Key parts of the city’s decision-making process remain concealed from the public.

City hall in Tel Aviv. (photo by Jesse Fox)

Mya, a 30 year old writer, lives near King George Street in central Tel Aviv. “It’s a narrow street, and it’s always backed up,” she says. “I work from home, and it’s difficult to concentrate with all the cars honking and buses and delivery trucks idling outside.”

“I think the city has started building a subway,” she adds. “That might help things, but I’m not really sure when it’s actually supposed to start running.”

However, despite her annoyance with the situation, Mya has never bothered to contact the municipality about it. “It just seems like a total waste of my time,” she explains, adding with a sigh that her trash cans keep disappearing too.

Theoretically, the body responsible for dealing with urban issues like transportation and garbage disposal is the city council. Consisting of democratically elected representatives of various communities, the council’s role is to govern the city. Yet, in Tel Aviv, this is not necessarily the case.

“The way that the mayor has engineered matters, the city council has no role at all in determining what the city does and how it does it,” says Dr. Noah Efron, a member of the city council since late 2008.

In his year and a half serving on the council, says Dr. Efron, a professor of history and philosophy at Bar Ilan University, “not a single policy or ordinance proposed by a city council member has been brought up for debate, much less approved.”

Dr. Efron represents Ir Likulanu (City for All), an ideological political movement that has had an adversarial relationship with Mayor Huldai since winning five seats on the council in the last local elections.

But it isn’t only members of the municipal opposition that would like to see a more democratic process in the city council. Says Reuven Ladianski, a city councilor and member of Mayor Ron Huldai’s coalition, “The fact that so many motions raised in the city council are simply transferred to the various municipal committees without discussion undermines the city council, to the point where it becomes almost irrelevant.”

The general public, for its part, no longer bothers to attend council meetings. This was not always the case. Following the 2008 elections, which swept a number of fresh faces onto the council, a rowdy and energetic crowd regularly packed the isles. Since then, however, the enthusiasm seems to have worn off. In 2010, city council meetings draw an audience of barely a dozen or so spectators, mostly local bloggers, journalists and political activists.

With a low hum of chatter emanating from both the council and the audience, meetings are conducted in technical and legal language that spectators often find bewildering. Council members frequently slip out for cigarette breaks, and even the mayor himself often gets up and simply walks out of the room, mainly when members of the opposition get up to speak.

A meeting of the Tel Aviv city council. (photo by Jesse Fox)

“Our job is to translate everything that happens there into something that the residents of the city can understand,” says Tamar Neugarten of Council Watch (mishmar hamoatza), an organization that monitors city council meetings. “That means separating the important from the unimportant, reading the documents and breaking through the legalese.”

Council Watch, a project of the Society for the Protection of Nature’s Tel Aviv Green Forum, recently opened a new blog, where it posts summaries of city council meetings and analysis of municipal decisions, including those of the city’s urban planning committee.

“These are important public bodies,” Neugarten insists, “and they should be transparent, along with dozens of other municipal committees that are not open to the public. But the truth is that the mayor manages everything behind closed doors. In Tel Aviv, the real policy-making is done by the Management Committee.”

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The Management Committee (va’adat hahanhala) is a body chaired by the mayor. Its members include deputy mayors, members of the coalition, and a handful of powerful senior officials. Although little is known about its workings, the committee is considered the real decision-making body in the municipality, sort of a shadow city council.

On its blog, Council Watch writes: “The Management Committee was set up based on the Municipalities Ordinance, which defines it this way: ‘The council may choose from among its members a permanent Management Committee to advise the mayor with regard to carrying out his duty, and serve as a committee in any matter that is not the authority of another committee, permanent or temporary.’”

In reality, claims Council Watch, the Management Committee has largely become the body that determines municipal policy de facto, effectively superseding the city council. However, unlike the city council, the Management Committee does not publish its discussions, and its meetings are closed to the public, opposition parties and the media.

“The Management Committee publishes nothing,” says Neugarten. “We do not know when it meets, what issues it discusses or who is invited to speak at its meetings.” In this way, she says, important decisions are made without transparency, and without the possibility to hold politicians accountable.

According to Dr. Yishai Blank, a law professor at Tel Aviv University, the tendency to hold important policy discussions in closed committees, instead of on the city council, reflects a will to weaken opposition parties, while deflecting public criticism.

“Municipal committees are supposed to be the local version of parliamentary committees, like those in the Knesset,” explains Dr. Blank. “Their job is to hold in-depth discussions and develop municipal bylaws, but also to make sure that the leadership carries out the will of the city council.”

The problem, he explains, is that city councils in Israel have chronically weak oppositions. “This is especially conspicuous in Tel Aviv, where for years there was no significant opposition in the city council, which allowed the mayor to function virtually unchecked.”

“Now that we are seeing the development of a new opposition,” he says, “it would be proper to invite members of the opposition to participate in Management Committee meetings as well, so that the body is reflective of the entire city council.”

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A hint as to the character of Management Committee discussions was provided earlier this year, in an article by Yoav Zeitun on internet site Ynet. The committee was reportedly discussing a proposal to grant residential parking permits to young people who live in Tel Aviv, but whose cars are registered in other cities (under their parents’ names).

Huldai, according to the article, opposed the idea, and began to raise his voice, yelling sarcastic and vulgar remarks that embarrassed committee members. He was eventually convinced to support the idea, however, and later apologized to the committee, explaining that he simply got carried away with enthusiasm.

The secrecy surrounding the Management Committee may also be concealing a lackadaisical organizational culture, in which meetings are held at irregular intervals and pressing issues wait in line for months before being brought up for discussion.

The Management Committee has been criticized as a sort of municipal “black hole,” into which motions from the city council and municipal committees tend to disappear for an extended period of time. Says Tamar Neugarten: “We know from comments by city council members that the Management Committee has a huge backlog of issues up for discussion, due to the fact that it doesn’t meet often enough.”

This creates a situation in which important decisions languish for months while waiting for the Management Committee’s approval. This is apparently what happened to a motion submitted by Pe’er Visner of the Green Party, which proposed granting children free entrance to the city’s museums.The proposal, submitted in July of 2008, was finally approved this month, nine months later, by the Management Committee.

Reuven Ladianski of Latet Lichyot is a member of the Management Committee, which he describes as a forum that discusses both motions and recommendations that rise from the city council and the municipal committees, and policy proposals that come down from the mayor and senior officials.

He confirms that there is a backlog, adding that during his first year in office, the Management Committee convened only about once every two months. Lately, however, he says that the body has begun meeting more frequently, approximately once every two or three weeks. The change is apparently due to pressure from the media and city council members.

