Tel Aviv - Cairo

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Not Gaza or Cairo but a long-neglected building snapped this morning in south Tel Aviv, in Florentine to be exact. Sometimes landlords deliberately neglect the buildings in order to encourage protected tenants to move out and allow them to sell the property to developers. Sometimes, the residents are too temporary, poor or disorganised to tackle the job of a renovation. Tel Aviv municipality wants to force all apartment owners to renovate their properties every decade or so. But will they receive financial help?

Talking of Cairo, yesterday we visited the Yoav Hot Springs near Asheklon, emerging with glowing skin and that lovely ironed-out feeling you get after a (too rare) massage. At the entrance to the spa we came across this strange sight.


A memorial to the Anonymous Egyptian Soldier! Click on the photo and you'll see that the plaque is in Arabic only. Presumably this is a memorial to the Egyptian soldiers killed in the war against Israel in 1948. We are in the same area of the kibbutzim Yad Mordechai and Negba where there were fierce battles in that war. I wonder if there a memorial to the Anonymous Israeli Soldier killed in Egypt in 1973 or in 1967?

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