Handicap organizations are planning to block many junctions and highways throughout the country on Sunday, in protest of the deadlocked negotiations with the Finance Ministry's Budget Department.
The organizations, led by an organization named "The Handicapped Panthers", are demanding the full implementation of the Handicap Law that was passed in 2018. The law states that handicapped people who cannot work will receive a living stipend that will gradually increase to 3,700 NIS a month.
The law states that the stipend will rise in four stages. The first two have already been implemented, but the Finance Ministry is hindering the implementation of the remaining stages, despite public promises made by Social Equality and Pensioners Minister Meir Cohen. The handicap organizations are demanding that Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman intervene.
Alex Friedman, one of the protest's leaders and head of an organization called "Handicaps are not Half People," who was a candidate in Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu in the recent elections, publicly hailed his party leader: "We have been walking hand-in-hand for nearly two years out of an obligation to help people with disabilities in Israel. You gave your word that you would act to implement the law in its entirety, and to eventually raise the handicap stipend to minimum wage."You are now the Finance Minister. Your representatives are meeting with us on a regular basis, but the tricks that the Budget Department are playing on us are forcing us to renew the protest. I am calling on you to announce that you will meet your promise."
The tricks that Friedman referred to add up to a NIS 600 million deficit out of the original 4 billion that was originally allotted to the issue, of which only half has been passed on to the handicapped people until now.
On Thursday, the handicap organizations vowed to cause "billions of shekels" of damage by blocking major highways and railroads.At about 10:30 a number of handicapped people blocked the Ayalon highway, leaving only one lane open.
At about 11:10 police announced that the highway has been reopened to traffic.