"We are promoting the planning of a new huge metropolitan city in the south of the country, which will be the next Tel Aviv, south of Be'er Sheva. The idea is to come from scratch and build this city with hospitals, universities and hundreds of thousands of units," said Shlomi Heisler this week, a man with a rather long degree - Chairman of the National Planning Headquarters and Chairman of the Committee for National Infrastructures in the Planning Administration.
As a warm southerner, and sometimes also a little boiling, I really wanted to say goodbye to the "next Tel Aviv".
But I wanted to suggest that it might be better to give her a name that does not contain "Tel Aviv" in it.
Somehow this may ensure seas, and diversity, and excavations everywhere for the next 100 years.
Unfortunately, except for excavations - everything else is missing south of Beer Sheva to Eilat.
If you need a name to characterize and brand the new city that will be built in Hul, the name should speak to the desert, something like "Kiryat Hul".
Well, yes, I understand, it doesn't sound the best.
It's too reminiscent of all the cities that are stuck in the sand with "Kiryat"-something.
And of course we don't want anyone to remember that they exist and are part of the Negev, so what if we find a short, modern and catchy name for the city.
Something like "harish", the plowed city?
On the same weight, we can suggest the name "Aavarit", which is both a city and a town, and it even has some germy aroma.
I mean, there won't be enough residents to justify an Aroma branch in the next 50 years, but "Avarit" certainly corresponds with the blindness of the people of the center in relation to space, doesn't it?
And on the other hand, maybe it corresponds a little too much with the space and "Awarit" reminds us of Arabic, and Arabic is the language of Bedouins, and maybe it's not worth reminding imaginary young couples that there are Bedouins around, and worse - that the Bedouins won't think they're invited to the new city.
If so, we said south of Be'er Sheva, maybe we'll go to the Bible, where there are no Bedouins.
Maybe the city will be named after the city of Abimelech the "king" - "Gerer"?
It's short, it swallows, it drags, and it's only three letters!
This will probably save a lot of ink in printing the official documents of the two hospitals that Heisler promises to establish - Gerer General and Gerer Samson, because what health fund will open a hospital for patients whose very existence is imagined?
74 years - and Be'er Sheva doesn't have two hospitals, so maybe it's better for Heisler not to promise "hospitals" in the plural.
Or maybe we'll go with a Ben-Gurion name like that.
As the old man said - "make the wilderness bloom".
So let's try a city with a name that corresponds to wasteland, something like "gecko".
Yes, I see why it doesn't sound so exciting, but wait - what about the "flower" city.
Oh no, it reminds me of Mizrahim, and we don't want to remind people in the new city of Yeruham, Ofakim, Sderot and Dimona.
But leave you with the Bible and Ben-Gurion, let's learn from the Americans and call the city a hot name, something sexy like "Las Vegas", such an international combination, and it also has a connection to the desert.
What about "Fata Morgana"?
It's interesting, it rings nice, a bit reminiscent of Fatma, but it has an international chic to it.
And in general, what does it mean?
Oh wait, is this a mirage?
Not good, not good, so maybe we will emphasize the positive in the city, so that everyone will know that it is a city with new infrastructure, and not related to the collapsing infrastructure of the Negev, something like "Tashtitha"?
Oh wow, it really sounds like some kind of nonsense that we smashed it too late on Thursday when we were dying to go home, and we didn't have a good answer for why there is a crisis and a bubble and a black hole in the real estate market, so we said we would build a new city and we didn't think it through until the end, because already We didn't have the strength to mop this with all the sand and its problems.
So maybe we'll call her something with space!
There is plenty of room there, no Bedouins, and no development cities that never manage to develop, and best of all - it really sounds like something new and futuristic!
But wait, "space" alone is not enough, not to mention the memorial day in "space", so maybe we also need a name that contains dreams.
And sand, because that's all we can sell to the unfortunates who will believe Heisler's delusion and be forgotten in the middle of the desert a moment after the city is built.
If so, we will finally find the name of the next southern city, an appropriate name for the "next great metropolis", for the "new Tel Aviv", a name so precise that it will precisely define the city and its inhabitants for the entire State of Israel.
Well, ready for it, ba-da-bi, ba-da-bam, here it comes, space city, dream city and sand city, remember?
From now on her name in Israel will be called: "Dream".
This week I spoke with a desperate high-tech worker.
"My experience teaches me that if I write all my professional experience in my resume, they simply won't get back to me. They calculate how old I am, and how many years I've been in the profession, and just don't get back to me. You can't even blame them for being old, because they never They will tell you this right in the face. They will sugarcoat it with all kinds of phrases like 'you don't fit the company's DNA', as if a company's DNA is something you are born with, and not something created by the people who make up the company.
"And they will do crazy things to find out how old you are, look up what school you went to, and check when you graduated, all because in the end they prefer to take these cool young people who don't care that in ten years they will be less cool and not young at all, and then They will be thrown aside in favor of the new cool ones."
When I wondered if she was ready to dance on her car and look for a job that fits her skills even outside the periphery, it turned out that she had long ago given up trying to find a job in the area where she lives, and is only looking for a job in the central area, a distance of more than two hours' drive, and even there - there is no job, or at least none Work for "too" experienced workers.
For years we got used to high-tech pulling the wagon of the Israeli economy.
"If my startup closes, I'll go to another one, there's always a demand for high-tech people," a friend told me a few years ago.
Until he recently called to consult about a job not in the high-tech field.
"Are times changing?", I asked.
"Not really," he replied, "it's us who are changing," he sighed.
But chaos can also be a ladder.
or a lab coat.
The Naut Hovav Council, south of Be'er Sheva, will dedicate its annual conference next week to the crisis in the high-tech industry and the ways to turn it into a lever for Israeli industry.
For the generation that doesn't know, it will be said that in the heart of Navot Hovav reside the factories of the petrochemical, chemical and phosphate industries.
Now the traditional industries want to absorb the high-tech workers in the periphery and in the center in their industries.
But in order to lift the current lever and make the old locomotive pull the Israeli economy forward, the members of the council and the industrialists' association demand the assistance of the Israeli government, either in prioritizing and granting incentives to vocational training colleges, or in creating connections between factories and entrepreneurs who wish to absorb the high-quality workers in the vocational training phase .
So you can wait for the establishment of the new government, or simply update the high-tech workers who are close to your heart, that maybe this time from the south the good will open.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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