In the past week, reports and rumors have multiplied about progress in negotiations with Hamas over the abductees deal and the ceasefire it entails.
Following this, ideas came up for renewed discussion in official forums and WhatsApp groups of residents of the Gaza Strip and Sderot who were evacuated from their homes, ideas to return the residents of the settlements who were evacuated to their homes.
Reactions to this idea were mixed and ranged from support to blanket denial.
Eliana Herstein, a resident of Sderot, a municipal employee and the mother of the late Dolev Suisa, who was murdered on October 7 in Sderot with his wife Odia, in front of their two young daughters, wrote an open letter to the residents of the area, in which she conveyed a clear message: We will return to Sderot only if The elected officials will move to live here themselves.
This is what Herstein wrote: "Since October 7, all residents of Sderot and the surrounding area suffer from anxiety attacks, to one degree or another. Those whose terrorists were in their neighborhood and tried to enter their home (like me, for example), experience anxiety attacks from every knock on the door... all the resilience centers In the city, they will not be able to treat the serious traumas we are suffering from after 20 years of Qassem and after the infiltration of hundreds of terrorists who committed a terrible massacre on us, after we were left without any protection."
Sderot children evacuated from the "Grand Court" hotel in Jerusalem, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
"We need to get a real commitment"
"The terrorists in Gaza declare their plan to repeat what they did to us on Black Sabbath - and they will do so if the state does not eliminate them all," she added.
"This is why the residents of Sderot and the surrounding area need to receive a real commitment from the decision makers in the country that if we return home, we will be able to live here safely and sleep at night without being alarmed by any slight noise."
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"Unfortunately, the decision-makers don't really care about our safety and they are trying to lure us with money to return home, probably because they are tired of paying for hotels or rented apartments for us. We are also tired of being in a hotel. It is something nice for a vacation of a few days, but it is not a substitute for a home - Certainly not for bereaved families...", Herstein explained the impossible reality of the evacuees, "but despite everything it is better for us to stay far from home, because all these difficulties are dwarfed by the constant danger of infiltration by Gaza terrorists."
In her public letter, Herstein offers a unique condition for the residents of the area to return to their homes: "If all the ministers in the government and all 120 members of the Knesset commit to living with their families in Sderot and Otafa for a minimum period of one year, we will consider taking the risk and returning to our homes as well."
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