Sharp words were exchanged yesterday between Jewish Agency chairman Leon Dulzin and Absorption and Housing Minister David Levy over Project Renewal the $1.2 billion government-Agency plan for refurbishing slum areas of Israel. At a meeting between top Agency, government and United Jewish Appeal officials, Levy insisted that the operative execution of the project must be in the hands of his Housing Ministry (to which he was recently appointed in addition to his Absorption portfolio).
“The time has come,” Levy was reported as saying “for well-meaning Jews abroad to stop thinking of their Israeli brethren as an unfortunate lot incapable of looking after their own affairs, and requiring contributors from abroad to do things for them.”
Prominent U.A leaders who were present at the meeting were quoted by Yediot Achronot as having retorted that there would be “not one cent” for Project Renewal unless the Jewish Agency was fully involved in the operational execution of the project. Jewish Agency sources told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today that the reports and quotes were substantially accurate.
They said the issue would be taken up tomorrow by the “Coordination Body,” the supreme government-Agency council which meets sporadically under the chairmanship of Premier Menachem Begin. The sources said that at the meeting yesterday, Dulzin and Deputy Premier Yigael Yadin had sided with the UJA leaders against Levy Yadin, as the senior minister in charge of social policy, is the government minister designated to oversee Project Renewal on the part of the government.
SCATHING CRITICISM REPORTED
Project Renewal, meanwhile, has come under some sobering and scathing comment from none other than its Agency-appointed director general, Eliezer Raphaeli.
Speaking recently to the presidium of the Zionist General Council, Raphaeli called on “all those involved in the project to begin publishing the truth — so as to cease raising false and delusive expectations” among the 45,000 families who are the “target population” in some 160 slum areas throughout the country. “Whoever supposes that tomorrow there will be no social distress in Israel as a result of Project Renewal is duping the public” Raphaeli said.
He added that since Begin had announced the project some 18 months ago the relevant government ministries had taken virtually no practical measures at all to bring it to realization. He noted that tomorrow’s meeting would be the first between the government and the Agency top policymaking level that would convene to endorse the project.
Zionist General Council chairman Yitzhak Peretz, a Likud Knesseter and former Mayor of Dimona, said cynically that “many people had earned their professorships out of Israel’s social distress, but hardly anything has been done in practice” (to alleviate it). Peretz called for a flowering of profile on Project Penewal, and stressed the need for action rather than words.
Raphaeli disclosed that it was already clear from studies done that the $1.2 billion referred to in initial estimates would not be sufficient to cover the cost of the entire project.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
