What’s wrong with the picture above? Ostensibly nothing – just a crowd of young people having a good time on a warm Friday afternoon. So why can’t I get this image out of my head?

There’s a word you hear sometimes in Tel Aviv: sachi. Back in the day, it was used to describe someone who was sober – as in not-high. Nowadays, it’s used by a certain crowd – the “cool” crowd: hipsters, leftists, activists, writers and so on – to describe the “squares.”

The sachi is the other half. The adult equivalent of the high school jock. He’s the guy (or girl) who works in finance, or maybe he’s a start-up guy or in hi-tech. He gets around in a car (not on a bike, like hipsters do), uses traffic apps and complains about there not being enough parking in the city. He has multiple pictures of Gilad Shalit on his Facebook page. He takes Instagrams of himself at clubs. He voted for Yair Lapid and has vaguely positive feelings about Ron Huldai, Tel Aviv’s mayor.

If you’re not a sachi, you can’t stand sachi culture. And if you are one, odds are you probably don’t know the word. (Then again, I wouldn’t know – I don’t hang out with sachim.) A few years back, an internet meme called “Sachim, they’re everywhere” became roughly the Israeli equivalent of the blog “Stuff white people like.” To hipsters, who are constantly seeking out “authenticity” and pride themselves on their sense of irony, the sachi’s lack of self-awareness is his most annoying flaw. 

Back to the photo. It’s an Instagram, taken by the Tel Aviv municipality and posted on its Facebook page. The caption, in English, reads: “Now in Tel Aviv – Harlem shake with 30,000 dancers.” (Later, that number was inflated to 70,000 and presented as a “world record”). The photo eventually gathered close to a thousand ‘likes’ and was shared by almost 100 people (myself included, although in an ironic way).

The image will presumably reappear one day in a Power Point presentation by Ron Huldai at some international conference, where he’ll talk about how cool the city has become under his leadership. This is city hall’s new magic formula for election-year PR: staging “trendy” public events, generating an online buzz about them and giving people (mainly sachim) the opportunity to look cool in Instagrams and share them on city hall’s Facebook page. Huldai shows up in a cape and a mask, takes pictures with a few young people, and everyone goes home happy.

But if you look closer at the picture, there’s something almost sinister in the way it is framed. The crowd of happy sachim has unwittingly posed against the backdrop of an overcast sky that partially obscures some of the most salient symbols of Israeli state control, both military and economic. The photo captures them, Where’s Waldo-like, dancing in front of one of the iconic buildings of the Kirya, the defense establishment’s Pentagon-like compound in central Tel Aviv, while further off in the distance a forest of cranes looms – the physical agents of a high-rise building boom, filling the city with fancy apartment buildings for the super-rich, which few of the people in the picture will ever be able to afford.

Meanwhile, at exactly the same time of day, this photo was taken in the West Bank:

I’m not one of those people who think that no one should ever be allowed to have any fun in Israel because of the occupation. Still, I can’t help but be struck by the juxtaposition of these two photos, which were both making the rounds on my Facebook wall on Friday afternoon. The first, shared by my sachi friends, the second, by hipsters and leftist activists. The link between the two lies in the fact that the chaos captured in the second photo was the direct result of plans and orders emanating from the Kirya, which looms above the Harlem shakers in the first – but the occupation and the Palestinians living under it couldn’t be further from the minds of the people in the foreground. 

The glaring disconnect between the two images reflects a larger moment of cultural transition happening in the city. Until very recently, central Tel Aviv was considered the focal point of the Israeli counterculture – if such a thing could be said to exist. The city has always been the place where Israelis critical of their country’s policies and politics could gather and pursue an alternative, radical cultural and political agenda.

Just two years ago, the 2011 social-justice protests – arguably the most successful counter-cultural project in at least a generation – erupted in central Tel Aviv. That movement – which had some of its formative moments in the very same spot captured in the photo – was eventually squashed by the very same Ron Huldai, whose neoliberal governance of the city created the conditions that led to it in the first place, and who now apparently sees his role as the city’s most powerful party promoter. 

Under Huldai, Tel Aviv has gentrified in a way that has blunted its anti-establishment edge and displaced its cultural vanguard. Central Tel Aviv, once ground zero for alternative living, cultural creation and political organizing, has been transformed into a yuppie enclave where sachim and rich foreigners may now outnumber everyone else. Sachi culture, with its embrace of the generic and viral trendiness, has filled the void left behind by the artists, activists and intellectuals, who now inhabit the city’s southern neighborhoods. 

The fact that young people there are now spending their Friday afternoons dancing at city hall-branded parties instead of staging angry demonstrations against it has unmistakable political significance for Huldai, who needs their votes to get reelected this fall. Obviously, prompting people to pose for Instagrams doing the “Harlem shake” is much more convenient for the powers that be than mass demonstrations calling to “change the system.” 

The gentrification and displacement process has yet to be completed, and the city now finds itself at a crossroads. If Huldai is elected to another 5-year term, the market may finish the job of pushing out everyone who makes Tel Aviv interesting, and all that will be left is the occasional sachi block party. But the people dancing in the photo are blissfully unaware of all that. All they wanna do is pose for a cool Instagram, and then get on with their lives. 

When the person at fault in a traffic accident turns out to be the chief of police, different rules apply. 

A screenshot of the video showing the police chief’s car running a red light.

What happens when a police car carrying the country’s top cop runs a red light at a busy intersection and knocks a guy off his motorcycle? When it happened to Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino last week, the police’s first instinct appeared to be: blame the victim.

Danino was riding in the back seat of a police car in south Tel Aviv, on his way back from an afternoon meeting, when his car hit a civilian. Ironically, the accident occurred in an area police regularly stake out during rush hour, hoping to catch people making illegal turns.

However, instead of simply taking responsibility for the accident, police told reporters that it wasn’t clear who was responsible, hinting that the other driver, a 23-year-old man, had a history of traffic violations. They promised to investigate. Meanwhile, the motorcyclist, who had no idea the commissioner was riding in the car that hit him, was taken to the hospital.

A week later, a video of the accident emerged. Taken from a security camera outside one of the buildings on the street, the recording clearly showed that, while all of the other cars on the road slowed down as they approached the intersection, the commissioner’s vehicle tried to squeeze through after the light had already turned red, and rammed into oncoming traffic.

Only after that video began to appear on news websites did the police commissioner announce he was suspending his driver until the incident could be fully investigated.

Accidents happen, and police officers are human. The police will naturally attempt to paint this as an isolated incident, while reassuring the public that any guilty parties will be held responsible. But anyone who has had any contact with them would be hard pressed to believe them.

Behind the wheels of their patrol vehicles, police flagrantly violate traffic laws on a daily basis.

Whether their sirens are wailing or not, police cars are some of the most dangerous on the road. Worse than taxi drivers, worse than teenagers with music blasting from their speakers. They speed, ignore stop signs, swerve out of their lanes, drive against traffic and generally move around in a way that is reckless and dangerous to anyone nearby, especially pedestrians, cyclists and motorcycle riders. Living a block away from the station to which the commissioner was presumably headed when last week’s accident occurred, I see it almost every day.

