Tel Aviv Halts Plan to Move Religious Beach After Talks Fail

Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality announced Tuesday that it will not move forward with the plan to relocate the city's separate beach from Nordau Beach to a new site in the north. The decision follows talks with the Interior Ministry that failed to produce an agreement.

"Recent discussions between Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality and the Interior Ministry regarding the separate beach did not become agreements," the municipality said in a statement. "Therefore, the decision to move the beach serving the religious public from Nordau Beach to a new location in the north of the city is not being advanced at this time. The municipality will continue to update residents on future developments on this matter."

The announcement ends months of controversy over the city's proposal to move the separate beach from Nordau to a stretch of coastline in the northern part of the city, near the border with Herzliya. Secular residents in the area protested the move, viewing it as an attempt by the Interior Ministry to increase the number of separate beaches in the country, even though the plan involved relocating the existing separate beach, not creating an additional one.

Map of the proposed relocation plan for the separate beach (Photo: Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality)

Municipal officials had explained that moving the separate beach north would create continuity along the promenade beaches, rather than having the current separate beach interrupt and divide the area. They also said the new location would be larger, and that "because the new beach would be at the northern border of the city and adjacent to Herzliya's separate beach, religious families could come together and spend time at the sea at the same time rather than on separate days, religious men at one beach and religious women at the adjacent beach."

"It is important to understand that maintaining one separate beach in the city is required by law for the regulation of bathing sites," the municipality said in a statement published last July. "We are currently in discussions with Herzliya Municipality, the Interior Ministry and all relevant parties to examine the move, and any advancement will be done in a gradual and orderly manner."