Nitzan Horowitz says that if elected he will be proud to represent Tel Aviv's LGBT community, but that he has a broader agenda.
By NIV ELISNitzan Horowitz521(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Given the conservative nature of Israel’s neighbors, gay superlatives come easily to the Jewish state. Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz isn’t just Israel’s only openly gay parliamentarian, he’s the Middle East’s only openly gay parliamentarian (though he was preceded in that role by Uzi Even, who broke that particular rainbow ceiling in 2002).After four years in the Knesset, however, Horowitz has set his sights on Tel Aviv City Hall. Should he win October’s race against Tel Aviv’s incumbent Mayor Ron Huldai, he will become the first openly gay mayor of Tel Aviv, in Israel.Not that the potential status is what motivates him. Horowitz sees room for improvement in the city’s greatest challenges: its transportation infrastructure, the population of African migrants residing in its south and the price of housing.“To think, I could be at the beach,” he says, wiping sweat from his brow in his sparse Rabin Square office on a hot summer day. Instead, he is juggling his duties as an opposition MK, preparing a response to the extension of daylight savings time issue, brushing up for a meet-and-greet with local supporters, organizing his campaign staff and working out his policy proposals.Huldai will not be easy to beat. In office for 15 years, he has overseen a period of relative prosperity in the city. In 2008, he handily beat his previous challenger, Hadash MK Dov Henin, who only pulled in about a third of the vote before returning to the Knesset.Yet the 48-year-old Horowitz is upbeat.Having chaired the Knesset’s Committee on Foreign Workers and the Lobby for Public Housing, he brings some expertise to the table. A former foreign correspondent for Haaretz, Horowitz draws inspiration for how to improve Tel Aviv from his time abroad in Paris and Washington.Horowitz sat with Metro to discuss his vision for the White City, from Bus Rapid Transit to work permits for African migrants, and why he’d be willing to limit his own term as mayor.What made you decide to run for mayor? The need for change. After 15 years with the current mayor, there is a strong need for change in Tel Aviv. And since I live in the city, I love the city, I am active in the city and I have a lot of experience with the relevant issues, I decided this is the right time and the right opportunity.There are some crucial things, fundamental things that need to be fixed.
First of all is education. Tel Aviv has one of the highest rates of kids per classroom in Israel, classrooms with almost 40 kids, kindergartens which are packed. It’s a big problem for parents, and it is because the city doesn’t build enough classrooms for kindergartens.Another issue is the housing problem.Houses for sale and rent prices are sky-high, almost unachievable for many people. Public transportation is kind of nonexistent in Tel Aviv, and we have a huge problem with traffic, pollution, car accidents and everything that is related.Huldai has done an incredible job catering to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community – on his watch, Tel Aviv has become an internationally recognized gay destination. Does that eat into a voting bloc that would naturally vote for you otherwise? I am not going to just be the mayor of the gay community, I will be mayor of everybody. I will represent the gay community, of course, I am part of it, I would be the first openly gay mayor in the Middle East – ever – so this is significant.But this is not the main issue and not the only issue. Gay people are also troubled by housing prices and transportation and lack of education, and the bad situation in the south of the city. For gay people there isn’t only the gay issue or the budget that the city allocates for gay events. As equal citizens of the city, they are also concerned with all the other issues. They have to pay rent and taxes and send their kids to school.As for Huldai and the gay community: He started out with a very hostile attitude toward gay people. He changed his attitude, and that’s a good thing, but there is still a lot to be done in regard to the LGBT organizations in Tel Aviv and the youth.And regarding the LGBT community, I will place greater emphasis on external things, on content, so I think it’s going to be good news, not just for the gay community, but for everybody.What would you have done differently than Huldai, had you been mayor for all these years? What he did for the last 15 years, we can all see. What I would do differently is change the priorities of the city, concerning the budget.Tel Aviv has one of the lowest rates of budget allocations for education in Israel. In Tel Aviv, 17 percent of the budget is for education, while in Ashdod it’s 34% and in Rishon Lezion it’s 36%.This is a matter of priority. I would put more money into education. I would remove all sorts of obstacles from creating a good, public transportation system, and I would be a player in the public housing market. It would be a 180-degree change.How would you fix the transportation system in Tel Aviv, both for residents and for the thousands of commuters that come in each day? First of all, we need a good, solid public transportation system. In the current system, buses compete with cars in the same lanes in the same traffic jams.There’s no advantage for someone taking transportation.I’m suggesting a whole new system: BRT, Bus Rapid Transit. It’s been implemented in more than 150 cities across the world, like Los Angeles and Istanbul. With BRT, you have mostly electrical vehicles running in their own dedicated lanes. It’s fast and effective, with the same advantage of a metro system and much lower cost and lower implementation time, because you don’t have to build those underground tunnels. It can be in place with five or six lines criss-crossing Tel Aviv in three years.How does that differ from the bus and taxi lanes that already exist in parts of the city? When you put yellow paint on the road, it doesn’t mean you have a public transportation lane – it’s just paint on the road. I’m talking about a much more serious system, that includes lanes with exclusive access; special clean, fast, silent vehicles; special ramps; stations where people can go in and out on the same level; very good frequency; very good coverage of the city. It has nothing to do with the lame attempts being made in the last few years.I would cooperate with the Transportation Ministry. Part of the problem is that the current mayor and the current leadership of the city have a longlasting fight with the government, so the bottom line is that everything is stuck.Nothing has advanced. Even the light rail is delayed, and maybe will be completed by 2020, but they haven’t even started digging the tunnels.People should be able to move through the downtown metropolitan area without a car. If we continue to go along the way we are today, traffic will simply stand still for most of the day. Even now, the Ayalon Highway is a big traffic jam and it’s just going to get worse.Tell me about your plans for urban renewal? How would you clean up downtrodden areas of the city? Housing is the basic structure for urban renewal. There’s a myth put forward by the government and the mayor that nothing can be done regarding the “free market.” This is a lie. The government and the city have very good and efficient tools regarding planning and budget in order to regulate the housing market.The city can plan new housing projects with a variety of apartments – large and small, tall and short buildings, apartments suitable for bachelors and young families and for old people. In Tel Aviv most of the land is city-owned and state-owned, so the city can build on its own, not just sell the land to contractors who sell apartments at ridiculous prices. It’s done in Paris and
