Some of the area's brothels, thriving in recent years, were heavily shuttered or locked. But women waiting for clients could be seen peeping from most brothels, and colored lights continued blinking above many entrances.

The report's harsh findings elicited this response yesterday from police Superintendent Pini Aviram: "It's old wives' tales, don't know where they concocted the data."

According to the report, presented to the Knesset speaker by head of the inquiry committee, MK Zahava Gal-On, some 3,000 to 5,000 women are smuggled annually into Israel and forced to work as prostitutes.

Aviram, head of the Russian crime division at the Tel Aviv district's central unit, has been focusing intensively in recent years on trafficking in women. Various women's organizations agree that Aviram and his colleagues have sometimes done more than all the police in the rest of the country put together. Rita Chaiken, who heads the anti-trafficking project at the Woman-to-Woman organization, said, "There is the Tel Aviv police, and there is the Israel police. Tel Aviv has a team of Russian speakers who are experts on the subject and invest more resources."

Surprisingly, those familiar with the state of trafficking in women in Israel are saying the report issued Wednesday is "inflated and incorrect."

Aviram said that, contrary to the report, several hundred women are smuggled in over a year, and he estimated there are no more than 2,000 such women in the country.

"Police statistics indicated that during peak years, there were no more than 3,000 in the entire country. So how can they now say some 10,000 of these women are living here?" he asked.

Aviram said the report represents the past five years, but not the last two years since the law against trafficking in women was passed.

Not only are the annual figures inflated, he said, but in the Tel Aviv region, where trafficking was most rampant, it has been greatly reduced: "I, for instance, for a year have not encountered a single new woman, from this year, brought to Israel for prostitution. All of the women we encounter have been in the country for a while, sometimes several years. Obviously all were initially trafficked, but they have been free for a long time, after having repaid their debts to the traffickers, and they continue in prostitution of their own accord and come and go as they please."

Aviram said police has succeeded in arresting all the major traffickers.

The police previously stated most prostitutes in Israel are trafficking victims. How, then, does Aviram explain the presence of all those women at brothels yesterday in south Tel Aviv?

"Most are Israeli," he said

Brothel manager "Avi" concurs: "Nobody keeps tourists here anymore," he told Haaretz yesterday, referring to illegals "imported" for prostitution. "Those mostly work in discreet apartments in the city. Why should I get messed up with tourists? The police would show up only because of them. Now it's quiet."

But attorney Uri Sadeh, who coordinates the anti-trafficking campaign at the Hotline for Migrant Workers, is surprised by Aviram's claims. "To say the trafficking phenomenon has decreased, especially in Tel Aviv, is to bury your head in the sand. A quick visit to the bus terminal area suffices to show the horde of girls without visas who are trapped there. None is there willingly. Every day we encounter trafficking victims who were captured and who arrived in Israel just a month or half a year ago. Those who have been engaged in this for two years are also trafficking victims. It's also not true that Israelis have replaced the victims. No Israeli is willing to work under such terms," Sadeh said.