PM: North-south highway to be traffic light free
Netanyahu boasts of NIS 30bn multi-year plan to build highway network from Kiryat Shmona to Eilat, says his government committed to developing the periphery, claims wealth gaps are narrowing.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that the government has invested about NIS 30 billion in a multi-year plan to build a major network of highways from Kiryat Shmona to Eilat, adding that "there will not be a single traffic light" on the new routes.
"We are creating tremendous and momentum and progress in the north, south, the center," Netanyahu said at a New Year's ceremony.
"The citizens of Israel know that every success and achievement is always relative, so there is a way to check it. Because Israelis travel all over the world, one can compare. We no longer have to look far to see progress and development, we can see it here," the prime minister boasted.
The prime minister also praised the development of cities in Israel's periphery.
"The term that I have been protesting against all these years is 'the development towns.' I have said that the time has come for these cities to finally be developed ... We need to salute the residents of the Negev and the Galilee, who often find themselves in the middle of the wilderness suffering from extreme weather conditions and facing a very difficult security situation …The barren land has yielded fruit," Netanyahu continued.
"Do you remember the development town of Kiryat Gat? Do you know what's happening there? Or in Dimona? I'm a big fan of Ben-Gurion's vision, but with a small change. The private sector is working," Netanyahu asserted.
"Developing the periphery is not an empty slogan, not for us … I am committed to doing to the Galilee what we did to the south. Our goal is to create new opportunities, to narrow the gaps," the prime minister added.
According to Netanyahu, the gaps between the rich and poor are narrowing, a point he said could be proved by the "Gini Index."
"The 'Gini' comes out of the bottle every year and demonstrates that the gap is narrowing. Why? Because people go to work, and when people enter the labor market, the index goes down," Netanyahu explained, while mentioning the government's five-year NIS 15 billion plan for investment in non-Jewish communities.
Netanyahu noted that security challenges continued to take their toll on allocation of resources.
"As we progress, we must recognize that our enemies are advancing, too. We must act decisively against the attempts of Iran and its allies' attempts to harm us," the prime minister concluded.
On Monday, speaking at a conference in Ramat Gan, the prime minister said that he was aiming to achieve 40 mandates for his Likud party in the 2019 national elections, while indicating that they may be held ahead of schedule.
Netanyahu also visited the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona on Wednesday, where he warned Iran that Israel has the means to destroy its enemies, in what appeared to be a veiled reference to the country's assumed nuclear arsenal.
Iran's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohammad Javad Zarif, slammed the prime minister's comments on his Twitter account: "Iran, a country without nuclear weapons, is threatened with atomic annihilation by a warmonger standing next to an actual nuclear weapons factory. Beyond shameless is the gall."
