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A battle is won but the war rages on
By Zvi Zrahiya, Guy Liberman and Raz Smolsky, Haaretz, July 24, 2009
Last Wednesday the Knesset voted on the reforms proposed for the Israel Lands Administration. If you
happened to drop by parliament that day, you couldn't have failed to notice that the place was thronged by
kids.
Not children, actually, but young adults clustered at the entrance to the building in Jerusalem, brandishing
placards and howling against the reform.

This young group was the spearhead of a large campaign opposing the ILA reforms. The opposition included
260 representatives of social organizations, who stopped Knesset members en route to the plenum, urging
them to cast a vote against the bill. The activists were receiving orders from the "war room" of the anti-ILA
reform campaign which was based, of all places, in the bureau of Laborite member of Knesset Shelly
Yachimovich.

This is clearly one of the biggest social welfare-related struggles in the country in recent years, and it
crossed political and other lines, uniting thousands of activists from various organizations, youth
movements, environmental movements, as well as MKs from the coalition and the opposition alike. These
included: Labor's Yachimovich, Habayit Hayehudi's Daniel Hershkowitz, Uri Orbach and Zevulun Orlev;
Meretz's Nitzan Horowitz; and Hadash's Dov Khenin.

Even though those involved in the campaign are not professional lobbyists per se - although they gave the
impression of being a real protest movement - the impact they wielded was significant.

Campaign activists sent hundreds of personal emails to MKs, spoke to them on their cellular telephones,
visited their offices, flooded their mailboxes with letters and even sent them bags of sand. Plus protest
groups stationed themselves outside the homes of the Labor cabinet ministers - all to remind them before
they entered their government Audis and Volvos that Israel's land must not be plundered.

The result of this campaign was clear on Wednesday in the plenum: Five Labor ministers and two deputy
ministers were absent, and the remaining Labor members included the four "rebels" (Eitan Cabel, Amir
Peretz, Yuli Tamir and Ophir Pines-Paz), as well as Yachimovich and faction chairman Daniel Ben Simon,
who voted against. And all this happened despite the coalition agreement that stipulated that these MKs
would support the land reform.
Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon, who had voiced his objections to Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, was also absent from the plenum. Other MKs who cast a nay vote included Likud MKs Tzipi
Hatovely and Danny Danon, and Deputy Minister Ayoob Kara. The absence of majority support for most of
the bill's clauses forced Netanyahu to postpone the continuation of the vote, which will apparently take
place this Wednesday.

It seems that the prime minister misjudged the intensity of the popular struggle against the legislation and
the campaign's influence over the MKs.

One of the campaign's organizers has been Uri Metuki, of the Dror Israel movement (established by alumni
of the Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed youth movement). For years he has been involved in encouraging
discharged soldiers to settle in peripheral areas, and has advanced many educational activities in the youth
movement. A few months ago, when he learned that the ILA reforms included the sale of land, he felt that
this ran counter to Zionism and all the values he teaches.

"Ever since Netanyahu's general ideas were publicized," says Metuki, "we have shifted into emergency
mode. We view the whole subject of selling land as very problematic. On May 4, we held our first