Time to end the protest
Op-ed: A month into protest, its leaders should take down tents, shift struggle to political arena
The past month has been very emotional. There is almost no Zionist Israeli who was not chocked up once or twice in the face of the protests, which raised a just demand for redrawing the budget.
The spreading of the struggle from the center of the country to peripheral areas is also a reason to be proud. In the face of the sights arriving from Spain and England (not to mention the horrors undertaken in Syria,) our protests indicate that Israel’s economy is apparently warped, yet our democracy is healthy and balanced.
Beyond one moment of excitement or another, a month has already passed since the tents were erected, and it appears that we can stop for a moment and ask what had been achieved thus far. In this test, it appears that the main achievement has to do with the prime minister’s promise to establish a committee, which comprises half the government. Or in other words: A big zilch.
The dismantlement of the tents should not be perceived as a defeat, but rather, the opposite is true: After the power of the protest became clear, such move could mark the stage where the battle comes out of the sandbox and shifts to the big leagues. The struggle’s young leaders must understand that in a state where even the price of cheese is the result of political pressures, the effectiveness of an apolitical, non-parliamentary organization is limited.
Run for office
As far as Bibi and Steinitz are concerned, thus far they have been facing a child armed with a toy gun. This is apparently the reason why Bibi intervened last weekend and sought to prevent the dismantlement of the tents. As long as the struggle remains stuck in place in this stage, it does not threaten Netanyahu and mostly disturbs the neighbors on Rothschild Boulevard.
In order to achieve real results in the world of action – that is, to keep some 10 to 15 billion shekels at the hands of the middle class – protest leaders must reorganize as a list that will run for parliament. The target must be very ambitious: Redrawing Israel’s political map. We should no longer see the traditional split premised on issues of Left and Right, but rather, a division based on socioeconomics. Is it possible? There is only one way to find out.
The math here is simple: Should the hundreds of thousands of protestors vote for a party that represents their just demands, they may translate their power to 10 or more Knesset seats – and that’s power that cannot be ignored. Recoiling from politics is completely understandable, yet in order to change the system one must be a part of it, and this is not done in tents, but rather, in offices.
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