The police would probably argue that they have to drive like this, but only in extenuating circumstances, in order to catch criminals and get to crime scenes quickly. But what if the cops’ recklessness on the roads is just a symptom of a broader organizational culture in which police feel they can act with total impunity?

I don’t know anyone in Jaffa who doesn’t have stories about obnoxious encounters with the police. I’ve had cops stop me on the street and ask for my ID, then curse at me when I ask them why they stopped me, telling me, “Cause I feel like it.” A cop once approached me outside a neighborhood pub, grabbed a bottle of beer out of my hand and then spilled it out on the ground. When I asked him what the problem was, he wrote down my name and ID number. I’ve seen cops beat an African refugee on the street, for no apparent reason.

When you need them, however, they are nowhere to be found. When a mentally ill woman was apparently gang-raped in broad daylight on a Tel Aviv beach last summer, witnesses who called the police said they never showed up. The same happened when a Be’er Sheva man was murdered last year outside his house. In both cases, police claimed they were there. In both cases, it later turned out that they had apparently lied, then attempted to cover their tracks.

In an article published late last year, Haaretz reported finding at least 20 incidents in which police lied about their actions during the term of the current commissioner. The article cites cases in which policemen wrote false reports, lied under oath, made false arrests and lied about it in court, broke into houses without a search warrant and so on. None of these cops were “made an example of” and kicked out of the force. A couple were given a slap on the wrist. Some were promoted.

Last summer, police physically assaulted demonstrators at social-justice protests, then arrested them and accused them, falsely, of attacking police. And the list goes on.

Why do police in Israel behave this way?

Maybe it’s because of the blurring of the lines between the police, the Border Police and the IDF, which has allowed military norms and culture to seep into police work.

Maybe it’s because of the example they get from their superiors, like Commissioner Danino, who was filmed in 2011 speeding down at highway at 100 mph (he later claimed he couldn’t remember if he was in the car at the time or not).

Maybe it’s the government’s fault. Since 2009, Netanyahu’s internal security minister (in charge of overseeing the police) has been Yitzhak Aharonovich, himself a former police officer and a member of Avigdor Lieberman’s party. Lieberman’s ongoing legal troubles would probably have indicated to a more upright politician that his party should be kept away from such a post.

Whatever the reasons, the end result is that many citizens end up viewing the country’s police force as a kind of private militia, not a body with a mandate to protect and serve.

When the very people who are supposed to be protecting the public act in a way that puts random people in danger, while treating regular civilians with arrogant disregard, it’s hard to put much faith in them. This time, the price was paid by a 23-year-old guy on a motorcycle, who got off relatively easy. But considering the behavior of the police in this country, the next such incident is just a matter of time.  

With city council set to vote on a $1.3 billion draft budget next week, the actual numbers have not yet been made public, while the mayor has banned residents from council meetings.

Tel Aviv’s city council is set to vote on a proposed $1.3 billion (!) municipal budget for 2013 next Monday, the day before Christmas.

It’s quite a hefty budget, roughly equal to the entire national budgets of small countries like the Bahamas and Nicaragua. The 2013 draft is up from $1.07 billion in 2012. Not bad in the midst of a global economic crisis. It’s also expected to be a balanced budget, with the city’s expenditures more or less matching revenue, and some $213 million of it is set aside for development projects, like renovating schools and repaving roads.

The city’s budget is put together, like most municipal policy, by senior officials inside city hall. Residents of the city, who may want to influence how the money from their city taxes and parking tickets is spent, have no formal channel for helping draft the budget. Theoretically, now would be the time for citizens to peruse the budget, form an opinion about it and contact city council members if they have other ideas about how the city should spend their money during the coming year.

However, with only a couple of days until the city council votes to approve the document (which it most likely will), city hall has unfortunately decided not to publish the full budget numbers, at least not until after they are approved (at which point, of course, it will be too late to do anything about them).

In lieu of the actual numbers, city hall published a press release this week, which of course painted a rosy picture of the city’s financial management, along with a couple of pdfs containing information about city hall’s general policy priorities.

The city’s move is somewhat surprising, since back in 2010 the city was ordered by a district court judge to release its 2011 budget in an open spreadsheet format, such as Excel. Then, too, the municipality refused demands for greater budget transparency, but the judge insisted that public information should be provided to citizens in a way that would allow them to analyze it themselves, instead of just taking city hall’s word for it.

Adding insult to injury, concerned citizens who may still wish to make their voices heard at the city council discussion on Monday will not have that option either. Mayor Ron Huldai unapologetically barred the public from attending city council meetings back in the summer, and that (somewhat anti-democratic) move has somehow managed to stick.

So there you have it: the public is purposefully kept in the dark about the specific details of the city’s budget, and then prevented from taking part in the debate on it in what is supposed to be the city’s parliament. This year, once again, a handful of senior officials (mostly older, wealthy, white men, who cannot be said to represent the city’s diverse population) will decide how to distribute over a billion dollars of public funds, and there’s basically nothing we can do about it.

Merry Christmas!

Update: The city council voted 20-8 to approve the budget on Dec. 24. The budget documents themselves finally appeared on the municipality’s website sometime in the preceding 24 hours.

Or: How to win friends and serve the powerful by feeding free sludge to the masses.

These are tough times for newspapers everywhere. With revenues dwindling, venerable media outlets are cutting back, shuttering foreign bureaus and looking for new sources of revenue. Add to that an ever-changing technological landscape and new competition from citizen journalism, and you’ve got an industry in crisis.

But in every crisis, there is also opportunity. For the clever businessman, owning your own tabloid can provide unexpected perks and benefits. If you’ve got the money and the inclination, it’s not very difficult. Just follow these simple guidelines:

Press releases are stories. Through its official statements, the government will signal to you what issues it considers important, and which ones it would rather see disappear. If the government has no comment, or if its answer is vague and unconvincing, drop the story. If the statement is solid, you can build a whole spread around it, including in-house commentators and supplementary news briefs.

Quotes are stories. Whatever the most powerful people in the country say on the record should always be treated as if it were actually worth taking seriously, even if it initially sounds nonsensical. Statements made at press conferences, canned responses, statements by spokespeople – all of these, regardless of how predictable or formulaic they may sound, must be reprinted with supreme gravity. Lead articles with these quotes and make headlines out of them.

Random data is a story. Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics is always issuing long press releases filled with random data. Most of it is too damned boring for the average person to care about, so the media never picks it up. When spun correctly, however, this random data can be make to prove any point. Use it as evidence to back up a claim in a story, or spin it into a story of its own.

Make yourself the story. There’s nothing wrong with a newspaper owner making guest appearances in his own paper. Generous donations to pet causes, keynote speeches by your spouse at political conventions, photo-ops with senior politicians – it’s all news, if you say it is. Add a short full-disclosure disclaimer in italics at the end of the story, and it’s all kosher.

