VISTAS OF ISRAEL

the story of Tel Aviv is the story of a municipal Jack and the Beanstalk it was planted less than 50 years ago meant to be a quiet little garden suburb the streets of one section were laid out in the shape of a candelabra another in the shape of a six-pointed star of david today these sections are right in the heart of a bustling metropolis at half a million if you wanted to design a perfect mousetrap for a traffic cop you couldn't do better than Tel Aviv the phenomenal growth of the city is a source of pride to the citizen and a problem for the policeman every morning he checks in at his precinct station and finds the experts busy drafting new traffic regulations setting up new stop signs and red lights for the roads that keep sprouting overnight the City Council has been known to approve the names of 20 new avenues at a single sitting the city motto is taken from the Old Testament I shall build thee and thou shalt be built and that includes no parking zones in one way streets the precinct best keeps in constant touch with officers along the main thoroughfares checking in reports on the flow of traffic as often is not the traffic cops day starts by being sent out on the assignment of clearing up a jam at one of the city's main squares his beat for today is along hallenby road right along the crowded commercial center of the city tel aviv's counterpart at Times Square and Piccadilly Circus takes a healthy imagination to believe that just 50 years ago this was a sleepy little village with the law barring shops and factories with chain stretched across the streets on Sabbath to keep out of whack ins not to mention donkeys and camels well some mornings can still be pleasant and quiet other mornings it can seem as though everybody in Israel has come pouring into Tel Aviv for a policeman who knows his business it doesn't take long to discover what's causing the jam up this is just one of those mornings that's all when it seems as though everybody in Israel is passing through Tel Aviv the first hour out on the beat you can tell it's going to be a rough day an old hand gets philosophical about it traffic jams are like bananas they come in bunches clearing up a traffic jam is a picnic compared to some of the jobs that come up in the line of duty there are some situations that are international the language here is Hebrew but the translation is just about the same in Paris or Chicago what do you think you're going to a fire but in Tel Aviv the first offender gets off with a warning noted on the back of the driver's license man does his best to be polite about it but you might as well face it in the whole wide world there never was a traffic cop who could win a popularity contest and so it goes a day in the life of a policeman in this city on wheels I'm Colonel basil Herman of the Israeli army official title military governor of the Negev that's the wilderness that stretches over the southern half of Israel but the Negev wasn't always a desert at places like Colonel and ab de you can see ruins of ancient cities complete with systems and public baths here in the era van with a copper mines of King Solomon and here at alerts King Solomon's Navy's set sail for the Orient and Africa what flourished once can be made to flourish again and already we can see it happening pioneer settlements dotting the ridges trees barley fields and the minerals of the Negev are being exploited potash from the Dead Sea phosphates from a great crater and even King Solomon's Mines are once more producing copper the seaport of alerts is also operating when you open a frontier that the road is the lifeline we had one a road to alerts running here along the border a winding twisting uncertain road wide open to ambush and sniping fire wasn't a sort of thing you'd hang your future on so we decided to build another 130 miles down the center of a wilderness here and there an ancient camel trek here a ravine with a sheer drop of two to three hundred feet and here nothing the army engineers and the Ministry of Labour set out to bring alive the prophecy of Isaiah and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose and a highway shall be there these are the men who built its road gangs surveyors engineers the road begins with the engineers working out of temporary headquarters in the field mapping a route through the wilderness deciding where to curve and where to blast straight through deciding just what it will take to do the job how many steam shovels and how much dynamite how many trucks and how many men the first crews come bouncing in across the desert across this dusty wasteland that was once one of the world's great trade routes through these stone slopes in the time of the Byzantines came caravans bringing spices from India carpets from Persia and precious silks from Peking the ancient tracks are covered over now by the dust of centuries and all that remains is the challenge the teams of surveyors set to work springing out the lines marking the way for the bulldozers and the jackhammer men chopping through the chalk cliffs scooping away the soft sandstone pounding down the natural kaolin that makes a perfect base for a modern highway they split into two teams one working down from kafar euro hum the other driving north from a lot come up against a barrier like the towering wall of the mawkish ramon and there's only one way to get through month after month working a 14-hour day in heat blazing at 110 degrees past dim camel tracks and ruins of cities that they'd back to the days of Caesar leveling the way for the asphalt crews the hot tar laid down by men who know how to handle themselves in his desert heat immigrants from North Africa and the hills of Kurdistan day after day pushing it through the new road curving from tell yo come to stable care from stable car to opt-out two weeks in the desert and then the two day break a chance to head down to a lot the rugged little frontier town on the Gulf of Aqaba at the northern shore of the Red Sea a chance to spend a few days where there's always a spot of shade and a bit of cool wind where water doesn't have to be rationed out by the thimble full a chance to take it easy and wash the desert out of your throat swap the latest gossip with the border guards the young fisherman the copper miners and tourists and frontier farmers who make up most of a lots population a few brief hours of fun in the recreation club overlooking the shore where once King Solomon's Navy put to sea to bring back gold and peacocks from the Orient loaf a little laugh a little shoot the breeze and then it's time to head back to work again there's a hundred and thirty kilometers of highway to put through and it won't build itself every inch on the map every mile of road is paid for with sweat and back-breaking labor the 20th century circles through the ancient hills between the mountains of Moab and the plains of cyanide the work goes on in a steady routine the crews taking off from a lot again and into the desert month after month for a solid year and each crew is a miniature Israel soldier and civilian Jew and Arab old-timer and new immigrant working together to open a way through the wasteland day by day the desert becomes a dirt road the dirt road becomes a black top highway a new road for pioneers coming in to plant their settlements on the hilltops a new route for trucks roaring along to bring out phosphates from the valley of our ova a new life line for construction crews heading him to build the southern sea port on the Gulf of Aqaba where the road builders blaze the trail the promise of the future goes riding down the road to a lot