Civil Fights: Leave the unsolvable, target the possible

Two weeks ago, a column by Haaretz diplomatic correspondent Aluf Benn offered Ehud Olmert’s replacement the following advice: While negotiations with the Palestinians and Syrians pose difficulties, “an attempt to freeze everything, conduct sterile diplomatic negotiations and focus on domestic issues such as ‘governmental reform’ or ‘the war on corruption’ until the external circumstances change will turn the prime minister into someone who is just whiling away time on the job.”

Benn’s view is hardly unique; virtually all Israeli leftists concur – which makes you wonder whether they inhabit the same country as the rest of us. After all, as Benn himself admitted, “the public does not believe a [Palestinian] deal is possible.” It is equally skeptical about a Syrian deal, though he omitted that detail. Thus to most Israelis, the real waste of time would be for the government to throw itself into trying to solve conflicts they currently deem unsolvable, at the inevitable expense of domestic problems they deem genuinely critical.

For instance, while Benn dismisses “the war on corruption” as “whiling away time,” most Israelis disagree: In a January 2007 Peace Index poll, a large plurality gave this issue top billing, its weighted grade of 31.5 out of 100 compared to 22.1 for the second-place issue (rehabilitating the IDF) and a mere 10.8 for making peace with the Palestinians. And that was before the worst corruption scandals broke, including most of Olmert’s cases, then-finance minister Abraham Hirchson’s alleged embezzlement and the discovery that well-connected businessmen were dictating senior Tax Authority appointments. Thus the issue’s importance has presumably only grown.

And with cause: In Transparency International’s latest corruption index, published last week, Israel fell to 33rd place, down from 30th last year and an all-time best of 16th in 2001. This leaves us tied with the Dominican Republic, behind Chile and Uruguay and well behind the Western countries that are our main competitors, thereby threatening our long-term economic viability.

OR TAKE another issue Benn dismisses: governmental reform. Nothing endangers democracy more than a public conviction that the system is broken. Yet more and more people feel that way, and are therefore opting out of the democratic process. The evidence is incontrovertible: Voter turnout, after holding steady for decades at about 80 percent, plummeted to 69% in 2003 and 64% in 2006.

This disenchantment stems partly from governmental corruption, but there is another, even more critical factor: We are the last remaining Western democracy where voters elect party slates chosen by party hacks rather than individual parliamentarians. Thus people have no real say over who represents them; no way to “throw the bums out” (since the “bums” are usually popular enough with the hacks to secure safe seats on their party’s slate); and no way to influence their representatives, who answer to the hacks rather than the voters.

Ordinary Israelis understand this: Another poll last year found that 61% want MKs elected directly. But only a very determined government could enact this reform.

THEN THERE are all the issues Benn did not mention – like education, where we are dropping steadily in international rankings. The last international assessment tests ranked Israeli 15-year-olds below 28 of the 30 OECD members in reading, math and science. Incredibly, according to an OECD study published two weeks ago, these poor results occurred even though Israel provides more hours of classroom instruction than 19 of the 22 OECD countries for which data exists.

The gravity of the educational decline (and we have not even mentioned our crisis-ridden universities) cannot be overstated. This country’s only natural resource is its citizens’ brainpower. Without nurturing this brainpower, our economy will wither, people will flee, we will be unable to finance our defense and the nation’s very existence will be imperiled.

Moreover, failing schools perpetuate yawning gaps between rich and poor. The well-off compensate by providing supplemental, private education for their children. But that leaves children of the poor with no chance of escaping the cycle of poverty through the time-honored means of education.

Israelis care about nothing if not their children, and I have yet to meet a parent who is satisfied with his children’s public-school education. Thus this issue is of great concern to most Israelis.

OR CONSIDER our dysfunctional police. Underworld assassinations are killing innocent bystanders on the streets, yet police have not managed to indict a single leading gangster: The only underworld kingpins facing charges (the Abergils and Ze’ev Rosenstein) were indicted by US authorities in American courts. Police admit that only one in 100 break-ins results in prosecution; the protection racket is reportedly rampant nationwide; and horrendous snafus are routine, from the 2006 escape of serial rapist Benny Sela to the policeman who stood and watched while a terrorist slaughtered students at a Jerusalem yeshiva this March.

Indeed, it is a standing joke that people file police complaints only to collect their insurance. And since police performance affects everyone’s personal security, this clearly matters greatly to most Israelis.

Reforming the police is a complex problem, but there are some obvious starting places. The population has tripled since the 1960s, while the police force has grown by only 50%; consequently, it is now badly understaffed by Western standards. According to Insp.-Gen. David Cohen, Israel has only 2.7 policemen per 1,000 citizens, compared to five per 1,000 in Europe. Moreover, low salaries and long hours make retaining good people difficult. Both are problems only the government can solve.

These are only a few of many pressing domestic issues. But all have a common root: For 15 years, successive governments have devoted themselves mainly to either negotiating with the Palestinians or suppressing the terror that these negotiations produced. Domestic problems were consequently neglected, and they festered.

Tzipi Livni could thus give her country no better gift for the new year that began this week than to ignore the advice of Benn and his ilk, make do with managing the conflict and devote her energies to domestic problems. Unfortunately, nothing in her record suggests that she will do so. Thus most likely, domestic problems will keep right on being neglected.