Israel's Troubles in the North Bore Netanyahu and His Callous Coalition
For Israel's north, the Swords of Iron war ended 608 days ago. In the time that has passed since then, a single, sealed and armored window at a house in Caesarea, for which the state paid nearly 2 million shekels, stands in outrageous defiance against those living near the front line and their ruined homes. For the owner of that house, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who has not deigned to return there since an October 2024 drone attack on it – this situation is nothing but a bore.
But the article by Adi Hashmonai shows that he is not the only one who is bored. While the head of the Israel Tax Authority, which is responsible for property taxes, rushed to the scene of the Hezbollah drone strike on the prime minister's private residence just one day after the incident, his officials have been in no hurry to respond to those whose businesses were destroyed during that war. They bore him, and the result is that residents have not been able to rebuild their businesses and are drowning in debt.
One of them is Golan Alon, the owner of a small paper factory in Kiryat Shmona who employed 13 people before the war. In March 2024, his factory was hit by a Falaq-2 missile. A dedicated employee, Zahar Bashara, was killed on the spot, and the factory went up in flames.
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Since then, 853 days have passed, and yet, the authorities have compensated Alon for less than 20 percent of the damage his business sustained, according to an assessor's estimate. Despondent over the delay in being fully compensated, Alon went against what he is accustomed to and took out loans from the government, the same government that was supposed to compensate him for the damage. Of the 13 people he once employed, only three remain today. "In the end, we're just ordinary people. Who has the strength for wars?" Golan said in despair.
The Tax Authority responded that it "will look into what is behind the delay." At the same time, the Israel Farmers Federation has cautioned that dozens of agricultural business owners alone have yet to be fully compensated for damages from a war that ended in November 2024.
Meanwhile, the winds of war have continued to blow with varying intensity for the past three years. None of the north's residents close to the front line know what tomorrow will bring from a security perspective and what impact it will have on them. The same uncertainty pervades among tourists and trekkers, who represent the main source of income for many in the north, driving them to avoid the area.
Their eyes are fixed on the owner of the unoccupied house in Caesarea, who holds in his hands the fate and future of this battered region of the country, whose struggle to recover has been encumbered by bureaucratic red tape.
For the residents of the north, replacing the government with one that is not bored by the daily hardships of its citizens is an existential necessity.
The above article is Haaretz's lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.