“It makes no sense that the body that effectively runs the city should meet only once every few months,” says Ladianski. He also believes that the workings of the Management Committee should be made more transparent, even suggesting that its decisions be brought before the city council for discussion.

“Aside from certain issues which might be considered especially sensitive,” he says, “I don’t see a reason why the Management Committee’s discussions should not be published.”

Adds Efron: “If city council members were truly able to represent the people that voted them into office, the city would look very different.  There would be real efforts to keep housing affordable and air breathable.  Schools in the south of the city would get more money and resources.  The agenda of the city would look radically different, and better, than it does today.”

In response to claims raised in this article, the Tel Aviv Municipality issued the following response: “First, it should be emphasized that Management Committee meetings do not take place in the dark, as is implied, but are work meetings that are conducted in accordance with the law, with their discussions recorded and decisions publicized in an orderly manner. Any citizen, including city council members and members of the opposition, may review the minutes of the meetings.”

“In addition, it should be noted that, contrary to claims, a majority of coalition members are of the opinion that discussions in the Management Committee are much more effective and efficient than plenary discussions in the city council, especially regarding issues that require a long and thorough discussion that allows for input from professionals. Moreover, every operative decision that is approved in the Management Committee is eventually brought up for approval by the city council.”

“It should be understood that with the scope of activity required in a city like Tel Aviv – Jaffa, most decisions reach the city council after having been processed and discussed at the professional level and in the relevant committees.”

Regarding the Management Committee’s backlog, the Tel Aviv Municipality told Metro: “Every motion that is transferred to the Management Committee will be brought up for discussion. In the case that a backlog is created, additional meetings are scheduled, as directed by the mayor. It should also be noted that many times discussions are postponed on the request of those who submitted the motion.”

Update: According to Ha’aretz commentator Ze’ev Segal, Israel’s Justice Ministry is attempting to secure cabinet approval for the creation of a new unit that would enforce the concept of freedom of information vis a vis public authorities. Segal suggests that Israel follow the example of US President Obama, who on his second day in office, issued an “open government directive” ordering all government authorities to publish information online about their activities in an open and accessible way.

This article was originally published in the Jerusalem Post’s “Metro” magazine on April 30, 2010 (click here for a pdf of the print version, here for online version).

Tel Aviv’s affordable housing plan remains on paper, while rents continue to rise.

In August of 2008, the Tel Aviv Municipality announced with much fanfare that it had a “revolutionary plan” to build hundreds of affordable apartments for young people in the city.

One year and a global financial crisis later, apartment prices in the city continue their inexorable climb. Mayor Ron Huldai, who announced the plan just months before the local election, was re-elected, and the plan to build affordable housing vanished from the headlines.

Meanwhile young people, faced with rent hikes at the end of their leases, have increasingly decided to move out of the city center. Those who stubbornly insist on staying put have crowded into smaller, more dilapidated apartments. Others have come up with creative ways to save money, like converting their living rooms into an extra bedroom.

What happened to Tel Aviv’s revolutionary plan?

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One thing, at least, is clear: work on the plan is done. Earlier this year, in May, the municipality announced that the Municipal Commission for Affordable Housing, the panel of experts that put together the plan, had completed its work.

The commission, composed of external consultants from various disciplines alongside municipal officials, had come up with a list of recommendations that sketched out approximately what an affordable housing program in Tel Aviv would look like. Now it was up to the political echelon to decide what to do with those recommendations, which aspects to approve and how to proceed with the initiative.

To date, the commission’s work is still awaiting approval. Despite the city’s promise back in May that the plan would be presented to the mayor and deputy mayors “in the coming weeks,” that has yet to happen. The commission’s full report, which contains details on the various policy tools under discussion, has not been released to the public.

Dr. Emily Silverman, a researcher from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology’s Center for Urban and Regional Studies, headed the team of professional advisors to the Municipal Commission for Affordable Housing.

“Our main recommendation was that new residential projects built in the center and north of the city include affordable units for rent,” she says. “In exchange for these units, developers would be given extra building rights.”

Silverman continues: “Another recommendation was to push forward building plans in the south of the city and in Jaffa which have already been approved, but have yet to be built due to various regulatory obstacles. Pushing forward those plans would significantly increase the supply of housing.” Indeed, according to press releases put out by the municipality last August, two such projects, slated to contain some 1,650 new apartments, were to be pushed forward immediately.

In addition, a range of other policy tools were proposed, and the commission even suggested specific plots of land for pilot projects.

As to why the commission’s recommendations have yet to be approved, Silverman blames the delay on opposition to the plan among senior figures in the municipality.

The municipality, for its part, appears to be keeping its cards close to its chest for the moment. In response to an inquiry regarding the delay in approving the plan, the Tel Aviv Municipality told Metro:  “The subject of affordable housing is a strategic issue of great significance. Therefore it is important that the approach be allowed to mature in order to reach an operative state. The same goes for the full publication [of the commission’s recommendations].”

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The concept of affordable housing is not really new in Israel. From the early days of the state, government policy aimed to make decent, affordable housing accessible to the majority of the population. The Housing Ministry, which wielded tremendous power and influence, once built entire cities from scratch and provided housing for millions of new immigrants.

Over the years, however, as Israel’s centralized, socialist economy gave way to a privatized, capitalist one, the state effectively withdrew from the housing market and the Housing Ministry lost much of its power and resources. The government ceased building public housing apartments for low-income populations, and instead began selling off publicly-owned apartments. In cities like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where changes in the rental market threatened to make housing out of reach even for middle-income people, pressure began to grow for local governments to intervene.

Israeli municipalities, however, strapped for cash and constrained by antiquated legal structures (the law setting out the powers of local authorities in Israel is a leftover from the British Mandate), were hardly in a position to respond. The demand for a new sort of affordable urban housing grew out of this situation, led by young people struggling to remain in their urban neighborhoods and academics who pointed out that many cities around the world, including London, New York and Paris, had successfully implemented programs to regulate rents and build affordable housing units. In both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the issue played a key role in the elections for mayor in late 2008.

Initially, officials inside the Tel Aviv Municipality approached the idea with trepidation. Mayor Ron Huldai was quoted more than once criticizing the idea in the media.

Dr. Emily Silverman recalls that the project, ironically, grew out of an attempt by the municipality to justify not taking action. It was back in 2007, Silverman recalls, that calls from local politicians calling on the city to explore the issue of affordable housing were growing louder. In response, City Engineer Chezi Berkowitz asked the municipal planning team to draw up a professional opinion explaining why the municipality did not have the capability to create such a project, based on two previous assessments of the issue written by economists.

