Ghost of a bike

Officially the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality claims to have a "pro bike" ideology and not for the first time they have organized a bike festival of sorts at the "sporteque" in north Tel Aviv. They also prepared a special "bike routes map" of Tel Aviv which, wonder of wonder, is being handed out for free.

But that is, so it seems, as far as they will go.

Biking is healthy, cheap, no problem with traffic jams and until recently, no parking problems either.
(That is, no problem to find a parking space, there is always a lamp post, a tree or some other piece of "street furniture" to which to connect your bike with a heavy chain lock, but when those are lacking you stand a fair chance to loose your bike to one of the many thieves. UNTIL NOW...

Yediot reported today that the Tel Aviv municipality has started to tow away bikes!!
They send a "pakah", a sort of municipal policeman with a big cutter, to cut through the lock and then a tow car comes to pick up the bike and tow it somewhere.

In order to get your bike back, you have to pay a fine (for obstructing the public space or some sort of offence like that.)
To the best of my knowledge there is no accepted & legal traffic sign stating you may not park you bike somewhere.
There are not enough bike park "thingies" in the city (in Jaffa there are none) so what are you supposed to do?

Don't these municipal police have something else to do?

And if you find your bike stolen, should you assume it stolen by the municipal police?
How can you prove your bike is yours by the way?

Weird....