Is Israel Sustainable?

I think that there are a lot of aspects of Israeli cities that are admirable. They also come with a lot of problems, some worse than in San Francisco. I spent most of my time in Rishon Lezziyon, but I also briefly visited Jerusalem, went to Haifa, and went a couple of times to Tel Aviv. I went by taxi, by car, by bus, by train, and by private transit “taxi” vans. I did not bike, but I did observe others biking and I have a few things to say about cycling in Israel. I also noticed a lot of things about cityscape and building design that I think are mostly admirable.

I’ll start with the city design. I didn’t see any single-family single-story homes in my stay. My mother’s family all live in apartments, even her rather wealthy relatives. There were some lower-density neighborhoods, but even there, the houses looked like they were attached duplexes, not the large-lot Eichlers uglifying Palo Alto. The other great thing about Israel is that literally nobody has a grassy yard. We don’t seem to have realized that California is a desert and should not be dotted with yards like in the ever-rainy Sweden. There is, however, still plenty of greenspace. Public parks are common (I found at least five within a ten minute walk) and most have plenty of grass. There are also a lot of fountains that I feel are a bit extravagant in a desert. Israel is big on desalinization, which is feasible but a lot more expensive than conservation and treating wastewater (read this blog post about drinking your own pee: http://www.citylab.com/weather/2014/06/why-californians-will-soon-be-drinking-their-own-pee/373014/).

One other cool thing about Israel is the prevalence of solar. Nearly every home and building has a solar hot water heater. This usually consists of a white tank on the roof that is attached to a flat-plate solar collector. Unfortunately, it looks like some of the newer buildings are forgoing solar. Keep in mind that Israel is very sunny and warm, so solar water heating is pretty much all that is needed. The water at my mother’s apartment takes a couple of minutes to warm up at some places, but it gets plenty hot. Speaking of hot, the weather is quite bad in summer. It only gets to be 85-100 degrees, but it is humid enough to feel a lot worse, and the low temperature at night is rarely below 70, at least for where I was staying. Despite that, a lot of people do not seem to use their air conditioners all that much and there are still always plenty of people outside. Stores, however, have no qualms about blasting the AC and leaving their doors wide open, to the dismay of me and whoever deals with their electric bills. 

Unfortunately, Israeli cities are lacking in a safe transportation infrastructure. Although cities are compact and mixed-use enough to warrant a pedestrian-friendly street layout, the space is just not there. Sidewalks are often narrow and bike lanes are nonexistent. Drivers are horrible-speeding, rude, honking. We saw a car crash into a scooter in Tel Aviv. I remember the crazy drivers from 15 years ago and it seems that the chorus hasn't changed much. Tel Aviv was full of traffic jams and the highways were often congested. There appeared to be a toll lane for a period on the highway but it was only used by buses and taxis while even while everyone else was stalled. Oh yeah, Israel seems to be a place for hitchhiker's-there were literally hitchhiking stops in the middle of the highway (or maybe they were just bus stops on the highway, which I also saw frequently).

Despite the car frenzy, public transit is somewhat decent. There was frequent bus service of all colors. Interestingly, the newer, fancier buses with wifi seemed to be empty while the old green buses were often quite full. There are also private vans (sheruts) that basically function as buses without set stops and for about the same fare. During Shabat (Friday afternoon through Saturday afternoon), the buses don't run and the sheruts pick up the slack (for a higher price!). Train service is also decent between cities but not fully comprehensive. The trains are definitely a bit on the older side and are smelly diesel trains. Haifa actually has started a BRT system called Metronit that looks and feels just like light rail. While a pleasant experience, it was still delayed due to lack of signal priority (mentioned in the Wiki). It has also been riddled by cost overages and at the end of the day, may not actually end up much cheaper than a light rail system. I think it is a good idea though, and if properly designed, can have most of the same benefits as light rail for half the cost.

The biggest issue with transportation is the road space. I see some complain about the lack of bike lanes or sidewalks in America, but this is heavily amplified in Israel. Where I was staying was a nice mixed-use neighborhood with a lot of apartments and shops. Unfortunately, sidewalks are often too narrow to handle foot traffic, much less the bicycles and electric bikes (very common!) that invaded due to the utter lack of bike lanes. Intersections are also an annoyance for pedestrians: just to get across a relatively small 4-lane road, one must wait for the signal, reach the median, and then wait another minute to actually cross. Maybe there is some reasoning behind the crosswalk timing but it seems more of a hindrance to walking. According to some studies (look them up if you want), most pedestrian accidents occur away from crosswalks, but this is likely due to the need to walk half a block, wait a minute, cross halfway, and then wait another minute before being able to cross, just to reach a park that was literally directly across from your house.

Don't even get me started about bikes. Tel Aviv actually has a bike share that seems fairly popular and bikes were fairly common in most places I visited. As I said though, there are no bike lanes and it doesn't appear to be getting better. Tel Aviv has a few bi-directional bike lanes and some bike paths through parks and along the beach. These are geared more towards leisure than towards commuting-the infrastructure is pretty nonexistent closer to shops and offices. Bi-directional bike lanes are also not particularly ideal on one side of a wide road-you may have to cross the road to reach the bike lane and then cross again to reach your destination. Rishon has more bike paths near new developments, but again, they're only on one side of the street and they aren't well connected. I hope that the US (and Israel for that matter) learn to do better.

