Lod is just 20 minutes from Tel Aviv. There is no other city in Israel that has gone through such turbulent political upheavals as Lod. Two years ago, Meir Nitzan, who had served as mayor of Rishon LeZion for more than 30 years, was called to the rescue and asked to run the city. He was preceded by a retired Israel Defense Forces officer, reserve Brig. Gen. Ilan Harari, and a retired police officer, Aryeh Bibi, who, each in turn, had also been called on similar rescue missions. The fact that the three were appointed to the mayor’s office without standing for election or applying for the job established the image of Lod as a city that is incapable of managing its own affairs and that is still not mature enough for democratic elections. “Running this city is an impossible mission,” I was told by Bibi, who had served as commissioner of the prison service before being called on to head the Lod City Council. His colleague Harari, addressing the Knesset, described the task as “the greatest municipal challenge in the country.”

Given the central location of Lod in Israel, all government ministries have pitched in to help the city and get it out of trouble. Prime ministers visited the city one after the other, lavishing promises aplenty. Alas, to no avail. In the absence of vital infrastructures, any of the residents who could afford it have fled the city.

“It is all going to change,” promised Aaron Attias — who leads the religious community in the city — as we were sitting in his bureau, encircled by photos of new buildings that adorn the office walls. “In 10 years, you will not recognize Lod,” he added. Attias was born in the city, and he is the only one of his six brothers and all his classmates who stayed behind. “They all left because they wanted to get ahead in life. In a certain sense, the residents of Lod have the feeling that they live in the most remote of development towns. We live in the center of the country; yet, we are the furthest removed from Israeli society.”

Like many of the Jewish residents, Attias attributes the decline of the city to the influx of “undesirable” Arabs, as he calls them. He targets his criticism at collaborators, Bedouins and criminal elements who established a foothold in the city, propagating poverty and violence. “I was asking myself what could be done in face of the situation,” he went on to tell me. “Should we cave in and give up on the city or rather brace up and fight for it? I realized that I could rely on the religious public alone, as we, the religious, are motivated by codes of mission ethics. We go where we are needed.”