Opinion | Haaretz Editorial
Editorial | Cutting Budgets, Netanyahu and Smotrich to Arab-Israelis: Drop Dead
Haaretz Editorial
Jan 15, 2024
The Finance Ministry's plan for unprecedented and disproportionate cuts in budgets meant for the development of Arab communities proves that the government has decided that Israel's Arab citizens will be the first to pay the price for the economic disaster in the wake of the Hamas attack and the war.
The National Council of Arab Mayors in Israel estimates that the cut will total 4.6 billion shekels ($1.2 billion), earmarked for educational, vocational, welfare, infrastructure development and other programs.
It is doubtful that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and the Jewish supremacist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu care about the first signs of the results of investment in Arab communities.
Israeli Welfare officials say gov't budget cut would harm massacre survivors
Even the Shin Bet security service, in an extraordinary statement issued Sunday, called the planned cut "a strategic hit to national resilience" that is liable to lead to "increased alienation, a sense of not belonging and a lack of commitment by the state," that will "increase the likelihood of violence motivated by nationalism."
The cuts in the 2024 draft budget include 23 cabinet resolutions for a cut of 15 percent. Nearly all the programs are multiyear, so the cut will also apply to the coming years. Of the combined sum of 37 billion shekels in cuts specified in the resolutions, 32 billion shekels are in programs for the Arab community, including the five-year plan (approved by the previous government) and the plan for combating crime in Arab communities (Meirav Arlosoroff, Haaretz Hebrew, Sunday).
Behind the smoke screen put up by the Finance Ministry and the government about "painful cuts" that will be felt in every part of Israeli society, the truth came out: blatant and targeted reductions of spending on Arab communities.
Although the average across-the-board cut to ministry budgets will be 3 percent, the cut to the five-year plan is five times that. The harm to Arabs is double: through the cuts to services that all ministries are supposed to provide and a cut "tailored" for them.
Experience also teaches that before the new budget's final approval, the other cuts will be reduced, especially in allocations to the government's preferred groups, starting with the settlers and the Haredim.
Since the state was founded, cabinets have approved more than 15 resolutions to narrow gaps between Jews and Arabs, but they have had little, if any, effect. In 2015, the Netanyahu government approved another multiyear plan, which signaled a new approach.
On the basis of its lessons, in 2021 the Bennett-Lapid government approved a much more comprehensive and ambitious plan. Initial signs of results of the investment include an increase in female employment, eligibility for matriculation certificates and enrollment in higher education.
Smotrich and Netanyahu should heed the warnings of Arab community leaders, the Social Equality Ministry and the Shin Bet against thwarting development of Israel's Arab community. The plan is intolerable discrimination that sentences about 20 percent of Israelis to socioeconomic hardship. We must not accept this distorted order of priorities.
The above article is Haaretz's lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten