The only place in Israel that will not vote at next week’s election

ELI Avivi didn’t want to live in his country any more, so he created his own. And for a place that doesn’t technically exist, it certainly gets good reviews on TripAdvisor.

Eli Avivi is the self-proclaimed president of Achzivland. Picture: Alamy

WHAT do you do when you get into an argument with the government of your country? Well, you could follow this guy’s lead and just set up your own.

Meet Eli Avivi, self-declared president of Achzivland, population: two Described as the most “unusual piece of territory in the Middle East”, Achzivland has its own flag (a picture of a mermaid), a house of parliament and its national anthem is the sound of the sea. On 3.5 acres of land north of Israel and bordering the Mediterranean Sea, president-for-life Avivi, 85, lives comfortably with his first lady, Rina, and the occasional traveller, surviving off donations to Achzivland’s “national museum”. The couple tore up their passports and seceded from Israel after an argument with the government in 1971, twenty years after first stumbling upon what was an abandoned fishing village. This is the story of Eli Avivi and Achzivland, the only place in Israel where residents — all two of them — won’t be voting in next week’s national elections. FROM FISHERMAN TO ‘HEAD OF STATE’ Avivi first discovered his oasis in 1952. It was then the remnants of a fishing village whose previous occupants left it abandoned when they fled to Lebanon. A young man then, Avivi caught fish and made himself at home. For more than 10 years, Avivi and Rina entertained guests there, including actress Sophia Loren. But the pair soon found themselves in a bitter dispute over the land that ended in broken bones and the establishment of Achzivland. The BBC reports that in 1963 the Israeli government attempted to oust Avivi and Rina to create a national park on the land. According to some reports, bulldozers demolished a wall Avivi was standing on. He broke several bones but recovered. Almost 10 years later, the government tried again. It erected a fence around his land but Avivi was defiant. “I have a lot of problems with the Israeli government,” Avivi told the BBC this week. “They didn’t want me to live here and did everything they could to take me away from here. It was like a kind of war between the government and me.” Instead of fighting back, Avivi tore up his passport and created his own country. He still lives on site and maintains he is not “anti-Israel”. “I love Israel the place, but not the government, because they never understood why I came here,” he said. ‘FELT LIKE I FOUND A PIECE OF PARADISE’ An agreement was reached between Israel and Achzivland for the latter to pay the government for access to the beach in exchange for official tourist signage pointing would-be visitors to the area. And they have come in droves. Because, while Israel may not recognise Achzivland, Lonely Planet certainly does. Since visiting in 2009, the people behind the world’s best-selling travel books have sent visitors to what they called “raggle-taggle outbuildings, a grassy camp ground, a sliver of gorgeous Mediterranean frontage, and a vast and rambling museum of knick-knacks”. There, visitors will find a small wooden cabin, a larger timber structure housing the country’s national parliament and a national park. There’s even a national museum. The Trip Advisor community has mostly good things to say about Achzivland, too, where visitors have their passports stamped by the couple and pay a small fee for a look through the old museum. “I was ecstatic when we decided to go here,” one user wrote last year. “(But) it’s amazingly hard to find.” Another said she “felt like I had found a piece of paradise”. But others were less impressed. “This is not a resort, but rather a decent beach, at most,” one user wrote. “If you’re in the area, go to the REAL attraction nearby instead — the national park of Akhziv, and forget about paying the old hippy a visit, as you would be disappointed.” That’s fine by Avivi who, now well into his later years, prefers a quieter existence. Achzivland is, of course, not the only micro-nation known for its quirks. The Principality of Hutt River in Western Australia had its own princess until Shirley Joy Casley died in 2013. Elsewhere, the Principality of Sealand was formed on an abandoned offshore platform just outside British waters and Freetown Christiania was established at an abandoned military base in Denmark.