“There’s a lack of leadership in Israel, or the leadership is indecisive about their ideas or ideology.When it comes to forming the coalition, it is actually about maintaining a job and not about actually doing the job,” says Israeli social justice activist Daphni Leef about the current talks to form a coalition government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In an exclusive interview with EJP, the 27- year-old girl who led the protests demonstrations in 2011 against the cost of housing in Israel spoke of her doubts whether the makeup of the next government will have any real impact on domestic or social policies.
Leef was this week in the European Parliament in Brussels as a host of the European Friends of Israel (EFI) group.
“I’m very concerned right now by the fact that for more than six months we’ve been preoccupied by the elections, then there was the election, so that’s a lot of tax money that went on elections, it kind of looks like even if there will be a coalition how will they pass a budget, how will they be able to pass a budget when they have Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) and Yair Lapid (leader of the Yesh Atid center party) in the same coalition,” she wonders.

“I don’t hear Lapid talking about breaking the monopoly and I don’t hear people talking about regulation of rents, there are a lot of issues that are not heard.”
Conceding that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apparent preoccupation with foreign policy issues such as the Middle East peace process, at the expense of grassroots budgetary concerns, and with US President Barack Obama’s impending arrival in Israel next month, has validity, she admits that “the peace process is important and I think that talking about it is incredibly important”.
However, she continues, “I think that the curious thing about the Prime Minister is that he actually won the election without any published plans and we went to election for a budget that he couldn’t pass and that nobody saw”.
Leef further doubts whether Netanyahu’s much-touted political coup of convincing centrist and fierce critic Tzipi Livni will have the desired impact of adding balance to the coalition.
“In what way is Livni not incredibly right-wing,” she asks. “Livni went into the election creating a movement called ‘Hatnuah’ (the Movement), that is completely built on her and her persona.”
The only parties with any real heritage are nationalist parties such as Naftali Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi, she contends, as Bennett himself mulls over the feasibility of joining a government coalition at such severe odds with his own ideology on key issues such as compulsory conscription for the Ultra-Orthodox and negotiations with the Palestinians.
“I think that the political system in Israel right now is not very respectful of the citizens themselves,” she continues, “because, when it comes to doing grassroots work, when it comes to actually going and speaking to the voters, when it comes to not leaving it to press, because all the campaigns were very press-oriented, it was very media-led,” she trails off, clearly frustrated.
“I think that those 10 mandates that Likud-Beiteinu lost during these elections and the some fifties new members of the Knesset is most of all a sign of disbelief in the system, that you see that corruption is being looked away from. It’s as if the entire political system is being treated like a game, of monopoly and in the same time, people feel under attack for just living their lives, even in the international arena. But there’s a detachment between a lot of the people in the country and the political arena,” she resumes.
Invoking the shrouded backroom talks that characterise complex post-election coalition talks, she insists Israel is no different to any other country.
“It doesn’t matter how the system will look, it’s the people and their values that they represent,” she adds.
“Having a leadership that is based on what kind of legacy am I leaving behind and it’s about morals, and it’s not about power and it’s not about being famous and it’s not about fortune, those are things that involve education and they involve what kind of community you grew up with.”
“When Eli Yishai was Interior Minister, he was not doing his job in my opinion as being the minister of the entire country. He was treating his position as a position to be used for a very small demographic, which means he did so out of looking out for power, out of the very narrow-minded closed-off point of view,” she says in reference to the ultra-Orthodox Shas party leader who was reportedly being on the verge of signing up to Netanyahu’s next government in return for three ministerial positions.
“I think that we don’t have a list of values that we sustain right now as people and as a country, that exists before and after a coalition that changes regularly, So it makes no sense that a coalition will go on and change the entire face of the country,” she insists.
Reflecting on the lack of real distinction between the apparently opposite ends of the Israeli political spectrum, she adds: “What’s very interesting is that the Left and the Right in Israel were both Socialists ni the beginning, so when you talk about the Right and the Left in Europe and the US it’s more distinct financially, but in Israel it’s as if they don’t really exist even, because you have strong monopolies, the Socialists don’t really exist and at the same time it’s not really a right-wing economy because our taxes are so high.”
“I’ve been sold the American dream for some reason all my life, but I don’t live in America,” she muses as she insists that parties shouldn’t be responsible for characterising the values and purpose of a country, but the people that live in the country. “It’s a process.”
On her concerns for socio-economic issues, she reflects on how Israel ended up with a 40 billion shekels deficit (4,2% of GDP), without anyone having any idea of how we got there, “because the budget is not completely transparent”.
“If you don’t understand that people are the future of a country, that’s what it is, then I don’t know what we’re doing. I hope that I’m wrong. Unfortunately I don’t think so, I’m very concerned, I’m 27, I don’t have citizenship of anywhere else, I love where I live, I’m very Israeli in that way,” she ends with a rueful smile.

EJP