Introduction: The prolonged evacuation of northern Israeli residents during the "Iron Swords" war created a rare context of chronic uncertainty, community disruption, and resource loss. Grounded in Hobfoll's Conservation of Resources (COR) theory and the construct of Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU), this study examined psychological distress among evacuees experiencing extended displacement and insecurity.


Purpose: The study aimed to test whether resource loss and resource gain mediate the relationship between IU and mental health (anxiety and depression), and whether perceived social support moderates this indirect relationship.


Method: A total of 148 evacuees (60.8% women, M = 42.07 years) completed measures of IU (IUS-12), perceived social support (MSPSS), resource loss and gain (COR-E), and anxiety and depression (SCL-ANX4/DEP6). Analyses were performed using SPSS 29 and PROCESS Models 4 and 14 (Hayes, 2022).


Results: IU correlated positively with both anxiety (r = .35, p < .001) and depression (r = .20, p = .007), confirming the main hypothesis. Mediation analyses showed that resource loss - but not gain - significantly mediated the link between IU and both anxiety (95% CI [0.01, 0.15]) and depression (95% CI [0.01, 0.16]). The moderating role of social support was not significant, indicating no conditional indirect effects. Exploratory findings revealed that participants who had not yet returned home reported greater social support but also higher anxiety (p < .05) while Kibbutz members reported higher loss and lower gain compared to non-Kibbutz members (F(1,145)=7.36, p = .007).


Conclusions: Results underscore resource loss as a central pathway linking intolerance of uncertainty to mental-health deterioration among the evacuees, supporting the COR theory's emphasis on the primacy of loss over gain. The non-significant moderation by social support and the significant disparity in resource loss experienced by Kibbutz members highlight the persistent and unique psychological vulnerability of this population during prolonged displacement