TEL AVIV — Avraham Binnenfeld had grown so dismayed with Israeli politics that he was preparing to move abroad when Hamas’s brutal attack on southern Israel in October 2023 upended the country — and his plans. Instead, Binnenfeld said, he immediately mobilized for army reserve duty, spending sleepless nights worried about his two brothers in combat units and freezing his plans to emigrate.

But now, weeks after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire in the Gaza war, Binnenfeld is packing up to move.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have left the country over the past two years, with numbers spiking during the summer of 2023 — amid tumultuous protests against the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government and even before the Hamas attack and subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza. AI Icon

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, more than 80,000 of the country’s 10 million citizens had newly moved abroad in 2024 and similar numbers are expected this year.