"There's nowhere to return to": Northern residents oppose IDF call to come back home

The IDF has reportedly reached a professional assessment that residents of northern cities and towns, evacuated to the center for over a year, can return to their homes by March 1. Many northerners think this is madness, according to Ynet reporter Yossi Yehoshua.

"This is a double abandonment," Metula Council Head David Azoulay told Ynet. "It's not enough that for a whole year Metula was almost destroyed without any response from the Northern Command until the start of the maneuver, so the decision to return residents in three weeks is a confirmation of complete destruction – in the name of the 'victory image' that the Israeli government and military decided on."

He then bluntly said that "Dear friends, there is nowhere to return to. Not in the military aspect and not in the civilian aspect. And there certainly isn't a 'victory image'. There are very grim images as a result of the abandonment we experienced before the maneuver.

"Metula's residents have nowhere to return to, the homes are destroyed and therefore residents should be kept in their current frameworks until June 1st."

Tens of thousands of residents of northern towns and cities, with the exception of a small number of farmers and others receiving exemptions, have been internal refugees in Israel since shortly after Hezbollah began a second front in the war on October 8.

Based on an assumption of the expected range of Hezbollah's missile attacks, the residents living within kilometers from the border were evacuated to the center of the country, to live in subsidized hotel rooms, apartments, or encouraged to find arrangements for themselves.

Consistent polls taken throughout the war pointed to about 70% of northern residents unwilling to return home unless and until the IDF demonstrated that the danger of missile attack and terrorist raids was truly gone.