Housing protests make for strange bedfellows

MK Ya'acov Katz (National Union), MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al) join protests, find different reasons, solutions for the crisis.

By LAHAV HARKOV
Ahmed Tibi 311 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Ahmed Tibi 311
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The protests on the cost of living brought together strange bedfellows, with both MK Ya’acov Katz (National Union) and MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al) joining demonstrators in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, providing opposite suggestions as to how to solve the crisis on Sunday.
Tibi said that he brought dozens of Ta’al supporters to the rally, which he called a “constitutive event.”
RELATED:Protest draws 300,000 in largest show of force yetPM presents 15-minister 'social justice' committee
“Suddenly we see citizens not just complaining, but demonstrating, not bowing their heads, but yelling out loud at an abusive, exploitative government,” he added.
“The question is, will the protests on Rothschild Street undergo ‘Tahrirization’ and bring a drastic change in the system?” Tibi asked.
The UAL-Ta’al MK said that the government must change its order of priorities and stop funding settlements.
Instead, he explained, the government should invest in “housing, education and health within the Green Line.”
Katz came to the opposite conclusion, explaining that West Bank construction would alleviate the housing crisis.
The building freeze in the West Bank “made it impossible for young people to buy a home,” he stated.
Katz said “tens of thousands of people arrived from Judea and Samaria on special buses to Tel Aviv, proving that [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu cannot ignore the growing protests, which represent every sector in society.”
“The government failed in one of its central roles, to prepare infrastructure for construction and housing throughout the land, which will allow for access to roofs above the heads of the state’s citizens,” Katz explained.
“The government has many options to quickly and efficiently solve this severe problem, but it is not using any of them, and the citizens of the state continue to suffer,” he said