ISRAEL-ELECTION/COST OF LIVING Israel's right-wing coalition and center-left opposition set competing agendas to lure voters ahead of elections

Record ID: 399258

  • Title: ISRAEL-ELECTION/COST OF LIVING Israel's right-wing coalition and center-left opposition set competing agendas to lure voters ahead of elections
  • Date: 5th March 2015
  • Summary: CLOSE OF ARTICLE ON COMPUTER SCREEN
  • Embargoed: 20th March 2015 12:00
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  • Location: West bank
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAVZA2AJDK282O11WNUL1OXPAS
  • Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS VIDEO WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY 4:3
    Israel's two rival parties struggle to set the agenda for the March 17 poll - national security or social-economy.
    Experts say that national security discourse tends to strengthen right-wing parties while a social-economic agenda is likely to benefit the center-left bloc.
    Last week dozens of Israeli social activists who attempted to shift public attention to social agenda issues, pitched tents in the central city of Tel Aviv in protest over housing shortage, a key issue in campaigning for the election.
    The protest on a main boulevard erupted on March 1, four days after the nation's auditor published a 293-page report finding "significant deficiencies" that have pushed up housing prices - a problem dogging Netanyahu's bid for re-election.
    "We are here to demand that the focus of the public debate would be on what really matters to the public: housing, fair wages, good health and education and not all those spins we see in the media in this election. We demand that all the political parties and the upcoming government to be elected will address these issues with real serious solutions," said Shai Cohen, the activist who spearheaded the protest.
    The protest was reminiscent of a similar demonstration against a housing shortage in 2011 that ignited social protests of unprecedented size in Israel.
    In the last election in 2013, the issue helped propel TV personality and political newcomer Yair Lapid to the post of finance minister after his centrist party placed second.
    But since then, many Israelis say Lapid failed to deliver on promises of economic reform and the nation-wide protest has yet to have yielded results. Polls predict Lapid's Yesh Atid party will shrink to about half its size.
    Boaz Gross, a 31-year-old archeologist from Tel Aviv and his wife Precious, parents of two toddlers, say that despite living an average life and making a good income, they have been struggling for years to buy a home.
    "Many times we continue to work very hard and we try saving but unfortunately we can never save enough. We have very good jobs, we make decent money... our cost of living is quite low, we don't spend very much, we live a very... above average life however we can still never afford to pay, to save to get a house," 33-year-old Precious Gross said.
    "No matter how much we progress in our jobs, in our salaries, we never manage to keep up with the rate in which housing costs grow," added her husband Boaz.
    The housing report said that house prices had risen by 55 percent from 2008 through December 2013, and rents by 30 percent, covering five years in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in charge, in addition to a year when his centrist predecessor, Ehud Olmert, was premier.
    It pointed to "significant deficiencies" in the government's handling of the housing crisis and charged that "the government and its ministries carried out a national housing policy in a dysfunctional way," not always implementing its decisions.
    Professor Neta Ziv, Academic Director of Israel Affordable Housing Center at Tel Aviv University describes what she calls a "competition of the agenda" between the centrist-left opposition who seek to promote social economic agenda while the government is trying to avoid it.
    "It has become something of a blame game between the parties and the parties now in power are trying to avoid addressing the housing issue and the parties that are competing with them are trying to bring in hosing and social economic issues to the public agenda so we are really.. there is like a competition on the agenda, on how much housing problem will be addressed," Ziv said.
    But despite the media and public debate generated by the critical report, and the cost of living being at the top of the domestic political agenda since 2011, Ziv argues that the issue is not getting the "appropriate attention" it deserves.
    "Unfortunately the social and economic issues and primarily housing are not getting the appropriate attention that they should because people in Israel, of course they are concerned about their security, but they are also concerned about the fact that they can't buy a house, or they can't rent a house, or they can't help their children like they could a generation ago," Ziv added.
    Shortly after the report was published Netanyahu gave a widely criticised statement, opening with a few sentences on the housing crisis, before quickly shifting to his bedrock theme of national security and Iran's nuclear program.
    "This is an important report and we treat it very seriously because it is a serious issue," Netanyahu said from the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim, and added: "When we talk about the housing prices, cost of living, I do not forget for even one moment the issue of life itself, of the living, meaning life. The greatest challenge we are facing, our own lives as Israeli citizens, as a state, is the threat posed by Iranian nuclear disarmament."
    In response, Tzipi Livni, co-head of the centrist-left Zionist Union, Likud's main challenger in the election, replied at a news conference the following day: "The meaning of life, prime minister, is knowing that there is a future here for our children."
    Netanyahu's rival and co-head of the Zionist Union, Isaac Herzog, criticized Netanyahu for the way he handled the crisis and vowed to handle the crisis if elected.
    "Only a prime minister can resolve the problem of housing and I pledge, as a prime minister to personally handle the housing problem," he said.
    Opinion polls show Netanyahu running neck-and-neck with Herzog. Netanyahu is seen having a slight advantage with more allies to form a coalition government.
    Netanyahu held onto power in the last election despite a campaign that critics said focused too much on his familiar theme of national security, and not enough on economic issues.
    Israel is a rich country, but its prices are higher and wages are lower than in the United States and Western Europe.
    Fixing the cost of living problem requires deep reforms of an economy dominated by a few powerful conglomerates that have stifled competition. Big companies are slated to be broken up, but the process will take years. The government has formed many committees to study the problem, but few changes have been made.
    A basket of basic products was 12 percent more expensive in Israel than the OECD average last year, according to the Bank of Israel, while gross salaries are $10,000 lower.
    Whether social economic issues play a significant role in the upcoming election is remained to be seen. The big question, however, is how will the future government handle them.
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