However, when members of the planning team consulted with Silverman, a known expert on the subject, she managed to convince them that it was possible. The planners in turn convinced the City Engineer, and thus the idea for the commission was born.

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Another irony is this: even if the plan is eventually approved and implemented, it probably won’t lower rents across the board. A certain number of people, it’s unclear how many, would be eligible for cheaper apartments, but the steps that the municipality is currently considering are not expected to have a significant impact on the greater housing market.

Gil Gan-Mor is a human rights lawyer at The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and a leading advocate of housing rights and affordable housing. ACRI is part of the Coalition for the Advancement of Affordable Housing in Israel, which also includes The Association for Distributive Justice, Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights, and research institutes from Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa and the Technion. The coalition has started a Hebrew-language blog as a platform for public discussion on the issue and is working on passing an affordable housing law in the Knesset.

Gan-Mor says he supports the move to create affordable housing in Tel Aviv, but believes that the city’s plan in its current form leaves much to be desired.

“The municipality could decide to set up a rent control mechanism that would allow landlords to raise rents incrementally, according to a set percentage every year,” says Gan-Mor. “Today, landlords take advantage of a lack of supply to hike rents substantially, and if a renter doesn’t agree to this, he simply has to look elsewhere.”

Dr. Emily Silverman admits that building a large number of affordable apartments for a specific group would probably not have a significant effect on the general rental market. “Affordable housing programs don’t usually result in a general lowering of prices, except for the target population,” she says.

However, she adds, speeding up construction of already-approved plans in order to increase supply (which was recommended by the commission) could theoretically lower rents across the city – it’s a matter of supply and demand. Silverman agrees that rent control mechanisms could also potentially benefit all of the city’s renters.

The problem, says Gan-Mor, is that regulatory tools, like rent control, which have been implemented successfully in many places in the world are not even being discussed – at least not according to the information that the municipality has made public. Says Gan-Mor: “The city’s method of releasing information through periodic press releases does not allow for a proper public discussion of the issue.”

He also notes that the municipality is considering making army service a condition for eligibility for affordable housing, a move which would effectively exclude the Arab community of Jaffa from the program.

Questions have also been raised regarding the project’s choice of target population. The commission’s mandate was to find affordable solutions for households with monthly incomes of between NIS 12,000-13,000. Last year, Dr. Emily Silverman described the target group to Metro as “moderate-income, socially-mobile young professionals.” For this population, the city would offer rents of around NIS 2,800.

However, as Gan-Mor points out, the plan provides no solutions for low-income residents of the city.

The municipality admits that this is the case, but argues that it does not have the resources to provide housing assistance to a low-income population. The Tel Aviv Municipality told Metro: “Public housing, everywhere in the world and in Israel as well, is the responsibility of the government, and not the responsibility of the local authority. The municipality does not have the capability to supply public housing like the government, without any means or appropriate tools. Therefore, the recommendations define the target population as an intermediate population, which is able to pay, but unable to afford to live in the city at market rates.”

To Gan-Mor, the city’s refusal to provide housing aid to low-income families is unacceptable. “The municipality’s plan states that it trusts the government to provide housing assistance for people in the lower income deciles,” he says. “The problem with this is that the State has scaled back its public housing programs in recent years. The waiting period for public housing in the center of the country can be over ten years, and rental subsidies provided by the government are way too low to cover rents in the Tel Aviv area. The inevitable result is that people with low incomes are forced to leave the city.”

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Not everyone, of course, is convinced of the merits of affordable housing. A number of conservative economists have publicly expressed their doubts about the plan. One of them is Dr. Yair Duchin, a professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem who made headlines last month when he called the idea of providing affordable housing in Tel Aviv “idiotic.”

Though he admits that, from a social perspective, there may be a problem in Tel Aviv’s housing market, Duchin says he prefers to look at the larger picture. The country’s periphery, he says, is emptying out. “Youth from all over Israel, including graduates of universities in Haifa and Be’er Sheva, are streaming to Tel Aviv. Affordable housing will only serve to attract more of them.”

“Of course the mayor of Tel Aviv wants to attract a young, strong, productive population. That’s perfectly legitimate. But there are also national goals. I think that the country’s limited resources should not be invested in those who want to live in central Tel Aviv.”

As for Tel Aviv’s young residents, Duchin suggests that they move out of the city, to Bat Yam, Holon or Petach Tikvah. If enough people move out of central Tel Aviv, he says, perhaps market forces alone will be enough to lower rents.

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For Prof. Noah Efron, a city council member from opposition party City for All (Ir Likulanu), it’s pretty clear why the plan is not going anywhere. “Nobody within the municipality wants to advance it, so it’s simply not being advanced,” he says.

While Efron thinks that the commission’s plan is insufficient, he admits that “it’s excellent for what it is,” and should be implemented right away. Noting that City for All has a much more extensive affordable housing plan of its own, Efron says he believes that the municipality’s plan has the potential to establish a number of important principles.

“The implementation of mixed housing, building for the rental market, dealing with apartment sizes – talking about these issues, even on a small scale, can begin to change the discussion about housing in the city and create important precedents, making it easier for the city’s planning committees to insist that developers build projects that are mixed, and not just for the rich or super-rich.”

To a limited extent, that has already begun to happen. Even without an official stamp on the commission’s plan, city planning committees have begun to use the momentum created by its work to require developers to integrate affordable housing units into new projects.

This is what happened, for example, in discussions regarding the former site of the city’s wholesale market. An enormous real estate project is planned for the 60-dunam site, which sits partially on city-owned land near Carlibach Street. When representatives from several local political parties insisted that the plan include an element of affordable housing, the developer agreed to add 60 small, affordable rental units.

“In the scheme of things,” says Efron, “it’s a drop in the bucket. But it’s also a sign that, if we continue to be vigilant in the municipal committees and bring enough public pressure to bear, we can begin this process, eventually making it into the norm. The municipality has publicly committed to doing this, now we have to push it to honor its commitments.”

This article was originally published in The Jerusalem Post’s “Metro” supplement on Sept. 11, 2009 (click here for a pdf of the original print version).

This month, Tel Aviv’s derelict Old Central Bus Station became history. The much-maligned New Central Bus Station may soon follow suit, while a New New Central Bus Station is still in the planning stages.

“I used to get off at the old bus station, and to me it was like another country…” goes the Tipex song (in free translation). Above: Tel Aviv’s Old Central Bus Station demolished. (Photo by Moran Beth Halachmi, via Flickr.)