If there’s no story, make one up. Take the initiative. If you hear someone complaining about something, present his personal grievance as if it were a collective demand from a clearly defined group. Use headlines like “Northern town outraged by…” or “Voters turned off by…” Adopt a pet issue, revive a long-forgotten or imagined conflict, or ignite a new one from scratch. After a few days, you can start to work it onto the front page and into the op-eds. (See, for example, Fox News’ coverage of the early Tea Party rallies).

Use titles as honorifics. Putting a fancy title in front of someone’s name signals to the reader that his words are meant to be taken seriously, and convey a certain sense of social hierarchy. Of course, Prime Minister is the supreme title, but just below him are any number of ministers, deputy ministers, vice deputy ministers, heads of committees, party leaders and of course army bigwigs. Use multiple titles for added emphasis (i.e. “Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Responsible for Coordinating Defense Contacts with Latin America, MK Dr. Prof. Rabbi Yehuda Cohen”). If you quote Palestinian or Arab officials, leave their titles vague (i.e. Palestinian spokesman). If you have to quote Obama, leave out the titles and simply attribute the quote to “Obama.”

Ignore the little man. History is made by leaders, not by common people. The more people understand this, the more they will be inclined to accept things as they are. Always present the same limited cast of characters in your main news stories. Present them as if they were the gods on Vesuvius. Convey epic importance upon their petty moves and intrigues. This is not to imply that there is no room for human interest stories. A couple of cheesy, feel-good stories about cute, funny or wacky things done by no-name people is always nice for filling up the back pages, next to the usual fluff pieces about celebrities and models.

Use quotes to tell the story. Lots of them. Describe events not by reporting on them, but by reporting what people said about them. This method saves time and resources, and is useful for deflecting readers’ attention from whatever aspects of the story you may wish to play down.

Quote selectively. The point is not what words people actually said to the reporter, but how that quote gets the point of the article across. This is especially true when translating statements made by foreign leaders. Allow yourself extra leeway with these. Change the order of sentences, shift the meaning slightly to support the main thrust of the article. Your readers certainly won’t bother to Google the original quotes.

Leave quotes unattributed. Unless you get the quote from a speech, press release or official communiqué, go with “according to senior government/diplomatic/security sources.” It’s also good to keep them in the plural, which makes it all the more vague. Feel free to change it up: “Sources in Jerusalem say…” “Washington seeks…” “Arab sources claim…” Unattributed quotes make it seem as if the words might be coming from somewhere other than the usual suspects. Savvier readers may guess that these are yet more quotes from the Prime Minister’s Office, given off the record – but your paper will have few of these.

Don’t overdo it with reaction quotes. Or just bury them at the end of the article. Reactions are the only loophole you might have for viewpoints other than the party line to slip into the public consciousness. Be selective and stingy with these. If you can, extract the more inert pieces of a reaction for the quote, leaving out the juicy stuff. If this is not possible, leave out the quote altogether. In any case, bury it deep at the end of the article. Very few of your readers will make it this far anyway.

Analysis is key. Since your readers can’t be allowed to think for themselves, provide them with an authoritative voice telling them how to interpret the big news of the day. Get a couple of guys (it’s important that they are men, and it helps if they are older and white) with good name recognition, guys who might have once been decent news men or diplomats. Offer them cushy terms, inflated salaries and a flattering caricature, to be placed next to their pieces.  Don’t worry if these pieces look like they were scribbled out while sitting on the toilet. They don’t need to be well-argued, just chock full of metaphors, associations and imagery which move people to fear and loathing (when referring to Arabs or leftist Jews) or exaltation (when discussing government leaders). These rants should be given headlines that leave no room for nuance (i.e. “fill-in-the-blank is Hitler”).

Redefine the Right. When the government is controlled by right-wing loonies, it’s important that they are not perceived as such by the general public. Dress them up in the trappings of respectability, while looking for someone else who’s even more extreme to cast as the real Right. This could be the violent fringes of settler society or fanatical religious Jews, who tend to stage mass riots over issues the secular public finds incomprehensible and repugnant. Don’t worry about losing readers, as none of them will read your paper anyway. They have their own yellow press.

Give it out for free. There’s nothing people like more than getting free sh*t, especially if it helps them pass the time on trains and in public restrooms, while reinforcing their preconceived notions. It will never occur to most of your readers that if a paper’s free, it’s either not worth reading or is meant to disseminate information of a very specific kind.

Disclaimer: This is a satirical piece, and is not meant to refer to any specific publication, Israeli or otherwise. 

The city’s new blueprint will not solve its major problems, but it will bring new hi-rises and business districts.

A new urban master plan for Tel Aviv-Jaffa was approved last night by the city’s local planning council by a 16-10 vote.

Brushing aside last-minute concerns raised by a number of city council members, Mayor Ron Huldai called on members of his coalition to pass the plan without further delay. Since his initial failed attempt to fast-track approval of the plan in 2010, Huldai has been watching the council’s deliberations with increasing impatience.

The plan itself is an impressive and professional document, but limited in scope. While it does create a framework for expanding the city’s housing stock over the next decade or so, it stops short of establishing a strong affordable housing program to help keep young people from being pushed out of the city by gentrification. And it has nothing to say about public housing or issues related to social justice, despite last summer’s social protests.

The plan will not solve Tel Aviv’s traffic problems either. It offers nothing beyond an existing light rail/subway plan, which has been stuck for over a decade, and foresees the continued dominance of private cars in the city in the future.

Nor does it propose steps to reduce the city’s carbon emissions. While most modern master plans use emissions reduction as a means to obtain broader goals of urban sustainability and quality of life, the words “climate change” do not even appear in Tel Aviv’s plan.

What the plan does do is to lay out, for the first time, what developers can build in the city, where, and how high. It allows for extensive construction of hi-rises and office buildings over the next couple of decades, which will ensure the city a solid tax base in the future.

However, it was promoted with a worrying lack of transparency. Throughout the process of putting together and discussing the plan, city hall refused to publish important parts of the plan. In fact, many of its core documents were only released for the first time last week. However, when city council members tried to hold a debate last night on the contents of these critical documents, their attempts were steamrolled by Huldai.

While the plan was still a work in progress, city hall made few attempts to make the public aware of its contents. However, literally minutes after it was approved, the municipality’s PR department issued self-congratulatory press releases to all the major financial media outlets, and even posted videos about the plan on Facebook.

The media, for its part, swallowed the city’s narrative whole, regurgitating its talking points uncritically, largely without seeking reactions from city council members or critics of the plan. (None of the newspapers took note, for example, of the strange fact that the master plan was formulated based on parameters laid out in a new proposed planning law – and not according to the existing law – as the municipality’s legal advisor admitted last night for the first time.)

Can Tel Aviv live with its new master plan? Clearly, the version that was approved last night is vastly superior to its initial iterations. The improvements came primarily as a result of persistent efforts by a handful of city council members and the activism of neighborhood groups, including a group of planning professionals living in the southern part of the city.

Surprisingly, many important last-minute changes came as a result of a series of public participation sessions held by the municipality’s planning teams last month. Unlike previous such sessions, the latest round of public meetings were conducted in an atmosphere of constructive dialogue and debate, and yielded a surprising number of insights, which the planners eventually integrated into the plan.

