The government should have given them counseling. They should have struck deals with contractors. The consequences can be seen in Rehovot, a town of 100,000 just south of Tel Aviv. The town itself is home to the Weizman Institute of Science and a branch of Hebrew University, but the Ethiopians who have moved here all live in the poor neighborhoods of Kiryat Moshe, Oshyiot, and Shaarayim. A short bus ride takes one from the campus of the Weizman Institute, through a middle-class neighborhood, and then suddenly into Kiryat Moshe, which appears to be primarily Ethiopian.
Children dressed in diapers play amid rotting mattresses and steel scraps in abandoned lots.
Few white people are to be seen, although only a few blocks away, the neighborhood becomes almost entirely white. It is an example of a benign but ill-advised government policy hurting those it was trying to help, Recant says. I don't think anyone wanted the Ethiopians to become segregated. But not enough was done to stop it from happening. The government counters that it has spent more per person on housing programs for Ethiopians than on any immigrant group in the past.