Israel's deep, desperate South - Haaretz

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Thu., September 13, 2007 ,

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Israel's deep, desperate South

By Daniel Ben Simon

It takes a mere half-hour to drive from Tel Aviv to the other Israel. The seeds of Benjamin Netanyahu's "correct economics" haven't yet borne fruit in this part of the country. Here, there is no perceivable economic growth, there are no high-tech factories, sparkling malls or cultural centers. True, there are some new train stations that make it easier to reach the center of the country, but travelers have yet to find a compelling reason to stop here on their way from Tel Aviv to Be'er Sheva or back.

This is Israel's South, 2007. The neglect and poverty are striking, especially when compared to the prosperity in the center. There is no other region in Israel that has as many residents who are dependent on welfare. Almost half of the population of the South gets by on a monthly stipend from the state. The disengagement from the welfare state and the cutback in the National Insurance Institute (NII) allowances during Netanyahu's term in the Finance Ministry are felt much more acutely here. Within months, a majority of the localities in the South were facing collapse, after the budget-balancing grants that had been allocated to economically weak communities had been slashed. Suddenly there was no money in the coffers, and the main supplier - the state - had shut the faucet. The poverty rates skyrocketed, soup kitchens opened in nearly every community and charity organizations sprouted like mushrooms.

"I don't remember ever seeing poverty like this here in Ofakim," said a municipality official who requested anonymity. "Even in the '50s and '60s, when there wasn't much, people divided up the little there was. There was a feeling that we're all in the same boat. Today you see genuine poverty. People who have nothing to eat. Before the holidays, the charities are going to distribute food packages to thousands of people. This is what you call a normal country? On the one hand, you've got billionaires and millionaires whose numbers are constantly growing and on the other hand, you've got hungry people who are also constantly increasing in number. This situation should strike fear into the heart of the state."

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Every man for himself

The scars of poverty can be seen in almost every corner of Sderot. The city is evidently going through a process of collapse. Because of the dread sown by the Qassams, sure, but in equal measure because of the neglect, the filth and the stink that have spread everywhere. No one cares anymore. The nerves of this city, whose residents are alternately contending with economic hardship and fear for their children's lives, are completely frazzled.

There are no smiles and no laughter. Only looks of overt or suppressed anger and despair. Everything's been tried already and nothing has helped. The army has mobilized to boost the city's morale. This week it set up a headquarters in the center of town. Male and female soldiers are roaming the city's streets in an attempt to dispel some of the anxiety. The Home Front Command established something resembling a command post for the poor, staffed by several officers and troops. The post is suitably protected and surrounded with bricks. Perhaps in order to make an impression, battle instructions in the event of an assault and the evacuation of wounded have been posted on the bulletin board.

The Home Front Command post is situated between the makeshift market square and the Na'amat day-care center, next to which a Qassam landed just this Monday. The shoppers at the market, most of them elderly folks or new immigrants who don't speak Hebrew, wander among the stalls and the mounds of garbage that have piled up. Almost nothing here costs more than five shekels.

Some residents have even started hoping for a Qassam to blow a kindergarten or school to bits, believing that that would pave the way for an incursion into Gaza, while others still hope that some sort of agreement can be reached that will restore a bit of sanity to this wretched place. Meanwhile, Sderot is left with no leadership, with no government. It's every man for himself.

This anarchy has spawned a wild succession of initiatives, launched by parents who have decided to take matters into their own hands. One parents organization announces the opening of pre-schools, while another announces the closing of elementary schools. A third calls for all the institutions to stay open, while yet another parents organization that just came into being orders all the institutions closed.

Mayor Eli Moyal seized on the police investigation against him (he is suspected of criminal mismanagement) and abandoned the commander's post. This forced departure came at just the right time for him, ahead of his planned retirement before the next local elections, about a year from now. After two stormy terms, he was exhausted and began to feel fed up with his job. The ratings he racked up in his appearances on television weren't reflected in the support he received from city residents. Over time they lost faith in him and he in them. In the past two years, an almost unbridgeable rift formed between mayor and citizenry. He expressed contempt for their endless whining and they expressed contempt for his standoffishness, which they interpreted as condescending, and for his frequent forays to Tel Aviv refuges.

On Monday morning, two police investigators in civilian dress came to the municipality offices. There was no one there to greet them. After a long wait, they entered Moyal's office and began emptying it. Moyal's secretary informed her boss by phone about the search. "Let everyone know that I'm not coming into the office," he told her. And he has kept his word. Since the police visit, Moyal has not been to the municipality offices. It's unlikely that this colorful character, who became famous because of the Qassams that flew from Beit Hanoun to Sderot, will return to the city in the foreseeable future.

With the general breakdown brought about by the Qassam war, many residents have decided to abandon the city. Hundreds of families, including some of Sderot's most established, have left the city, either until the crisis passes or permanently. Everything has lost some of its value. Not just life, but also houses, properties, businesses, the standard of living.

Anxiety-ridden legal revolution

Farther south and farther away from the Israeli prosperity, Ofakim has tried to recover from the assault the state has launched against it. This past Tuesday, municipal employees were invited to take part in a traditional pre-holiday toast. Slowly and hesitantly they entered the conference room and took their places. A few bottles of drinks and trays of burekas were set out on the table.

At that very moment, two men returned from the Bank Hapoalim branch not far from the municipality building and went into the mayor's office. Ilan Saguy, the Interior Ministry's appointee to head the locality, and Ze'ev Recanati, the accountant accompanying him, had gone to the bank and signed some papers. From that point onward, they became the city's legal signatories. The signature of the mayor, Avi Asraf, who was dismissed a week earlier, has been expunged and may as well never have existed.