The limited opening provided by the city (the sessions themselves were conducted as a  concession to community groups, which had earlier demanded greater public involvement in the plan) for genuine dialogue with the public provided a glimpse of how city planning processes could look if they were taken more seriously by the municipality. They also illustrated how the public, when given the chance, is capable of contributing valuable input and local knowledge as a complement to the efforts of professional planners, whose approach is generally top-down.

The master plan will now go to the district planning committee, where it is expected to undergo further changes. By law, it will then be deposited for formal objections by the public for a period of 60 days, before eventually being approved by the Interior Minister.

Cover image: Rendering of a large real estate project approved by Tel Aviv’s local planning council last week (via Ynet).

Community groups win a number of key changes to the city’s new urban master plan.

A long-running battle over Tel Aviv’s proposed master plan reached a turning point today when Mayor Ron Huldai agreed to adopt a series of proposals put forward by neighborhood activists for the southern part of the city.

The mayor’s announcement this morning at a meeting of the local planning committee took pretty much everyone by surprise (including, apparently, the municipal planning department).

Huldai’s city hall had sought to develop one of the city’s last undeveloped areas, a broad swath of land in the southern part of the city, as a new central business district. When the first drafts of the new city master plan began to appear a couple of years ago, they showed the area, which is sandwiched between residential neighborhoods, filled with high-rise office buildings and bisected by a broad highway.

Local residents immediately voiced their rejection of the proposal. Once again, they argued, city hall was pursuing its own agenda while ignoring local needs. While the city’s plan for the area would bring in new tax revenue (office buildings pay significantly higher municipal taxes than residential apartments) and provide a new traffic corridor for commuters headed to the city center, they pointed out, it would also physically divide their neighborhoods, while neglecting to solve chronic urban problems such as an acute housing crunch and a lack of decent public transportation.

Soon after, a coalition of neighborhood activists and community-based organizations came together to create South Tel Aviv for People, a grassroots initiative formed to advocate for a more people-friendly planning vision for the city’s southern quarter. (Full disclosure: I live in this part of the city and am heavily involved in the initiative.)

Working with local communities, the group put together an alternative proposal for the area which envisioned it as a mixed-use district, with plenty of new apartment buildings, schools and parks built along pedestrian-friendly streets. The proposal made the case for setting aside a portion of the new apartments for affordable housing programs while building public transportation instead of highways and extending the city’s building preservation plan southward (currently, the city only grants protection to historical buildings in the center of town).

For the past two years, South Tel Aviv for People has advocated for this vision by issuing position papers, lobbying local politicians, holding public events and raising awareness of the issue through the media. Over time, the group has sharpened its criticism of city hall’s plans while formulating an increasingly coherent and persuasive alternative. Meanwhile, city hall has done its best to ignore the group and its ideas.

However, as the master planning process dragged on, these ideas began to gain traction with city council members, whose votes were needed to get the plan approved. This alarmed the municipal leadership, which had hoped to push the plan through the approval process without encountering any serious resistance (thanks, in part, to a total lack of transparency).

As a result, several hearings on the master plan were postponed or cancelled, while those that did take place often became bogged down in arguments and disorder.

Several months ago, after a particularly rancorous meeting, the group received an invitation to meet with senior planners at the municipality. Its representatives gave a presentation – which was duly ignored by the deputy head planner (the most senior person in the room), who gave his full attention to his Blackberry. Some officials attacked the group, while others tried to convince them that their reservations about the plan were misguided. Needless to say, nothing came of it.

The city councilors on the planning committee, however, were becoming more receptive to the group’s message, which made it harder for the mayor’s coalition to ram parts of the master plan through hearings.

Today’s hearing began with the usual rancor, as committee members (armed with a position paper formulated by South Tel Aviv for People) demanded answers to a number of open questions about the details of the master plan.

Then the mayor strolled in and, after a short private consultation with the head of his planning department, announced that he was reversing his position – effectively allowing the committee to adopt the community’s positions on a number of important elements of the plan.

According to the new changes, Shlavim Street (the backbone of the new district planned for south Tel Aviv) will become an urban street instead of a commuter highway, and the buildings built along it will be mostly mid-rise apartment buildings, instead of high-rise office buildings.

Additionally, the city’s new central bus station, a mammoth structure that spews pollution onto several southern neighborhoods, will be moved to a different location (presumably on the city’s outskirts). A large city-owned lot, currently occupied by parking lots and garages, will become a complex of schools for local kids and a prison located on the city’s southern border will be transferred elsewhere and office buildings built in its place.

Municipal planners also promised to publish the master plan in full within two weeks. Incredibly, city hall has thus far managed to resist calls to release these documents, which have been kept under wraps even as hearings on the master plan proceeded and votes on its proposals were held.

In another achievement for local civil society, a two-month public participation process on the master plan will be launched early next year.

There is still plenty of room for improvement. For example, the plan still contains nothing about affordable housing (an acute issue in a city where the cost of housing has skyrocketed over the past few years), public transportation or sustainability issues.

However, the decisions made today are a huge leap forward. By accepting the major tenets of the alternative plan that rose up from the grassroots, the municipal establishment has opened the door to further changes, while proving that regular citizens, through sustained activism, have the power to influence even the most stubborn politicians.

Cover image: South Tel Aviv for People logo. 

Policies which were considered hopelessly radical just a few weeks ago are now seen as not nearly radical enough.

The people of Israel have spoken loud and clear: they want “social justice” and a renewal of the social contract.

More specifically, they are calling for an end to the neoliberal economic policies of the last two decades and a return to the welfare state model, including greater investments in public education and health care, more affordable housing, greater concern for the sick, elderly and handicapped, and a generally more accountable form of government which actually hears and responds to its citizens.

Such policies would represent a massive departure from the current method – a 180 degree reversal, really, of the status quo. Yet, while public opinion polls have found somewhere around 90% support for these demands among the general public, it is not at all clear that the Bibi-Shas-Lieberman government is actually capable of addressing them in any serious way.

Shas’ ministers are certainly not. Unapologetically fundamentalist and sectarian, their response thus far has been to exploit the protests in order to provide cheap housing for their constituency – large ultra-Orthodox families who may or may not work for a living – while pushing through more construction in the settlements. They could care less about the tent protesters, who would never vote for Shas in any case.

Avigdor Lieberman also doesn’t seem to give a damn. He is counting on the fact that the bitter experience of the Russian immigrants who make up his constituency with state socialism has made them into die-hard supporters of the “free market.” Images of mass protests demanding welfare policies from the state, he hopes, will remind them of failed historical revolutions and the brutal dictators that came to power in their wake.

Thus, as a quarter of a million people marched through the streets of Tel Aviv last weekend, many of them calling to bring down the government, Avigdor Lieberman dined confidently in a posh restaurant on the other side of town – and he didn’t hesitate to report this to journalists the next day. Lieberman represents the very opposite of the free and open society envisioned by tent protesters. His politics are based on fear and incitement. He will not change either.

