By NoCamels Team
With the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza now in its second week and a ceasefire apparently not on the horizon, tens of thousands of Israeli families in the south of the country are looking for safe haven from rocket fire from Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Joining the war effort, an Israeli tech company has created a new online platform to help these Israelis who have been displaced or evacuated find a safe place to stay.
Families in the north of the country are also leaving their homes as Lebanese-based terror group Hezbollah and Palestinian groups in Lebanon and Syria have also begun firing at Israeli civilian population across those borders.
The Israeli government has made some 50,000 hotel rooms available to house citizens who have been forced to leave their homes, but it is not enough to support them all.
The Safe Zone platform connects the Israelis who have to leave their homes to potential hosts willing to welcome them in their own homes or in other accommodations for free.
The app was the initiative of the CEO of the tech company, who wishes to remain anonymous, working alongside a group of volunteers.
“It is hard to miss the fact that there is a substantial number of families who currently do not have a home or have been evacuated,” the CEO told NoCamels.
“We saw that people were asking on social media if someone could host them. So we decided to do it in a more orderly fashion and so we built the platform, which has become the biggest platform in the country,” he says.
Users of the app can look for a place to stay according to criteria such as geographic location, the amount of people who have to be hosted, whether they can bring their pets and even the kind of bomb shelter available in the event of rocket fire.
“People can search by our many filters,” he says. “For example, whether they want to be hosted in a kosher home, the number of beds they need or if it is suitable for people with disabilities.”
He says that sometimes a family is still in the location and has freed up space for guests or has opened up the entire home for hosting.
The platform already has thousands of beds available for people who had to leave their homes, which the CEO calls “truly heartwarming.” He says that thousands of people have also used the platform already to find a safe place to stay.
The platform is staffed by a “kind of war room” of about 20 volunteers, he says. These volunteers review a potential match between hosts and guests who have already made contact through the platform, verify that the place is suitable, and ensure that the placement is confirmed.
Safe Zone has versions for desktop browser and for mobile, and the hosting is entirely free, according to the CEO. For now the app is only in Hebrew, although the desktop version can be translated into other languages by the browser.
The CEO says that some hotels, youth hostels and even municipalities have taken the initiative and are using the platform to promote accommodation for those in need.
He has also made a call for people with similar initiatives to contact the platform through the website in order to join forces and make all the efforts speedier and more effective.
“We will keep it going for as long as it is needed,” the CEO tells NoCamels. “It’s a national effort – we want to help.”
