Why Netanyahu is suddenly unpopular in Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose approval rating has dropped nearly 20 percent, today scrambled to respond to a widening movement protesting pocketbook issues

By Joshua Mitnick, Correspondent / July 26, 2011

Tel Aviv
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been put firmly on the defensive for the first time since his election, with tens of thousands of people protesting the surging cost of housing.

With his approval ratings in a double-digit dive, Mr. Netanyahu canceled a trip to Poland today to unveil a series of measures aimed at cooling off real-estate prices that have risen by more than one third since 2007.

But demonstrators rejected the reform package as too narrow, focusing too heavily on students even as the protest movement burgeons well beyond the young people who set up tents in Tel Aviv two weeks ago.

snip* The prime minister has received broad public backing for a confrontational foreign policy toward the Palestinians and a critical stance toward the Obama administration – his approval rating stood at 51 percent after crossing swords with the US president this spring.

But the growing socioeconomic malaise has caused his approval rating to plummet to 32 percent, according to a poll published by the liberal Haaretz newspaper.

in full: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0726/Why-Netanyahu-is-suddenly-unpopular-in-Israel

As reported last week or the week before in the daily Stock Market Watch thread.

(Today's thread, btw: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4936078#4936608 - includes some Talmudic wisdom ).

"The housing is a symptom … . Although there is a really good macroeconomic aggregates like GDP growth and unemployment, the problem is that we have very large income inequality," says Momi Dahan, an economics professor at Hebrew University.

He says that such issues are coming to the fore because of a relative low in Palestinian violence.

"When it is quiet in the area of security, then all of the other problems come to the surface," Prof. Dahan says. "People are sick of the rules where some people get a six-digit salary, and a cleaning woman or a cashier has a hard time feeding their kids."

...so that their land can be turned into more "low-cost" Israeli settlements. :puke:

Is anybody gaining at Likud/Beitenyu/Shas/"Independence"s expense? Or, at least, anybody other than Kadima?

In truth, there is no opposition in Israel. In order to bring down Netanyahu's government, which is selling the country's treasures to tycoons for a mess of pottage, we first of all have to get rid of the opposition, which is cut from the same cloth.

By Oudeh Basharat

What do Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv and Tahrir Square in Cairo have in common? Both are the seeing the creation of authentic mass protest movements, and in both countries there is a lack of formal political opposition. In Cairo the opposition is informal. Here there is a formal body called Kadima, which is not an opposition.

The Knesset is likely to become confused here between the opposition and the coalition. MK Shai Hermesh of Kadima found himself this week defending himself against an attack by MK Miri Regev of Likud on the issue of housing prices.

Meanwile the Shas MKs are at the moment serving as their own opposition, and are looking far more authentic than the members of Kadima. The right, not only here, is talented at pushing its failures onto the doorsteps of others. In the Arab world they push the failures onto the doorstep of criminal imperialism, the traitorous reactionaries and Zionist agents. In Israel the address is the left wing and human rights organizations.

The alienation between the opposition and its role has deep roots. In 1977, after 30 years in power, the leaders of Mapai (the forerunner of Labor) had difficulty functioning as an opposition. Were they expected to distribute flyers at the junctions? Wave signs? Participate in salon meetings with four listeners, one of whom wants them to repeat every sentence twice?

And so it didn't take long for them to start knocking on doors, like a drug addict looking for his daily fix, in an attempt to attain positions in a national unity government.

A right-wing opposition has a free hand. It will support any military adventure of a leftist government, but when the scent of a peace treaty starts wafting in the air, it will make sure to start protesting.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-needs-a-real-opposition-party-1.375475