The resignations of Shas and UTJ from the coalition, and the withdrawal of their 22 seats from the government, leaves the coalition with 60 seats out of 120. This is a precarious position for any government, and certainly one with exceedingly difficult choices ahead of it, including whether to continue prosecuting the war on terrorism.
In essence, what Shas’s vote has done is topple the government. Prime Minister Sharon still has the option of bringing the extremist anti-religious Shinui party into the coalition, but their six seats will not dilute Labor’s new stranglehold on policy. All Sharon would need to do is blink in the wrong direction, and his government would fall.
There is no doubt that Shalom’s policy is a recipe for economic disaster. The new taxes he has proposed, along with cutting back government benefits from various segments of society will remove much of the little spending power consumers have left and lead Israel’s recessionary economy into depression. Shalom’s plan is to the economy what the Oslo Accords were to Israel’s security – borderline suicide.
While Shas’s vote may have saved this country additional years of economic hardship caused by Palestinian terrorism, the vote was disingenuous. Had Shas voted against the Oslo Accords nine years ago the way they so bravely voted against Economic Oslo last night, none of this would be an issue today. Rabin’s government would likely have survived, Netanyahu would never have gone to Wye, Barak would not have had the current war as a response to his national suicide plan at Camp David, and Sharon would not now be proposing to tax to death those Israelis that have had the nerve to survive the terrorism.
But Shas does not have that kind of national vision. Instead, they voted for Oslo in 1993, causing this nation a decade of pain and suffering in human, political, and now economic terms. And now, their vote last night is liable to bring down the government.
Shas’s lack of national vision is apparent in their reasons for the vote last night. They voted against the economic plan because it would remove child benefits from families where the parent did not serve in the army. Most of the people affected by this clause are the ultra-Orthodox. Despite the fact that this clause is one of the few somewhat just clauses in the plan, it is the one that Shas has latched onto in their stand.
The increase in sales taxes, the surtax on income taxes, the cutback on welfare payments, and the lack of a tax on capital gains, are all damaging. Yet they did not merit Shas’s disapproval in the same manner, despite the damage all these things do to the lower socio-economic levels of the country.
Silvan Shalom’s economic plan deserves to be opposed. But no one in the Israeli political sphere has seen fit to propose the alternative that would lead to economic health in Israel while paying the costs of the war. Israel must demand payment of the costs of the war from the countries that have until now paid to support the Palestinian terror infrastructure that caused it.
Donor nations in the European Union, as well as the United States, Canada, and various other nations and international organizations, have paid billions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority in the name of humanitarian and economic assistance. But instead of using that money to build proper schools, resettle the population out of festering camps, create jobs and establish a peaceful state, Yasser Arafat has channeled the funds to terrorist activities aimed at prolonging the war and costing Israel billions of dollars in lost productivity, as well as lost lives. All this has been corroborated by terrorist chief Marwan Barghouti during his interrogations in Israeli prison.
The donor states and organizations have consistently turned a blind eye to this larceny and to the carnage it has caused. But Israel goes right along with this program, preferring to bilk the money out of an already over-taxed and over-burdened population, rather than sending the bill to the real culprits. No doubt Yasser Arafat will be quite pleased as he watches the seventh Israeli government in 14 years fall because of his master plan.
On the same day as the vote took place, the media carried the story of the Blumberg family, which has chosen to file suit against the European Union for NIS 100 million. Tehiya Blumberg and her five-month-old fetus were killed in a terrorist shooting last August, and her husband and daughter were paralyzed in the attack. The suit puts partial responsibility on European funding of Arafat’s terror infrastructure and the lack of any European oversight on how the money was spent.
Perhaps Shas should be demanding that the government take the Blumberg’s lead in recouping its expenses from the war. For it is the Blumbergs, not Shas, that is practicing honest economics.
Copyright 2002. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
