Israel holds local elections under cloud of war
By Dedi Hayun and Herbert Villaraga
SDEROT, Israel (Reuters) - Israel held local elections under the shadow of war on Tuesday, with tens of thousands of voters who have been evacuated from areas near Gaza and the northern border with Lebanon forced to wait until later in the year to cast a ballot.
While 242 municipalities will be voting on Tuesday, the decision to postpone the vote in 11 districts in exposed areas was a concrete example of the impact on Israel of one of the biggest security disasters in its 75-year history.
Life in big cities like Tel Aviv has returned to near-normal since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, but the almost five-month-long war in Gaza and the near daily exchanges of rocket fire in the north have left many border areas almost deserted.
"Maybe it's a smart decision to postpone the election for later, when people will be less scared to go back home," said 24 year-old Yaara Maimon in Sderot, a southern town on the edge of Gaza where dozens of people were killed in the attack and where the local elections have been postponed until November.
"If you walk around the town you still see places that are broken and missile hits and stuff like that, so maybe people are scared to come back."
In the north, where towns and kibbutzim along the border are also largely empty, the Israeli army said it hit Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, after around 35 rockets were launched from Lebanon towards the Mount Meron area.
Already the vote had been delayed past its originally scheduled date of Oct. 31 and then further delayed in January because of the fighting. But with the war set to enter its sixth month next week, the government decided to go ahead.
"In a war, in a state of emergency, we see the municipality and the local authority and council handling and coping with a multitude of challenges, and there is nothing more important than that, so I call on citizens of Israel to go out and vote," President Isaac Herzog said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government has seen its support plunge over the failures that allowed the devastating Hamas-led assault to catch security forces by susprise. But surveys indicate that overall support for the war itself remains solid among Israelis fearful that the Islamist movement would repeat the attack if it is not destroyed.
The attack killed about 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and the gunmen abducted another 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies, prompting a relentless bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza by Israeli forces that has so far displaced most of the population and killed almost 30,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health authorities.
In Israel, some 200,000 people were evacuated from the border areas as Israel launched its response. But after months of living in hotels and other temporary accommodation, there is growing fatigue and pressure to get back to normal.
In Gaza, Israeli forces have been preparing an assault on Rafah, where more than one million Palestinians displaced from their homes have been seeking shelter.
On Tuesday, hopes of a pause in the fighting were raised when U.S. President Joe Biden indicated that an agreement may be reached next week, ahead of the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
But in the north, exchanges of fire have steadily intensified and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Sunday that forces would step up operations there if a temporary ceasefire is agreed in Gaza.
(Writing by James Mackenzie, Editing by William Maclean)