Essential Hebrew phrases

Hello, goodbye and peace — the all-purpose Hebrew greeting.

Thank you. 'Toda raba' is thanks a lot; 'bevakasha' serves as both please and you're welcome.

Not a joke entry. French is a working service language in Netanya — bakeries, estate agents, clinics, the tourism association's own website — in a way it is nowhere else in Israel.

The promenade. Netanya's runs along the cliff top for kilometres and is the longest in Israel — it is the city's high street, park and social life in one.

Independence Square — the pedestrian plaza on the cliff above the beach that is the true centre of Netanya. Everything downtown is described by its distance from here.

The cliff. Netanya sits on top of one, which is why the city has beach lifts and why 'sea view' and 'beach access' are two entirely different things here.

Municipal property tax, billed per square metre to whoever occupies the flat, by classification zone. Netanya's seafront zones are not priced like its eastern ones.

The reinforced safe room required in new residential construction since the early-1990s standard. Netanya's stock spans the 1930s to last year, so this varies enormously by building.

Cool, fine, all good — the universal Israeli okay.

Come on, let's go. An Arabic loanword Hebrew absorbed completely, and one you will use hourly.

Thank you in Russian. Roughly one in four Netanya residents speaks it, and it is a working language in shops, clinics and bank branches.

Help! Emergency numbers are 101 for a Magen David Adom ambulance, 100 police, 102 fire, 104 Home Front Command.