Since the beginning of 2024 – and especially during the last seven months – every Israeli deserves some peace and quiet. But more entitled to them than anyone are the nearly 130,000 Israelis who have been in the south and north and have been living in unimaginably closed quarters with their families. Specially designed “Quiet Rooms” for evacuees have been installed at three of the hotels – the Vert Lagoon in Netanya, the Leonardo Hotel in Tiberias, and the Jacob Resort Hotel in Hadera – that have been housing Israeli “refugees” from Sderot, Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, and Kiryat Shmona.
With continued speculation of escalation in , hotels now have a working model to set up a Quiet Room if even more people have to be evacuated from the north in the months ahead. The joint project, co-sponsored by the Health Ministry and JDC (Joint Distribution Committee) Israel, has proven incredibly successful, according to those benefiting from it and the organizers. The hotel rooms have been extended, and more Quiet Rooms have been prepared in other facilities.
There are also plans for the evacuees to replicate the Quiet Rooms and bring them with them as they return home in the coming months. The Quiet Rooms are modeled after the famous Snoezelen rooms—controlled spaces designed to reduce anxiety and mental stress while providing a place for sensory calm and self-regulation—at Ra’anana’s Beit Issie Shapiro, the country’s leading developer and provider of innovative ther.