And Bibi? He, at least, is finally making a concerted PR effort to convince the public that he can change. This week he appointed a respectable leftist professor to head a team charged with negotiating with the leaders of the protest movement. According to the newspapers, the professor made it clear to Bibi that he would have to relinquish some of his most cherished philosophical beliefs, and Bibi, supposedly, agreed.

Notwithstanding Bibi’s sudden change of heart, responding to protesters’ demands will not be easy.

While Israel’s stated national religion has always been the cult of security, for the past two decades another ideology has gradually come to dominate the discourse. That ideology, of course, is neoliberalism, the so-called free-market economics of Milton Friedman, Reagan and Thatcher. Since the early 1990s, neoliberalism gradually became no less than the conventional wisdom in Israel – especially among government, media and social elites – regarding anything that fell outside the confines of the diplomatic-security sphere.

(Though no self-respecting adherent of this philosophy would actually use the word “neoliberalism.” To this day, in fact, the word is used only by the philosophy’s opponents, who seek to put a name to a system of beliefs that has long remained amorphous and unnamed.)

Over the years, the policy that became most identified with Israeli neoliberalism was privatization – of banks, social services, government services and pretty much anything else that could be transferred from the government’s hands to a small oligarchy of prominent businessmen and their families. Often, public assets were sold off at well below market value, and, more often than not, deals were made even more profitable by the government’s “failure” to adequately regulate privatized industries.

In order to set the stage for the eventual privatization of public services and assets, various corners of the public sector were weakened. Budgets shrank, the civil service failed to grow even as its workload exploded and government services gradually became ossified – providing politicians with a pretext to eventually privatize them altogether, either directly or through various forms of outsourcing. After all, they argued, the private sector can always do things better than the public sector.

Meanwhile, society’s safety net was systematically shredded, resulting in ever-increasing rates of poverty.

The same exact methods have been used in almost every country on earth over the past several decades, almost always going hand in hand with unprecedented corruption. Menem’s neoliberal programs led to the collapse of Argentina in the early 2000’s. Hosni Mubarak’s government spent much of the last decade violently imposing neoliberal policies over a defenseless population, as did the US occupation of Iraq.

In the US, neoliberalism picked up speed under Reagan and later reached its peak under George W. Bush. The bubble finally burst in 2008, spreading its toxic fallout so far and wide that the country is still struggling to recover today, almost three years later. The Cameron government’s experiment with neoliberal “austerity” in the UK just blew up in its face.

Neoliberalism inevitably inspires a backlash. Poor and middle class people, who eventually notice that their lives have been made inestimably harder in a thousand little ways, eventually respond – usually with protests, sometimes with violence and, where they are fortunate enough to have non-neoliberal candidates to vote for, at the ballot box.

In Latin America, for example, a handful of states are now led by moderate leftists, who are attempting to institute a local version of European-style social democracy. Something similar is happening in Spain, and probably will in Egypt as well.

Now it has happened in Israel, and the political-economic discourse has been transformed as a result. Suddenly, policy ideas which would have seemed utterly unfeasible just a few months ago are now considered too little, too late. As long as tent camps continue to grow and spread, the new discourse will only get stronger and more coherent (hence the politicians’ constant desire to evacuate them).

Ironically, all of this happened on the watch of the man who has been Israel’s foremost prophet of neoliberalism for the past twenty years, and who, with his own hands, created many of the problems that he is now being asked to fix – first as prime minister in the nineties, then as finance minister under Ariel Sharon. His policies during the current term in office have been almost indistinguishable from his policies during those previous terms – until now, that is.

Can Bibi change his stripes? While it seems unlikely, there are precedents. Most notably, Ariel Sharon, the father of the settlements, who ultimately decided to evacuate the settlers from Gaza when his political future seemed to be on the line. (Whether that move resulted from a genuine change of heart or political exigencies is, of course, debatable.)

In any case, Benjamin Netanyahu now finds himself in a similar position. What the protesters are demanding from him would require that he repudiate the absolute core of his socioeconomic doctrine. On the other hand, if he can’t please them, he’s finished.

To paraphrase Einstein, the same neoliberal thinking that got us into this mess will certainly not get us out of it. The pressure is on for this government, or the next one, to develop a new narrative, a new way of envisioning the state’s responsibilities toward its citizens.

Time will tell if our elected leaders are actually capable of doing so, or if they will all have to be replaced with a whole new generation of political leaders who can, unlike previous governments, offer a new vision of a post-neoliberal Israel, and chart a path to get us there.

The Middle East’s dictators have already written their playbook, but what about the region’s quasi-democracies?

Middle Eastern dictators have followed remarkably similar paths in responding to the popular protests of the “Arab Spring.” So much so that a recent episode of This American Life attempted to codify them into a how-to guide for the Middle Eastern autocrat, detailing their steps one by one.

These included moves like ‘shut down the internet’ (step 1), ‘send in thugs’ (step 2), ‘blame Al Jazeera’ (step 7) and ‘organize paid demonstrations in favor of your regime’ (step 8).

However, what happens when popular protest breaks out in “the only democracy in the Middle East” – where things like cutting off the internet just won’t fly, and where the cost of hiring camel-mounted thugs is prohibitively expensive?

Caught without any such playbook, the protests which began on July 14 have forced our wise and experienced leaders to improvise, essentially making it up as they go along. Here, then, is a roundup of their actions thus far, offered as a free public service to other quasi-democratic governments in the region, who are liable to find themselves in their shoes sooner or later.

Step 1: Co-opt the protest

Cozy up to the demonstrators. Put on a casual shirt, drop by their tent camp and make nice. Tell them you are on their side, that you believe in their cause. Press some flesh and grin toothy grins for the cameras.

Step 2: Conspiracy theorize

When they refuse to go away, cast them as a fringe phenomenon. Call them “radical leftist anarchists.” Try to associate them with “enemy” groups, imply that they have violent tendencies. Hint that a left-wing, anti-government conspiracy is paying for their tents. Pin the blame on the usual suspects (left-wing NGOs and upstart political movements).

Step 3: Try paternalism

Tell the protesters you’re way ahead of them, that you’ve spent years thinking about the very same problems they’re complaining about now. Publicly invite them to come to Jerusalem to support your (neoliberal) reforms. Smile smugly for the cameras.

Step 4: Call them spoiled

Unleash the hordes of right-wing columnists and spin doctors against the ungrateful citizens. Attempt to paint them as spoiled, lazy children who are looking to get something for nothing. Call them communists. Emphasize the wisdom of the market, use words like “market forces,” “macro” and “supply and demand.”

Step 5: Fake empathy

Recognize the protesters’ distress. Call it “real.” Tell the media that you “embrace” and “identify with” them, reassure them that you’re only looking out for their best interests. Really. Promise “surprises.”

Step 6: Panic

Call frequent late-night meetings with senior ministers, float rumors of an impending cabinet shake-up, castigate ministers in front of the cameras, use macho army metaphors, cancel trips abroad.

Step 7: Bluff

Announce that you are planning to integrate some of the protesters’ demands into your neoliberal reforms, then don’t. Hope no one notices.

