"As far as I'm concerned, globalization is the greatest danger to Israel, not Iran. Everyone will solve the problem of Iran, the US, Russia, Europe. Globalization is our problem. The young say, 'If we're not in high-tech, why stay here? We'll make better money abroad," said MK Avishai Braverman (Labor) at the Herzliya Conference today.
Braverman said, "The whole business has failed, despite its potential. We have a neoliberal economic policy with a complex bureaucracy, and a dysfunctional regime. I'm very scared by what's happening here.
"Israel is the poorest and most unequal country in the West, and its police services are faulty. We're building a country in Tel Aviv and overseas, not in outlying areas, where people are leaving because there's no work. In the past seven years, with the surpluses from growth, we could have reformed the bureaucracy, Israel Electric Corporation, and the banking duopoly. Why does Israel have so many ministers - 30 - while France and Germany have just 12?"
Braverman, considered the Labor Party's economic luminary, went on, "I don’t understand why a country with no deficit and large budget surpluses is so unegalitarian. Finance Ministry officials frighten us with economic depression. I'm very scared by what's happening here. I favor cutting the national debt, but the Maastricht criteria call for a 3% deficit, while we always have no deficit. So what's the problem?
"As for priorities, we have money in Israel, so bureaucratic reform is paramount. We must have reform now. I'll fight with everything I have to institute them ahead of the 2009 budget."
Braverman continued, "We mustn’t adopt the US model; the European model is better. Instead of the entrepreneurship, Israel is adopting the malaises of the US economy. Ben Gurion would be shocked at the priorities here, because they're the priorities of Tel Aviv, the priorities of the Israelis who don’t give a damn about the Galilee and the Negev. We must cut the bureaucracy and add budgets to the strengthening of the collapsing periphery. We must add incentives for the Negev and carry them out, because the youth doesn’t believe a word."
At the conference, opposition leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu took credit for the sharp drop in the unemployment rate to 6.6% of the labor force, announced by the Central Bureau of Statistics yesterday. He declared, "Only by economic peace can we solve the problem of diplomatic stagnation and build initial ties with the Palestinians."
Netanyahu believes that he is becoming closer to power because of the public's reaction to the Winograd report. He outlined his own plan for the creation of an Israeli-Palestinian economic peace, while simultaneously creating a deterrence against the Gaza Strip and the Hamas regime there. He called for the creation of joint industrial parks on the Israeli side of the border, under Israeli security and economic control, where both Israeli and Palestinians would work. "Economic peace is the corridor to political peace. I propose creating islands of prosperity, bases of hope, instead of bases of Islamic radicalism."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 21, 2008
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2008