Getting real, the only way that the demands of the Israeli Left can be met would be for Israel to become a communist dictatorship. Freedom and democracy make for the Israel of today.
Opposition Leader Herzogrecently said about Netanyahu focusing on ‘Jewish state bill’: “You talk more and more and more about nationality in order to avoid addressing the inability of the public to afford buying a house.”
As anybody with half a brain knows, housing prices are the result of supply and demand, freedom and democracy. The government does not have any real direct control over these things. Isaac Herzog, Leftist Labor Party leader, knows this perfectly well, but as a Leftist campaigning to unseat Likud leader Prime Minister Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu, he goes for the popular headline grabbing demands which ignore reality.
Of course, there are steps the government can do to lower some housing prices, but the process would take a long time, and we all know that Herzog himself would vote against them.
To lower housing prices, there must be low priced building in places where Jewish Israelis would love to live, such as “E1,” the connection between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, linked from a 2006 article.
| In the not-too-distant past, Kashriel told The Report (“Growing to Jerusalem, June 14, 2004”) that “Ma’ale Adumim was established to break Palestinian contiguity,” adding that “Ma’ale Adumim necessarily cuts the West Bank in two.” In March 2006, however, when Kashriel meets me in his office in the impressive city council building next to the city’s shopping mall, his message has been recrafted, presumably to cause as little discord with the Americans as possible, and to try to persuade me, or them, that the Palestinian and American objections to Israeli building in E1 are unfounded. The Palestinians, he asserts, have misleadingly persuaded the Americans that E1 will split the West Bank in two, now claiming that to “not true at all.” Unfurling a large map, he points out the new road, from Anata to Al-Azariya, that will facilitate Palestinian north-south traffic, and which is due to be completed in a matter of months. More roads are planned to run around the barrier to the east, in the less than 20 kilometers of wilderness the Palestinians will theoretically have between the Ma’ale Adumim bloc and the Jordanian border. |
That’s to show how long Jerusalem has been strangled by the Israeli Left, which in all honesty cares more for American interests than Israeli needs. If they hadn’t blocked E1, prices in the Jerusalem area would be much lower today.
A few hundred more units built each year in the Gush Shiloh (bloc) would easily be full and lower prices for those who want to be a half hour from both Jerusalem and the Tzomet Yarkon (Junction.)
My area is also very popular for those who want a more rural-suburban, warm community life and easy access to Ariel and the Jordan Valley, which is a couple of minutes’ east of Shiloh.
In general, building for Jews in all of the popular places in Judea and Samaria would lower prices across the board in all of Israel. And of course schools, hospitals and medical centers should also be built. Building is less expensive in all of these areas. Now that there’s a university in Ariel, a hospital should be built with the required medical school (and school for nursing,) since there aren’t enough spots in the existing medical schools.