By Ira Sharkansky
JERUSALEM — I hope that you are all doing well, now, throughout the New Year, and for a very long time in the future. We’re doing well. We enjoy our Retirement Village, and are making many friends. Services are good. We’re being taken care of , more or less. Government rules that we check in each day, with an appropriate press on a button, there are evening lectures, films, or concerts, and occasional celebrations.
The country proceeds, also more or less well. Lots of arguments and demonstrations. Major hospitals were on a Sabbath schedule, turning away some patients, claiming that the Finance Ministry hadn’t come through with the money promised. Now that seems to have been solved, with yet another promise from the Finance Ministry.
And we’re waiting on the passage of a national budget. We’ve not had one for some three years, and this government will expire if one is not passed in a month or so. With a Knesset majority of one vote, it is dependent on full cooperation. That empowers each Knesset Member to have considerable leverage, to get what he/she wants, or to vote no, abstain, or be conveniently absent from the voting. So far, the Knesset has passed a budget with one vote. Now it’s waiting for two more votes.
There’s also a quarrel about agriculture and food costs. Proposals to import more fruits and vegetables from Turkey and elsewhere, which will lower the prices in the markets, but with loud voices from farmers and their supporters about the need to protect locally grown food. Local growth is more costly, due to the prices that farmers must pay for water, taxes, and labor.
Also an argument about the Defense Minister meeting with Mahmoud Abbas. First meeting at that level in a number of years, with intentions to firm up the smooth (more or less) relations with the West Bank, and to a lesser extent Gaza. The Prime Minister approved the meeting in advance, but there are quarrels from within and from outside the government. Hard to tell what people expect. We have to live with the Palestinians. They have to live with us. With or without contentious claims about history, rights, and the presence or absence of a Palestinian state. There won’t be quiet, and there’ll be occasional violence from Arabs or Jews not happy with what exists. Solutions? Or living with uncertainties and nothing final?
What about the reopening of an American consulate in Jerusalem, meant to serve as something close to an Embassy, for the Palestine Authority? According to Yair Lapid, it would threaten the Israeli government. The question is open, and stands at something of a contradiction with the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, formalized by Donald Trump, and not changed by the Biden administration. Maybe the opening of a consulate in Ramallah?
The beginning of school? It’s happened. And there are classes for something like nine days throughout this month of holidays. But there is a very high incidence of infections, but a lessening of serious cases. Those data are due, presumably, to the high incidence of vaccinations. But something like a million Israelis who have refused to be vaccinated. Almost all of those seriously ill are the unvaccinated. Couldn’t the opening of school be postponed for a month, to give a chance for the vaccinations to further lessen things? And what about the incidence of infections associated with schools, where kids seem inclined to hug one another and demonstrate their closeness? Then there’ll be infections spread from the opening of classes to family gatherings for the holiday.
Apparently, we’ll have to live with this illness for some time. There are pressures to open gatherings, with or without masks, and to permit international travel, along with many Israelis who go to where ever or to Uman in the Ukraine to dance on Rosh Hashana at the grave of a Rabbi, and mingle closely, again with or without masks, and come home and do who knows what rather than isolate themselves for a week.
With all of the above, there is also a continuation of violence within the Arab communities. We’re hearing of shootings, deaths, and injuries due to disputes between families. There’s a high incidence of illegal weapons, and some confusion as to whether the police are active enough. Theirs is a more violent culture than ours. One can pick the statistics. While Arab Israelis constitute roughly 21% of the population, they accounted for close to three quarters of the homicides. These include “honor killings” of women, in some cases for speaking with a man from an undesirable family. We hear demands for more police, and claims from the police that they find little cooperation when investigating lawlessness in the Arab community.
However you look at us, there is a lot to do in the year 5782.
Shana tova.
*
Ira Sharkansky, Ph.D, is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University. He may be contacted via ira.sharkansky@sdjewishworld.com