Netanyahu Called on Carpet for Housing Crisis

YERUSHALAYIM
United Torah Judaism MK Rabbi Yaakov Litzman reacts during a plenum session in the Knesset. (FLASH90)
United Torah Judaism MK Rabbi Yaakov Litzman reacts during a plenum session in the Knesset. (FLASH90)

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu encountered an infuriated opposition in the Knesset as he tried to pass blame for the ongoing housing crisis to his predecessors during a special session convened to address the issue.

The prime minister’s appearance was obligatory, following a petition signed by 40 MKs demanding that he explain his policy on housing.

At first Netanyahu attempted to evade the subject entirely by discussing negotiations with Iran, a tactic that provoked the ire of United Torah Judaism MK Rabbi Yaakov Litzman.

“Leave off Iran for a moment,” he interjected, “and start to address the [economic] decrees against the weakest members of society, the destruction of religion and the yeshivos. Look at the damage you’ve done by cutting child allowances and raising poverty levels.”

Knesset Speaker Yuri Edelstein asked Rabbi Litzman to leave the plenum after he repeatedly interrupted Netanyahu’s speech.

Netanyahu then proceeded to announce data supplied by the Central Bureau of Statistics, through which he purported to prove that the problem predated his administration.

“From 2000 to 2008, prices rose moderately. From 2008 there was a sudden sharp rise. By 2010, prices rose by nearly 40 percent on average. From 2010 to today prices have risen 5.6 percent. There was a sudden sharp rise that then moderated.”

He also blamed the Israel Lands Administration for being an “inefficient government monopoly that holds 93 percent of the land.” Netanyahu’s own efforts to push through reform of the ILA have failed.

Netanyahu listed the measures his government had introduced in the housing market in the past few years and the bureaucratic impediments.

“We increased the supply of housing by 25,000 units, thanks to the immense work of the ministers in my last government,” he said, “but eventually we are going to increase the stock of planned housing. Here we encounter something that has no peer anywhere in the world — our planning laws.

“You start in the national committee, then go to the regional committee, and back again in unending loops and circles like a coiled snake, and finally, after years of these tribulations, maybe there will be permits. There’s nothing like it in the world. The bureaucracy here is stifling.”

Netanyahu said that his bill to reform planning and building regulations had been delayed because of the elections. “Now the law is being submitted again. We can do a lot of things. Prices have risen 40 percent, but we want them to fall. If you really want this change, then the simplest, immediate practical step you can take is to pass this law.”

Opposition Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) followed Netanyahu to the podium. “You have been prime minister for five years,” she said to him. “Till when can you blame your predecessors? There’s a limit.

“In your previous government you promised dramatic reform that would bring down home prices significantly. Five years later, these are the facts. In 2013, it takes 135 monthly salaries to buy an apartment. Twelve years of work. That’s a fictitious statistic because you have to buy food as well.

“This week we started to receive figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics, according to which half the workers in the economy earn less than NIS 6,000 monthly, making it 200 monthly salaries for an average person to buy an apartment.

“You continued making promises. In an ostentatious press conference after the social protest you said, ‘I saw the protest coming when I was minister of finance. These are dramatic changes; we will accomplish massive changes through legislation.’”

UTJ MK Rabbi Yisrael Eichler demanded that the government approve construction for the hard-pressed chareidi community in Yerushalayim, Beit Shemesh and elsewhere in the central region.

He denounced the government’s efforts to thwart the chareidi housing development in Charish, as well as a recent proposal for a chareidi housing project in Kasifa, a remote location in the Negev among Bedouin who violently oppose it. Kasifa, he noted, is the poorest Bedouin community, with the highest unemployment rate.

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