Residents of the towns of Avivim and Dovev in northern Israel, who have been evacuated from their homes, discovered that their children will not be allowed to participate in summer camp activities offered to other evacuees from their towns who are still staying in a hotel, Israel Hayom reported.
The matter was first reported on Friday by Merom Galile Regional Council head Amit Sofer. Sofer published a letter in which he claimed that the management of the Fattal Hotel in which the evacuees are staying is not allowing the children of Avivim and Dovev to participate in the summer activities with the other children in the hotel.
Some of the families of evacuees who left the hotel have found alternative places of residence, but none have been able to return home.
"Dear parents of children in grades one through six, and residents of Avivim and Dovev," Sofer wrote. "As you know, the Council, together with the community center and the leadership of the towns, has put together a variety of summer activities for you, including a summer camp. Despite the fact that in the Upper Galilee and the schools of Nof Harim and Psagot there are no frameworks for the summer, we demanded that options be opened for the children."
"To my dismay and great surprise, the efforts at persuading the hotel's management faild, and they are not allowing our 18 children who moved to rental options to participate in the activities together with the 47 children who are in the hotel. This is another side in the complexity, and it is another impetus calling to the families to find residential solutions near the Council. And in any case, we will not differentiate between the children. They have gone through and are going through enough. Now, we are working to find a solution."
Shimon Bitton, chairman of the Committee of Evacuated Towns, responded: "Yesterday we received a number of phone calls from evacuated parents from Avivim, who were in the hotel for a period of time and afterwards found alternative arrangements. And essentially now, at the end of the school year, they signed their children up for summer camp together with the other children of Avivim, at the Leonardo Hotel, for a summer camp plan that was created together with the Merom Galil community center. And it is amazing: Yesterday I received phone calls that someone there had simply decided that anyone who is not staying in a hotel and not among the guests of the hotel simply cannot attend the day camp."
"I find myself with 18 students who have nothing to do over the summer. I take this very seriously. Lately we have seen that the hotels are also making it more difficult for relatives who want to visit their family in the hotel. And now it has stepped up another notch, and they are not allowing the children to participate. I assume and understand that, certainly, outside tourism is more interesting to the chain and the hotel at the moment. And essentially they are showing us the door out," the Council chief said.
Bitton added: "In any case, on Sunday we will not open this summer camp. We will not open it to all the children. We are planning to take all of the chuildren, together with their parents, to the Tiberias municipality campus until a solution is found. I am not the one who is supposed to find these solutions. The one who chased me out of my home, out of Avivim, is the government of Israel, the Defense Ministry, the Tourism Ministry," he concluded.