We Could Break Strike, but...
By Zev Golan, Executive Director, IASPS - Jerusalem

Finance Director Ohad Marani told Israel Television that “we could break the Customs strike but it would risk igniting the whole economy, so we are trying to work out a compromise.” This shocking admission by the director of Israel’s Finance Ministry followed suggestions by Manufacturers Association head Oded Tira, that the government of Israel allow goods to be brought into Israel and duty paid based on customs declarations and deposits made by the importers, until the strike ended.

Marani’s statement was a restatement of Israeli high diplomacy, in economic terms: essentially Marani was endorsing the peace process. Yes, terror is wrong; yes, we could defeat terror; but we prefer to compromise with it. Yes, war hurts innocent people; yes, it is the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens; but we prefer to compromise. And the factories that are closing because their raw materials cannot be cleared from customs, and the Israelis returning from abroad forced to endure hours-long waits at customs, and the people planning trips this weekend who have just been informed the airport (not airports – but the one, state-run monopoly on international flight) will close this weekend as it strikes, holding hostage the entire population of Israel till the extortionists who call themselves workers get the ransom they are demanding, all these innocent people are victims of their own government’s tyranny, as has been described in recent op-eds on this website concerning the original peace process.

Marani was saying: We are morally bankrupt. We do not care about the people who live here. We want to keep governing, and we are gutless cowards who do not intend to risk more strikes – for, in true peace process language, as Israeli politicians have taught us, when you kill terrorists you only encourage more terror, therefore you need to compromise with them and give them half your country, and as per Marani, when you break a strike, you only encourage more, so the thing to do is compromise.

The only possible explanation as to why Marani would go on national television to declare his moral bankruptcy, his political naivete and his economic ineptitude, is that, perhaps, he intends to declare his candidacy for the premiership. He certainly has all the qualifications

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