Step 8: Divide and conquer

Agree to meet with one of the protesting factions, but not with the others. Offer them some goodies, but only for them. Tell them it’s cause they’re special, that they’re “the foundation upon which the state is built,” or some such nonsense. Hope they take the bait.

Step 9: Make a plan 

Call a press conference. Present the exact same neoliberal reforms as before, but repackaged and with minor adjustments. Be sure to emphasize: “there is no magic bullet.” Use hand gestures. Project an air of jovial collegiality with cabinet ministers. Use Power Point. Tell the nation that everything’s under control, flash smug smile repeatedly. Use selective hearing when responding to journalists’ questions.

Step 10: Give cops a raise

Young police officers making the minimum wage might become overly sympathetic to protesters. When no one’s looking, give them a hefty raise, while continuing to insist that you can’t afford one for the country’s doctors – who happen to be on a hunger strike.

Step 11: Play the “responsible adult” 

Put a figure to protesters’  demands, preferably in the billions. Hint that implementing them would lead to a Greece-style debt crisis or a US-style near-default. Remind the population how successful your macroeconomic policies have been.

Step 12: Appoint a panel

Recruit some of the more socially-minded cabinet ministers and a few well-paid consultants to engage in dialogue with the protesters. Send in Shimon Peres.

Step 13: Give ‘em the finger

Ram above-mentioned neoliberal reforms through parliament. Ignore the protesters demonstrating outside, as well as their leaders’ characterization of said laws as “cynical and wicked.” Look  unbearably self-satisfied during the vote.

Step 14: Declare a 180

Tell the head of the panel you appointed that you are willing to change your stripes and repudiate your neoliberal worldview. Release a few trial balloons.

 Step 15: Beat the war drums

Wait for a terrorist attack or security-related incident to occur, and then use it to divert attention away from socio-economic issues. Revert back to pre-protest security discourse.

 Step 16: Return to business as usual 

After the panel you appointed submits its recommendations for policy changes (which, needless to say, will be cosmetic), you can finally get back to the status quo ante. In order to prevent the return of the social-economic discourse to the headlines and op-ed pages, amp up the saber-rattling.

Step 17: Create a decoy

Encourage members of your coalition to propose a diarrhea-like flood of anti-democratic bills. That should divert the attention of the bleeding hearts and the media for the time being. Doesn’t hurt to target NGOs’ sources of funding either.

Step 18: Wait for next elections

Cover image: A “stroller protest” marching through the center of Tel Aviv on July 28, 2011. (Photo courtesy of ActiveStills.org)

Netanyahu is incapable of meeting tent protesters’ demands because he is wedded to a rigid, anti-urban ideology.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a serious problem on his hands. Tens of thousands of angry young people are taking to the streets, yelling things like “the people want social justice” and “the answer to privatization – revolution,” while calling on him to resign.

His proclamations that he “embraces” and “identifies with” the protesters only seem to have further incensed them, and they refuse to buy the stale bill of goods he is trying to sell them as a solution to the housing problem.

Worse still, the people seem to have “lost their fear.” In the context of the Arab Spring revolutions, this phrase was used to describe a collective shaking-off of the mortal fear of the regime harbored by the masses. This fear – of harassment, blacklisting, arrest, persecution, torture or death – is what kept people in line for so many decades under dysfunctional and kleptocratic regimes.

In Israel, the fear is not of the regime, but of external threats: Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and other bearded bogeymen. Nurtured assiduously by the government, these fears are what have kept the people in line for decades, as the country’s wealth was siphoned off by the army, the settlements, the ultra-Orthodox and the oligarchy. As long as the external threat was  dangled over Israelis’ heads on a weekly or daily basis, the masses didn’t dare to raise their heads.

But now they are, and worse still, they are discovering the hidden lines that connect all of the multitude of small, isolated battles taking place in the country.

It seems an entire new generation has become radicalized practically overnight. In a single week, the population has gone from being docile and indifferent to indignant and irate.

Despite attempts by his loyalists in the media to present them as political puppets of one left-wing conspiracy or another, or spoiled children whining about not getting their lollipop, the demonstrations have only gained strength, forcing Bibi to actually attempt to address their grievances.

This is a problematic situation for both sides. The demonstrators, most of whom had never encountered the intricacies of Israel’s byzantine land planning system before moving into their tents, have thus far failed to put forward a clear set of demands – although in a single week they have developed democratic decision-making mechanisms that put the current Knesset to shame, and have been debating their demands day and night.

Whatever these end up being, Netanyahu will find it hard to address them in any meaningful way. Bibi, whose political and socio-economic positions apparently ossified back when he was still known as Ben Nitay, has been nothing if not consistent in his views. The problem is that those views reflect an outdated and anachronistic approach, and one which is completely at odds not only with the worldview of the protesters, but with Israel’s official planning policy.

Bibi’s American dream

Bibi’s grand vision can be summed up in one tidy word: sprawl. A combination of the classic Zionist “I will cover you in a dress of cement and concrete” zeal with the free-market real estate economics that he learned about in the US, Netanyahu’s grand plan involves turning over vast tracks of virgin land to big developers, so that the latter can construct massive residential projects, while the magic of the free market lowers prices. Supply and demand.

“Undeveloped land is dead land, which doesn’t understand anything. When you develop it, it understands.”

This pearl of wisdom was uttered by none other than Israel’s prime minister, during a visit to the Dead Sea in which he was dazzled by all the “dead” land he found just waiting to be developed.

Bibi’s vision is of an unrestrained real estate market, in which developers buy up (state) land on the edges of the city, develop it, and then buy up more land, further out, and develop it.

The result of this model is always the same: a monotonous, soulless landscape of suburban tract housing zoned for single uses – here residential, there commercial, and so on. Public transportation is neglected in favor of private cars and elevated highways, complete with mammoth interchanges and endless parking lots, all subsidized generously by the state. Picture the suburbs of any American city.

This model, which began to catch on in Israel in the 1970s, was later rejected by the state’s planning institutions in favor of a more compact and sustainable pattern of growth. Planners here realized at some point that, unlike the US, Israel is a tiny country, where unrestrained development could easily overwhelming the country’s remaining open spaces.

The result was National Master Plan 35, a blueprint for the entire country’s future growth, based on limiting sprawl, redirecting construction back into cities, investing in public transportation and preserving what is left of the country’s natural areas. The plan was approved by the government in the early 2000s, and has since been undermined by almost all of the country’s leaders.

None more so than Benjamin Netanyahu, who is one of the world’s last true believers. Along with the Republicans in the US, Chicago School economists and disciples of the late Milton Friedman, Netanyahu remains a market purist. His blind faith in the wisdom of unencumbered markets has withstood even the free-market-induced crash of 2008 and the sharp declines of economies which he touted for years as models for Israel, primarily that of Ireland.

Nowhere is this truer than in the real estate market. In Bibi’s eyes, the market will solve the social problems created by the housing shortage. Deep down, he doesn’t believe in planning or other “outrageous” forms of regulation any more than he believes in ‘two states for two peoples.’

