ABSTRACT
So far, I have focused on the responses to the crisis of decision-makers and planners on the national level. What of the local elected officials and citizens? How did they react to the avalanche of new immigrants who landed on their doorstep every day and night during the height of the crisis? What were the views held by local leaders and planners about the goals and value-dilemmas posed by this unexpected challenge? How did this challenge fit their vision of their town’s future? In particular I was interested in how planners and other personnel handled the uncertainties, burdens, and potential conflicts with the central government that this new situation presented. Even though the central government policy was ostensibly the same across the country, and was certainly the same for the two matched case study towns, it elicited different responses from the planners of each town. I shall conclude this almost-final chapter with a few very schematic observations that verge beyond the scope of this book and look at some broader outcomes and impacts of the mass immigrant absorption on the two towns and on Israeli society in general.
