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Shattered
Hirsh Goodman

The recycling bill passed for no reason other than pure political thuggery, almost a mockery of democracy

In all the years I have lived in this country, little has astounded me more than the recent law passed by the Knesset pertaining to the recycling of plastic and glass containers. This requires that consumers pay a deposit on such bottles, and are entitled to a refund when the bottles are returned to the store. One would think that passage of such a law, long overdue, would be cause for celebration. Unfortunately, this was not to be. Instead, it came to symbolize so much of what is wrong here, starting from the lack of planning through political scandal to ministerial incompetence.

In terms of lack of planning, shopkeepers were never informed of the law or prepared, nor were they told what to do with the plastic and glass containers once they took them back from their customers. As a consequence, when it was due to go into effect on October 1, the law was met with an across-the-board boycott by all shopkeepers in the country, who refused to cooperate. When questioned on the subject, Environment Minister Tzachi Hanegbi � who had reaped considerable publicity out of the new measure � admitted that chaos reined, but dismissed it as a temporary phenomenon. But there would have been no chaos had Hanegbi not begun enforcing the law when those, who were supposed to collect the money, repay the deposit and then do something with the bottles, did not have a clue as to what to do.

And the minister totally evaded answering the real question of why there was no preparatory work at all. Nothing. Hanegbi�s ministry does precious little as it is and the law had been in the pipeline for months. Still, zero had been done to ensure that the law's intent became efficient reality.

But that's just one aspect of it, the type of �it-will-be-alright� syndrome that led to the 1997 Maccabiah bridge disaster and which has been so detrimental to this country. Bad as all that is, there is another side of the recycling story that is even worse. The Shas syndrome.

You are probably not going to believe this, but the recycling law only relates to bottles and plastic containers of 1.5 liters (about 1.5 quarts) or less. That's right. The really big recyclable items, those that comprise most of the trash, are not part of the deal. Why? Because if they were, Shas said it would not vote for passage of the bill, and the law nobody was prepared for anyway would not have passed.

The reason for Shas's opposition, for a change, was not based on religious grounds. It didn't even have anything to do with discrimination against Sephardim. The official reason given and, worse, accepted by Israel's lawmakers, was that Shas constituents have large families which means that they tend to buy drinks in large-sized bottles. Since the average Shas voter is either hard at study in the yeshivah, or a mother of many children with already more than enough to do, why should they accept the additional burden of paying a deposit on bottles and then having to take the empties back to the store to redeem their 25 agorot (6 cents)? In consequence Shas would support the bill only if bottles of up to 1.5 liters, and no larger, were included. And so, for no reason other than pure political thuggery, almost in mockery of democracy, the bill was passed, albeit totally perverted in intent.

Since then we have read about the deal Shas made with the moshavim and kibbutzim whereby Shas would pick up 20 percent of the profits realized on all agricultural land that its ministers, particularly the interior minister Eli Yishai, can get rezoned for development. The deal, ostensibly to benefit �disadvantaged neighborhoods,� stinks, but at least it makes some sort of sense. Kibbutz and moshav members get rich and never have to milk a cow again and Shas gets money for its institutions.

Even the recent instruction by Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovad-iah Yosef to his party�s ministers to use their positions to extract concessions from regional council heads, though not politically correct, makes sense of sorts. If regional council heads want something from the Shas-controlled Interior Ministry, then Shas has a right to demand something from them. That's the way politics works. But to oppose recycling bottles because it is a �bother� is beyond the pale, an abuse of power and a very worrying sign of political arrogance.

As for the environment minister, we never held out much hope for the environment when he was named and thus cannot be terribly disappointed with his performance in the recycle-a-bottle matter. Indeed, it was classic Hanegbi. He first gave in to Shas on a ridiculous point and then concentrated on pushing the bill just to prove he could.

This may not be a very relevant story in this time of war with the Palestinians and a collapsing economy. In my view, however, it is illustrative of so much that is wrong with this country, and all for no real reason at all other than laziness, arrogance and political corruption so deep that it could not even help save this land we have fought so hard to make ours. How sad.