Protests Hit Occupied Cities for 21st Week

Date: 28 May 2023 - 23:07

News ID: ۱۱۵۵۶۶

TEL AVIV (Dispatches) -- For the 21st week in a row, tens of thousands have swarmed the streets in several cities throughout the occupied Palestinian territories in protest at Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet and its extremist policies.
The crowds thronged the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities, including Haifa and Beersheba, as well as dozens of other locations across the occupied territories.
The new protests came only days after the Knesset approved the regime’s annual budget. Opposition figures have slammed Netanyahu’s proposed budget as “outrageous,” saying “it gives certain sectors perks and doesn’t take the general population into consideration.”
The rallies have been occurring every week since January, when Netanyahu announced his intention to push through with the so-called overhaul plan.
Faced with overwhelming public pressure, including the biggest protests ever seen across the occupied territories as well as several strikes, Netanyahu announced a pause in the scheme on March 27 to supposedly enable talks on the reforms.
Last week, 280 leading economists warned in response to the budget announced by Netanyahu’s far-right coalition that Israel is becoming a third world economy.
Details of this year’s budget were revealed by the occupation regime in a meeting held in a tunnel underneath Al-Aqsa Mosque.
In their warning reported by Haaretz, the academics cited massive subsidies expected to go towards the ultra-Orthodox school system, as well as bigger stipends for full-time yeshiva students.
The current far-right cabinet is heavily influenced by extreme religious parties. Netanyahu is said to have agreed last year to boost public funding substantially for ultra-Orthodox institutions that don’t teach core subjects such as maths and English, to the tune of billions of shekels a year.
According to Haaretz, concessions made by Netanyahu to build his far-right coalition include an

agreement to boost stipends for ultra-Orthodox men who eschew full-time employment for lifetime study in institutes catering for advanced study of the Talmud and rabbinic literature, or a traditional Jewish educational institution yeshiva for married men.

“In order to enable integration into the labor market, children should receive an education that enables this, and adults should face incentives to do so,” the economists are reported as warning.

“Unfortunately, the Israeli regime not only does not deal with this dire issue, but also chooses measures that exacerbate the problem and deteriorate the future of Israel’s economy towards the Third World.”

Relations between the ultra-Orthodox and secular communities are extremely fraught in Occupied Palestine. Tensions are said to be extremely high, so much so that the two communities are “Heading for War” according to one Israeli commentator. Secular Zionists are said to be incensed over the billions of shekels earmarked for the Haredi community and their educational institutions.

According to education ministry documents obtained by Haaretz, in 2019 more than 90,000 Haredi students – 27 percent of all ultra-Orthodox students – were excused from studying core subjects that year. Resentment is fuelled further because the Haredi community is growing at a much higher rate than any other group and only contributes two percent to the regime’s revenue from income tax.