An Israeli man who has been living in his cave home on a Mediterranean beach has now been served an eviction notice from Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry, saying the structure is illegal and threatens the country’s coastline.
Over 50 years ago, 77-year-old Nissim Kahlon transformed a cave on the beach into an underground labyrinth with chiseled tunnels, detailed mosaic floors and staircases and chambers. His elaborate creation has been a popular spot for tourists as well. Kahlon also heartily welcomes all the visitors to his unusual beach house.
What does Kahlon say about the notice?
Reacting to the notice, Kahlon said the government is trying to denigrating him instead of encouraging him. In 1973, Khalon says he was living in a tent along the Herzliya beach and started scratching into sandstone cliffs and later moved into a cave he carved. Kahlon said he had received a demolition order in 1974 but that order was never carried out. Since then there was no opposition from the authorities until 2022. The eviction is on hold until later this month for him to appeal.
Kahlon has acknowledged that he never received any building permit and the city hall had shut down a beachfront restaurant he opened years ago. However, he argues that the authorities connected his cave to the electric grid decades ago.
“I am not leaving here. I am ready for them to bury me here…I have nowhere to go, I have no other home,” Khalon has said.
Kahlon’s cave home
Over time, his simple wall hole turned into a sandcastle which was filled with recycled wood, metal, ceramic and stone. Almost all the surfaces in the main quarters are covered in elaborate mosaics which are made from discarded tiles of different colours that Khalon covered from dumpsters in Tel Aviv over the years. He has used glass bottles for decoration and insulation purposes. Every wall in the complex is curved and stairways bend and branch through the bedrock to chambers of different design and purpose. The structure has its own plumbing, a phone line and electric lighting in many rooms.
“From the stones I quarry I make a cast and build a wall. There’s no waste here, only material, that’s the logic…Everything is useful, there’s no trash,” he says.
Kahlon’s cave home is on the outskirts of Herzliya, a seafront city 8 miles (13 kilometers) north of Tel Aviv. It stands in contrast to the luxury homes that dot much of the beachside town- one of the most exclusive addresses in a country with a dire housing crunch.
A few hundred meters (yards) north of Kahlon’s cave is a Crusader castle- site of a battle between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin over 800 years ago -as well as an abandoned facility that once belonged to Israel Military Industries, a defunct government-owned arms maker.
The facility, where explosives were developed and tested, was abandoned nearly 30 years ago after a massive explosion in 1992 killed two workers, damaged hundreds of buildings and shattered windows as far away as Tel Aviv. Last month, another explosion blew a massive crater in the sandy soil not far from Kahlon’s cave.
Various Israeli government authorities have accused each other of being responsible for cleaning up the patch of derelict, polluted ground over the decades. The Environmental Protection Ministry said that it has conducted repeated surveys to assess the extent of the pollution.
A full-scale cleanup, however, has not been done since the site was abandoned in the 1990s.
The ministry said the Defense Ministry and IMI, which was taken over by defense contractor Elbit Systems five years ago, are responsible for security at the site — whose main gate remains wide open and is frequently the scene of rogue raves — and that “there weren’t supposed to be any remnants of live ammunition” inside.
The Environmental Protection Ministry also said Kahlon had caused “significant damage to the cliff, endangered the public and reduced the beach for public passage” over the past 50 years. It says the recent explosion only increases the potential risk to the cliff.
The ministry accused the Herzliya municipality and other authorities of failing to address the situation over the years and claimed it has tried since 2016 to resolve the issue. In the end, it said it issued the eviction order “to remove the harm to the coastal environment” and said the Herzliya municipality has found alternative housing for Kahlon.
In the meantime, Kahlon’s friends and family have launched a crowdfunding campaign to help raise money for his legal defense while Kahlon continues to pursue his life’s work.
After an interview with The Associated Press, Kahlon picked himself up, grabbed his walker and a mason’s hammer and commenced chipping away at a nearby tunnel.
“I’m doing something to feel something,” he said. “I can’t sit around all day.”
