JERUSALEM, Dec. 20 (JTA) A new report on rising poverty in Israel is increasing the pressure on Prime Minister Ehud Barak to address domestic problems if he hopes to win backing for his peace policies.
Announcing the findings of the study, Labor and Social Welfare Minister Eli Yishai said Monday that Barak must attend to the “social process” if he wants the public to support the peace process. Barak has promised to hold national referendums on final peace accords with Syria and the Palestinians.
“If we want peace with our neighbors, it is no less important to make peace within us,” Yishai said. “The social gaps are increasing.”
According to the National Insurance Institute report, some 277,000 families lived below the poverty line in 1998, up from 270,000 the previous year. Yishai said the figure represent 1.2 million people, among them 440,000 children. The figures for the first time include statistics on the self-employed and residents of eastern Jerusalem.
Barak’s critics have accused him of pursuing foreign policy to distance himself from what they say is his failure to keep domestic promises to fight poverty and unemployment.
However, one government minister rejected such criticism.
Ran Cohen, trade and industry minister, called the latest figures a “social catastrophe.” But he said the core of the problem lay in the policies of the previous Likud-led government.
“It is a black stain on all of us,” Cohen said. He told Israel Radio that because the government of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasted “huge sums of money on Jewish settlements, the fervently Orthodox and all sorts of corruption, this is the result that people are living below the poverty line in Israel.
“Enough of abusing the peace process in order to solve the social problem. The social problem must be solved on its own.”
At the same time, Cohen said the government should revise its own strategies to combat the problem. Cohen said that next year’s budget should commit to creating 80,000 to 90,000 new jobs. He said the government’s target of 50,000 new jobs account only for natural growth and would not bring down unemployment.
The pressure on Barak is expected to increase. The government faces a Dec. 31 deadline for passing next year’s budget. Though by law the government can continue to operate three months into the new year even without a budget, failure to secure its final passage would be a blow to Barak.
The Israeli daily Ha’aretz on Monday quoted treasury officials as saying that even without taking coalition demands into account, the budget was already short for a number of projects, including paying for a promised Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, drought relief for farmers, promised assistance to the handicapped and a contingency plan if the water crisis continues.
