Fed Up
With Likud
In Rural
Towns
From the Negev to the north,
a mood offrustration.
INA FRIEDMAN
Special to The Jewish News
0
fakim, Israel — 'We're finished
with the Likud" was the cry
that rang out through Israel's
rural development towns last
week."This time we're either
voting Rabin or a blank slip,"
(the traditional form of a protest
vote).
That theme repeated itself from Kiryat Shmonah
in the north to Ofakim and the cluster of develop-
ment towns in the Negev Desert, the very con-
stituencies that helped put the Likud in power 15
years ago and have been its mainstay ever since.
First settled as immigrant camps (ma'abarot) in the
early 1950s, these towns are still inhabited mostly by
Jews of North African origin who have long regarded
themselves as the objects of disdain and discrimina-
tion.
The electoral upset they wrought in 1977 stemmed
more from a desire to punish Labor — for keeping them
out of the mainstream — than any real affinity with
the Polish oligarchy that ruled the Likud. Still, they
embraced the Likud as their own, especially after
Menachem Begin appointed David Levy, an ambitious
labor organizer, as the first minister to emerge
from their ranks.
But in the wake of Mr. Begin's death, the tables
seemed to have turned. "After 29 years of Labor,
the Sephardim placed great hopes in the Likud,"
explained one seasoned party activist. "But it's
proven to be more of the same, and they want to
punish it just as badly as they punished Labor,
and in exactly the same way."
Resentment toward the Likud has been brew-
ing for a long time. And the reasons were easy to spy
in all the development towns. Since the last elections
in 1988, the economic situation has declined appre-
ciably throughout Israel. But nowhere has unem-
ployment hit harder than in these relatively remote
settlements.
Factories have closed, one after the next. Middle-
aged heads of families have been fired from their jobs
with no alternatives available. Their despair is ag-
gravated by the sight of their sons returning from three
years of army service to face dead-end lives on the dole.
Even the receding prospect of peace has found its
way into their plaint. For two generations the inhab-
itants of these towns saw themselves as the lowly
brick and mortar from which the state was built. Now
some are grumbling that their sons have become its
cannon fodder, as well.
"You raise a child for 18 years just to send him off
to the army to die," mumbled a burnt-out, sad-eyed
man nursing a glass of whiskey in a two-bit cafe in
Sderot, just 5 miles east of the Gaza Strip. This, too,
is a theme that crops up repeatedly as people allow
themselves to feel anger again.
The development towns in the northwestern Negev
One doesn't have to search
very hard for political ferment
It's right up front,
out on the streets.
are virtually undistinguishable from each other. All
are approximately the same size, with 12,000-16,000
inhabitants (and unemployment figures ranging from
4 percent in Netivot to a whopping 12 percent in
Sderot).
All are a combination of small duplex structures
from the '50s and '60s, apartment complexes from the
`70s and '80s, and a sprinkling of more prosperous-
looking villas.
All have housing for new immigrants going up on
their perimeters, though the immigrants are loath
to come for fear of falling into the same pit of idleness
as the veterans.
All remain dusty, shabby towns, with little atten-
tion to landscaping or other details that give the bed-
room suburbs on the West Bank a touch of class. Here
and there one sees gardens, satellite dishes, signs of
caring and connectedness. But neglect is still the loud-
est message transmitted from these precincts. And
one doesn't have to search very hard for political fer-
ment. It's right up front, out on the streets, just wait-
ing to be documented.
At high noon in Netivot, Yehiel Zohar, the Likud
head of the town's local council, is engaged in a lively
street debate with some of his constituents
about David Levy's shabby treatment at the
hands of the Old Guard of Likud. The theme
here is again discrimination, and Mr. Zohar
• says he hopes Mr. Levy "breaks with Likud
and sets up his own party."
Further south, in Ofakim, a group of people
in their 30's are discussing politics over a beer
in the town's central square. These second-gen-
eration residents, born and raised in the de-
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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