Mossad and Knights Templar / A sign of maturity

© Goethe-Institut

Mossad and Knights Templar

It might be an irony of history or simply pragmatism that Jewish resistance fighters – who later became the Israeli army – used these very same centrally-located buildings to prepare for the 1948 War of Independence. They hid spare parts for building aeroplanes that they had stolen from the British supplies in the wine cellar, and the Mossad intelligence agency was even quartered in the former Templers district for a while. Later the State President Chaim Weizmann and Prime Minister David Ben Gurion set up camp here. Sarona became Hakirya, which was Israel’s first seat of government from 1948 to 1955. Even now the head of government’s second official residence is still located in one of the other Templer houses – of which there are twelve in total – in the sealed-off area around the Ministry of Defence on the other side of Kaplan Street.

© Goethe-Institut

A sign of maturity

All these layers of the past are being revealed in Sarona again today. Mayor Ron Huldai sees the newly-awakened interest as a sign of maturity. “Tel Aviv is over a hundred years old and has a past that merits a backward glance”, he says. “The Templers are part of that.”