Eshkol regional governor Gadi Yarkoni is very worried about the future of the towns surrounding Gaza and admits that even a month later, he has trouble relaxing from the shocking massacre by Hamas.
"I feel that the massacre happened yesterday - 30 days have passed, but not all the murdered have been buried yet, and the captives and the missing have not yet returned," Yarkoni said in an interview with Maariv.
In his opinion, the state has not yet come to its senses and understood what it must do. "People here don't know how to make decisions at the pace the residents need. There is no leadership. I solve these problems in a week. They don't understand what happened to us here. So it will cost the State of Israel another billion, will the State of Israel fall apart? No. But if the residents don't get what they need for their livelihood and their hope - it's worth many billions."
"They play with us over little things," he adds. "They are starting to get petty, people's vehicles and houses have been burned, they don't understand the magnitude of the hour. The people are helping us, but we need the government to also intervene and shoulder the burden."
Yarkoni has serious concerns for the rehabilitation of the Gaza periphery. "We are different people today. The communities are in a very bad state. Shattered. Even the state does not understand the magnitude of the incident. We need to restore trust, and then we can talk about the restoration of the tree towns. It is clear to me that many residents will not return until there is a decisive result at the borders. I will return, but I'm not important. What's important is future generations. If I'm the last generation in the region, it's a waste of time for the State of Israel - it will look different. Its borders will be from Tel Aviv to Netanya and that must not happen."