About ten thousand people demonstrated in Habima Square in Tel Aviv last night against the government's plan for a settlement with the gas exploration companies that will circumvent the objections of the Antitrust Authority, Walla! News reports. The demonstrators carried placards with slogans such as "The People Demand Economic Justice" and "Stop the Theft, Not Right Not Left, Social Justice."
Demonstrations also took place, for the second successive Saturday night, in Haifa, Jerusalem, Beersheva, and smaller towns.
The demonstration in Tel Aviv began with a minute's silence for the victims of the weekend's terror attacks in Paris and of the shooting attack in Samaria on Friday.
Former Accountant General at the Ministry of Finance Prof. Yaron Zelekha spoke at the Tel Aviv demonstration. "How many times can I explain: it's not robbery, it's organized robbery," he said, "Whoever doles out the public purse to his friends will fill it with his crimes. Over the past months we have opened the public's eyes to the way the government is despoiling the greatest national resource ever discovered here, after dividing it up among a group of magnates almost without consideration. This is a monopoly that is selling our own gas back to us, that it received for nothing. They say it's worth making concessions for the sake of Israel's geo-strategic standing, but Netanyahu has tuned Israel into the country with the most expensive housing in the West. The country in which cars are the most expensive in the West. The country in which food is the most expensive in the West, and now the country with the most expensive gas in the West and it's our gas."
MK Stav Shafir (Zionist Union), who came to the demonstration together with her party colleagues Merav Michaeli and Omer Barlev, said, "I call on all the members of Knesset to join the citizens of Israel and protect the country from the pathological connection between power and wealth. We must stop Netanyahu and Tshuva's great economic crime," referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yitzhak Tshuva, who controls Delek Group, one of the main parties to the gas agreement alongside US company Noble Energy.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 15, 2015
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