The reasons not to return are clear for Rachel Amar, an evacuee from the Israeli border town of Kiryat Shmona where, only hours before Binyamin Netanyahu announced the ceasefire in Lebanon, a Hezbollah rocket hit a bus station.
Sitting in one of Tel Aviv’s finest beachfront hotels as she weighed the news of Israel’s truce and the prospect of returning home, Amar had doubts. “What are we doing here? This agreement doesn’t give us security,” she said. “We are so close [to Lebanon]. I keep imagining October 7 will happen to us — it’s a matter of luck that it didn’t.”