It sometimes seems to me that there must be some kind of curse on all things transportation in Tel Aviv. The traffic jams are unbearable, the drivers obnoxious, the buses lousy and the bus station even lousier. And who even knows if the light rail/subway project will ever actually happen…

Recently, however, things have started to happen in Neveh Sha’anan, where the old and new bus stations lie on opposite sides of a busy pedestrian mall.

The old bus station, more or less abandoned (except for a couple of businesses and perhaps the occasional junkie) since the early 1990’s, was demolished last week. After the Egged bus company finally vacated the place, the city decided to redevelop it. The first new tenant will be the Minshar art school, which will build a brand new building on the site. Other educational institutions are expected to follow, and in the meantime the rest of the plot will be transformed into a temporary park.

Meanwhile, local newspapers have been abuzz lately with rumors that the New Central Bus Station, an almost universally detested structure credited with destroying the entire surrounding neighborhood, may soon be vacated as well. Billed as the world’s biggest bus station, the place has never functioned well, is almost impossible to navigate and much of its commercial space sits unused.

Bus companies Egged and Dan are reportedly fed up with the place, and are looking to transfer their activities elsewhere when their contracts with the station’s owners expire in a couple of years. The Ministry of Transportation and the Tel Aviv Municipality are said to support the move, according to local newspaper Ha’ir.

According to Ha’ir, a new transportation terminal is likely to be built at the Holon Interchange, south of the existing station. The current bus station, recently aquired by new owners, may be reincarnated as something different altogether, possibly a high-rise complex. Or, the new owners might be able to convince the bus companies to stay put. In either case, any change in the status quo is likely to take years to pan out.

But if a New New Central Bus Station is in the cards for Tel Aviv, let’s hope that this time they do it right.

Originally published at GreenProphet.com on August 9 2009.

After a difficult summer, intense public pressure convinced Israel’s government to partially suspend its anti-foreigner crackdown.

African asylum seekers participating in a “human chain” demonstration Saturday evening in Tel Aviv. Photo by Keren Manor, courtesy of Activestills.org.

July was not an easy month for African asylum seekers and migrant foreign workers living in Israel.

During the peak of the hot, humid Tel Aviv summer, foreigners living here were forced to hide from an aggressive manhunt conducted in broad daylight on the city streets. However, in response to an intense public backlash, the government has decided to back down on some of its anti-foreigner policies.

As I wrote here last week, July saw the inauguration of a new Interior Ministry unit, called “Oz,” with a mandate to arrest and imprison “illegals” – meaning migrant workers without a valid visa, the children of these workers, Palestinians living illegally inside the Green Line and African asylum seekers living in the center of the country.

The latter are refugees from disaster zones such as Darfur, South Sudan and Eritrea who seek temporary asylum in Israel. An Interior Ministry policy dating back to early 2008 (which until July was only loosely enforced) prohibits them from living in Greater Tel Aviv.

Beginning July 1^st, Oz’s inspectors, accompanied by police, began descending daily on neighborhoods known to be populated by foreigners, arresting people wholesale. Refugees from Africa were also arrested, and ordered to leave Tel Aviv for the country’s periphery. Many of them did, leaving behind jobs, apartments and community.

The move, however, provoked a huge public outcry. Protests were organized, a media campaign was launched, and a handful of dedicated activists even took it upon themselves to conduct anti-expulsion patrols, keeping an eye on Oz’s movements and warning potential detainees and other activists ahead of raids.

(Barely a day went by last month when I didn’t receive a text message from these volunteers saying something along the lines of: “Arrests at the corner of X and Y Streets, please come help if you are in the area.”)

Adding to the public pressure against the expulsion from Tel Aviv, mayors and residents of the outlying towns that were forced to absorb the refugees often reacted to them with undisguised hostility. Meanwhile, the Tel Aviv Municipality, perhaps embarrassed by reports that it had pressured the government to expel the refugees, softened its stance on the issue.

The Jerusalem Municipality, for its part, publicly stated that Oz inspectors were not welcome in the Holy City.

Then, to the surprise and relief of many, Interior Minister Eli Yishai announced late last week that his ministry was suspending restrictions on refugees’ freedom of movement, and that they would be allowed to return to Tel Aviv. At the same time, he announced, the next phase of the operation, in which migrant worker families with young children would also become candidates for immediate expulsion, would be put off for at least three months.

In the meantime, the government will finally sit down and hammer out a coherent policy regarding non-citizen populations living in the country. And a new idea is now making the rounds: the construction of another wall, this time along Israel’s desert border with Egypt.

Yishai made the announcement on Tisha B’av, a somber Jewish fast day which commemorates a series of historical disasters (including more than a few expulsions) that befell the Jewish people. Yishai, a religious Jew, must have been aware of the irony.

The activist community, emboldened by the victory, vowed to keep up the pressure. Following the announcement, a demonstration was held demanding the release of several hundred African refugees still being held in prison for violating the new-defunct policy. On Saturday evening, thousands of Israelis, Africans and migrant workers formed a human chain around a south Tel Aviv park, calling for a law against expelling children from the country.

That same night, Oz hit the streets with a vengeance. Once again, activists reported violent arrests and inspectors breaking down doors in neighborhoods populated by foreign workers. While African refugees and families with children had won a reprieve, for now anyway, “illegal” migrant workers continued to be forcefully deported.

Meanwhile, for Africans seeking asylum in Israel, the daily struggle continues. Thus far, at least, there hasn’t been a mass return to Tel Aviv, and thousands now find themselves living outside of the center, with new landlords and new neighbors – but not necessarily with new jobs to pay the bills.

Originally published at Mondoweiss on August 3, 2009.

Photo by Oren Ziv, courtesy of Activestills.org.

This past weekend, a couple friends and I helped four Sudanese families move out of Tel Aviv. We rented a van (which of course broke down mid-move), loaded up their possessions along with some furniture donated by several kind people, and set off for Nazareth, Hadera and Ashdod – distant cities where they hope to set up new homes. The families, refugees from conflict zones in Darfur and South Sudan, were grateful to us for our help. Leaving Tel Aviv was not their choice – as of the beginning of July, they are no longer allowed to live and work in Israel’s largest urban area.

Refugees everywhere tend to concentrate themselves on the fringes of big cities. Here, too, most of African refugee community, which began arriving here after Egyptian police attacked and killed Sudanese refugees protesting in Cairo in late 2005, took up residence in Tel Aviv’s poorer southern neighborhoods.

