Tel-Hai Magazine 2023-2024

“Our study reinforces previous findings on the importance of preparing border residents for possible evacuation. It also strengthened the understanding that the type of security threat evacuees experience is of importance to their emotional state and anxiety levels.”

south who experienced the October 7th massacre first-hand, the experience of evacuation mobilized coping levels di rectly and indirectly, while among the residents of the north only indirectly, and for the northern evacuees, levels of cop ing were related to the amount of anxi ety and stress they reported: those who felt more anxiety reported higher levels of coping. In many countries, emergency author ities have been established precisely to evacuate residents from their homes fol lowing security threats to the civilian population and actual war, and different countries employ different approaches 11 . However, as experience is gained in the field, there is a growing awareness that preparing residents for independent ini tial evacuation is probably the most ef fective solution, mainly in recognition of the limitations of government bodies to provide an immediate and adequate re sponse to large populations during an emergency 12 . Of course, independent initial evacuation may be appropriate for some of the population, but this course of action may harm the weaker popula tion groups 13 .

In the current Israel-Hamas war, it has been reported that at least 1.5% of the population of Israel evacuated their homes 14 . Our study reinforces previous findings on the importance of preparing border residents for possible evacuation. It also strengthened the understanding that the type of security threat evacuees experience is of importance to their emotional state and anxiety levels. Limitations and follow up studies Despite the interesting findings of this study, it should be emphasized that this is a preliminary study conducted to inves tigate the experience of evacuation due to war while it is still ongoing. The study was conducted on a relatively small sam ple of evacuees from the north and south, who agreed to respond anony mously to a one-time online self-report questionnaire. Therefore, generalization of the findings must be done cautiously, and one cannot speak of a circumstantial relationship but only of a general direc tion and tendency. This study was con ducted about three months after the evacuation, so there is a possibility that it represents only one stage of the process

that the evacuees will have undergone by the time their period of displacement ends. Follow-up studies should investi gate additional aspects of the evacuation experience by distinguishing between different populations and other psycho logical aspects of prolonged evacuation periods. 2 Kirschenbaum & Rapaport, 2018; Oviedo et al, 2022; Yalim & Chapple, 2023 3 Renne, 2018 4 Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995 5 Carver, 1997 6 Shenaar et al., 2012; Gidron et al., 2010 1 Morina et al., 2018; Renne et al., 2011

7 Gidron et al., 2010 8 Shenar et al., 2012

9 Shaham & Elron, 2016 10 Shaham & Elran, 2016 11 Kirshenbaum, 2014 12 Kirshenbaum et al., 2023 13 Whiteford & Tobin, 2004 14 Ayalon et al., 2024

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