Late last Thursday evening both the Economic Arrangements Law (EAL) – the law that includes amendments to existing laws and new legislation connected with the implementation of the national budget and economic reforms – and the Budget Law were passed in the first reading. The last time that such an event took place in the Knesset, which in normal times is no big deal, was on February 13, 2018 – over three-and-a-half years ago.
Why has it taken so long for the 2021/2022 budget to get to this stage? Because from December 26, 2018, to May 17, 2020, Israel had transition governments, which cannot submit a budget, and from May 17, 2020, to December 23, 2020, the Netanyahu-Gantz government refrained from passing a budget for 2020/2021. MK Israel Katz, who served as finance minister in that short-lived government, stated in a TV interview on Channel 13 that the reason there had been no budget was “because Gantz wanted to be prime minister.”
Of course, Benny Gantz wanted to be prime minister: he had a signed coalition agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu that included rotation in the premiership between them. All he wanted was that the agreement be honored. It was Netanyahu who wanted to prevent the rotation from taking place, and decided to prevent the budget from going through (it was never prepared or submitted), because according to the law, if the budget is not approved by the end of March of the year to which it applies, the Knesset is automatically dissolved, and new elections are held.
The preparations for the first readings of the budget and Economic Arrangement Law bills for 2021/2022 last Thursday were a combination of farce, performed by the opposition in the plenum, and a serious process of last-minute negotiations and compromise, performed among the Coalition partners in closed rooms in the Knesset building.
While the debate on the EAL toward first reading was going on, with MK Mansour Abbas (Ra’am) chairing the sitting, and Hamad Amar (a Druze from Yisrael Beytenu, who is not an MK), who serves as minister in the Finance Ministry, addressing the plenum on behalf of the government, the opposition benches were in an uproar. MKs Galit Distal Atbaryan, Keti Shitrit, May Golan and occasionally David Amsalem (Likud) took turns shouting and shrieking against the government, the prime minister and the bills being “debated,” without seeming to mind the accuracy of the facts and figures they threw into the air, while waving their arms in all directions.
Amar simply looked at them with a toothy smile, commenting to Distal Atbaryan that he enjoys listening to her speak. Abbas just sat and grinned, not using his right to call the unruly MKs to order, or having them removed by the ushers, as if to say yesahaku hayeladim lefaneinu (let the children play before us). Every once in a while, when Amar was being interrupted and couldn’t be heard, he and Abbas went into a friendly tête-à-tête.
At some point Netanyahu walked into the upper public gallery of the plenum, which is separated from the rest of the hall with bulletproof glass. This gallery is designated these days for MKs who are in quarantine, and have come to speak and vote. Netanyahu is in quarantine after his visit in Hawaii. He was in the wide gallery all alone, and after giving his usual speech against the government in general and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in particular, he sat down in the back of the gallery, at an angle where he could be caught by the cameras, legs crossed, and opened a voluminous book in English (I couldn’t make out the title) on his knees.
FOR MOST of the time, there was almost no one in the plenum from the Coalition (except for Abbas and Amar), whose members were busy negotiating with the government about chapters in the EAL, which are in dispute within the Coalition.
The three controversial chapters were one dealing with the Regulatory Authority, the second dealing with the cancellation of agricultural imports, and the third dealing with the retirement age for women. Temporary compromises were reached on all these issues toward the vote on the bill, though none was completely resolved.
The first two of these issues involve ideological questions, over which the various parties that are members of the Coalition are deeply divided. Free-marketeers wish to cut regulation on economic activities to a minimum, while those who support a planned economy believe that an unregulated free market is likely to turn into anarchy in which only the strong survive.
In the case of agriculture, the question is whether one can deal with the price of agricultural produce simply by means of free imports with which local producers will have to complete, or whether what is necessary is a comprehensive policy that deals with all aspects of agriculture, including the actual survival of an agricultural sector – a problem with which most countries in the industrial world deal by means of subsidies.
The issue of raising the mandatory retirement age of women from the current 62 to the retirement age of men, 67, is the least ideological of the three. In dealing with it, at least three factors must be taken into account. The first is the actuary situation of the pension funds. The second is the fact that many women work in monotonous and wearing jobs, and by the age of 62 are worn out. The third is that there are women who wish to remain at work after the age of 62, but employers are frequently happy to have an excuse to end their employment when they reach 62.
On all three issues compromises will be reached: regulation will be reduced, but moderately; agricultural imports will be increased, but other measures will be taken to ensure that the agricultural sector will not collapse; while the retirement age for women will be gradually increased, but not to 67.
AT THE end of last Thursday evening, the Coalition emerged exhausted but victorious, while the members of the opposition appeared to have lost their way and sense of proportion halfway through the process. Only two of their members were paired off with Coalition members (MK Miri Regev, who married off one of her sons that evening, with new mom Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli, and MK Itamar Ben-Gvir, hospitalized with COVID-19, with Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy, who was being a gentleman). Another four opposition MKs were away without being paired off, so that the Coalition had a comfortable majority, without the help of the Joint List.
To be continued in October, when the Budget Law and EAL will be prepared in the Knesset for second and third readings.
The writer was a researcher in the Knesset Research and Information Center until her retirement, and recently published a book in Hebrew, The Job of the Knesset Member – An Undefined Job, soon to be published in English by Routledge.