There are rare cases where the state has a historic opportunity to redress social injustice.
To me, an urban renewal venture is just that.
The project is no longer a voluntary alternative, it is not a luxury or a favor that the government gives to its subjects.
The enormous deterioration in the condition of the buildings erected throughout Israel for the absorption of immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s is becoming tangible.
All over the country, buildings are being evacuated for fear of collapse, leaving hundreds of families with poor means without any safety net.
This phenomenon will intensify and will be a focus of first-rate social distress.
The construction boom, especially in the development towns, is an opportunity to rejuvenate the demographic fabric and attract young couples.
At the same time, it reinforces the need, as well as the moral and ethical duty, to take care of the old neighborhoods and the residents who formed the foundation and nurturing of the development towns and settlement of the country.
The widening gaps between the old neighborhoods and the new neighborhoods undermine the fabric of life and expand the sense of inequality.
Along with the infrastructural characteristics of inequality, in cities ranging from Gaza, inequality and the protective gap are also intensifying.
The old neighborhoods remained promiscuous without built-in protection, the population in them is older, and the time required to reach a safe area is only a few seconds.
Initiatives such as TMA 38 and others have not matured in the urban periphery of Israel due to lack of economic feasibility. The price of entrepreneurship is low and market forces are not enough here. Of old and young populations have an extraordinary urban value, which is not reflected in the young neighborhoods that are rising in abundance.
To produce urban renewal, government involvement and an economic safety net are required.
This is not about rehabilitating neighborhoods, it is not about applying an aesthetic patch, but about a thorough upgrade, redress of injustice and reduction of infrastructure gaps that only the state can fund.
Upgrading infrastructure, strengthening buildings, repairing water and sewage systems, updating electricity grids and completing protection gaps will give senior residents an asset that can compete with the latest inventory in the market without being easy prey for cheap speculators and homeless money in the seventh and eighth decades of their lives.
It is also important for the whole city as a community: it is possible to replace the curbs, the peeling plaster and the electricity poles, but it is not possible to replace the soul, the smell of childhood and the touch of the people.
I am interested in urban renewal that will preserve what we could not be today without it.
Israel is strong enough to elevate its past.
To mention its smells, to listen to the various melodies that emanated from the blocks and housing of the train.
Israel is strong enough to march its veterans to an equal springboard.
It seems to me that there is no more worthy social investment than this.
I was privileged to lead Ashkelon.
The city is networked with cranes that build its new skyline, new employment areas and multi-lane roads that surround it and lead to modern interchanges.
Ashkelon, like many other cities, will not be complete without renewing its old neighborhoods.
The common future was built together alongside the concern for the very glorious past that made it possible.
