PM’s rivals bash him for housing prices

Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid and Zionist Union chairman Isaac Herzog denounce Netanyahu for the housing crisis in Israel, as the State Comptroller was slated to release an extensive housing report later this week, which will likely critique Netanyahu for the spike in apartment prices during his past two terms. Meanwhile, Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon blames Lapid, who served as finance minister, for the crisis.

Herzog says the housing crisis “is not a decree of fate, but rather the result of the ongoing unsuccessful policy of Netanyahu’s failed government.”

The report will only confirm “what Israeli citizens already know and suffer from — that the housing prices climbed by 90 percent in the past seven years,” Herzog adds.

Lapid welcomes the report, and says: “The report must be published, and Netanyahu knows very well why he wants to bar it from publication.”

“The public must know what we had to deal with in the past year and eight months, and who is responsible for the crazy increased prices. For a year and eight months we fought the housing crisis, against a prime minister who always tried to trip us up,” Lapid says.

Kahlon lashes out Lapid, and says “Lapid is the main culprit [responsible for] the rise in housing prices in the past two years — him and no other.”

“Lapid read a draft of the report was alarmed,” Kahlon writes on Facebook. “Right now, he’s trying to cast the blame for his resounding failure to resolve the housing crisis on Netanyahu alone. This reflects a serious lack of self-awareness and misunderstanding of the economic reality.”