The mother of all strikes

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

From a broader, political perspective, the strike must be viewed as part of the ongoing struggle between Histadrut leader Amir Peretz and Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The two are so different, in background, style, ideology and personality that their disputes often seem to be as much about the personal animosity between them as it is about the issue at stake. Peretz makes no secret of his hope that he will be the standard bearer for the Israeli Left, presumably at the head of a post-Peres Labor Party against the Israeli Right, presumably headed by Netanyahu in a post-Sharon era.

While Netanyahu aims his rhetoric to the middle class (often sounding like Ronald Reagan talking about welfare queens or Margaret Thatcher wondering what ‘society’ means), that middle class is dwindling. A report issued yesterday by the Central Bureau of Statistics shows that it took NIS 10,139 a month for a household to keep its head above water in 2003, down 3.9 percent from 2002 – but the average wage is about NIS 7,500. Middle class spending on meals at restaurants has dropped by almost 5 percent, and on meals at cafes by more than 8 percent; spending on domestic help has fallen by more than 11 percent; spending on daily newspapers has dropped by almost 18 percent; and spending on travel abroad is more than 23 percent lower.

Peretz appeals to the democratic socialists but also to the poor and the working class, even though he leans toward an overly dramatic and inflated rhetoric. More problematic for him is that the poor and working class have been Likud voters for the last 29 years and even now, after Netanyahu’s policies have struck them hard in their pockets, he still polls better than any other politician in Israel after Sharon and Peres. But Peretz is probably the only potential candidate for a still undefined future election who could somehow manage to pull together the Left. But that is sometime in the future. Meanwhile, the strike dominated the news this morning, shoving other issues to the sidelines, with the most significant being the reports that Syria is redeploying its troops in Lebanon.

Woman Crucified # 13 by Silvia Rosenberg, mixed media on recycled paper, 20x30 cm.

ire service reports from Lebanon quoted Lebanese officials as saying that Syrian forces began moving troops from the outskirts of Beirut towards the Syrian-Lebanese border. Troops stationed in Damour, a village just south of Beirut, and in Aramoun to the east, were withdrawing towards the eastern Bekaa Valley. The Lebanese said the Syrian forces would at a later stage redeploy troops from northern and central areas towards the Bekaa. Israel Radio finally noticed the event late in the morning, but even as it reported the deployment pointed out that so far, all that has happened is redeployment inside Lebanon, away from the Beirut area and into areas still held by Syria, like the Bekaa. Israel Radio also was reporting that the Jordanians want to build a fifth minaret on the Temple Mount/Haram el Sharif.

It’s hard to tell how that will go down with Israeli zealots, including some in the government, who are already upset about what they say are deliberate attempts by the Islamic Trust on the mount to erase any historical presence of the Jewish temples that once dominated all of Jerusalem from the old City hilltop. Any change on the mount is capable of setting off chain reactions – the latest controversy is what the waqf should do with dirt excavated from various digs and renovations it is conducting on the mount. An Israeli group, backed by some, but not most Israeli archaeologists, argues the dirt must contain ancient artifacts of interest to archeologists, while the waqf insists it is just dirt. Not helping matters is the bitter memory, for Israelis, of Yaser Arafat’s reported insistence at Camp David – often repeated by Muslim leaders, including some Israeli Muslim leaders -- that the First and Second Temples were never located at the site.

Other issues in the news this morning included reports of Leftist kibbutzniks organizing to join the Likud, to counter the Rightist elements in the ruling party and heightened anti-Sharon rhetoric from the Right, including references to him ‘as worse than the Judenrat,’ the Jewish collaborators with the Nazis.

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