Agricultural Students Return to Border Orchards After Four-Month Evacuation

Four months after being evacuated from their school and the fields they worked every morning during Operation "Roar of the Lion," students from the "Adam veAdama" agricultural high school in Kibbutz Yiron returned on Tuesday to fruit orchards near their campus. The return became possible after the fourth ceasefire took effect, and the teenagers went back to thinning the heavy fruit that had been waiting for them.

Yiftach Gadot, a 10th grader from Kdum Arava near the Dead Sea, said, "It's crazy that four months have passed since the last time we worked here. It's so good to be back." He added, "Suddenly when we returned, all the longing was released, and so was our love for the place." He said the students felt the work was especially meaningful because it helped local farmers during the North's busiest season.

When the renewed fighting with Iran and Lebanon began in February, the boarding school students were urgently evacuated from Yiron. Since then, and until about a month ago, they were displaced and moved between different Adam veAdama agricultural schools around the country. Even when Home Front Command rules again allowed educational activity near the northern border, work in the orchards remained prohibited until the area was classified green on Tuesday.

Yizhar Barak, CEO of the Adam veAdama network in Yiron, which is part of The Good Fence organization and works with the "We Go Home, Returning to the Galilee" movement, said the farmers were happy to see the students back after a difficult period of uncertainty. He said they arrived at 6 a.m. and were badly needed. The school year is still not over for Adam veAdama, unlike other Israeli high schools, and three more weeks of farm work and team-building remain. Barak said next week the network's programs will move to the Upper Galilee and the Golan Heights. At the same time, construction continues on a new agricultural boarding school in Kibbutz Matzuva in the Mateh Asher Regional Council, on the Lebanese border, due to open on September 1. Adam Meir, the network's CEO, said the students' return was "far beyond agricultural work," calling it "a statement of commitment to the land, the farmers and practical Zionism."