A particularly large wave of refugees arrived in Tel Aviv during the winter of 2008. During that time, it became common to see people sleeping outside in public parks or cramped into overcrowded shelters. Noticing the obvious distress of these newcomers to our city, several friends and I set up a voluntary organization to provide them with food, English and Hebrew lessons, children’s activities and whatever other services we could muster on a shoestring budget and with the help of a handful of volunteers.

Around the same time, the Israeli government, which also caught wind of what was going on, decided to restrict African asylum seekers from living inside Greater Tel Aviv (illegally, according to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees). This policy still applies to the vast majority of the almost 20,000 refugees from Sudan, Eritrea and other countries currently living in Israel.

Apparently, the policy stemmed from a combination of NIMBY-ism on the part of the Tel Aviv Municipality, economic nationalism (“they are taking jobs from Israelis”) and the government’s fear that, if treated well, the refugees would tell all of their friends and family to come to Israel as well. The policy, called Hadera-Gedera after the two cities that delineate the edges of Metropolitan Tel Aviv, recalls (to my mind, anyway) the Pale of Settlement, Imperial Russia’s attempt to physically remove the Jews from the mainstream of Russian society.

While a small minority have been officially recognized as refugees, and thus granted ID cards and the right to work legally, the rest have been labeled by government officials as “refugee work immigrants” and “illegal infiltrators from enemy countries,” and told the leave the center of the country.

Until recently, the Hadera-Gedera policy was only loosely enforced. However, July 1st marked the inauguration of a new unit at the Population Administration, called “Oz,” charged with arresting and expelling all “illegal” foreign workers and asylum seekers. Whether the new unit’s appearance has anything to do with the rise of the nationalist far-right in Israel is unclear.

In any case, since then they have been conducting daily manhunts on the streets of Tel Aviv, targeting anyone with a foreign appearance. After they arrested hundreds of African refugees and ordered them to leave the city, the refugees got the message, and thus began the latest in a long series of displacements that this community has suffered.

The tragedy of it all is that the refugee community was finally beginning to find some stability and normalcy in Tel Aviv. Here, their kids studied in Israeli schools, they found jobs, free health clinics and aid organizations. How they will find jobs to pay their rents outside of the center of the country, where work is scarce, I do not know.

Needless to say, this is a community of sharp, resilient and warm people fleeing unimaginable circumstances. Many, many people in Tel Aviv reacted to their arrival with an outpouring of hospitality and generosity. There are more than a few people in Tel Aviv for whom the decision to expel them from the city represents the crossing of a red line – and it takes a lot for people to really take up such a cause in a country where every week seems to bring some new scandal or political upheaval.

The government, however, has hardened its heart toward these uninvited guests. Passed around like a human hot potato, the African community has not always been made to feel welcome. Almost every refugee that I have met spent the first several months of his or her stay in an Israeli prison, and, for most, the only official document they carry is still their “conditional release” from incarceration.

The government is promoting a new law which would criminalize the refugees, threatening them and those that assist them with long jail terms. According to the bill, my friends and I, by choosing to spend our weekend helping refugee families move, could find ourselves sentenced to 20 years in jail.

For the sake of comparison, Avraham Hirshson, Israel’s former Finance Minister who was found guilty of stealing millions from a workers’ federation, got only five and a half years in jail.

Like most Israelis, I come from a family that was forced to flee its home more than once. Almost everyone in this land, whether Jew or Palestinian, knows what it is like to be a refugee. If anyone should have compassion for these unfortunate people, it is us.

Originally published at Mondoweiss on July 26 2009.

A dramatic plan that would change the face of Tel Aviv is likely to be approved, despite the adamant opposition of residents and charges of sloppy and unprofessional planning.

The future of Neveh Tzedek? A map, prepared by the residents’ committee, illustrating future construction plans. (Image via: www.nevetzedek.org)

The Tel Aviv City Council held a meeting yesterday to discuss a handful of building plans that, if approved, would effectively transform some of the city’s most historic areas beyond recognition.

The discussion, which some council members described as “fateful” and “dramatic,” drew a large number of city residents eager to have a say in the planning of their neighborhoods. The meeting, however, was conducted in a manner that seemed designed to exclude the public, and avoided discussion of the plans’ repercussions for the city’s future development.

The plans under discussion included the widening of Yitzchak Elchanan Street, north of Neveh Tzedek, as well as the new Mesila Highway, south of the neighborhood. Both are plans for new traffic arteries, lined with skyscrapers, that together would form a ring of traffic and tall buildings around Neveh Tzedek, one of Tel Aviv’s oldest and most charming (and richest) neighborhoods.

When connected with the Shlavim Highway, another skyscraper-lined expressway being promoted by the city, the roads would create a major new traffic artery, channelling cars from the Holon Interchange south of the city to the office towers along Rothschild Boulevard.

The plans were drawn up after a higher planning committee ordered Tel Aviv to formulate a comprehensive planning document, instead of haphazardly promoting a collection of individual building plans and roads, as it had done until then. The city recently presented and approved the comprehensive plan, resulting in several appeals being submitted by city council members.

The day got off to a bad start when dozens of residents were refused entry into the meeting. Instead of being held in the usual city council hall, the discussion took place in a small meeting room on the 12th floor of the municipality building, with officials claiming there was not enough space to let everyone in. The residents did eventually manage to get in, though, and made sure to make their presence felt, jeering the plan’s proponents and applauding when some council members spoke out against them.

Left: Dozens of angry residents were initially denied entry into the meeting, on the grounds that there was not enough space for the public.

Opponents of the plans claimed that they would necessitate the destruction of two schools near Neveh Tzedek, form a “separation wall” of concrete buildings between south neighborhoods instead of connecting them and ruin the character of neighborhoods slated for preservation. The Mesila Highway, a three-story right-of-way (a subway line and an underground highway below street level, with a park on surface) was criticized as unrealistic and unlikely to ever actually take shape.

The plans themselves, which were neither printed nor submitted for public review, were only presented halfway through the meeting, on the request of a council member. Several neighborhood representatives criticized them as being superficial, unprofessional and hastily put together.

The documents contained no serious discussion, for example, of the effects that the tall buildings would have on breezes, or of where their shadows would fall. Apparently, no one thought about where all of the new residents’ children would go to school, or what effect their cars would have on the already traffic-clogged area. Some council members pointed out that the new residential buildings, in all likelihood populated largely by foreign residents who live outside Tel Aviv, would add little to the fabric of life in that part of the city.

After all sides’ claims were presented, Deputy Mayor Doron Sapir, who chaired the meeting, declared a closed discussion and asked all observers to leave.

