Kahlon demands Israel Land Administration portfolio

Kulanu chairman says faction will not join coalition after March elections unless they are allowed to dismantle authority in charge of public lands.

By Moran Azulay, YNET

Kulanu Chairman Moshe Kahlon set terms on Monday for entering the governing coalition after the elections in March – “if we are not given the responsibility over the Israel Land Administration, we will not participate in the government.”

At a Ben Gurion University conference in Be’er Sheva on Monday evening, Kahlon said, “Reform against the weak is easy; reform against the strong is the difficult problem. Reforms are not manifested by writing updates on Facebook or interviewing well on television. Reforms are manifested in acts, not in speeches.”

Kahlon insisted: “In the end, we have to fight the monopolists. The monopolists are strong – they have a lot of money – and it is not easy, at all.”

The former welfare and communications minister added: “We will present a clear plan to break-up the monopolists utilizing efficiency measures and by protecting the workers. Don’t let them fool you – streamlining is not downsizing, but the opening of new manufacturing lines. Such a process is good for the factory, for the workers, and for the 8 million citizens of the State of Israel.”

The Kulunau chairman said his faction had an organized plan to dismantle the Israel Land Administration. “I say it here – I am going to dismantle the Israel Land Administration. If we do not receive the Israel Land Administation portfolio, we will not enter the government,” he declared.

Earlier on Monday, at a marketing association convention in Tel Aviv, the former Likud minister said that “the government is at fault for the high costs of housing and the rise in the cost of living. The prime minister and the finance minister argued from the first day of the new government and the public interest was at the bottom of their priority list.”

January 12, 2015 | 3 Comments »

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  1. @ ArnoldHarris:
    The issue of the Land Administration is highly complex. Yes, the lands should be safeguarded for the Jewish people.

    The trouble is who decides who gets the land has always been the issue. Example the Kibbutzim have always had land way beyond their percentage of the population.

    Certainly this helped establish the farms in the pioneering days. Cost of Land is certainly a big reason for for the high housing costs. Certainly in the center of the country.

    Basically the Israeli Land Administration controls 93% of the land in the country and leases it out for 49 years at a time I believe.

  2. As an observer and commenter on Israeli affairs, I had earlier developed some interest in Kahlon as a fresh face with new ideas for the Israeli leadership.

    But his newest proposal, publicized as a demand which, if denied, would cause him to pick up his marbles and quit the game, should impel Israelis to pause and consider carefully before allowing him to become the country’s new kingmaker on his own terms. Why so?

    Because the State of Israel must, above all, make absolutely certain the lands of the Jewish state shall reside forever under Jewish control. I do not care about democracy or Israeli capitalism, but I care absolutely about the Jewish nation. Before any changes to the way land ownership is revised in a country as small as Israel and more subject to foreign-funded conspiracies to rob the Jewish nation from its permanent control of the lands that make up Eretz-Yisrael, any such changes should be carefully — CAREFULLY — researched to determine ultimate impacts of such changes.

    It was one thing for Kahlon to have been involved in ending the former monopoly in Israel’s cell phone industry. But land use, which is a matter of supreme importance to all trained urban and regional planners, must never be subject to the sudden whims of a politician seeking possible Knesset votes by running a popularity contest. And the more I think about it from historical perspectives, the more I think this particular politician throws his weight around like Napoleon Bonaparte in his ultimately disastrous rise to power.

    I think Netanyahu, Bennett, Liberman and the Jewish religious parties could assemble a good coalition on their own, and let Adon Kahlon fight it out with Yesh Atid for centrist votes.

    Let me know what any or all of you think of this.

    Arnold Harris
    Mount Horeb WI