“Hostile intrusion” by a drone, “direct confrontation” without possible shelter. With each attack detected from Lebanon, the “Red Alert” application vibrates, a haunting reminder for Racheli of the impossible return to her school in northern Israel that she had to evacuate.
“It’s the most dangerous corner” of the country, on which Katyusha rockets and anti-tank missiles from the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah fall, says the 23-year-old student, displaced since the attack on southern Israel from Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip on October 7.
This attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,189 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data, triggered a massive Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, where at least 36,096 People were killed, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas health ministry. In support of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hezbollah regularly exchanges fire with Israel.
On both sides of the border, a strip of several kilometers has become a de facto war zone. Tens of thousands of Lebanese and Israelis have fled the region.
As of May 24, of the 48,000 Israeli schoolchildren and students evacuated from the border area with Lebanon and the edge of the Gaza Strip, 28,000 were still displaced, according to the Ministry of Education.
Racheli has not returned to her school in Tel Hai since October 7. The student training to be a social worker is staying in a youth hostel in Tel Aviv, far from most of her classmates scattered around the country.
” Trauma “
The lack of equipment was quickly filled by “the surge of generosity in the country”, she said. But “loneliness” and “shock” remain.
Classes have moved online and “it’s very complicated for me to follow. I listen to the course but I don’t print anything. When it was time to study before exams at the end of the first semester, it was as if I hadn’t studied anything, as if it was too much for my brain. I had to start everything from scratch,” says the student.
At the start of the war, some 360,000 reservists were called up. “How can you study when the soldiers, your friends, are risking their lives and dying? », asks Racheli in reference to the 289 Israeli soldiers who have fallen since the start of the ground offensive on October 27.
Like another student interviewed and a volunteer like him with displaced people for the Kedma association, she says that everything is “on hold”.
“It is very difficult mentally for reservists returning from war to come back to reality,” comments Shachar, who does not want to give his last name. She manages scholarships for Kedma, an organization based in particular in the North and which manages projects aimed at 18-25 year olds.
“Some were absent […] six months, others two. We recorded lessons and prepared homework to help them catch up on the first semester, but the second has already started,” she explains.
“Israel is facing a national trauma that has emotional and mental consequences on the entire population, including children and adolescents,” the Ministry of Education told AFP, according to which 8% of Students do not attend classes regularly.
“Disturbed children”
To support mobilized students, Parliament adopted a law in December aimed at covering university costs.
The ministry also says it has recruited school psychologists and made various supports available, in particular to evacuated students and “children whose loved ones were murdered or kidnapped” on October 7. “About 54 million shekels [20 millions de dollars] were allocated to provide an emotional and therapeutic response.”
“It’s clearly not enough,” says Shachar.
A feeling shared by other displaced people from the north met during a demonstration in mid-May in Jerusalem where they are temporarily housed. Among them, a mother helpless to see her eldest daughter, a school student, “dropping out” because “she can’t concentrate”, and another, from the locality of Shlomi, who says that she “ can’t live anymore” in a 15 m hotel room2 with her family.
“The children are disturbed,” adds Amigo Cohen, a demonstrator who worked in a daycare before the evacuation: “How long will it last? »
But despite the shots from Hamas and Hezbollah, a sort of war of attrition, Mr. Cohen wants to “return to his village and the children”: the authorities “would offer me a suite at the Los Angeles Hilton that I would not stay in!” »