Central Israel residents demand access to massive green space just beyond a fence

Residents living in a densely packed region of central Israel are demanding access to a massive green site on their doorstep that housed the first agricultural school in the Land of Israel and today encompasses several schools, a farm, fields, orchards, woodland, and the country’s first botanical garden.

The Mikveh Israel Agricultural Youth Village is located on some 3,300 dunams (815 acres) of prime real estate in central Israel, surrounded by the city of Holon, the local authority of Azor, and the neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv.

None of those locations were settled in 1870, when the Ottoman sultan leased the land to educational organization Kol Israel Haverim (KIAH), part of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, to establish an agricultural school, Mikveh Israel.

They were, however, all settled by 1956, when KIAH signed a contract with the State of Israel that created a company under joint ownership. The state leased the land to KIAH for 99 years, with an option to extend for another 99 years.

Many Israelis over a certain age will remember visiting the open spaces and heritage sites, which include the reconstructed 19th-century school buildings and mechanical workshop, an old synagogue, wine cellars, a palm-lined boulevard, and the nation’s first botanical garden.

For the past 30 years, however, a wall and fencing have prohibited free access. A Mikveh Israel spokesman said nobody knew exactly when the fence was erected or by what authority but said it would have been in accordance with Education Ministry instructions.

As an educational facility, 85 percent of its budget comes from the public purse. The site charges for pre-booked group tours of the botanical garden and many heritage features.

Over the years, with population growth and massive development in central Israel, Mikveh Israel has turned into a green island surrounded by concrete and neighborhoods with little green space.

Residents living outside of the fence are now trying to leverage Mikveh Israel’s plans to build additional facilities on the site to restore some of the public access that once was.

They say that by serving just 1,800 students, the facility caters to a privileged few, a charge the youth village says shows a misunderstanding of Mikveh Israel’s purpose.

One precedent the petitioners are citing is a fight by residents of the northern city of Beit She’an to gain access to a section of the Assi Stream that runs through a veteran, fenced-in kibbutz. That resulted in a small section of the stream west of the kibbutz being opened to the public.

Initial backing for public right of access

In plans it issued for public objection in January last year, the Tel Aviv District Planning Committee, supported by the state Committee for the Protection of Agricultural Land and Open Spaces, backed giving the right of public access to the historic core of the Mikveh Israel campus and connecting it to the metropolitan fabric by opening access roads to the east, west, north, and south.

Mikveh Israel, supported by the Education Ministry, KIAH, and the Council for the Protection of Heritage Sites in Israel, resisted, claiming that the entire site was an educational institution, that the public had no legal right to access it, that students’ safety would be at risk if strangers roamed around, and that there was no money to ensure security and upkeep of areas open to all.

In February, the planning committee backtracked. It announced that it was considering “special instructions” rather than a legally binding public right of access. It proposed providing narrow public thoroughfares in stages over seven years from the date of the plan’s approval, with the committee empowered to approve further postponements. The thoroughfares would only be open when the schools were not in session, leaving the decision on those hours to Mikveh Israel.

This decision spurred the school’s nature-deprived neighbors to further action.

‘It’s not a park’

Equal in size to the central city of Givatayim, the youth village sits on either side of Route 44.

Some 1,800 students study there in three state schools (for 7th through 12th grade), two boarding schools, and an educational farm. The facilities are concentrated south of that road.

The Montessori and forest education networks also run two private kindergartens and elementary schools on the campus, and around 100 families live onsite, most of them Mikveh Israel staff.

The agricultural village, which now plans to expand its agriculture-oriented education system to another roughly 3,000 students of all ages, says the site is not a park but an educational campus with significant heritage value.

That status is anchored in the Mikveh Israel Law, passed in 1976. This law determined that the school would continue to educate young Israelis for a life of agriculture and settlement and that any use of the land could only serve the school.

A High Court interpretation of this law followed in 2005. It said the law’s main goal was to “preserve the school’s land as a ‘green lung’ in the heart of the Tel Aviv metropolis,” to prevent it from becoming part of any built-up area, to “preserve the zoning of the school land for the purpose of fulfilling its goals,” and to require any alteration to this stated goal to be approved by multiple state bodies.