The Interior Ministry effected a legal revolution in the city, leaving the residents in a state of unease and anxiety. Hundreds of families earn their living from the municipality and more families are tied to it indirectly, via dubious relations with the people who were elected to lead and run the town.

Right after the elected government was ousted, Vivian Alfasi, the deposed mayor's secretary, came in and removed from the office cabinets files, awards, trophies and certificates of appreciation connected with Asraf's regime. A framed picture of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was left hanging on one wall. At the bottom of the picture Olmert had written: "To Mayor Avi Asraf. With warm greetings and a loyal handshake, in friendship, Ehud Olmert."

This office gained a reputation throughout the South for being a symbol of the rot that took hold of glory-seeking and power-hungry politicians in several southern municipalities. At the height of his city's economic crisis eight years ago, then-mayor Yair Hazan acted as if he was ensconced in the office of a head of state. Money flowed like water in order to accord the occupant of the office his due status. Today, not much is left of all that grandeur and style. The Jacuzzi is gone. The waiting room is gone. The dressing room is gone.

Hazan lost his seat, largely because of his weakness for ostentation, and he was succeeded by party colleague Avi Asraf. A few days ago, Asraf was sent packing, along with all the members of the city council. His secretary, Alfasi, who can barely hide her anguish, expected politicians to come to her boss's defense, only to find that you can't count on them when you need them. Asraf too, who expected the heads of his party to rally to his aid, discovered that most of them didn't even bother to answer his cries for help.

The Interior Ministry investigators who examined the municipality's functioning were shocked by the medieval methods by which the city was run. What they found was an atmosphere of "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours," a distribution of goodies bordering on the criminal, veiled and rather open threats, a city council paralyzed by quarrels and intrigues, and a mayor who had lost his ability to run the locality.

This is why the decision was made to suspend the local system of democracy in favor of appointed officials meant to restore proper administration and transparency to city life. It is doubtful whether this medicine will cure Ofakim's sickness. A populace of 26,000, half of whom are unable to earn a livelihood, living in a city where there are hardly any places of employment and in which many residents live an endlessly repetitious cycle of temporary employment, unemployment and professional retraining.

The state appears to have given up on the project of ameliorating the situation in the southern communities. The widely covered crisis affecting Sderot, Ofakim and Arad conceals the bleak situation that prevails throughout the South generally. Apart from Netivot, which has seen some economic prosperity, thanks to the pilgrimages made to the graves of tzaddikim (sages) in the town, and to the courts of rabbis and kabbalists, no economic growth is perceptible in most of the region's cities. In Arad, where most of the elected city officials were also removed from their jobs, the price of houses and apartments has declined by tens of percent. Anyone who can get out is leaving. Most of the old-timers and the city's founding residents already left some time ago for the center of the country, many to Modi'in and the surrounding area.

During the holiday gathering, municipal employees were introduced to their new bosses, and were also told that the party is over in Ofakim.

Running amok in Sderot

But the eyes of the country are on Sderot. A city that has become a living symbol of Israel's helplessness in the face of present-day Gaza, despite the stranglehold that the country has imposed on the Strip since the disengagement. Were it not for the war atmosphere, the state would almost surely have dispatched a caretaker committee, as it did in Ofakim and Arad, and in Yeruham as well. Out of all the southern cities that have been forgotten by Israelis, this bombarded city weighs on the national consciousness like a wound that refuses to heal. Perhaps this is why fatigued minds have intermittently suggested cutting off Gaza's electricity or disrupting the water supply, intermittently of course.

In any event, Sderot was saved from the catastrophe that was poised to befall it this week. On Monday morning, a few minutes after classes began in the new school year, a warning siren sounded. The city ran amok. Parents, crazed with worry, rushed to the pre-schools to get their children. A rumor spread throughout the city that one rocket had struck a Na'amat day-care center near the city center. Anguished cries split the tense air.

"I don't remember ever seeing a sight like this," says Shalom Halevy, a longtime Sderot resident. "People were running about like maniacs seeking shelter. I can't describe the panic to you. Twenty thousand people scurrying all over the place."

The rocket actually landed just a little more than a meter from the day-care center, shattering a tree and carving a gaping hole in the ground. The sobbing children were taken home amid a cacophony of cries of terror and fury. The next day, the hole in the ground became a pilgrimage site for tourists and visitors. A group of journalists from Ukraine stared at the hole for a long time, while a Russian-speaking municipal worker waxed lyrical about the miracle that had transpired in the city. The day-care center is used by immigrant parents from the Caucasus region who came to Israel in the 1990s and were sent to live in the city's Neveh Eshkol neighborhood.

The neighborhood's appearance is so faded that it looks like it was built 100 years ago. Most of the public apartment houses in the South were built hastily and shoddily by public companies - Amigur and Amidar - and within a few years they were abandoned by the older immigrants, who were replaced by more recent arrivals. The immigrants from North Africa first made way for the immigrants from the Soviet Union who arrived in the 1990s, and the latter are leaving to make way for immigrants from Ethiopia.

"For Sale" signs hang on many balconies in the immigrant housing projects. Even these newer arrivals have despaired of Sderot and are looking for another city to move to. Soon Sderot will push its troubles aside and become immersed in an election campaign for the local authority elections, scheduled for a year from now. Past experience indicates that this will be a fierce life-and-death battle. Already, some people are exploiting the climate of anxiety and fear in order to drum up support.

This week, the vulnerability of Southern politics was already evident. Anyone fantasizing about sitting in the mayor's seat went to the media to propose a solution to Sderot's problems. In the meantime, residents run about the city, which continues to sink ever further into despair, while the state displays an appalling helplessness. Aspiring municipal leaders may talk about shutting off the electricity or the water supply to Gaza, but this isn't likely to help Sderot, at a time when the state has shirked its responsibility for the cities of the South and set them back to about where they were in the 1950s.

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