When Communities Are Forced to Leave: Place Attachment, Local Leadership, and Policy Lessons from Wartime Evacuation

Background and Purpose:

Following the outbreak of the war in Gaza after the October 7 attacks, approximately 160,000 residents in Israel were evacuated from their homes and relocated to temporary housing across the country. This large-scale forced displacement created significant challenges for families and communities, as well as for emergency response and recovery policy. Drawing on place and community attachment theory, this study examines how displaced residents experience and reconstruct their emotional and symbolic attachment to place and community during prolonged evacuation.

Beyond the Israeli context, the study speaks to a growing global reality in which large-scale evacuations and temporary displacement have become increasingly common due to natural disasters, armed conflicts, and climate-related crises. Hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and floods frequently force communities around the world to leave their homes for extended periods, disrupting social structures and place-based identities. Understanding how displaced populations maintain and reconstruct attachment to place and community is therefore critical for informing international disaster response and recovery policies that aim not only to provide physical shelter but also to sustain social cohesion, community continuity, and psychosocial well-being.

The study aims were (1) to explore residents’ perceptions of the communities and places from which they were evacuated; and (2) to analyze the nature of emotional and symbolic attachment to place in the context of rupture and displacement.

Methods:
This qualitative study was based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 40 residents from three different evacuated types of communities in the Gaza Envelope: a city, a kibbutz, and a moshav. The diverse community types enable comparative analysis of how social structure and governance shape residents’ experiences of displacement and belonging.

Results:
Three central themes emerged. 1. activation of attachment systems under threat: evacuation triggered processes of renegotiating personal identity, community belonging, and sense of place. External threat often intensified residents’ emotional attachment to their community of origin and strengthened collective cohesion.
2. leadership as a dimension of place attachment: participants expressed a strong need for protective, stabilizing leadership. In the urban setting, the mayor emerged as a central attachment figure symbolizing safety and continuity. 3. variation across community types: residents of the kibbutz described high expectations of formal leadership accompanied by disappointment in institutional responses; the moshav demonstrated strong grassroots initiative; and the city exhibited greater reliance on municipal leadership structures.

Conclusions and implications:
Findings suggest that evacuation and recovery policies should recognize place and community attachment as critical components of individual and collective resilience. Policies should prioritize maintaining community integrity during evacuation whenever possible, strengthen local leadership as a stabilizing resource, and adapt social welfare and recovery services to the social and organizational characteristics of different community types (urban, collective, and rural). These insights contribute to the development of community-sensitive displacement and recovery policies in emergency contexts.