Snow and politics
Once again time has raced past and I find myself staring
February in the face, having not blogged for over two months. So, I hear you say, what have you been doing
with your time?
One thing I have been doing is huddling up in my bedroom near my heater because winter in Jerusalem is pretty grim. This is largely due to the fact that the buildings are not built for the three or so months of chill winds, rain and very occasional snow that we get, being designed more with the hot summer months in mind. To that end, everything is made of stone and most places don’t have carpets (my bedroom certainly doesn’t). The cold and damp gets in the stone, making the interior of your house equally cold and damp; I swear sometimes it’s warmer out in the street than in our living-room. Of course, there’s no such thing as central heating (what a ridiculous idea!) so we all have electric heaters. Mine entertainingly spent the first two weeks of January blowing the fuses every time I plugged it in and I’m sure it’s sucking electricity as keenly as a vampire sucks blood. I’m already terrified of the bill we’re going to have. I also have an electric blanket, purchased when I lived in the basement of the big barn that was no. 8 Alexandra Road (in a room with no carpet, no double-glazing and one tiny radiator). Anyway, even though I only use it for two months of the year I do not regret lugging it all the way here; it’s making my night-times much more bearable.
This winter has been mercifully warmer and drier than last year’s, but it’s still a trial. When it rains here, it’s full-on, clothes-soaking, street-flooding, shoe-drenching gobbets of water and we’ve had several weeks of solid rain; the streets turn into rivers and the ultra-Orthodox can be seen walking round town with plastic bags over their wide-brimmed hats. I walked to work one morning in December, no more than 10 minutes away from home, and arrived literally soaked to the skin. Hilariously, most Israelis love the rain: they say it’s relief from the interminable sunshine (how can you ever get bored of sunshine?), plus they do make the valid point that the land desperately needs it. However, I left England in pursuit of warmer, sunnier climes and so the three or so months that it rains here really irritate me. One student said to me when the rains began, “Ooh, does it remind you of home?” Yes, I said; that’s why I left. Also, Jerusalem can be a rather windy city; this makes buying an umbrella a completely redundant exercise as they break within seconds. The city then becomes some sort of macabre umbrella graveyard, with the discarded metal spokes littering the streets.
This winter has also been notable for the snow that fell
in Jerusalem early in January. The city
doesn’t really get snow, ever, and when it does it sticks around for about 30
minutes before melting into slush.
Hilariously, though not unsurprisingly for people who are rarely exposed
to it, Israelis really can’t handle the snow.
They get very, very excited and run around (in, it should be noted,
completely inappropriate footwear), that’s if they’re not crashing their
cars. Israelis are not noted for the
quality of their driving at the best of times; add slush and snow to the mix
and it’s a recipe for disaster. This
year they actually closed the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway (which is, for
the last 30 minutes into Jerusalem, just one massive hill) to try to prevent
accidents. Anyway, it was really lovely
to see the city in the snow, once I dragged myself away from my electric
blanket. Snow brings that funny sort of
hush to everything and transforms the landscape: for once everything looked
clean; the shuk was practically deserted; the Old City was bizarrely quiet and
there were people building snowmen and messing around in the snow everywhere
you looked, even on my narrow little Nachlaot alleyway.
The grey of January was at least relieved by the massive entertainment value provided by the recent elections. Firstly, by law Israelis are given a day off on election-day, and if they choose to go into work they get double-pay. This certainly didn’t happen back home; I remember rushing home from work to make it to the Redland Green polling station in 2010 and am pretty sure I didn’t get overtime for my efforts in work that day. We had a total balagan at school because we were in the middle of exams week and didn’t have enough teachers to invigilate the sessions, so had to give the middle school a day at home. Secondly it’s worth bringing up because two and a half weeks after the elections there still isn’t a government. It turns out that Israeli governments always end up as coalitions because no one party ever gets enough seats in the Knesset for a majority. This is partly the result of having about a million political parties, including my favourite, Ale Yarok, which literally means ‘green leaf’ and whose primary party platform is the legalisation of marijuana; they did not gain any seats in the Knesset this year (I know, I can't believe that result either). Anyhow, when all the votes are counted no one party ever has the 61 necessary for a majority - historically, the most any one party ever got was 56 and that was in 1969 - so the weeks after the election are spent furiously making deals to try to get some sort of coalition together.
This year the Likud party, led by Netanyahu (the current Prime Minster) is the biggest party in the Knesset but still, it only got 31 seats and so Bibi is now in the middle of what appears to be (according to local news) the most unstable and unpredictable coalition negotiation deals in history. The next biggest party is a new one called Yesh Atid (‘there is a future’) and it’s led by an ex-TV presenter and silver fox called Yair Lapid. I’m pretty sure there’s been as much press about how hot Lapid is as there has been about his proposed policies. Anyway, Lapid and Bibi don’t seem to have managed to come to any agreement, maybe because Bibi is jealous of Lapid’s dashing good looks and fuller hairline, but more likely because Yesh Atid want new laws forcing Orthodox Jews to submit to the IDF draft, which they have previously been exempted from, and the ultra-Orthodox parties who may also be in the government obviously aren’t having any of it, so Bibi's having trouble reaching some sort of middle ground.
