When the Hezbollah militant group began trading rocket fire with Israel in October, Zoe Sages and her family left their home near the Lebanese border and decamped to a hotel further south.More than nine months later, they and hundreds of other members of the Sasa kibbutz are still there, striving to maintain their communal way of life and children’s schooling. While the government pays for their food and accommodation, the pressures of living in a 30-square-meter (320-square-foot) room in the sweltering town of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee are taking their toll.“The community wants to return home 100%,” said Sages, 36, a humanresources director and mother of three who moved to Israel from the UK in 2006. “The questions would be under what conditions and whether normality will return.”Sages is one of hundreds of thousands of people in Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinian territory of Gaza whose lives have been upended since Hamasled militants invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people. Israel’s retaliatory and ongoing air and ground assault has claimed more than 38,000 lives in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory.Lebanon-based Hezbollah opened fire in solidarity with Hamas, launching drones, rockets and missiles at towns and villages across northern Israel. The Israeli military has responded with hundreds of strikes of its own, and communities on both sides of the border have fled.Domestic pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enable evacuees to return home has raised the prospect of an all-out conflict, which could devastate both countries.Israel and Hezbollah last fought a war in 2006 that lasted 34 days and wrecked parts of Lebanon. The militant group has since accumulated a vast arsenal of rockets that are capable of reaching every corner of Israel.Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran and designated as terrorist groups by the U.S.Within Israel, about 143,000 people had evacuated their homes or were eligible to do so by late June, 68,500 of whom were from the north near Lebanon and 74,500 from the south, according to a report from the Knesset Research and Information Center. The number of people housed in hotels fell to 22,800 by the end of June, down from a peak of about 50,000, as evacuees made alternate accommodation plans or braved the violence and returned home.It costs the state about 500 shekels ($137) a night to house an adult and half ...
