As the Libyan and Syrian uprisings dominate the headlines it is fairly easy to miss the increasingly determined protests across Israel where 150,000 people, led primarily by the middle-classes, are marching, rallying and camping out in objection to spiralling housing prices among other economic and social gripes. One poll shows support for the protests at an incredible 87%. The Director of the Finance Ministry has resigned as pressure increases on the Likud Finance Minster himself to go.
Questioning whether this could be the 'Israeli Summer' The British Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) have written a fairly comprehensive summary of the protests, but if you are looking for an explanation through the medium of a comedy dance track, the protesters have delivered. However, the protests - and much of the analysis around them - fail to recognise an important drain on the Israeli economy and an extremely significant area of housing policy: the settlements.
Clearly, the protesters are focused on domestic financial hardships and are not looking to bring in foreign policy or the politics of the occupation. However, the disparity between housing policies on different sides of the Green Line are one of the causes of the deep frustration Israelis are experiencing with their lack of housing options.
Lara Friedman of the American-Jewish campaign group, Americans for Peace Now highlights the peculiar priorities of the Israeli government on the issue of housing. Friedman notes that settlers can expect the state to provide 100,000 shekels towards their mortgage, half of development costs and 70% of the cost of land purchases; all funded by the majority of taxpayers who receive no such benefits. But she continues:
"It isn't just housing that's subsidized for settlers. It's other things, like transportation. Recently Peace Now conducted a study comparing the cost of public transportation for settlers (transportation running to and from settlements) and the cost of public transportation for Israelis living inside the Green Line. The results, as Peace Now, noted, were outrageous: "...while many people in Israel struggle to pay to the overblown prices of public transport - settlers beyond the Green Line have subsidized fares of up to a half of the price of regular costs." Israel's transportation Yisrael Katz subsequently confirmed Peace Now's findings."
Likewise, former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin recently published an op-ed in the daily newspaper Israel Hayom, highlighting even wider political reasons behind Israel's current economic troubles, including the collapse in availability of cheap Palestinian labour in Israel (while widely available in settlements), but notes most significantly:
"The arguments that the investments in the territories came at the expense of investments in the periphery were never just campaign slogans. This was the truth, and it is still the truth. The right wing always used to argue that it is possible to have it both ways, but this was never true. The disadvantaged sectors, which did not want to settle in the West Bank, paid for decades the price of the accelerated construction in the territories."
Beilin is not alone in placing the blame at the feet of the right-wing of Israeli politicians, but what remains of the Israeli left do not get off lightly either. Not only have Labor and Kadima presided over years of consistent settlement growth, but as Fabian researcher Natan Doron points out in an article for LabourList, the Israeli Labor party have failed to capitalise on Netanyahu's inability to remedy to the situation. However, not all Labor politicians have missed the significance of settlement subsidies on the Israeli economy. MK Binyamin Ben-Eliezer called on Tuesday for the reallocation of the settlement budget towards solving Israel's housing crisis. Though it is a shame he felt the need to clarify his statement saying; "I have nothing against [settlers]."
This is where the real issue lies. Many of the key difficulties Israel faces, whether they be political, economic or security issues, can be linked to the liability of settlements, but representatives of the overwhelming majority continue to pander to the settler community.
Recently the main settler representation group, the Yesha Council, attempted to join the protests, on condition that leftists they disagree with are excluded. Before welcoming their involvement, the protesters should politely request that the settlers give up their massive state subsidies - or better yet, move into Israel and relinquish the burden they pose on the state.