Frustration With Knesset Mounts as Only One MK Shows Up for Committee Meeting

Jerusalem, 28 March, 2024 (TPS) -- Business owners from northern Israel were infuriated as only one member of a Knesset committee showed up for a Wednesday meeting on how Hezbollah rocket fire has impacted local businesses.

“It was a very difficult feeling to see the empty seats and think that we, in the north, are not important enough to those sitting in the Knesset,” said Inbar Bezek, director of the Economic Company for the Development of the Upper Galilee.

The only Knesset member present for the meeting of the Special Committee for Strengthening and Developing the Negev and Galilee was its chairman, Michael Biton, of the National Unity party.

The meeting went ahead despite the absence of the other 11 committee members. Also attending were representatives of government ministries who discussed current procedures to provide relief to the stricken businesses. Bezek said tourism has collapsed and warned that thousands of northern Israelis will be out of work as factories begin to close down if the government does not intervene.

“Alongside the security threat and the crumbling of the communities in the north, slowly, slowly, under the radar, the economy in the north is collapsing,” Bezek, a former MK, told the committee.

Amit Sofer, head of the Marom Hagalil Regional Council, criticized the state for only dealing with the north’s evacuees and called on the government to broaden the businesses that are eligible for indemnities. Sofer noted that only businesses located within 5.5 km of the Lebanese border currently qualify and that businesses twice that distance are going through hardships.

As the news of the committee’s missing members spread, three arrived during the closing minutes of the approximately hour-long meeting. The three MKs were Almog Cohen of Otzma Yehudit, Tatiana Mazarsky of Yesh Atid, and Ofer Cassif of the Hadash-Tal alliance.

Most of the other committee members said afterward that they were attending other Knesset meetings.

Hezbollah leaders have suggested that they will continue to fire rockets to prevent thousands of residents of northern Israel from returning to their homes. Israeli officials have been calling for Hezbollah to be disarmed and removed from Southern Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

On Wednesday, 25-year-old laborer Zaher Bashara was killed when a rocket hit a factory in Kiryat Shmona. Bashara was from the nearby Druze town of Ein Qiniyye.