Tel-Aviv (Israel), special envoy.
It’s a typical Indian summer evening in Tel Aviv. Along the dike of Jaffa, a former Palestinian city absorbed into the metropolis after the Nakba, residents wander. Some with their dogs, who can drink from the water bowls provided by some restaurateurs. They are sometimes overtaken by sweaty joggers or high-speed scooter riders.
We hear the surf of the waves, which would make the Mediterranean pass for an ocean. From a rooftop escapes, in the middle of lively music, a voice in French: “I remind you that you will have to go down one floor for the start of the reception. »
An hour’s drive south, Gaza was almost completely burned to the ground. Two hours to the north, Hezbollah rockets encountered Israeli army strikes. But, in Tel Aviv-Jaffa (3.5 million inhabitants out of Israel’s 10), life seems to flow like a quiet stream, apparently justifying its nickname: the “bubble”.
However, the expression annoys Itamar Avneri, a peace activist, elected municipal councilor last February: “It’s really ridiculous to call it a ‘bubble.’ Certainly, we are not a kibbutz attacked near Gaza or villages on the border with Lebanon. This city is a microcosm of the country, with diversity but also social problems and an increasingly high cost of living. We live there because there is work and, as far as I am concerned, because LGBT rights are respected there. In fact, this bubble thing is another way of saying that we are protected leftists. »
A joke would sum up this feeling of both embodying Israel and being apart from it: “A third of the country works, a third goes to the army, a third pays taxes and it’s the same third: the one who lives in Tel Aviv. » The economic capital was for dozens of weeks the epicenter of demonstrations against the judicial reform project which would have almost given full powers to the far-right government of Benyamin Netanyahu. Kaplan Street continues to be the scene of rallies but over the past year, the purpose has changed.