The plans: ‘Free, supervised public access’

The initial expansion plans, issued by the Tel Aviv District Planning and Building Committee in January last year, said 95 dunams (23.5 acres) would be available for new buildings for classrooms, research, and farming activities.

The plan would allow for the provision of education to more students and new partnerships with nearby authorities, research bodies, and academics. It would also “open Mikveh to the public as part of the fabric of the existing metropolitan area of the center of the country.”

To do this, the plan proposed “free, supervised access to public thoroughfares” and “defined areas for public access.” Building permits for certain facilities would be conditioned upon the creation of a mechanism to ensure that public access to the heritage center, the botanical gardens, and other sites would be supervised.

Following the committee’s U-turn in February, a second period of time for objections was opened, and those objections were discussed on June 24.

Mikveh Israel ‘Can’t have it both ways’

Environmental lawyer Ori Sharon, a Holon resident who teaches at Bar Ilan University, said the existing educational complex, plus the agricultural land and the area earmarked for additional construction, stretched across 400 dunams (just under 100 acres) and should be fenced off. Pointing out that Mikveh Israel receives most of its funding from the state, he contended that the rest of the site should be opened to the public.

If the students had to go beyond this area, they would have to take the same precautions that his own children did when they left school for extracurricular activities. Entire neighborhoods were not fenced off to protect children leaving schools anywhere else, he said.

Furthermore, he said, Mikveh Israel couldn’t have it both ways: It couldn’t claim that public access could endanger students’ safety while allowing strangers to enter the complex for commercially profitable events such as weddings, horseback riding, and tractor driving courses or come for meetings at various offices that rent space.

“With the massive development they hope to promote… the numbers of strangers that will continue to come in will only increase. Who knows if any of these are registered in the sex offender database? Who knows if they are really going where they claim to be going? How can we leave the situation as it is when children apparently roam freely around an area the size of a city, even in groves and orchards where no one sees what is happening, while strangers enter unhindered in an unsupervised way all the time?”

Addressing a fear that the public would visit the heritage sites and leave a mess behind, he quipped, “Why don’t we also shut down the Western Wall?”

Sharon cited the need for “distributive justice” — a fair division of space that balanced Mikveh Israel’s interests against those of the public.

He also emphasized the need to enable pedestrian and bicycle access through the park to Ariel Sharon Park beyond and a new transportation hub planned for the Holon Junction.

Around 500 residents have signed a petition that says: “The residents of the neighborhoods adjacent to Mikveh Israel don’t have a single park or green lung near their homes. It cannot be that such a huge site serves nobody except for a small group of high school students carrying out one session of agricultural work each week for a few hours. In practice, everyone living next to Mikveh Israel knows that the site is empty and silent throughout most hours of the day.”

While agreeing that the areas serving the students daily need to be fenced off, locals want wider thoroughfares that are open 24/7, additional gates so that people living nearby can walk into the site, a peripheral track around the property for runners and cyclists, and additional paths through the site that are further away from the schools. They also want access to the heritage sites promised in the original plan.

‘An educational institution, not a park’

Sarit Goldstein, the youth village’s CEO,  told The Times of Israel that Mikveh Israel was an educational campus and farm, not a park, where students carried out 90% of the agricultural work.

She said she opposed thoroughfares for the public at any time of day or night because boarding school students were on site, adding that she was not prepared to fence off the schools since “it’s a youth village that allows students a free and safe place to bond with nature.”

All national parks and botanical gardens charged entrance fees, she noted, and she said she was in regular contact with Holon Municipality’s community department to find new ways to attract locals to the site.

Entrance was free on Independence Day and the recent festival of Shavuot, she said, and with city support, would be provided several times during the summer.

She added that Mikveh Israel allowed a few dozen locals to walk and cycle around the site after they proved they had no criminal background, promised to stay away from certain areas, and paid a NIS 200 ($53) annual fee.

“It might be that the site was more accessible in other periods,” Goldstein went on, “but Education Ministry regulations and safety requirements for students have also changed.”

Explaining that the site on the other side of Route 44 was currently out of bounds because of infrastructure work not connected to Mikveh Israel, Goldstein said she would be happy to meet with the residents — something that has not happened to date.

“Maybe there are ideas we haven’t thought about,” she said. “But access has to be supervised, and we will not turn ourselves into a park.”

The Education Ministry said it deferred to Mikveh Israel to comment.