Rejecting deal, some disabled protesters renew road-jamming protests
Junction north of Tel Aviv blocked as group seen as main force behind traffic-halting actions calls stipend boost ‘shameful’
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
Disabled protesters blocked a road junction north of Tel Aviv Sunday, rejecting a deal signed between other disabled activists and the government early Friday to increase stipends and end traffic-halting demonstrations.
On Saturday night, a group of activists who had led the traffic-blocking protests vowed to continue the demonstrations.
On Sunday morning, protesters renewed their protest by blocking Hasira Junction, a main intersection in Herzliya. Saturday saw only emergency traffic on the roads as most Israelis refrain from using cars over the Yom Kippur holiday.
“We weren’t invited to the negotiating table so from our point of view, nothing is new,” read a statement from the group, which calls itself The Panthers.
Over recent months, the group has been the main force behind protests that have brought traffic to a standstill by blocking junctions, highways and major arterial streets in cities throughout the country.
A deal reached early Friday morning by Treasury officials, the Histadrut Labor Federation and representatives of disabled rights activists for an increase in the stipends was meant to put an end to the protests.
Protests by the disabled began in March after a Knesset committee rejected for the third time a bill aimed at bringing disabled benefits up to the level of the minimum wage.
They continued throughout the summer while the Knesset was in recess and had ramped up in recent weeks, pushing the issue to the top of the national agenda with protests causing major traffic jams daily.
Under the deal, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others called “historic,” benefits for some 244,000 disabled Israelis will rise from NIS 700-1,800 ($198 to $509) per month in four stages, from January 2018 to January 2021, at a total cost of NIS 4.2 billion ($1.19 billion).
People with 60 percent disability will end up with NIS 2,100 ($594) in monthly benefits by 2021, with the most disabled — those needing full-time care — receiving NIS 4,500 ($1,274).
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This falls short of the disabled organizations’ demand for the maximum benefit to equal the minimum wage of NIS 5,300 ($1,500) and for rise to be made all at once, but the government pledged to consider raising the maximum to this figure at the end of the four years.
In a column in Israel Hayom, Panthers spokesman Nair Lavie said his group’s representative was turned away from the talks, which began Thursday afternoon and lasted over 12 hours. Six other groups were represented, he said, calling the additional stipend “miserable and shameful.”
He also decried the fact that the deal did not link the raises in stipend to the minimum wage, as had been demanded by protesters.
Instead. the agreement links benefits to average salary rises.
It also raises the bar on the amount a disabled person can earn without it affecting his or her benefits from NIS 2,800 to NIS 4,300 ($792 to 1,216) per month.
It further budgets for an additional NIS 150 million ($42.5) to increase benefits for disabled children, NIS 300 million ($84.9 million) to allow the elderly to retain both their elderly and disabled benefits and NIS 75 million ($21.2 million) to encourage jobs for the disabled.
The agreement will go to the Knesset to be set into law.
The negotiations involved Histadrut chairman Avi Nissenkorn, Knesset coalition chairman David Bitan, Prof. Avi Simchon, the prime minister’s economics adviser and head of the National Economic Council, and Ilan Gilon, a Meretz MK, who is himself disabled.
The agreement was celebrated by politicians and other activists.
Gilon said the agreement was a significant achievement, even if all the disabled’s demands had not been met. A statement put out by representatives of the disabled activists also called it an important agreement.
On Saturday night, immediately after the Jewish Day of Atonement ended, Netanyahu said, “This is a historic agreement that will bring a dramatic improvement in the situation of the disabled in Israel.”
He added, “The agreement expresses the principles that Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and I delineated from the start.”
“We made social history in Israel. We dramatically improved the economic situation of the disabled population,” Nissenkorn said when the deal was announced.
He praised the organizations representing the disabled for the “determination and responsibility” they showed in their protests for social justice.
