “so the landlord is doing us a favor by renting it out. But if he finds a buyer, we have to leave – so the temporary nature of the lease works both ways.”

Until Hanukkah, in early December, Ortal and her family stayed at a hotel in Eilat. “My extended family were in the same hotel and, slowly but surely, they all left,” she says. “The main reason for leaving the hotel was that my husband and I needed to get back to work. We spend most of our days working and the drive from Eilat is so long. I needed a few things from our house, so I drove there and picked them up – an oven, washing machine, kitchen utensils – but the apartment was well furnished. We still don’t know people here but we’re either working or driving most of the day so we really don’t have time to meet people. It’s easier for the younger kids. They found children and families their own age. My eldest, who is in the eighth grade, still hasn’t found friends. She misses her friends from Sderot but they are in Tel Aviv.”

According to Ortal, “daily life in the hotel was easy. There’s someone to prepare things for you, to cook for you and you don’t need to go shopping or do cleaning. But it was emotionally hard for us to be there. In the first month, there were six of us in one room. It took them a whole month to give us an extra room, which made things much more comfortable. Now, in our own home, we’re back doing our routine chores: groceries, shopping, cooking, getting ready for shabbat – like we did at home.

“Now the only question is when we will return home. I refuse to go back to the city if the security situation is precarious. Enough is enough. After 20 years, it’s time for Sderot residents to stop being transparent.”