Tel Aviv

The Tel Aviv bus station is said to be one of the biggest in the world and it’s something of a nerve centre for Israel
. The buses are responsible for getting all the teenage soldiers back home to be fed by their families and then back to the base to pick up more trauma.

You can either get the white collective vans outside to your destination (they’re called sheroot) or enter the bus station where you’‘ be searched by an Ethiopian soldier. Once inside you have to find your way between six floors which include a full clothes and electronic market – the Israelis just can’t help making business whenever there’s a chance.

The central bus station is supposed to be a very dodgy area and, like many rundown, poor neighbourhoods in the world, there’s a good deal of drunks and junkies around. There’s also a lot of prostitution as the Israeli mafia is very strong in the trafficking of prostitutes from Russia and the Ukraine.

It’s true there is quite a sketchy feel in the street near the bus station but a lot of the fear comes from the fact that it’s the cheap part of town where the immigrants live. There’s strong concentration of Russians, Ethiopians, Phillipinos and Chinese here, the latter brought in to do the work that the Arabs used to do before the first Intifada.

Although Israel depends on the immigrants to do manual and construction work that the Israelis wouldn’t be caught dead doing, the immigration police are strong here. Many of the immigrants trying to make a buck to send back home live in fear of immigration raids. Check out all the Western Union signs and you get the picture.

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