Netanyahu: Protests across Israel won’t topple coalition government
In about six weeks, before the high holidays, Netanyahu will present a plan that will “change the face of the country,” the sources quoted him as saying.
Netanyahu said the plan’s main points were to break the monopolies that are preventing competition and to slash indirect taxes.
By the beginning of next week, Netanyahu will announce the makeup of a “dialogue team” to consist of ministers and economic experts. They will meet with the heads of the protest movement and hear their demands.
Netanyahu said he did not intend to meet with the protest leaders, who he believes are backed by leftist political parties and organizations. But he said he identifies with the grievances that are at the basis of the protest.
“This can be our great opportunity,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying. “No one can complain about the economy. The economy is working. But there are complaints, justified complaints, about the hardships of daily life, about the high cost of living.
“Everyone is asking me how I plan to deal with the political situation. My political strategy for the coming year is simple: Take real and serious care of these problems. My goal is not to dismantle the tents. They will not be dismantled. They are there to be there.”
As the Knesset went into its long summer recess Wednesday until October 31, Netanyahu reportedly left the building in good spirits. His pet legislation, the bill to set up new housing committees, has been passed. Before acceding to some of the protesters’ demands, he showed protest leader Daphni Leef and her friends from the Rothschild Boulevard tents who’s boss. Now, after he has proved that he cannot be pressured, he can allow himself to be generous.
Netanyahu believes that in a year and a half, before the next elections, the results of this reform will be felt throughout the country in the addition of tens of thousands of apartments and a real decline in purchase and rental prices.
“They say they want cheap housing. The purpose of the National Housing Committees Law is to flood the country with housing,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying. “That will bring down prices. So why are they against it? Think about it.”
Last week he saw a few opinion polls, some that had been commissioned and some by the media. He was happy to see that in all of them, Likud had emerged little scathed, while Kadima had lost seats to Labor and Meretz.
While it’s true that a vast majority of Likud voters support the protest, as first published in a Haaretz survey nine days ago, Netanyahu is convinced that these people will vote Likud in the next elections, too.
On this issue, I trust Netanyahu. I remember what the banking system was like when there were currency controls. He ended that. This is his opportunity to turn Israel into a free market economy and I believe he will take it. As usual, the left provides the ammunition to destroy itself. Now, if only we could see the end of Peres and his cronies, the transformation could be complete.
Because the protesters goal isn’t cheaper housing, but rather to impose marxism. Therefore of course they don’t want a free market solution to the high cost of housing.
I’m surprised that supposedly conservative Likud voters would sympathize with the protesters. Israel is going to wreck its economy if it goes down the path of what the protesters demand.
The problem is Israel’s taxes. They are absurd.
The solution is to fire 2/3s of the government’s useless workers, eliminating the government’s dependency on highjacking and milking the public for so much money. If the US doesn’t understand why bloated government is like plaque-clogged arteries, they should examine Israel’s economic circulatory system.
Yes, it will take a generation to adjust from being a nation of so many paper pushers and rubber stampers to a country where the vast majority of people are actually employed in a productive economic environment. That’s the cost to pay for eating like a pig for 60 years.
No pain, no gain.