Can you guess which one is Bibi Netanyahu and which one is Yair Lapid?
Another newish party, HaBayit HaYehudi (‘the Jewish home’) got 12 seats, but their leader Naftali Bennett managed to totally rub Bibi up the wrong way by stealing some of his supporters: HaBayit HaYehudi is ultra-nationalist (Bennett wants to annex at least 60% of the West Bank and is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state) and so they managed to attract some of the right-wing voters who would normally vote Likud. Plus, several years ago Bennett made a bad joke about Bibi’s wife that went down like a lead balloon and apparently meetings between them are ‘business-like’, which is presumably a polite euphemism for tenser than a cat stalking a bird.
The really interesting thing about the elections, on a more serious note, is the way in which many of the parties avoided discussion of the peace process (or lack thereof); none of them wanted to touch it with a barge-pole and a lot of them went out of their way in the run-up to the elections to emphasise the fact that they wanted to focus on other issues - social problems, the ultra-Orthodox/draft issue, the rise in food prices. Bibi of course has abandoned the peace process completely, to the extent where straight after the UN vote in November which upgraded Palestine to 'non-member observer state' he authorised the building of 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank, a move which hardly spells conciliation and which received a lot of international media attention (try http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20585706). After the elections, Lapid called for a return to peace talks and moves towards Palestinian 'semi-statehood', but is fairly hard-line over the central issues of dividing Jerusalem, with East Jerusalem as the proposed Palestinian capital (no thanks) and the right of return for refugees (again, no thanks). Before them, however, he didn't really reference the peace process at all, preferring to stay focussed on 'domestic issues'. The interesting thing is that whilst all the political parties were convinced that abandoning all mention of the Occupation would be a good strategy, I think they misjudged the national mood: Israelis do want to deal with social issues but everyone knows that if you scratch the surface preoccupation with the Occupation (as it were) is everywhere. Life rumbles along as usual and then every now and again something comes along (like Operation Pillar of Defense last November) which disturbs the status quo and makes many Israelis realise that, in the long run, something will have to be done. It's always the elephant in the room, no matter where you are or what the context is.
So, two weeks down the line and coalition talks aren’t going anywhere. The latest, according to yesterday’s Haaretz (the paper I read out here) is that negotiations are likely to go on for weeks yet, though at some point someone somewhere, surely, will tell the main parties to put their toys back in the pram and stop being unreasonable. Not least because if they can’t agree on a government then they’ll have to call another round of elections and I have a feeling the electorate may have lost any enthusiasm it once had for the political circus. I’m starting to wonder who is actually doing the governing whilst all this horseplay is going on; someone, somewhere must be in a government office pursuing whatever kind of policy they feel like since the top brass are too busy to pay any attention to them. But, if nothing else, the elections give everyone something to talk about when the weather is bad, so at least the winter will pass by faster and the long, hot days of summer will be here before we know it. I hope so; I really am worried about my electricity bill.
One thing I have been doing is huddling up in my bedroom near my heater because winter in Jerusalem is pretty grim. This is largely due to the fact that the buildings are not built for the three or so months of chill winds, rain and very occasional snow that we get, being designed more with the hot summer months in mind. To that end, everything is made of stone and most places don’t have carpets (my bedroom certainly doesn’t). The cold and damp gets in the stone, making the interior of your house equally cold and damp; I swear sometimes it’s warmer out in the street than in our living-room. Of course, there’s no such thing as central heating (what a ridiculous idea!) so we all have electric heaters. Mine entertainingly spent the first two weeks of January blowing the fuses every time I plugged it in and I’m sure it’s sucking electricity as keenly as a vampire sucks blood. I’m already terrified of the bill we’re going to have. I also have an electric blanket, purchased when I lived in the basement of the big barn that was no. 8 Alexandra Road (in a room with no carpet, no double-glazing and one tiny radiator). Anyway, even though I only use it for two months of the year I do not regret lugging it all the way here; it’s making my night-times much more bearable.
This winter has been mercifully warmer and drier than last year’s, but it’s still a trial. When it rains here, it’s full-on, clothes-soaking, street-flooding, shoe-drenching gobbets of water and we’ve had several weeks of solid rain; the streets turn into rivers and the ultra-Orthodox can be seen walking round town with plastic bags over their wide-brimmed hats. I walked to work one morning in December, no more than 10 minutes away from home, and arrived literally soaked to the skin. Hilariously, most Israelis love the rain: they say it’s relief from the interminable sunshine (how can you ever get bored of sunshine?), plus they do make the valid point that the land desperately needs it. However, I left England in pursuit of warmer, sunnier climes and so the three or so months that it rains here really irritate me. One student said to me when the rains began, “Ooh, does it remind you of home?” Yes, I said; that’s why I left. Also, Jerusalem can be a rather windy city; this makes buying an umbrella a completely redundant exercise as they break within seconds. The city then becomes some sort of macabre umbrella graveyard, with the discarded metal spokes littering the streets.
