On video: drone footage: the destruction in Hatay province in Turkey after the earthquake (Reuters)
Rubble, screams of destruction, dead on stretchers, orphaned children shivering with cold, a dog licking the palm of its owner trapped under the rubble of a building, the images from the earthquake disaster in Turkey and Syria are heartbreaking.
But after we finish being shocked, we go back to our business - and if in the first days after the disaster we are exposed to headlines with horror scenarios beyond what is expected in Israel, God forbid, in the event of a similar noise, we turn to other matters.
So maybe this time we will be a little smarter, before the act and not just after it?
For years the experts in Israel have been warning that nature will turn on us too.
The question, according to them, is not "if", but only "when", and they state that the day when the earth will shake will not be far away.
But it turns out that the difference between terrible pictures in Turkey, and a deadly earthquake in Israel, which will go through with much less damage, is a total of three billion shekels.
Yair Lapid and Benjamin Netanyahu.
One bought the support of Abbas, the other the support of Goldknopf with sums that are much larger than those needed to strengthen tens of thousands of apartments against an earthquake (Photo: Flash 90, Olivier Fitussi)
Crying for generations
Israel's governments for generations, from the right and the left, have been careful during the decades that the country has existed, to ignore the problem and hope that when the earth shakes, it won't be on their watch.
If you have had a sense of deja vu for other mass disasters, such as the Miron disaster for example, you are not alone.
Everyone sees the writing on the wall, but pays no attention to it until it is smeared with blood.
According to the estimates of the Ministry of Housing, only three billion shekels are necessary to strengthen the 36,000 apartments that are in dangerous buildings close to the Syrian African divide, most of them in the north.
The Treasury claims that the amount is much larger, but there is no price for human life.
The solid fact is that hundreds of thousands of residents are in danger, of which thousands may lose their lives, when according to estimates, the cost of an earthquake and building collapse is estimated at NIS 90 billion.
The Ministry of Housing blames the Budget Division of the Ministry of Finance for not transferring the money to strengthen the buildings.
The Ministry of Finance says that they transferred NIS 110 million to strengthen buildings as part of the urban renewal budget, because those who need to carry it out are private entrepreneurs at their own expense and not at the expense of the state.
The problem is, no private entrepreneur wants to strengthen buildings in the periphery, because there is no profit there.
If the state does not want people to die, it must put its hand in its pocket, and not engage in petty accounting, when human lives depend on it.
More in Walla!
Pietro celebrates a round birthday and you enjoy a once-in-60-years sale
In collaboration with Pitro
Alarm in the south.
Not only earthquakes: in Israel many houses do not have MMD or effective shielding against a missile attack, it is also only a matter of time (Photo: Flash 90, Anna Kaplan)
And if it was in the coalition agreement?
This stupid bickering is mind-boggling mainly because we all know that when the politicians want, they find the money out of nowhere.
The problem is that our public money is usually directed to the places of interested parties, without an order of priorities that puts the citizens at the top of the list.
Somehow the budget will find a way to silence a disobedient Knesset member who threatens to overthrow the government, give a job to some "Macher" who is also a vote contractor in the primaries, or pamper the head of some false council, in order to calm down a sector that is causing problems.
And it doesn't even matter at all if the prime minister is Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid or Benjamin Netanyahu, and they have to please coalition members named Mansur Abbas or Yitzhak Goldknopf.
It is well known that the coalition funds are a rabbit that jumps out of the state coffers as if by magic.
50 billion here, 20 billion there, no problem.
But when it comes to the lives of civilians, who may die in agony, suddenly they become stingy and count every shekel.
This is also the case with the shielding of the houses in the north, which one day may be forced to absorb a missile attack by Hezbollah, perhaps also by the Syrian army. This is also the case with the settlements surrounding Gaza, which are facing Hamas missiles, some of them without MMD. Everyone knows that at some point there will be a war, but Why invest now in something that could only happen in a few more years, when the Prime Minister's party might be in the opposition?
The answer is unequivocal: precisely because of the pictures from Turkey, so that we don't look like them here. Even if it costs us, heaven forbid, like a party's coalition agreement One.
Of money
opinions
Tags
Earthquake in Turkey
Earthquake
Strengthening buildings
coalition