The organisers of last Saturday night's cost of living demonstration were hard put to find a suitable venue for the mass assembly they had planned. Tel Aviv's Rabin Square is being renovated and none of the other squares in the city could contain the large turnout they expected.. Nevertheless, despite the constrictions the demonstrations held in Tel Aviv and other places exceeded their most optimistic expectations.
On Sunday morning the government knew that over 300,000 disgruntled people can't be ignored or dismissed by calling them anarchists, left-wing agitators or sushi eating layabouts.
Instead Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz expressed sympathy, understanding and promised efforts would be made to lower the cost of living, break up monopolies and initiate tax reform.
At the same time he stressed that changes would be limited by budgetary confines.
Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed a panel to examine the demonstrators' complaints. The investigating body headed by economist Professor Manuel Trachtenberg intends to meet with the demonstrators' representatives and aims to submit recommendations to the government next month.
At this juncture I want to insert a timeline so as to add a realistic perspective.
At first the prime minister called the panel a "round table" group of experts. In effect what he proposed was a board to investigate the complaints, He tried hard to avoid calling the Trachtenberg Panel a committee. Journalist Amnon Abramovich reminded his readers that parliamentary committees are quagmires. They are an effective delaying mechanisms designed to bury complaints embroiling petitioners in endless arguments over clauses and sub-clauses. If, contrary to all expectations, the committee concludes its work and makes recommendations, the government either ignores them or delays their implementation.
Yoel Esteron founder and publisher of Calcalist a business newspaper and media group owned by Yediot Ahronot gave the young and untried demonstration leadership some free advice " avoid falling into the trap Netanyahu's posse is setting for you (the negotiations over the protesters' demands.)”
If Professor Trachtenberg manages to table his panel's findings some time in September the timing will almost certainly coincide with the UN General Assembly's scheduled vote on the establishment of a Palestinian state. Some Middle East analysts argue that obtaining recognition without the possibility of realising a Palestinian State will frustrate the Palestinians and might lead to an outbreak of violence in the West Bank.
Of course no one is suggesting that Netanyahu's government is relying on a Palestinian insurrection to save it from the demands for a new social order.
However, it's reasonable to suppose that the possibility of a "Black September" scenario appears somewhere in the government's counter-demonstrators strategy.
Yoel Esteron says “Netanyahu is beginning to realise that his ad hoc remedies and committees won't bail him out – they'll just put off the inevitable. “
Esteron advises the prime minister to call a general election. Admittedly “going to the country” now might be political suicide, “But,” says Esteron” if he chooses to go to the polls, such an honest and courageous move might just land him back in office.” If Netanyahu calls for a general election early next year it might cool the protesters’ ardour. At the same time it could present an opportunity for genuine change. Political parties will be compelled to present explicit ‘social justice’ platforms and explain how they plan to implement them.”
A late addition to the time line is the international monetary crisis. Prime Minister Netanyahu has hinted that at a time when stock markets are unstable and the credit rating of the USA has been downgraded we can’t afford to finance the changes demanded by the protesters.
Our daughter Irit, a frequent visitor to the Rothschild Boulevard encampment, gave me a detailed account of the prevailing atmosphere. It agreed closely with the description given by Los Angeles Times correspondent Batsheva Sobelman, "Part Woodstock, part boot camp,
Tel Aviv's burgeoning protest encampment has become a small-scale experiment in a utopian society and a challenge to the established social order." Reminiscent of Ein Harod in the early 1920's.
The tenacity of the boulevard campers has been questioned and it too should appear as a factor in the timeline. They all aspire to rent or own a home but they are not homeless. Most of them are either living with their parents or living in unsuitable and expensive rented apartments. So camping out for the summer is not unreasonable. Most of them commute to jobs during the day and go home to shower and change their clothes before returning to the Boulevard. New encampments have sprouted up in other avenues in Tel Aviv and elsewhere.
Under the heading "Street Power" The Economist provided a similar description,
"Rothschild Boulevard, a pleasant, leafy thoroughfare that meanders through Tel Aviv, with offices and commodious flats on either side, has oddly become a colourful encampment, seething with talk of people-power and social revolution. The tent-dwellers are a mixed bunch with a preponderance of young, educated, middle-class families."
