Israel’s Cabinet acted Sunday to kill a liberal housing loan bill that the Knesset passed last week, which the government says it cannot afford.
A communique issued after the weekly session said the Cabinet had decided to “freeze” the measure, “effective immediately until the annulment of the law or the end of the fiscal year, whichever comes first.”
The communique said the Cabinet acted “after realizing that implementation of the law entailed amounts that exceed what was allotted to the matter in the annual budget law.”
The new measure authorizes government-subsidized mortgages of up to $67,000 at 4 percent interest, with only 80 percent linked to the consumer price index.
The Treasury said the measure would cost the government some $2 billion that is not in the budget.
It was introduced May 7 as a private members bill by Knesset member Ya’acov Shamai of Likud and was adopted by a comfortable margin.
Some observers said Likud bloc members who breached party discipline to vote for it were intimidated by members of the Likud rank and file who packed the Knesset gallery in support of the measure.
The Cabinet also announced the appointment of Professor Ya’akov Frankel, an economist who has worked abroad in recent years, to the office of governor of the Bank of Israel, the country’s central bank.
He will succeed Professor Michael Bruno of the Hebrew University, who wanted to retire earlier but agreed to stay in office until August, when Frankel can take over.
The appointment was almost unanimous. The only dissent came from Rehavam Ze’evi, a minister without portfolio of the extreme right-wing Moledet party. He thought it unseemly to confer such high office on a man who has worked the better part of 20 years outside Israel.
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.