Some other things I saw were a little disturbing as well. For one, there was a lot of trash around parks and in the street. There was also a lot of smoking, often with store owners lighting up right outside their door. Overall, it was a mixed bag, but I can't say that Israel is a sustainable country. For one, war is pretty nasty for the environment. But even forgetting Israel's treatment of Palestinians and other social issues, the pedestrian/cycling support is sorely lacking in otherwise nice and dense mixed-use developments. 

Israel: Politics and Happenings

NOTE: This Post was written predating most of the violence and is about events from June 26th to July 3rd

Israel

This post is going to be a little different than the previous two. First of all, I am going to ignore some mishaps that occurred in Stockholm that led to me spending 20 minutes walking up and down stairs three times only to end up paying $4.50 to use a bathroom. Also, I thought my headphones were broken, but it turns out my laptop was just being dumb. Sorry, but that’s it for the humor in this post. Anyway, I am going to focus mostly on sustainable urban design (or lack thereof) in Israel and what I feel could be useful for California. That said, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to talk about Israel without discussing the social situation, so get ready for some political ramblings.

Let me get one thing out of the way: I am Jewish and most of my mother’s family lives in Israel. However, I would consider myself vehemently anti-Israel government, 100% opposed to settlements, and supportive of a two-state solution. My cousin is also quite liberal as well and is disappointed with Israel’s strongman Benjamin Netanyahu. Her husband is even more extreme in his disdain of Israelis, going as far to say as everyone is nice to you unless you’re Arab. I question the notion that Israelis are friendly at all, but I’ll leave that for later. I really don’t understand why we can’t just get along, but I guess some people have different ideas. I hesitate to say that I am strongly pro-Arab because I feel like that means that I have to support Hamas and believe that Israel has no right to exist. I am, however, pro-peace and pro-equality. If you want to hear more of my thoughts on the political situation, read on, otherwise I’ll talk more about Israel’s urban design in my next post.

I did not go anywhere near the settlements or the Palestinian side of Israel, both out of fear and lack of time. However, there are persecuted minorities within Israel itself. In the “Jewish” part of Israel, around 16.5% of the country is Muslim. Their status is not quite oppressed, but it is something like I imagine America’s south to be today. There is a lot of economic segregation, as the Arabs tend to be much poorer than most Jews. Think of East Palo Alto, except there literally aren’t any Arabs in many parts of Israel. That is not to say that there are no Jews who live together with Arabs, it is just almost exclusively in poorer areas. I’m getting this information from my cousin who works at a university by the way, so feel free to contradict me if I’m wrong. She also said that primary schools are segregated, even in otherwise mixed communities. I would presume that the Arab schools aren’t quite as good either. One thing that I have read about is the Israeli position on mixed-faith marriage. It is recognized in Israel, but not performed, so you’d have to fly to a nearby country, which isn’t all that easy to do if you’re already economically disadvantaged. Another example of Israel’s overt racism is the governmental makeup. There are a few Arab representatives in parliament, but no Israeli party, even the most liberal Labor Party, would seriously consider forming a coalition with Muslims, even if it would give them a majority. Anyway, that’s just semantics.

I actually was taken to a Muslim area in Jerusalem. This was just a small sample and part of a rather touristy area. It was basically an old, narrow lane for walking. You’re basically bombarded by people trying to sell you something in their store. There were a lot of sports shirts/flags or whatever (especially for the Lakers, Celtics, Yankees, etc. There was also some sarcastically pro-Israeli memorabilia (like “Don’t worry America, the Israeli Defense Forces are Behind you”, which was actually meant to be taken literally as there were soldiers everywhere). The place we ate lunch at had the “best hummus in the world” according to my cousin. It was pretty good, but I don’t know if it could merit such a title. The falafel at this place was actually quite bad too. The worst part was the waiter who served us. I saw him holding a cigarette in one hand and then proceeding to serve pita! Disgusting, and smoking wasn’t even allowed in the restaurant. At least the other shop owners had the courtesy to blow smoke in the faces of passing tourists instead of suffocating customers inside. Okay, enough story time.

One thing you notice about Israel is that there are military people everywhere. That’s because every Israeli citizen (except Arabs and some super religious people) has to serve in the army. This reinforces the notion of Israel as a police state, and it doesn’t really make me feel comfortable to see so many soldiers (some armed with assault rifles) everywhere. I’m not so worried about surveillance, but the more guns there are, there more likely that I’ll get shot. As I write this, I think that Israel is trading rocket fire with Hamas. I don’t at all support Hamas, but neither do I think that Israel’s deadly blasts are justified on the basis of deterrence. There is literally no reason that we can’t live together, but barring that, Palestinians need their own country with freedom of trade, travel,. Etc. Oh yeah, the settlements are just horrible and racist and reflect an 1840s Andrew Jackson philosophy. Unfortunately, the current government is only stoking the fire further and the US is not exactly threatening to pull aid to Israel. I don’t really feel like boycotts of Israeli companies (or of Caterpillar or HP or whatever) are really going to make a difference-the solution will have to be through political reconciliation. My cousin’s husband (also Jewish by the way) seemed more supportive of the idea though. It’s good to know that not everyone in Israel is racist.

I’ve been rambling too long about socio-political hogwash, but there is one more thing that I found interesting. Israel is largely a mishmash of various European immigrants who were pushed out of Nazi Germany and not necessarily welcomed in the United States. However, besides the Arabs, there are a good number of African (nearly all Ethiopian) immigrants as well. Israel has admitted to even recently giving the Ethiopians birth control without their consent. Many of the Ethiopians can’t read or write Hebrew and they tend to do the jobs that Mexicans would do in America. Even though they are Jews, they are still basically second-class citizens, perhaps slightly more respected than the Arabs.