.jpg) |
| Protective head-gear for inclement weather. |
The grey of January was at least relieved by the massive entertainment value provided by the recent elections. Firstly, by law Israelis are given a day off on election-day, and if they choose to go into work they get double-pay. This certainly didn’t happen back home; I remember rushing home from work to make it to the Redland Green polling station in 2010 and am pretty sure I didn’t get overtime for my efforts in work that day. We had a total balagan at school because we were in the middle of exams week and didn’t have enough teachers to invigilate the sessions, so had to give the middle school a day at home. Secondly it’s worth bringing up because two and a half weeks after the elections there still isn’t a government. It turns out that Israeli governments always end up as coalitions because no one party ever gets enough seats in the Knesset for a majority. This is partly the result of having about a million political parties, including my favourite, Ale Yarok, which literally means ‘green leaf’ and whose primary party platform is the legalisation of marijuana; they did not gain any seats in the Knesset this year (I know, I can't believe that result either). Anyhow, when all the votes are counted no one party ever has the 61 necessary for a majority - historically, the most any one party ever got was 56 and that was in 1969 - so the weeks after the election are spent furiously making deals to try to get some sort of coalition together.
This year the Likud party, led by Netanyahu (the current Prime Minster) is the biggest party in the Knesset but still, it only got 31 seats and so Bibi is now in the middle of what appears to be (according to local news) the most unstable and unpredictable coalition negotiation deals in history. The next biggest party is a new one called Yesh Atid (‘there is a future’) and it’s led by an ex-TV presenter and silver fox called Yair Lapid. I’m pretty sure there’s been as much press about how hot Lapid is as there has been about his proposed policies. Anyway, Lapid and Bibi don’t seem to have managed to come to any agreement, maybe because Bibi is jealous of Lapid’s dashing good looks and fuller hairline, but more likely because Yesh Atid want new laws forcing Orthodox Jews to submit to the IDF draft, which they have previously been exempted from, and the ultra-Orthodox parties who may also be in the government obviously aren’t having any of it, so Bibi's having trouble reaching some sort of middle ground.
Another newish party, HaBayit HaYehudi (‘the Jewish home’) got 12 seats, but their leader Naftali Bennett managed to totally rub Bibi up the wrong way by stealing some of his supporters: HaBayit HaYehudi is ultra-nationalist (Bennett wants to annex at least 60% of the West Bank and is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state) and so they managed to attract some of the right-wing voters who would normally vote Likud. Plus, several years ago Bennett made a bad joke about Bibi’s wife that went down like a lead balloon and apparently meetings between them are ‘business-like’, which is presumably a polite euphemism for tenser than a cat stalking a bird.
The really interesting thing about the elections, on a more serious note, is the way in which many of the parties avoided discussion of the peace process (or lack thereof); none of them wanted to touch it with a barge-pole and a lot of them went out of their way in the run-up to the elections to emphasise the fact that they wanted to focus on other issues - social problems, the ultra-Orthodox/draft issue, the rise in food prices. Bibi of course has abandoned the peace process completely, to the extent where straight after the UN vote in November which upgraded Palestine to 'non-member observer state' he authorised the building of 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank, a move which hardly spells conciliation and which received a lot of international media attention (try http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20585706). After the elections, Lapid called for a return to peace talks and moves towards Palestinian 'semi-statehood', but is fairly hard-line over the central issues of dividing Jerusalem, with East Jerusalem as the proposed Palestinian capital (no thanks) and the right of return for refugees (again, no thanks). Before them, however, he didn't really reference the peace process at all, preferring to stay focussed on 'domestic issues'. The interesting thing is that whilst all the political parties were convinced that abandoning all mention of the Occupation would be a good strategy, I think they misjudged the national mood: Israelis do want to deal with social issues but everyone knows that if you scratch the surface preoccupation with the Occupation (as it were) is everywhere. Life rumbles along as usual and then every now and again something comes along (like Operation Pillar of Defense last November) which disturbs the status quo and makes many Israelis realise that, in the long run, something will have to be done. It's always the elephant in the room, no matter where you are or what the context is.
So, two weeks down the line and coalition talks aren’t going anywhere. The latest, according to yesterday’s Haaretz (the paper I read out here) is that negotiations are likely to go on for weeks yet, though at some point someone somewhere, surely, will tell the main parties to put their toys back in the pram and stop being unreasonable. Not least because if they can’t agree on a government then they’ll have to call another round of elections and I have a feeling the electorate may have lost any enthusiasm it once had for the political circus. I’m starting to wonder who is actually doing the governing whilst all this horseplay is going on; someone, somewhere must be in a government office pursuing whatever kind of policy they feel like since the top brass are too busy to pay any attention to them. But, if nothing else, the elections give everyone something to talk about when the weather is bad, so at least the winter will pass by faster and the long, hot days of summer will be here before we know it. I hope so; I really am worried about my electricity bill.
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