As far as the environmental problems which we now know are created, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by sprawl, as well as the soulless environments which result when contractors are allowed to prioritize quantity over quality, Bibi simply ignores them.

A three-pronged reform

The strategy that he has chosen to implement his vision is three-pronged.

First, privatize state-owned land by passing a law reforming the Israel Lands Administration, which holds 90+ percent of the country’s land. Check.

Second, create emergency planning committees (“national planning committees,” or in Netanyahu parlance, the “supertanker” plan) to fast-track construction on those lands, bypassing the existing planning system, which presumably would never consent to such a thing. Check.

Third, rewrite the country’s planning law such that, among other things, the ability of the public to oppose building plans would be sharply reduced. The Knesset is still working on that one.

These are the “reforms” that Netanyahu has been touting incessantly since the tent protests began on July 14. While they have some merit – the ILA truly is a horrendous dinosaur in need of reform, the planning system is often slow and inefficient and could use more hands on deck, and the country’s planning law is archaic and in need of a few tweaks – the devil is in the details.

Rather than propel the country forward, into the era of sustainability and social equity, Bibi’s grand vision will drag us backward, accelerating massive, uncontrolled (sub)urbanization while degrading the country’s standard of living.

As for the claim that flooding the market with tens of thousands of units will lower prices, most serious economists and planning experts are not buying it.

Wanted: an urban lifestyle

Another thing that Netanyahu’s reforms ignore: young people today are not interested in living in some bland suburban hi-rise.

It’s no accident that the tent city phenomenon began in central Tel Aviv. While a slew of commentators have scolded Tel Aviv’s young people for their desperate attempts to remain in the city, the truth is that no other place in Israel can offer what is, and has always been, Tel Aviv’s major selling point: the cosmopolitan, urban lifestyle it offers.

Nowhere else can young people find so many opportunities, economic as well as cultural and social, to live alternative lifestyles or hold opinions considered alien by middle-of-the-road, suburban Israel, or to live an ecological lifestyle which is not dependent on the automobile.

The protesters don’t want to move to cheap housing out in the middle of nowhere, they want to stay in the city. And, unfortunately, there is only one city in Israel that offers young people a truly urban way of life.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a walking anachronism. His government is detached and useless. Both are shackled to failed ideologies which cannot solve the problems we are facing.

Therefore, it is up to us, the young people, to find solutions to this problem (and possibly others as well) ourselves. Housing protesters need to get proactive, brainstorm, put their heads together with NGOs and academics, come up with a clear, simple list of demands from the government, and refuse to give an inch until they are met.

A tent camp in the middle of Tel Aviv is Israel’s answer to the ‘Arab Spring.’ 

Demonstrators pitching their tents Thursday night on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard. (Image courtesy of ActiveStills)

Even before the first tent went up on Rothschild Boulevard last Thursday night, the authorities had already decided it was bad news. That morning, someone  in the municipality had gotten wind of plans to pitch a “tent city” in the middle of one the city’s most affluent streets as part of a protest against the skyrocketing cost of housing in Tel Aviv, and decided to nip it in the bud.

The chances for negative publicity were high, as the activists were vowing not to leave until real solutions to the city’s housing crunch were found. As city hall had nothing real to offer them, the police were instructed to rescind the demonstrations’ permit, which had already been issued.

The protesters insisted they would show up with tents in any case. Upon the intervention of deputy mayor Assaf Zamir, whose party purports to represent the interests of the city’s young adults, the permit was reinstated – but that didn’t stop protestors from showering both Zamir and mayor Ron Huldai with beer, water and eggs when they dropped by the encampment later that evening for a visit.

The weirdness of that encounter pretty much set the tone for everything that was to follow. Huldai, according to protesters’ accounts, began by lecturing the demonstrators on the proper way to conjugate the Hebrew verb “to rent,” before launching into a self-satisfied rant about how the Tel Aviv Municipality is pioneering the art and science of creating affordable housing in Israel. He concluded with his usual refrain, which he traditionally uses to justify his inaction across a range of fields: ain li samchuyot – literally, I lack the authority. Or, in a freer translation – blame the government.

The protesters, to their credit, weren’t buying it. Flush with the excitement of a nascent social movement, which already then seemed destined to echo far and wide (yesterday it landed on the august pages of the Guardian), and a bit insulted by the mayor’s condescension, the demonstrators ran him out of the makeshift camp, while spraying him with various beverages and chanting “a mayor for the rich” as he retreated.

Wet, frustrated, and a bit shocked, the aging Huldai retreated to the passenger seat of his car, where he was forced to wait impatiently while his driver attempted to remove a protester who had planted his behind on the hood of the automobile and refused to budge.

The normally media-shy Huldai would later launch an aggressive rearguard media offensive, expressing reserved support for the protesters and their cause, which he deemed “legitimate,” while requesting that they keep public order and hygiene. That night, he wrote on his Twitter feed: “I came to Rothschild Boulevard tonight to speak with the demonstrators, but it became clear to me that they don’t want to listen.”

Politicians discover the tent camp

Huldai’s prognosis was only half correct – they did indeed want to listen, but only if the speaker actually had something to say. Over the next few days, as the camp became the epicenter of a voracious media circus, numerous politicians attempted to mollify the demonstrators with various and sundry forms of cheap populism, and most were driven away in contempt.

One such lawmaker, a member of the ruling Likud party, seemed genuinely surprised at the general refusal of the young crowd to kiss her rear end, at one point shouting at a demonstrator in front of news cameras: “What, are you a retard?!” She stalked off, fuming, and later told the media that she had encountered a crazed mob of radical leftist agitators. The demonstrators, for their part, responded by creating a musical remix of the memorable moment and posting it on YouTube.

Other politicians, however, mainly from the left-wing opposition, were warmly welcomed into the fold, as were any number of sympathetic passers-by, some of whom came bearing food, supplies, advice and even prayers.

The Prime Minister, for his part, offered what he might have considered a sincere gesture, encouraging the demonstrators to “come to Jerusalem and help the government pass its real estate reforms.” The reforms in question were a package of bureaucracy-busting, supply-side, neoliberal proposals so stale and controversial that they have even encountered substantial push-back in  the Knesset (the same Knesset which routinely passes racist and obnoxious laws without skipping a beat, such as the law passed last week which criminalizes calls to boycott the settlements).

The place quickly acquired a carnival atmosphere. At one point on Friday night, tent-dwellers were lining up to bellow off-key renditions of protest classics like Tracy Chapman’s Talkin’ ‘bout a Revolution and Madness’ Our House (“Our house, in the middle of the street”) into the microphone of a karaoke machine that someone had set up inside the main tent.

The media discovers the tent camp

However, the demonstrators’ apparent inexperience in dealing with the media and the lack of a clear list of demands allowed all sorts of ill-wishers to manipulate their image and misrepresent their aims.

It wasn’t long before grumpy commentators – almost uniformly old, male, white and privileged – began to describe them as spoiled children, whining about wanting to live in the center of town but unwilling to work hard enough to pay for it. Senior politicians, including the Housing Minister (who hails from the ultra-religious Shas party), jumped on the bandwagon, eager to delegitimize what they saw as a potential threat to their political hegemony.