Only after the meeting ended did it become clear that someone had actually drawn up an alternative plan, in which the thousands of housing units proposed by the city would be built in low-rise buildings instead of skyscrapers. No one had mentioned this alternative during the meeting itself, although neighborhood representatives had expressed their clear preference for such an alternative.

In the end, the plans will probably be approved. That’s the way it is in Tel Aviv – Mayor Ron Huldai demands strict discipline from members of his coalition, and he knows that he can easily find the votes to pass any proposal he likes. The fact that so many major new roads (accompanied, of course, by parking lots, giant intersections, gas stations, etc.) are being approved in southern Tel Aviv speaks volumes about the city’s planning policy. Increasingly, the mythical light rail, which is still not even close to implementation, is looking like a smoke screen.

The bottom line is that the city backed itself into a corner. By encouraging developers to buy up large plots of land in an area of the city that it thought no one cared about, city planners found themselves with a series of plans for tall buildings in an area where no other building rises above four stories. By promoting skyscrapers around Neveh Tzedek, the city found itself antagonizing a hornet’s nest of wealthy and well-connected citizens. And by excluding opinionated residents from most of the planning process, the city found itself with an uncompromising front of opposition that no longer believes a single word uttered by its officials.

While the future of the area remains unclear, there is still reason for optimism. Politicians are slow learners, preferring a bitter fight to the end over an agreed-upon compromise. However, a line in the sand has been drawn by residents and activists in the city, and a new kind of politics is slowly taking shape in the city.

Originally published at GreenProphet.com.

A few days after T and S, refugees from South Sudan, had their first daughter, they were forced to leave Tel Aviv. By Florentine Lempp.

If I was the kind of person that had heroes, T. would be one of them. At the age of 23, she has just had her third child, the first girl after two boys. She’s a refugee from South Sudan who lived in Egypt for a while, until there too life became unbearable.

Almost two years ago, she walked across the border from Sinai into Israel, together with her husband S., in the search of a better life for their children. They carried the boys through the night, fearful of being caught by Egyptian soldiers or abandoned by the Bedouin smugglers to whom they had paid a large sum of money to guarantee their safe crossing.

They are devout Christians. According to S., they prayed, and their prayers were answered. They crossed the border unharmed and finally found their way to Tel Aviv. The rent here is outrageous, but what can you do – if you don’t take the apartment right away, another refugee will come, who might be willing to pay even more in order not to have to sleep in the park.

When I first met T., she was already four months pregnant. She had quit working in a kindergarten for children of refugees and foreign workers and was now only taking care of her own two kids – the quiet but very affectionate five year old, and the cute but hot-tempered little one, whom they lovingly call “Balagan (chaos) Boy”. I’ve never seen her sad, or worried, or even exhausted in light of what she has been through. When a friend got sick, when a neighbor had a child, she was always there to help.

On a very hot June afternoon, when the little electric fan in the apartment was unable to provide any relief from the heat, we took the two kids to the park. With a belly as big and as round as a basketball, about a week before she would give birth, we were sitting near the playground in Lewinsky Park, watching the boys running and climbing, ignoring the comatose homeless man sleeping under the slides and the used needles in the grass. We talked about the immigration police and the expected raids, their orders to expel those who don’t have a valid visa.

T., like so many Sudanese refugees, holds only a “conditional release” from prison, but it doesn’t allow her to live in Tel Aviv – or, for that matter, anywhere between Hadera and Gedera. It also does not allow her, or her husband, to work legally in order to support themselves. But someone has to pay for the apartment and for food.

The reason why the authorities don’t want the refugees to live in Tel Aviv is because, so they argue, the refugees take jobs and apartments that would otherwise go to Israelis. But whoever has paid attention to the kinds of jobs that refugees are doing, will see that it has been decades since those have been done by Israelis. Dishwashing (and other low-wage jobs in restaurants), cleaning and construction work have long been the domain of Palestinian laborers. Ever since the Second Intifada, the void of Palestinian laborers has been filled by refugees and foreign workers.

As for the apartments, I doubt that the shortage of affordable apartments would be solved by removing the refugees from the houses around the two bus stations, an area which is very unlikely to undergo the same process of gentrification that we have seen in other quarters of South Tel Aviv.

T. likes Tel Aviv. There is work here, and the landlords in the south of the city are used to renting their apartments to refugees (even though they demand exorbitant prices). The UN offices are here, and it is not too far from the Population and Migration Authority’s offices in Lod. Here, there are several aid organizations that support refugees and there is a free clinic in nearby Jaffa. But most of all, there is a community of refugees from South Sudan here who know and help each other. If they had to move to the periphery, they would lose their support system.

Two weeks later: the new baby was born, and S. was arrested shortly thereafter by the immigration police. They let him go, under the condition that he and his family leave Tel Aviv within the next six days. He went to Hadera to look for an apartment and a job, while T. stayed home with the kids, partly because she’s worried about the immigration police and partly because it’s too much of a hassle to leave the house with all three of them to look after.

He was not successful. Landlords and employers alike are wary of the “conditional release” that makes him look like an ex-convict. But he’s not giving up.

Neither T. nor her husband is expecting any favors or welfare from the state, all they want is safety for a while, for themselves and for their children, until they can go back to South Sudan. While in Israel, all they want is the chance to support themselves, to work for their living, like everybody else. In the meantime, despite the dire situation, and against all odds, they are optimistic that God will help.

The little baby girl is called “Joyce”.

Florentine Lempp is a political scientist, and works as a program coordinator for German study tours to Israel. She has spent much of the past year volunteering on behalf of the African refugee community living in Tel Aviv.

Published on Haaretz.com on July 27, 2009.

This week, Israel began arresting foreign workers and asylum seekers. A photo essay.

“Do not oppress the stranger because you think he has no one to defend him; remember how Pharaoh learned that God defends the stranger.” Nahmanides (Ramban)

They told us it was coming, and they weren’t kidding.

This week, Israel’s new Population, Immigration and Border Authority burst into south Tel Aviv, accompanied by a fleet of buses and soldiers from the Border Police. Their orders, apparently, were to arrest everyone: those with papers and those without, foreign workers and asylum seekers, married men and single mothers.

The Authority is headed by Yaakov Ganot, a veteran of the police, Border Police and Prison Service. Ganot has been criticized by the State Comptroller and even the Supreme Court, which found that “his behavior is not suitable to a policeman and can hurt the reputation of the police.” Under Ganot’s leadership, the Immigration Administration was criticized in the past for infringing upon the human rights of foreign workers.

