An impressive mural by the Israeli artist Klone greets customers entering Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market, one of the city’s most sated, rich and megalomaniacal venues, located in the shadow of luxurious upscale apartment towers. Klone made a name for himself as an underground graffiti artist in the city’s unmanicured areas, creating in the dark of night, below the radar of the establishment. The cooperation between these two seemingly contradictory elements — a graffiti artist and a prestigious real estate venture — attests to the connection developed between street art and money, marketing and branding, especially in the context of urban real estate in Israel.

Today private compounds buy street art, a paradox in itself, while cities seem pleased that graffiti artists decorate the streets and create a contemporary urban buzz — as long as it's in poor, disadvantaged neighborhoods like Florentine in Tel Aviv and the lower city in Haifa. According to research on street art, a young and well-to-do crowd is drawn to this vibe and will gradually change the face of these neighborhoods. They will push out the poor and the artists who created the neighborhoods’ character and then “clean up” the street art — in other words, get rid of the very thing that drew them there in the first place.

“Possibly, 50 years from now, Tel Aviv will be a city for the rich only. There will be no street art there,” said Yael Shapira, an art researcher and founder of Alternative Tel Aviv. “But street art will always be here, I believe. It will simply move away [from Tel Aviv] to other cities, like Bat Yam or Holon, south of Tel Aviv.”

These days, street artists feel that the establishment treats them like criminals but at the same time exploits their work to promote itself. Israeli law considers graffiti to be vandalism, but Shapira told Al-Monitor that the Tel Aviv and Haifa municipalities have asked her to conduct graffiti tours for the public. The city of Netanya sponsored a huge project last year that invited graffiti artists from Israel and abroad to paint in the municipal market.