Last update - 00:00 25/04/2007
A birthday gift for Israel: (tidy) piles of garbage
By Eli Ashkenazi, Tamara Traubmann and Yair Ettinger
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis spent Israel's 59th Independence Day yesterday touring its various regions and nature resorts, leaving behind some 800 tons of garbage. The visitors poured into nature reserves across the country, demonstrating a strong preference for the forests of the Jewish National Fund in Jerusalem, the Carmel Mountains and the northern Negev.
Foresters began collecting the garbage left by visitors on Independence Day and were pleasantly surprised to find that most vacationers had concentrated the garbage into heaps instead of leaving it lying around.
Other decided to stay in the center, and celebrate the national holiday in Ganei Yehoshua in northern Tel Aviv, where billionaire Arcadi Gaydamak had organized a public event under the banner "Surprise Party for Israel." In addition to tens of the thousands who attended the celebration, a group of student demonstrators also attended the event, carrying signs saying: "Gaydamak, please pay my tuition" to protest the privatization of the higher education system, and the government's intention to increase tuitions.
Earlier, in Monday's Memorial Day service for victims of terror, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged not to repeat "mistakes made in the past," when terrorists freed in exchange deals eventually carried out more deadly attacks against Israelis. He also reassured bereaved families that their feelings would be taken into account in seeking the release of captured soldiers.
Earlier in the day, Olmert, addressing the families of fallen IDF soldiers, said that Israel would weigh every diplomatic initiative and could make "very painful concessions" in an effort to achieve peace.
Olmert told mourners gathered at the national cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem that Israel's debt to its fallen included "not letting up in believing and the vital effort to attain the hoped-for peace with security."