After Syria tension, MKs vote in favor of tax breaks for Golan residents
Golan residents would receive a 13% tax break; Kadima leader Livni calls proposal 'poorly timed.'
By DPA and Zvi Zrahiya Tags: Golan Heights Kadima Israel newsIsrael's parliament, in a preliminary reading, passed a bill Wednesday that would grant tax benefits to Israeli residents of the Golan Heights if it passes.
Some 67 of the 120 lawmakers in the Knesset voted for the bill, while 13 voted against, Israel Radio reported. The rest abstained or were absent.
The private bill, initiated by lawmaker Eli Aflalo of the opposition Kadima party, must pass three more readings before it becomes law.
"The Golan is an inseperable part of Israel and there is no reason that Golan residents should not receive the same tax benefits that other residents of the periphery receive," Aflalo said.
Under the bill, 33 Israeli communities on the Golan - the strategic plateau which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day war - would be added to a list of towns which receive tax benefits amounting to 13 per cent. The move would cost Israel 35 million shekels annually in tax revenue.
Kadima leader Tzipi Livni and a few other members of her party voted against the law, which they charged was "poorly" timed because of a recent verbal clash with Syria, and which they warned could further raise tensions with Israel's north-eastern neighbour.
In a recent exchange of threats, Damascus had hinted that if attacked by Israel, it would lash out at Israeli cities. Foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman of the coalition Israel Beiteinu party then replied that if Syrian President Bashar Assad dared to attack Israel, he should know that "neither he nor the Assad family will remain in power."
Livni's Kadima rival, Shaul Mofaz, and his supporters voted for the bill in an explicit display of the split within the opposition party. The hawkish Mofaz, a former army chief of staff and defence minister, is vying for the party leadership.
Livni's spokesman had earlier issued a statement, accusing the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of the Likud party, of "playing with fire" for turning down a request to postpone voting by several weeks until tensions with Syria had calmed.
One Likud lawmaker, Ofir Akonis, in turn accused Livni of turning her centrist Kadima party into a left-wing one and of following an "extremist line" by voting against the bill.
Legislator Haim Oron, of the left-liberal Meretz party, also slammed the bill, which he said failed to include also the Druze villages on the Golan.
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If Syria fired 8000 rockets across the cease-fire line into the Golan, Damascus would be a smoking hole in the ground the next day, and Assad knows it. That's why the Golan has been far quieter the 42 years israel controlled it than in the 19 years Syria had it - daily artillery fire into Israeli farming valleys below. That Israel doesn't use this same firm deterrence against Gaza rockets says Sderot and the other Gaza area towns should be EXEMPT from Israeli taxes until they are far better protected. Egypt-ruled Gaza of the 50's and 60's would have been flattened by IDF return fire and air strikes if they had tried this level of fire at Sderot - even one shell a day.
If it is ok for Israel to continue to ignore the UN that states that the Golan is Syrian, then it must be ok to ignore the UN's creation of Israel.
The people of Israel support this justified decision by their representatives. The rest of the world is surprised it wasn't done before.
Livni & most leftist mks are simply not smart. even though I disagree with oron on many issues I always respected him because I thought he was smart. now i see that he is not. the reason that the druse of the golan do not get this tax break is that they reject the stat of israel!!! why should they get this break? they themselves do not want it!!!!
.. to start pushing our supermarkets not to stock products from Israel?s disputed areas anymore. So far I have thought it was a bridge to far, since there seemed to be a status quo and with ups and downs a solution was worked on. It's ever clearer a religious value system imported from a different era keeps turning current neighbour states and human beings happening to be on land, ambiguously described a long time ago, into occupiers and the enemy. Undeniably a vision formerly held by extremists has become main stream and is no longer seeking for compatibility with today?s and more globally shared values. The conclusion should be that western supermarkets can just as well put their ethical annual reports were the sun never shines if they keep co-financing the next land grap (motivated on these shady ideological grounds).
Golan needs to become a bulwark against Syria. If tax breaks encourage faster and more intensive development there, so it clear to everybody that this is Israeli and not Arab land and can never be "returned", then so much the better.