Israel hits the skids
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-10-20Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 7 →
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TOKEN strikes broke out in many parts of Israel last week in response to the government's threat to break the link between public sector employees' wages and the rate of inflation.
This attack on Israel's 'sliding scale of wages' or index linking - the workers' chief weapon against the raging three figure inflation of the shekel - follows a crash in the baking system, a big devaluation of the currency and a 50% jump in food prices.
The appointment of a new Finance Minister - replacing Yoram Aridor who resigned following the revelation that he proposed to junk the shekel in favour of going on to the US dollar - will not in itself restore confidence. ' The bank crash was the result of a long-term deep-going trend in the Israeli economy.
Israel has always lived beyond its means. Without huge remittances from US Zionists and from the West German Government and without millions of dollars worth of grants and waivers from the US government, Israel simply could not survive.
Its military and colonising projects - bigger under Begin than ever before - ate up millions every day.
On top of that, the Likud coalition further scuttled the economy when in 1981, in order to win the elections, it unleashed a big consumer spending spree when it cut taxes on many imported items.
The result is that Israel's debt per head of population is 10 times that of Brazil, a byword for Third World indebtedness. Servicing that debt costs Israel $2,200 million a year - equivalent to all its US aid and accounting for nearly half its export revenue.
Even before the bank crash there had been widespread acceptance that an election would have to be held soon in order to solve the near parliamentary deadlock. Now that election looks even nearer.
The choice between the two main party blocs - the Marach or Labour Alignment based on the Israeli Labour Party, Mapam, and the Likud bloc based on Herut party - will not mean that the Israeli working class will be able to choose a policy of militarism and settlements or anti-militarism and no settlements.
But it is likely that some workers will see that it is the nature of the Israeli state rather than the spendthrift policies of the Likud that have brought about the present chaos.
That in itself could, in the present situation, present revolutionary socialists with enormous possibilities.