This week, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's plan, dubbed "Traffic Light," was unveiled. It is claimed that it is intended to fight crime in Arab society, but in practice it is empty, and it seems that it is the ladder given to the finance minister in order to get down from the tall tree he climbed.
He opposed the transfer of budgets to Arab society, especially in the security and international arena vis-à-vis the OECD, an organization that Israel wishes to join but in return sets conditions and demands to improve the situation of Arab citizens of the country.
It is a pity that the honorable minister does not distinguish between his personal position, which has been famous for many years, mainly Jewish supremacy, and a real struggle against criminal organizations and preventing them from taking over the resources of the Arab authorities. Even if the minister's position is correct, it is motivated by the wrong consideration. The enforcement agencies also failed because Arab society turned a blind eye.
For more than 20 years, the Interior Ministry and the Finance Ministry have had permanent representation in all Arab local authorities. This representative is given the title of "comptroller", and the local authority cannot pay or repay any debt and may not employ an employee without his approval and signature. His salary is paid by the Interior Ministry, so if there is talk today of failure, and there is one, the government ministries must first of all conduct a home check against their confidants, who were sent to maintain the public purse, and seem to have failed.
Only in a third world country or in a country ruled by an undemocratic regime of intelligence and intelligence organizations is the intelligence body allowed – in our case the Shin Bet – to be part of government decisions. Not to support it, but to cancel and prevent decisions by ministers whose agendas are openly anti-Arab, and to transfer budgets to a national and ethnic minority.
A situation has arisen in which the organization, which puts the Arabs under a magnifying glass, is pushing for the transfer of budgets to them. This raises a great question: how can the government function if this is the case, and whether the extremist government ministers know where their decisions might take a fifth of the country's citizens.
There is a problem in the local authorities, not just the Arab ones. This is how local government in Israel has been and continues to be conducted for decades. Quite a few senior officials in the local authorities upgraded their status to MKs and ministers, investigations were opened against them and indictments were filed. One of them, Ehud Olmert, who was also prime minister, was tried for his term as mayor rather than prime minister. The data clearly indicate that elected officials in local government in Jewish society have been investigated and judged much more often than Arab elected officials.
It cannot be argued, in the name of fighting crime, that budgets should be withheld from Arab local authorities, when the control and payment mechanisms have been in the hands of the government for more than 20 years; In addition, each authority has designated bank accounts for various projects, from which it is not possible to spend money without purchase orders, agreements signed by the authority's legal advisor, the accompanying accountant, the treasurer or the CEO, and if there is no confirmation of the necessity of a position from the competent bodies in the various government ministries.
The "Traffic Light" plan raises many questions, chief among them: Who is supposed to define the authority, can it be appealed, and to whom?
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