On July 1st, the first day of the new unit’s existence, it carried out its first wave of arrests. According to Haaretz, several hundred people were detained. Two thirds of them were released by nightfall.

Since then the raids have continued. The neighborhood of Neveh Sha’anan, which over the years has become a lively local version of Chinatown, with adults and children of multiple nationalities and ethnicities living side by side, is no longer a safe zone for Tel Aviv’s non-Jewish residents.

While foreign workers face the very real possibility of deportation, along with their children (who were in many cases born in Israel), African refugees cannot be legally returned to their homelands. Instead, the government seeks to expel them from the center of the country, to the periphery – north of Hadera and south of Gedera. While the official logic behind this policy is not clear (at least not to me, I have yet to hear a coherent official justification for it), it has been in effect for some time now. Only now, it is being strongly enforced.

After living through wars, genocide and oppression, these refugees have found some measure of stability in Tel Aviv, and have begun to rebuild their lives here. Now, however, the government has undermined that stability, and many refugees are exploring their options outside of Tel Aviv.

This week, one of the leaders of the South Sudanese community was detained. The cops, who examined his papers and saw that he is an asylum seeker, released him. But they left him with a warning. You have a week to leave Tel Aviv, they told him. Next time we find you here, you will be arrested and imprisoned.

This man, whose wife has just had a baby, works to support his family. For a while, he also ran a community center for South Sudanese. Although he closed it down not too long ago, he had planned on reopening it in a more central location. A devout Christian, he was also thinking about studying for the priesthood in Nazareth. This week, after being ordered to leave the city, he traveled up to Hadera to look for an apartment there.

In tolerant and pluralistic Tel Aviv, African refugees have built communities. Here they have access to jobs, housing, medical care and organizations that provide them with aid and services. Outside of the center, they are isolated, with no one to defend their rights. In the country’s periphery, they are cheap labor, easily exploited and not always made to feel welcome.

In the wake of previous raids, African refugees have fled to places like Eilat, where they found plentiful employment in that city’s hotels and tourism industry. Local politicians there, however, decided that the refugees were “a burden and a nuisance,” eventually convincing the Interior Ministry to expel them from Eilat (despite the fact that Eilat’s hoteliers lobbied against their expulsion). Many eventually returned to Tel Aviv to once again start over from scratch.

Refugees and foreign workers are human beings, and they have human rights. If the Interior Ministry has a good reason why refugees should not live in the center of the country, let it state it publicly. If not, it should stop playing with the fates of thousands of people as if their lives were a game of backgammon.

This expulsion, like previous ones, will only serve to disrupt people’s lives even more – people who have already been through unimaginable situations and suffer from serious post-traumatic stress. As a nation of refugees itself, Israel can and must demand a more ethical and humane policy from its government. Israeli citizens, American Jews and the various aid and advocacy organizations have a responsibility to tell the government what it doesn’t want to hear – that we will not let it mistreat refugees and victims of persecution and genocide.

Photos by Nir Landau, Keren Manor & Oren Ziv, courtesy of Activestills.org.

See also:

Refugees Keep Out!

Help Us Help Ourselves – An Open Letter to Israel from a Darfuri Refugee

African Refugees in Tel Aviv (Photo Essay)

Israel’s new point man on refugee issues spouts some pretty shocking opinions in an interview with Haaretz.

Handwritten poster hanging in a Darfuri refugee shelter in Tel Aviv (photo by Daniel Cherrin).

For about a year and a half now, I have been volunteering with the African refugee community in Tel Aviv. I’ve heard some of their stories, formed several friendships and met some incredibly inspiring and resilient people along the way.

Although in many ways the community is much better off now than it was a year or so ago, African refugees continue to face adversity and prejudice in Israel. While gradually emerging from their own personal traumas, and their collective culture shock, the refugees have met with a strange sort of hospitality on behalf of the Israeli government.

For several weeks, rumors have been circulating that the government is gearing up for a large-scale operation to arrest and expel “illegal” foreigners, including foreign workers, refugees and asylum seekers. Recently, a bill was overwhelmingly approved by the Knesset which would criminalize the refugees (Hebrew link to the text of the bill) and those who assist them.

Last week, Haaretz’s Nurit Wurgaft published an extensive interview with Yaakov Ganot, head of the Population Administration in the Interior Ministry, who agreed to shed some light on the subject (read it in English here and in Hebrew here).

Ganot, the architect of the government’s “Hadera-Gedera” policy (which prohibits refugees and asylum seekers from living and working in the center of the country) is in charge of a newly-formed government body, the Population, Immigration and Border Authority. Among other things, the authority will take over the issue of refugees and asylum seekers in Israel, and is set to begin operating July 1st.

I have to admit that I was so shocked after reading this article for the first time that I had to read it again. It wasn’t any easier to digest on the second reading.

The good news for people who care about human rights is that Ganot has no intention of forcibly deporting the 20,000 or so African refugees currently living in Israel. The bad news is that he is not inclined to do them any favors either, and apparently views them as lawbreakers by default: “The kind of thing you find nowadays in Tel Aviv, where illegal workers and infiltrators can just go about freely, this has to stop.”

In a display of circular logic that only an authentic Israeli bureaucrat could produce, Ganot explains that the refugees’ poverty is bad for Israel’s image: “They send the money home, live in horribly crowded conditions, and also give Israel a bad name, because they live in such poor conditions. A hundred people in a moldy shelter, 20 people in one apartment.” If Ganot’s new authority has any concrete plans to improve their living conditions or reduce the crowding in their apartments, he doesn’t mention them.

Ganot admits that the refugees are exploited by employers because they are illegal. The reason they are “illegal” is that they are not officially recognized by the government as refugees. Still, Ganot doesn’t understand what the big deal is: “We don’t send them back, so why do they need that official recognition right now?”

“They’re not going to be lovers of Israel because they’re hunted,”he adds. This is one of the myths put forward by the government – that these are mostly Arabic-speaking Muslims from enemy nations, and they are no great friends of ours. Many will also hint, as Ganot does, that there are security issues at stake.

From my personal experience, the opposite is usually true. While most do speak Arabic, and a great many are Muslims, the refugee community is probably among the more patriotic groups in the country. While I can’t speak for all, the refugees that I know are eternally grateful to Israel and to the Jewish people. They study Hebrew, hang the Israeli flag and some even wish to enlist in the army.