Two weeks ago critics called the protest a knee-jerk reaction without an agenda. I don't know if indeed they had a clear idea where they were heading then. The Economist described this week's attitude as more determined and pragmatic, "Their evolving list of demands, hammered out in days and nights of sweaty argument, includes calls for higher direct taxes for the rich, lower VAT for everyone, more hospital beds, free nursery-school, rent control and cheap home-building enforced by the state. It is a far cry from the dilution of the welfare state Mr Netanyahu believes in and has diligently carried out as prime minister in 1996-99 and again since 2009."
The Economist's concluding comment said they were, "Untainted by establishment politics. People are listening to them."
They know that alignment with any of the opposition parties will tend to fray the broad apolitical fabric they have woven. Likewise both Labour and Kadima realised that an apolitical popular protest was better off without their unwanted patronage.
I can't see how Netanyahu, Steinitz or the Trachtenberg Panel can possibly meet the demonstrators' demands without jettisoning their economic programme. The new social order demanded means a rearrangement of priorities.
In an article entitled “ A question of priorities,” Amnon Abramovich examines the choices that need to be made.
“The starting position of Israeli society is frightening. Only 55% of Israelis work, that is, every working person carries on his back one who doesn’t work. This situation was produced and is encouraged by our political establishment. Worse than that, the non-working Israel is growing and reproducing three times faster than the working Israel.
Instead of setting up yet another committee, the prime minister should have stood up and said: From now on, we shall follow one decree – ‘We were all born to work!’ It’s Jewish, it’s Biblical and it’s also social-democratic. The government should ensure that remuneration is fair. We should put an end to corporate tricks and set sane salaries for senior executives.
Furthermore, Netanyahu should declare the Negev, Galilee and poor neighbourhoods top priority regions.
Obviously we shouldn’t ignore the defence budget. Two years ago Defence Minister Ehud Barak set up a committee to examine the functioning of the army’s rehabilitation division. Its recommendations were not implemented. Had they been adopted and applied to the entire division, we could have saved billions of shekels, at least, in only one branch of the army.
When the defence budget is immune to cuts even at this time, it indicates that no changes will be made. Various reports have characterised the current budget as deceptive and manipulative. For example, look at the sixth submarine which the IDF is due to acquire from Germany. It costs about half a billion Euros, not including maintenance and operating costs. Most experts say we do not need a sixth submarine; there is no national security need for it. Nonetheless, we will buy it.”
However the Defence Ministry was quick to indicate its contribution to the social effort: An assortment of old ideas published regularly, such as relinquishing army bases and land which the army has no use for any more. The following day Barak asked the Knesset Defence and Foreign Affairs committee for an increase of $200 million in the defence budget.
Last week the daily Maariv featured an interview with former cabinet minister Haim Ramon, now a leading figure in the opposition Kadima Party, who noted that even as middle class Israelis make do with less, in the West Bank “the government subsidises housing, transportation, infrastructure.”
“The government gives per capita twice as much there as the national average,” Ramon said. “If the government had treated the rest of Israel the way it treats (the settlers) there wouldn’t have been a protest today.”
Ramon’s comments were among the first by a prominent politician to draw the link between the protests and one of the most divisive issues in Israeli politics. The battle pitting a dovish, secular left that advocates compromises with the Palestinians, against a nationalist-religious bloc trying to maintain a hold over parts the occupied West Bank.
Despite flattering macro-economic figures, with far stronger growth and lower unemployment than in most other developed countries, the wealth has failed to trickle down to the country’s heavily taxed and increasingly squeezed middle class.
Studies show that Israel — a once-egalitarian country that championed social safety nets, its leaders living frugally and its wealthy remaining discreet — has developed one of the highest income disparities in the developed world.
“In the end, it is political,” wrote journalist Yonatan Yavin in Yediot Ahronot. “It’s political that billions go to fund settlements and populations that do not contribute” — a euphemism for the ultra-Orthodox, where more than 40 percent of men spend years in religious study and do not work.
For decades, the Israeli government spent tens of billions of dollars to keep its military in the West Bank, build roads and subsidise housing and transportation costs, drawing 300,000 Jews to live there. The ultra-Orthodox community of 700,000 — almost a tenth of the country’s population — is a major beneficiary of Israel’s welfare system, with more than half of all ultra-Orthodox families living under the poverty line.
Addressing these problems won’t be easy. Half measure won’t satisfy the people in the boulevards.
Last week Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) Has called for changes in the coalition in order to meet the challenges presented by the protesters. When Yishai talks of social justice his priorities rest with his own constituents.
On Saturday I will be marching with protesters in Afula ( our local metropolis).
I decided it was about time I experienced the struggle myself.
Have a good weekend.
Beni 11th of August, 2011.
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