November 22, 2023

ITC update: Operation Iron Swords

Day 47
Wednesday 22.11.23

IDF soldiers were killed in action in Gaza bringing the total number killed in the ground incursion to 70. 

Above faces of the children being held hostage in Gaza.

The Israeli war cabinet approved an agreement to secure the release of roughly 50 hostages among the approximately 240 who were abducted. The deal is expected to see the release of 30 children, eight mothers, and 12 other women, including the elderly whose lives are at risk, in groups of 12-13 people per day. In exchange, Israel has agreed to a humanitarian pause for at least four days for the first time as well as the release of 150 teenage and female Palestinian security prisoners. The deal was backed by the heads of the security establishment: the army, Shin Bet and Mossad.

The deal could be extended; for every release of ten more Israeli hostages there will be an additional day of paused hostilities. The deal is expected to go into effect on Thursday morning. The first group of 10-12 Israeli hostages are expected to be released a few hours later. The hostages will be handed over to the Red Cross and then on to the IDF where they will undergo medical examination and be reunited with their families.

Families of hostages are facing a terrible ordeal waiting in agony every day to see who is going to be released and whether their relatives are on the list.

Northern Front: Rocket fire targeted Galilee today. Early yesterday evening, multiple rockets were launched towards Israel’s Western and Upper Galilee regions, causing sirens to sound in Kiryat Shmona and other communities. An anti-tank missile directly hit a house in the northern border community of Metula in the morning. There were no casualties.

Though the Israeli advance through northern Gaza has slowed the rate of rocket launches on Israel, Hamas and other terrorist organizations still retain the ability to fire from the southern Strip. Tel Aviv last night came under heavy rocket barrage.

ITC on the Ground
Hospitals – at the beginning of the war there were no applications for psychosocial training. In the last week, inquiries began regarding ITC self-help for medical teams. Both Maccabi and Leumit health care providers applied for ITC training, workshops, and weekly accompaniment for their caregivers.

National Resilience Center: In the aftermath of October 7^th, the National Resilience Center was established by the ITC in collaboration with the National Insurance Institute and the Ministry of Health, with the aim of providing a therapeutic response for residents who do not reside in areas with active resilience centers, and who suffer from terror related anxiety.
The Center provides a supportive immediate response with the understanding that many of these people have not previously been treated and certainly not in the context of such a complex reality. The Center provides a comprehensive and professional treatment response, of 24 therapy sessions and accompany the applicants in the process from the moment of their reception and throughout the subsequent treatment.

The National Resilience Center is currently helping 700 Nova survivors.

# patients who have contacted the National Resilience Center to date – 1,972

# active patients at the Resilience Center – 1,784

In the coming days the Center will also be providing trauma care for over 3,000 firefighters and ZAKA volunteers.

It is clear, that the number of citizens who will contact the Center for therapeutic treatment will increase significantly in the coming weeks and in significant numbers in the aftermath of the war.

Operation clean up

Above activists from the Rov Ha’ir Jewish-Arab movement meet to discuss cleaning shelters

in Haifa, on November 6, 2023. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)

The non-profit Rov Hair has launched an effort to map all existing shelters, private and public in Haifa, and created an interactive map. In preparing the map, Rov Hair’s 500+ volunteers found many private shelters that were unusable, either because they had been flooded, allowed to decay, had no functioning air ventilation systems or simply had been turned into storage places. The subsequent cleanup action has become a symbol of Arab-Jewish coexistence and activism, part of broader Jewish-Arab readiness efforts in Haifa, involving hundreds of volunteers. To date they have restored approximately 200 shelters to usability and in their joint efforts are helping to avoid violence of the sort that erupted between Jews and Thanks for all your support. We will keep you updated. Arabs in 2021, during the previous round of hostilities with Hamas.

Thanks for all your support. We will keep you updated.