Netanyahu facing pressure as Israelis take to streets
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Xinhua, August 1, 2011
New policies
Golan predicted that the result of the protests would be a number of administrative measures, including price cuts and efforts to change the tax structure. Additionally, an increase of gasoline prices that was supposed to be introduced this week has been postponed.
"Netanyahu will make a lot of sacrifices in order to maintain a certain degree of popularity," Golan said.
According to a recent report by the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, published in the business daily Globes, there is indeed much need for new measures from the government as "the housing and dairy market problems are government policy failures."
The report claims that Israeli taxes on homes are 75 percent above the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average. The 34 member nations of the OECD include the world's most economically advanced countries and some of the fastest-rising emerging nations.
In response to the criticisms, Netanyahu said after Sunday's cabinet meeting that some of the grievances of the protests are just and some are not, but added that Israel has the tools to deal with the situation after the last few years of economic success.
He also announced that a "special team of ministers and experts that will propose a responsible and practical plan to alleviate Israelis' economic burden."
No new elections
Yehuda Ben Meir, who heads the national security and public opinion project at the Institute for National Security Studies, believes the challenges facing Netanyahu are of a totally different nature, compared to the foreign policy issues that have dominated his premiership so far.
"The demonstrations, more than anything else, reflect a serious concern among large segments of the Israeli population, especially the middle class, regarding widening social gap," Ben Meir said.
He added that while Israel, over the last six years, has experienced tremendous economic growth, many in the middle class feel that they have not benefited from that development and that the wealth remains concentrated within a small group of people.
But, "at the moment Netanyahu isn't in any danger because he has a stable coalition," Ben Meir said.
While political parties are sensitive to public opinion, and there is a possibility that some of the coalition partners may bolt seeing the protests as a sign of deep popular discontent, Ben Meir played down the likelihood of a government collapse.
He added that even though some demonstrators were calling for early elections, rather than the scheduled November 2013, there is a chance that Israel would end up with the very same government if those elections were held.
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