BY SHEERA FRENKEL, JEWISHWORLDREVIEW—
More than a quarter-million Israelis marched Saturday evening against the high cost of housing, though many Israelis said it was a general protest over the struggle to make ends meet.
“Every month was the same. We would work and cut coupons and hold off on anything frivolous. Still, we would end the month counting pennies and not put anything away,” said Lital Ben-Mor, 33. “You have no idea how depressing it is to think you will spend your whole life barely getting by. Now — these protests show that across the country Israelis feel the same way. That it’s not just us who are stuck like this.”
Israel’s economy is one of the strongest in the region. It projects growth of 4.8 percent this year when most countries in the region are facing economic stagnation. For the average Israeli, however, costs have gone up while their wages have stayed the same.
Figures published in Israel’s largest daily newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, said the price of housing in Israel has risen 60 per cent in the past four years. Increasingly, Israelis are spending more than half their wages on housing.
Israeli officials responded to the protest by forming a panel of government ministers and economic experts to draw up a plan to reduce living costs. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to rein in expectations, telling the protesters that he would not make rash decisions.
“We cannot take all the lists of problems, and all the list of demands, and pretend we will be able to satisfy everyone,” Netanyahu said. “We need to be fiscally responsible, while making some socially sensitive amendments.”
The committee is expected to take a month to make its recommendations, frustrating protesters.
The protest leaders have published a list of specific demands, though the movement has come to represent a vague call for change across various interest groups in Israel.
The official demands include construction of affordable housing and a reduction of the sales tax, which is now 16 percent.
“These are just two specific things. But what they really want is for everything to be different. For the average person with an average family to be able to buy a home and give his kids an education,” said Aviva Fine, 41, who attended the protest Saturday.
She described how she and her husband have full-time jobs and earn slightly above the average in Israel. Though the live in a suburb north of Tel Aviv, they spend half of their wages on their mortgage each month.
“The truth is we can’t put anything away. No matter how many cuts we make and how many holidays we postpone, the daily cost of life in Israel is too high for us. We just feel desperate,” she said.
The “Israeli summer” of protests began with a Facebook petition over the high cost of cottage cheese — a staple in most Israeli homes. Three weeks ago, a young freelance filmmaker fed up with the cost of renting a flat in Tel Aviv announced to her friends that she was going to set up a tent on Rothschild Boulevard — one of the cities most expensive residential streets.
Her protest took off; within a week, hundreds of tents crowded the boulevard as Israelis from across the country said they would occupy the tents until housing became more affordable.
“It’s the kind of thing that any Israeli can get behind. It’s untenable that the majority of us spend half our salary, or more, on rent. Every year we watch the things around us get more expensive, though our salaries stay the same and can’t keep up,” said Noam Sheizan, 22, who has slept on his tent on Rothschild for the past two weeks.