Lapid promises Gaza border settlements NIS 50m aid

Yair Lapid  picture: Eyal Yitzhar
Yair Lapid picture: Eyal Yitzhar

The government is shorlty due to present a comprehensive aid plan for the region.

Minister of Finance Yair Lapid met heads of local authorities bordering the Gaza Strip this afternoon and announced that he had reached agreement with Minister of the Interior Gideon Sa'ar on emergency aid of NIS 50 million. Lapid said this sum should meet the immediate needs of the regional councils that have been dealing for nearly two months with massive rocket and mortar fire from the Gaza Strip at communities in their jurisdictions. In the past six weeks, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of the Interior have transferred in two stages a total of NIS 30 million to Gaza border settlements.

Prime Minister's Office director general Harel Locker is due in the next few days to present a comprehensive aid plan that he is formulating together with directors of other government ministries, designed to support communities that have been under fire for a long period.

"The real, long-term solution to the current problems is to strengthen the settlements in this region and to turn them into an Israeli gem. We are formulating a government decision on the matter, and we will hold a proper work meeting here," Lapid told the regional council heads who had gathered for a meeting at the Sdot Negev Regional Council with him and Tax Authority director Moshe Asher.

"It's hard living here," Tamir Idan, head of the Sdot Negev Regional Council, told Lapid. "We want to live in peace, to invest in education, culture and sport. Donors come here all the time and ask what we need, and time and again we have to say we need reinforcement for buildings. We've had enough. We have seen the ideas for an aid plan being formulated in the government ministries and my impression is that thorough and serious work has been done. We ask for your support, especially since we have heard people say that the plan involves too much money."

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 25, 2014

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2013

Yair Lapid  picture: Eyal Yitzhar
Yair Lapid picture: Eyal Yitzhar
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