To write off the entire community as “not lovers of Israel” is not only an affront to the refugees, it is also short-sighted. Imagine what will happen when these young Darfuri and South Sudanese men return to their country speaking Hebrew and grateful to Israel for the asylum that they were granted here. What better allies could Israel ask for in a hostile state like Sudan? That officials like Ganot cannot grasp this testifies to an unfortunate lack of imagination.

In an apparent contradiction, Ganot admits that the refugees are just “scraping by,” but then goes on to criticize them for making “pretty good money,” which he says they send out of the country to their relatives: “When a Sudanese arrives here and goes to work cleaning houses, he makes pretty good money. He doesn’t pay income tax, or health tax. They live 20 people to a room. That’s [an income of] two thousand dollars.”

And, of course, Ganot cannot resist delving into meaningless and irrelevant demographic calculations: “We’ve reached a situation in which 1,680 people arrived in one month alone, when our entire aliya [Jewish immigration to Israel] is 14,000 people per year.”

He also can’t help but indulge in ignorant and racist stereotypes: “There are people who defecate in the waiting rooms, who attack and bite.”

In Ganot’s world, this is a new kind of phenomenon, which he calls “refugee foreign workers” – here by choice, not for lack of choice: “In our examinations, I would say that 99.9 percent of them are here for work. They’re not asylum seekers, they are not at any risk.”

On the South Sudanese: “Nothing is happening in southern Sudan. They didn’t come to us from Sudan. They come from Egypt, where they heard there’s a chance to make money in Israel.”

On the Eritreans: “The Eritrean ambassador met with me and he said, ‘Tell me, sir: If you had army deserters, what would you do with them?’ I said, ‘I’d put them in jail.’ He said, ‘They’re deserters. It’s not right that instead of returning them to Eritrea, you keep them here.’”

He neglects to mention that, unlike Israel, Eritrea is a cruel dictatorship that forcibly conscripts its young men in order to fight frequent and superfluous wars. The US views it as a “rogue state.” Ganot, apparently, has found a common language with its officials, who last year called on Israel to repatriate Eritrean “army deserters” to their homeland. Eritreans in Israel, for their part, are convinced that returning to their homeland would mean certain death at the hands of the regime.

And, as if his comments were not sufficiently insulting, Ganot even mocks the suffering of the refugees: “They’re upset about one thing only: That they can’t be in Tel Aviv, make a lot of money to send home, sit here and cry.”

The fact that the Israeli government has chosen to appoint someone who openly makes statements like these to a position where he is responsible for the fates of some 20,000 African refugees is revealing. As opposed to the (mostly volunteer) organizations that approach the refugee community from a position of compassion, respect and human solidarity, the government is determined to deal with the refugees as an unwanted nuisance – banishing them to the margins of society and issuing self-fulfilling declarations describing them as hostile infiltrators and enemies of Israel.

One can’t help but wonder if the politicians and government bureaucrats have already forgotten that they too, along with the entire Jewish people,  were once a nation of refugees, and that in their own interminable period in exile there were also those that chose to accomodate them, and those that chose to persecute them.

Postscript: In her July 1st op-ed in Haaretz, Avirama Golan offers an interesting explanation of the phenomenon described above. In her view, the Interior Ministry’s decision to target non-Jewish foreigners is the result of socio-economic and class politics, couched in the discourse of Jewish ethnic and religious identity:

“The Filipinas who bathe our elderly, the Chinese who build our luxury towers and the Thais who cultivate our fruits and vegetables for export often displace Israel’s Arab citizens. These citizens have no lobby, and no one cares about them or their lack of employment. In contrast, the Africans, South Americans, Ukrainians and all the rest, who clean houses and do other household scut work, displace a different group – the Jewish lower class.”

This class of people is effectively Shas’ electorate. Shas holds the Interior Ministry and dictates policy to officials like Yaakov Ganot that are charged with executing it. Shas, eager to serve as a lobby for its voters, thus chooses to expell foreigners working in one sector of the economy, while “importing” more and more foreign workers for another economic sector – all the while presenting these policies in the language of “Hebrew labor,” while ignoring questions of humanism and universal values.

I recently joined the Tel Aviv Bicycle Association, an organization that advocates for bike-friendly planning in the city.

“At this point in time, Tel Aviv is like a martial artist who has mastered the basics, and must decide if he wants to invest the effort in order to become a professional.”

This was the assessment offered recently by one municipal official regarding the city’s efforts to promote itself as a bike-friendly place during recent years. The city, he said, is at a crossroads. It has already built the easy bike paths in places with ample space, obvious demand and uncomplicated zoning. Now it must decide if it wants to go all the way.

Last week I joined the planning team of the Tel Aviv Bicycle Association (תל אביב בשביל אופניים), a local bike advocacy group. The organization, an offshoot of Israel Bicycle Association, has been inactive for several years, but is now back in action. And the municipality, it seems, is eager to cooperate.

Cycling in Tel Aviv is an issue that is very dear to my heart. Living in Jaffa, I have become used to “commuting” to the city by bike almost every day. Luckily for me, a new boardwalk, complete with an excellent bike path, was built along the beach just before I moved down here. In other parts of the city, biking is neither pleasant nor easy, and can often feel like an extreme sport.

The city’s pleasant climate (for most of the year anyway) and flat topography make investments in bicycle transportation a no brainer – especially considering the huge success that bikes as a form of transportation has had in places with a less pleasant climate, such as Portland, Copenhagen and Amsterdam.

At the moment, Tel Aviv for Bikes is composed of a handful of volunteers: architects, urban planners and bike enthusiasts. The group’s goal is to transform the city into a place in which riding a bicycle (for fun, to school, to work) is a safe, fun and inviting activity.

Left: A “bike lane” in Tel Aviv is often little more than a stencil painted onto a sidewalk. The city claims to have created 100 km of bike paths, but many of them are of questionable quality.

The good news is that the city seems to be on board. There is a special budget for paving bike lanes, and 3 professionals at the municipality who are in charge of planning new routes. The mayor has lately been painting himself as an enthusiastic supporter, and there are rumors that the bike budget will be doubled in next year’s budget. There is also a master plan for bike lanes in the city, a pretty good one, and bike lanes are now being integrated into road-building projects.

The bad news is that things are moving very slowly. The yearly budget, 7 million NIS, is enough to pave a few short segments here and there, but not nearly enough to bring about the biking revolution that the city needs. Most of the bike lanes that are being paved, however, are budgeted as part of larger projects, such as the new boardwalk near Jaffa.

Our first project at Tel Aviv for Bikes will be to conduct a survey of existing bike lanes and suggest specific steps to improve their flaws. Stay tuned to this blog for more updates in the future…