Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi) vowed to bring down housing prices by “cutting bureaucracy”, a pledge that was dismissed by protest organizers who have turned one of Tel-Aviv’s main avenues into a tent camp.
Netanyahu convened a press conference in Jerusalem yesterday (Tuesday) with the housing and finance ministers to lay out a plan would give incentives to big builders include free state land.
“He talks about free land and who’s going to get it — the contractors and rich businessmen,” Daphne Leeff, a protest leader told reporters afterward amid the hundreds of tents on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv. “What he’s offering us is nothing less than fraud.”
Israeli women shout slogans against Netanyahu, during a protest in Ha’tikva popular neighborhood, Tel-Aviv yesterday night, Tuesday, July 26, 2011 (Photo: Activestills)
“Instead of offering real public building through the state, instead of offering apartment rent control and affordable housing solutions, Netanyahu is proposing additional gifts to contractors, and this time at land prices,” added MK Dov Khenin (Hadash), chairman of the Environment and Health committee, in a statement.
“This is the same ideology of a bankrupt person, of shaking off the state from responsibility to its citizens and leaning on the payments of captains of fortune, who are the ‘engine of the market.’” Condemning the prime minister for his inflexibility to public protest, Khenin warned that “there are limits to the spin that even a salesman as talented as Netanyahu can sell.”
“This time the public will not buy the merchandise,” Khenin said. “More and more people in Israel, from the north to the south, are arriving today to the only logical conclusion – that when the government is against the people, the people are against the government.”
“We are continuing the struggle – the students are a part of the wide social struggle for affordable housing,” the National Students’ Union said in response to Netanyahu’s plan.
“The prime minister is offering students an unprecedented benefits package and this is appreciated. However the students are fighting for all Israeli society and not only for themselves.”
After rejecting Prime Minister plan, activists continued to protest across the country on Tuesday. Approximately two thousand activists marched in Haifa, chanting “Bibi go home” and “we want justice, not charity.” Elderly residents cheered the young protesters as they passed by. Seven protesters, among them Hadash activists, were arrested by police.
At a Jerusalem tent protest site activists put on shows, with one theatrical piece featuring Netanyahu covered in mud. Actor Mariano Edelman (from the satirical show “Eretz Nehederet“) came to the tent city in Tel Aviv dressed as the prime minister. In central Ashdod dozens of protesters held signs that read “I have a right to live in my city” and “the entire country is covered with tents, and only Bibi has houses.” In Be’er Sheva, three protesters were arrested after trying to block a road, and in south Tel Aviv, at Ha’tikva popular neighborhood, dozens of activists blocked Etzel street. “Bibi go home, we also deserve a home,” shouted demonstrators who were unimpressed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s housing plan.
In Ashdod, hundreds of residents took to the streets as part of the national protest against the rise in housing prices, including families, young couples and students.
In southern Tel Aviv, municipality inspectors arrived at a hub of tents at 4:30 am to hand out evacuation orders to the young people sleeping there, among them, several Hadash and Communist Party members, who complained of being woken up at such an early hour. The orders posted on the 15 tents in Levinsky Park near the Central Bus Station.
Today morning, hundreds of doctors from the Rabin Medical Center and the Sharon Medical Center in Petah Tikva, Ziv Hospital in Safed, and Sheba Hospital in Tel-Hashomer marching through the city streets protesting against the negotiations deadlock between the Medical Association and Finance Ministry representatives.
