Summary of editorials from the Hebrew press
BreuerPress
Four papers discuss Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s plans for spending cuts and tax increases to be included in the 2013 state budget:
The Jerusalem Post notes the discrepancy between the tax burden placed on the average Israeli and that ofon the large corporations, and states that “the discriminatory and distorted aspects of our tax system need to be replaced with
a clearer, simpler and fairer tax code.” The editor calls for these changes to be made “immediately, as part of the 2013-2014 fiscal budget and accompanying
legislation,” and adds: “Perhaps when Israelis see that big business is also being forced to share the burden to ensure that the State of Israel remains strong, the bite of tax hikes and budget cuts will be a little easier to bear.”
Haaretz asserts: “The package of budget cuts and tax increases, with all its shortcomings, was an indisputable necessity.”
discussion. He will allow Lapid to be the bad cop and afterwards will rescind
some of the decrees and portray himself as the arbitrator, the responsible
adult, the good cop. He will avoid dealing with the questions of how the deficit
was created, why the previous government stuck its head in the sand even as
there was a dramatic fall in state revenues and why, for all intents and
purposes, he engaged in election economics. He will avoid dealing with the
question of why he insisted on offering Lapid the Finance Ministry; does burying
a political rival justify damaging the state?”
Yisrael Hayom says that the revived Arab League peace proposal „calls on Israel to take a tangible and deadly risk/gamble in exchange for an agreement that is open to being violated,” and accuses its Israeli proponents of, inter alia, „belittling the significance of the patterns of inter-Arab behavior that have come to the fore in the past three years: Violent intolerance for those who are different and ‘heretics’; violent tribal, ethnic, religious, conceptual and geographic fragmentation; unstable policies and coalitions; and agreements that are scratched on ice, not etched in stone.”