Calling the protests “justified,” Benjamin Netanyahu announced his plan, which includes creating more apartments for students and allows for giving away some government land at a discount or free of charge in order to lower prices for home buyers.
“The housing problem in Israel is one that can be solved,” Netanyahu said at a press conference.
The protesters, thousands of young Israelis who have erected tent encampments in several cities, promptly rejected the proposals as insufficient.
Netanyahu said the high price of housing stemmed from a slow pace of construction that was due largely to stifling bureaucracy, and added that his new reforms would cut red tape and lead to the creation of 50,000 housing units in the coming years.
In several weeks, the tent protests have snowballed from a minor irritant into a major problem for the prime minister and his coalition government.
Israel has seen other demonstrations recently over the country’s high cost of living, and doctors in public hospitals are also currently on strike over their working conditions. The protests, which have dominated media coverage here for weeks, are contributing to an atmosphere of instability and public discontent.
A poll Tuesday indicated wide support for the protesters and a sharp drop in Netanyahu’s approval ratings.
In the poll published in the daily Haaretz, 87 percent of respondents expressed support for the protests. Thirty-two percent expressed their approval for Netanyahu, as opposed to 51 percent two months ago, the paper reported.
The poll, conducted by the Dialog company, surveyed 493 people and had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
Protesters in the tent encampments in different Israeli cities watched Netanyahu speak on TV and quickly rejected his proposals.
“What Netanyahu is offering is nothing less than deception,” Daphni Leef, one of the leaders of the protest in Tel Aviv, told reporters.
“Netanyahu is saying lands will be given for free and who will get them? The needy people in Israel? No way. Those who will get them are the contractors and his other wealthy friends,” she said.
Sivan Vardi, an organizer of a tent protest in Jerusalem, told Knesset TV that the protest would continue. “We are keeping the tents, and we will not dismantle a single tent until we get a more complete solution,” she said.
Israel’s housing crunch has come about largely because the housing supply in the nation of 7.6 million has not kept pace with demand. Between December 2007 and August 2010, housing prices jumped an inflation-adjusted 35 percent and rental rates have also risen steadily.
