Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said Monday that Israel should be thankful that the world's financial woes have left it relatively untouched. "The shocks in our economy are minimal compared to what is going on in the world," he said at a special session of the Knesset's finance Committee.
The session was held in the Prime Minister's Office. The Committee had asked Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to attend a special session on the economy in the Knesset, but Netanyahu instead asked the committee to convene in his bureau, without press presence. He thus managed to avoid what would likely have become a trap, in which opposition MKs would have tried to embarrass him in front of the cameras.
The Prime Minister told the committee members: "Israelis are finding it hard to 'finish the month' [financially] and gaps in society are growing. On the one hand, the intention is to reduce gaps and make things easier on the public – especially the middle class – and on the other hand, to safeguard the economy and Israel's economic strength."
MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ), who chairs the Finance Committee, thanked the Prime Minister for the session. "In the coming months there will be economic and social changes and most of them will pass through the Finance Committee, so we came to hear to from the Prime Minister about his intentions and those of the government before we are asked to decide in these matters," Gafni said.