8 April 2020 Jewish News
www.jewishnews.co.uk
17
Political turmoil / Israel News
Israel’s Labour Party on brink of collapse The historic Israeli Labour Party looked to have finally disintegrated this week after its two leaders left to join Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, leaving the rest of the party “shocked”, writes Stephen Oryszczuk. Amir Peretz and his number two Itzik Shmuli said they would merge with Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party in return for ministerial positions but others, such as Labour’s third Knesset member Merav Michaeli, were adamantly opposed. Peretz and Shmuli are expecting to receive socio-economic portfolios in the new government, which will be led by Netanyahu for the first 18 months, before a promise to rotate prime ministerial powers to Gantz.
Amir Peretz debates political rivals in the run-up to last month’s election
But Michaeli was left “shocked” at the two leaders’ desertion, saying: “You don’t throw away the party of David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin
and Shimon Peres.” The party grew out of Ben-Gurion’s Mapai, or Workers Party, and was the dominant force in Israeli politics from
the state’s foundation in the 1940s to Likud’s first victory in the 1970s. As the Israeli population has veered further to the right in recent years, Labour’s popularity has waned, to the point it now needs to merge with other left-wing parties in order to meet the 3.25 percent parliamentary threshold. Five years ago, Israel’s left-wing and centre-left parties scooped 29 of the 120 seats, but in last month’s election they won only seven, despite Labour running alongside both Meretz and Gesher, in an alliance that dissolved quickly after the ballot. First Gesher’s Orly Levy-Abekasis, whose father was a Likud lawmaker, broke away after refusing to enter a minority government with Arab
parliamentarians, then Labour and Meretz parted ways last weekend, as Peretz and Shmuli made their plans clear. The split leaves Labour and Meretz with three lawmakers each. The Labour rupture comes as Israeli politicians finally look likely to agree a unity government comprising Netanyahu’s Likud, the two strictly Orthodox parties, most of Gantz’s Blue and White, and the two Labour politicians. Yair Lapid has withdrawn his Yesh Atid faction, so will sit in opposition together with the Joint List of Arab politicians, while the religiousnationalist Yamina bloc of the current Defence Minister Naftali Bennett may also be sidelined.
Bombs swapped for ventilators ONE MILLION ISRAELIS JOBLESS Israel’s defence establishment has stopped making missiles and started manufacturing ventilators. The assembly line building the Ventway Sparrow ventilator model was set up by the Israel Aerospace Industries at an Israeli missile factory last Tuesday, Israel Hayom reported. Thirty ventilators made in the factory have been delivered to the
Health Ministry, Defence Minister Naftali Bennett announced. This line of ventilators is already in use at hospitals and emergency centres in Israel and abroad. “Israel must develop independent capabilities in everything related to dealing with the Covid-19 virus pandemic,” Bennett said. “We must develop independent, advanced capabilities.”
Getting through this together
Almost a quarter of working-age Israelis are now jobless after the latest government figures showed the effects of the lockdown there, with more than a million Israelis now on the dole. A staggering 844,000 unemployment benefit claims were registered in March alone, sending the jobless rates skyrocketing to 24.4 percent in just three weeks, compared to only 3.4 percent a month before. Israel was one of the first countries to impose stringent lockdown conditions at the start of the
coronavirus pandemic, and the new figures show the extent of the economic damage caused. The Israeli government has said it will help employees who had been made permanently unemployed or, as in most cases, have been placed on unpaid leave, by covering up to 75 percent of their wages. While discussions continue around a possible federal grant for the self-employed, tens of thousands who work for themselves have had little by way of reassurance.
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