More gracious commentators offered them friendly advice, telling the demonstrators to go live somewhere where they could actually afford to pay the rent, say, the Negev desert, or maybe in the settlements.

By Sunday, the fourth day of the protest, pictures of the tent camp (which had still not reached more than a few dozen tents) were on the front pages of all the newspapers, and numerous copycat demonstrations were said to be in the works in towns and colleges across the country.

On the whole, journalists seem to have reacted to the whole thing with unprecedented enthusiasm – possibly due to being pleasantly surprised at the emergence of such a dynamic and ongoing news story in the midst of the languid summer, or perhaps out of genuine excitement that, for the first time in years, an authentic protest movement seemed to be taking shape, partially inspired by our neighbors in Egypt, Jordan and Syria, as well as more recent protests in Spain.

The media’s reaction was, of course, not uniform. While Haaretz seemed to mostly support the protestors, the tabloid dailies offered sensationalized headlines and mixed analyses. A Jerusalem Post editorial applauded the emergence of a new kind of consumer protest movement, sort of a cottage cheese boycott 2.0, and the grassroots vibe which seemed to bridge the gaping abyss between left and right, while also giving the government kudos for supposedly being on track to solve the problems.

The truth, however, is that no one in power – not the mayor, not Bibi, not the Housing Ministry and certainly not Kadima (which did zero for the cause while in office, and has continued to do zero in the opposition) – have as yet taken any real steps to solve the housing crisis. They have all clearly sinned, and instead of trying to cover up that fact, they should repent, and fast, so that they can begin to move past their usual rancor and ineptitude and find a credible way to begin to deliver real solutions to the problem.

Of these there are quite a few of these, a good number of them quite doable, and many of them generally politically palatable (to the people and our saner elected representatives, though not necessarily to the PM and members of his ultra-right, neoliberal clique).

Potential solutions to the housing crisis

First, an affordable housing law must to be passed right away. This could be part of the ongoing effort to rewrite Israel’s planning law, or a stand-along law. In any case, it must grant municipalities the legal authority to formulate their own affordable housing policies. Until that happens, affordable housing programs that have already begun to take shape in a handful of Israeli cities will remain frozen, and in some cases be reversed.

Second, the government needs to resurrect its public housing programs. What was once a formidable system for housing the under-privileged (while “affordable housing” generally relates to apartments for the middle class, “public housing” refers to subsidized housing for the poor) has gradually been allowed to disintegrate. In Israel of 2011, poor families receive pitiful housing vouchers which barely allow them to live in the country’s worst ghettos, while no new public housing stock has been built in two decades, and existing stock is sold off to developers (who are encouraged by the authorities to evict any residents still living in the properties).

As Technion researcher (and, full disclosure, a former professor of mine) Dr. Emily Silverman pointed out this week in an op-ed, the well-timed departure of a number of veteran Housing Ministry officials from key positions opens up the possibility that new blood in the ministry could bring about a new spirit of action and initiative. However, this can only happen if the government supports and facilitates such a process.

Also, the formulation of a “right to housing” law would certainly help improve the situation by forcing the government to recognize its responsibility to guarantee that it citizens are able to find proper housing at affordable prices.

What city hall can do 

On the local level, the Tel Aviv Municipality needs to seriously up its game. Much has been written on this blog about the new master plan being advanced for the city. Scandalously, that plan does not include a chapter on affordable housing, despite city hall’s stated enthusiasm for the subject (the official excuse is that the lack of affordable housing legislation leaves the municipality without the  legal authority to promote affordable housing – or, in other words, ain li samchuyot).

Even if it can’t be implemented right away because of government malfeasance, affordable housing must be included in the master plan, as city council members have repeatedly insisted, both as a clear statement of intent and as a means of pressuring the government to pass the necessary legislation. City hall’s decision to roll over in resignation, instead of fighting for its rights, is a pathetic failure of leadership.

Even more disturbing is another fact which came to light recently during a discussion of the new master plan. Uniquely among Israeli cities, the Tel Aviv Municipality actually holds a significant amount of city-owned land and properties, which could easily be converted into residential buildings containing small apartments and affordable units. However, it turns out that neither the municipal planning teams nor members of the city council have been allowed full access to information about the scope and location of these properties.

The reason, apparently, is that a single municipal bureaucrat has for years treated the municipal properties department as his own private fiefdom, doling out information only to the extent that he sees fit. This is certainly not in accordance with the rules of good government, and it is mayor Ron Huldai’s duty to root out such cases of dictatorial behavior among city officials inside his administration.

The master plan, by the way, will not significantly expand the supply of housing (affordable or otherwise) in the city over the next couple of decades. Instead, planners have chosen to rezone land for millions of square meters of new office buildings (which bring in much higher city taxes and make much fewer demands on the municipality, in terms of things like new schools, community centers, etc.). Is this the way to plan for the future in a city that is already experiencing a severe housing crunch?

Talking about a revolution?

These ideas are, of course, just the tip of the iceberg. Affordable housing policy does not require reinventing the wheel. A variety of policies exist, and they are certainly known to decision-makers, local as well as national. International precedents exist in abundance, and working proposals continue to be put forward on a regular basis by the Coalition for Affordable Housing in Israel and, on the Tel Aviv level, by the municipal opposition, which this week released a well-thought-out proposal detailing simple steps city hall could take to alleviate the housing shortage in the near term.

Ones hopes that the various groups will manage to sit down together and kick out an orderly list of demands, just as the young protesters camping out in Cairo’s Tahrir Square did (and continue to do). If such a scenario actually takes shape, then perhaps the enthusiasm of the media and activist community will be validated, and Israel might just experience a little taste of the revolutionary spirit blowing through the Middle East these days.

Meanwhile, the tent camp on Rothschild Boulevard is looking more and more revolutionary. Last night, the tents numbered close to a hundred, the people in the thousands, and celebrities, politicians and reporters were eagerly rubbing shoulders with people playing music, projecting movies on makeshift screens, reclining on couches, playing with their children and distributing meals to demonstrators.

Unusually for Israel, no uniformed security forces whatsoever were present – no police, no soldiers, no border policemen, no unmarked cops on motorcycles. The lack of law enforcement seemed to provide space for a refreshingly relaxed and open atmosphere, as, one after another, young people took advantage of a Hyde Park-style microphone to share their thoughts about the protest and what form it needed to take. Passers-by beeped and shouted out their solidarity with the cause, as organizers huddled over laptops used Facebook and Twitter to blast their message out into the world.

One final thought. The positive vibes and open atmosphere of the protest camp seem to already have succeeded in accomplishing one thing: persuading Israelis to discard the automatic cynicism which characterizes so much of life in Israel and is seen by many as one of the primary obstacles to real political change here.

Dropping this cynicism is perhaps the Israeli equivalent to what the young revolutionaries in Arab countries have described as “losing their fear,” a spontaneous mental process in which people shed, overnight, decades of ingrained mental patterns and begin to see their predicament more clearly.

If this is indeed the case, then perhaps there is hope.