Tel Aviv Rooftop

graffiti Florentin Israel's siege policy against the Hamas government in Gaza has swerved badly off course. With the wall separating Gaza from Egypt (known in Israel as the Philadelphi Corridor) breached and Egyptian forces unable (meanwhile) to herd hundreds of thousands of Palestinians back into the Strip, it seems that a new era is unfolding. Egypt, whether it likes it or not, may be increasingly forced to take responsibility for the million and a half Gazans on whom Israel badly wants to turn its back. It's unlikely that this is the result of some well conceived Israeli master plan. Much more plausible is that Hamas cleverly orchestrated both the telegenic electricity cuts and the breach of the wall at the height of the Israeli sanctions to score thereby global sympathy and the possibility of an open border with Egypt. Palestinian journalists have confirmed that at least one of the ...

A Shabbat morning walk in mummy's shoes... East of Rehov Ha'aliya , a mere stone's throw from the jeeps and boutiques of Neve Tsedek , the demographics change radically and you enter neighbourhoods populated almost entirely by foreign workers. There are plenty of signs of poverty and the garbage collection here needs improving, but not everyone is as destitute as this old man filling his supermarket trolley from grabage cans. Small groups of people hung around the phone booths waiting their turn to make cheap calls home. The foreign workers, who hail from China, Romania, Africa, Thailand and the Phillipines (partial list) have for years now been doing Israel's dirty work: in old age homes, in construction, in agriculture and restaurants. As in every developed country, these "guest workers" tend to stay and their children have become Hebrew speaking sabras' who have no memories of their parents countries of birth. Before the second intifada, many of...

The other night we braved the cold and ventured out to Tel Aviv University to see a play called ' Bedouin ' at the theatre school. Hagai Shomroni , son of B& H, was among the young cast portraying the tortured lives of Israeli Negev Bedouin in an impressive multimedia production that left us with plenty of room for thought.. and shame. The play was composed of a series of scenes and satirical songs based on documented cases. It all added up to a picture of official, sometimes brutal, discrimination against some 80,000 Bedouin all of whom are Israeli citizens and many of whom serve in the IDF . Here are a few facts about Israel' s Bedouin. About 80,0000 of them live in 36 unrecognised villages and 9 villages that have recently received recognition. Most of these villages do not receive basic services such as water, electricity and health services. They did not start out by being 'unrecognised'. Most were established before 1948 while others were establishe...

see titles of pics at the end The Bush visit is now behind us and the local pundits are stressing that following the schmaltzy welcome, the sterile areas, the hugs and kisses and the grand and empty proclamations, it's time to get back to the gritty reality. Israel's guru of journalism Nahum Barnea ( Yedioth Aharonoth ) wrote on Friday that two practical outcomes are likely to emerge from the visit. First, the Israeli leadership received an explicit or implicit message that the US administration would back an Israeli military operation in Gaza (the qassams that fell on the western Negev during the visit also made an impression on Dubbya ). Second, out of the 100 or so unauthorised outposts that need to be evacuated, Olmert will evacuate one that appears at the top of the Americans' list - Migron , near Ramallah . Neither of these actions are likely to help Mahmoud Abbas sufficiently to shake off his image of a weak leader, unable to evince enough concessions ...

A trip to Yaffo never fails to produce some interesting images and today was no exception. This is the once famous Jerusalem Hotel in the American Colony, built by American Christians in the 1860s and later taken over by the German Templers . Temporary home to rich and famous visitors to the Holy Land before it fell into disuse, it is now undergoing restoration. In the shuk ha- pishpishim (flea market) cars have been commandeered into display cases for old carpets. Met H for a coffee and with his unerring eye, he caught this woman applying heavy make-up (for ages). We sat at a cafe that seems to be made out of corrugated iron in the part of the flea market where people simply lay out their wares on the ground. A selection of ouds for sale. An open air pool table in clear out area that will no doubt soon be built over. Commercial towers on the seafront as seen from Eilat St on the way to Yaffo . Not Mexico, but Rehov Eilat again.

Excited pelican at the Abu Kabir zoological gardens. Many (many) years ago, late for an appointment, I was approaching Tel Aviv in a clapped out Fiat 126 when, as often happened, the engine overheated, steam poured out of the radiator and I had to make an emergency stop to find some water. I raced into the nearest, official looking building, burst through one unattended room into another and found myself facing a corpse on a slab! Only then did I realise that I was in the Abu Kabir pathological institute. Abu Kabir , deep in South Tel Aviv , still retains the name of the pre -1948 village that was populated by Arab immigrants from an Egyptian village of the same name. According to a sign at the entrance to the zoological and "ecological" gardens we visited there today, when the area was captured by the Hagana in 1948, the 5,000 residents of Abu Kabir "fled". Today the area is also home to a notorious detention centre, a 19 th century Russian church ...