HERZLIYA, Israel (AP) — In half a century, Nissim Kahlon transformed a tiny cave on a Mediterranean beach into an elaborate subterranean maze filled with chiseled tunnels, detailed mosaic floors and a network of stairways and chambers .
He lives in one-of-a-kind artistic creation, which is a popular destination for local curiosity seekers, and Kahlon, 77, is quick to welcome visitors to his underground home.
Now the Israeli government wants him out.
Fifty years after Kahlon moved into the house, Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry served him with an eviction notice, saying the structure is illegal and threatens Israel’s coastline.
“Instead of encouraging me, they’re bashing me,” Kahlon said, sitting in his mosaic-tiled living room, rolling a cigarette. The sun glinted off the sea outside her west-facing windows.
Kahlon was living in a tent along Herzliya beach north of Tel Aviv in 1973 when he says he started scraping the sandstone cliffs and settled in a cave he dug.
Over time, its simple hole in the wall has turned into a veritable sandcastle on steroids, filled with recycled wood, metal, ceramics and stone. Nearly every surface in his main quarters is covered in elaborate mosaics, made from tiles of all colors that he has salvaged from dumpsters in Tel Aviv over the years. Recycled glass bottles serve as decoration and insulation on exterior walls.
Each wall of the labyrinthine complex is curved, and the stairs bend and branch through the bedrock to chambers of different design and purpose. The complex has plumbing, a phone line, and electric lighting in its many rooms, and Kahlon insists its construction is solid.
“From the stones that I extract, I make a cast and I build a wall. There is no waste here, only matter, that’s logic,” he said. “It’s all useful, there is no trash can.”
Kahlon said he received a demolition order in 1974 that was never carried out.
Since then, he says he never heard any opposition from the authorities until last year. The eviction is on hold until the end of the month to give him time to appeal.
He admits never having received a building permit and the town hall closed a restaurant by the sea which he had opened years ago. But his main argument is that local authorities hooked up his cave to the power grid decades ago.
“I’m not leaving here. I’m ready for them to bury me here,” said Kahlon, a gruff but amiable chatterbox with a gray beard and beret. “I have nowhere to go, I have no other home.”
Kahlon’s cave house is on the outskirts of Herzliya, a seaside town 13 kilometers north of Tel Aviv. It contrasts with the luxury homes that dot much of the seaside town – one of the most exclusive addresses in a country in the midst of a housing crisis.
A few hundred yards (meters) north of Kahlon 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 formerly to Israel Military Industries, a former government-owned arms manufacturer.
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 carved a huge crater in the sandy ground not far from Kahlon Cave.
Various Israeli government authorities have accused each other of being responsible for cleaning up the abandoned and polluted plot of land over the decades. The Environmental Protection Ministry said it had carried out repeated surveys to assess the extent of the pollution.
A full-scale cleanup, however, has not been carried out since the site was abandoned in the 1990s.
The ministry said the MoD and IMI, which was taken over by defense contractor Elbit Systems five years ago, are responsible for security at the site – the main gate of which remains wide open and is often the scene of rogue raves – and that “there weren’t any remnants of live ammunition inside.
The Department of Environmental Protection also said Kahlon had caused “significant damage to the cliff face, endangered the public and reduced the beach to public passage” over the past 50 years. He says the recent explosion only increases the potential risk to the cliff.
The ministry accused the municipality of Herzliya and other authorities of failing to address the situation over the years and said it had been trying since 2016 to resolve the issue. Ultimately, he said he issued the eviction order “to eliminate damage to the coastal environment” and said the municipality of Herzliya found alternative accommodation for Kahlon.
In the meantime, Kahlon’s friends and family have started a crowdfunding campaign to help raise money for her legal defense while Kahlon continues to pursue her life’s work.
After an interview with The Associated Press, Kahlon got to his feet, grabbed his walker and a bricklayer’s hammer, and began digging a tunnel nearby.
“I do something to feel something,” he said. “I can’t sit all day.”