The emergency aid package is intended to strengthen personal and community resilience among residents of Shlomi, Metula, Kiryat Shmona, and those living in the Mateh Asher, Ma'ale Yosef, Merom Galil, Mevo'ot Hermon, and Upper Galilee Regional Councils.
The main component of the program, budgeted at 4.5 million NIS, will provide organized respite stays in hotels across the country for about 5,000 residents and families. The initiative will be implemented in several rounds, beginning a few days before Passover and continuing throughout the holiday, and will include full accommodation, transportation, and educational activities, offering participants a temporary reprieve outside the range of fire.
Photo Courtesy of the KKL-JNF Photo Archive
In parallel, the board approved an additional 1.5 million NIS earmarked for special and urgent cases in northern confrontation-line communities. This funding is intended for residents unable to remain in the area for extended periods due to a lack of protected spaces, physical limitations, advanced age, complex socio-economic circumstances, or significant personal distress. The funds will be transferred immediately and directly to local authorities, enabling them to respond swiftly to urgent needs.
Eyal Ostrinsky, the KKL-JNF Chairman, said: “On the eve of Passover, it is our national and moral duty to ensure that residents of the northern confrontation line, who stand on the front lines day after day, are granted a moment of calm and security. The emergency assistance package we approved, totaling 6 million NIS, reflects Israeli mutual responsibility at its best; we leave no one behind. Alongside the family respite initiative, we have placed critical emphasis on special and urgent cases in border-adjacent communities. For them, the current security situation is a matter of life and death, and their inability to evacuate independently poses a real danger. Therefore, we have allocated a dedicated budget that will be transferred directly to local authorities for the evacuation and respite of those most in need.
KKL-JNF will continue to serve as an anchor of stability and resilience for Israel’s home front, acting swiftly on the ground to provide genuine responses to community needs. This is the necessary Zionist response at this time: to strengthen the people who safeguard the country’s borders and ensure they are provided with a proper framework of freedom and security.”
The overall initiative, which will be professionally supervised and managed by KKL-JNF, is intended to convey a message of support and mutual responsibility. It is a complex operation to execute on short notice, yet essential to alleviating the heavy pressures placed on the civilian home front and providing immediate protection for the most vulnerable residents, ahead of a return to the challenging emergency routine along the Lebanon border.