JERUSALEM — Israel’s prime minister offered a crash program to speed up housing construction Tuesday in an effort to defuse a growing wave of protests that has brought about a sharp drop in his approval ratings.
Calling the protests “justified,” Benjamin Netanyahu announced his plan, which includes creating more apartments for students and allows for giving away some government land at a discount or free of charge in order to lower prices for home buyers.
“The housing problem in Israel is one that can be solved,” Mr. Netanyahu said at a news conference.
The protesters, thousands of young Israelis who have erected tent encampments in several cities, promptly rejected the proposals as insufficient.
Mr. Netanyahu said the high price of housing stems from a slow pace of construction that is largely because of a stifling bureaucracy. He added that his new reforms would cut red tape and lead to the creation of 50,000 housing units in the coming years.
In several weeks, the tent protests have snowballed from a minor irritant into a major problem for the prime minister and his coalition government.
Israel has seen other demonstrations recently about the country’s high cost of living, and doctors in public hospitals also are on strike because of their working conditions.
The protests, which have dominated media coverage here for weeks, are contributing to an atmosphere of instability and public discontent.
A poll Tuesday indicated wide support for the protesters and a sharp drop in Mr. Netanyahu’s approval ratings.
In the poll published in the daily newspaper Haaretz, 87 percent of respondents expressed support for the protests. Thirty-two percent expressed their approval for Mr. Netanyahu, as opposed to 51 percent two months ago, the paper reported.
The poll, conducted by the Dialog company, surveyed 493 people and had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
Protesters in the tent encampments in different Israeli cities watched Mr. Netanyahu speak on TV and quickly rejected his proposals.
“What Netanyahu is offering is nothing less than deception,” Daphni Leef, one of the leaders of the protest in Tel Aviv, told reporters.
“Netanyahu is saying lands will be given for free, and who will get them? The needy people in Israel? No way. Those who will get them are the contractors and his other wealthy friends,” she said.
Sivan Vardi, an organizer of a tent protest in Jerusalem, told Knesset TV that the protest would continue: “We are keeping the tents, and we will not dismantle a single tent until we get a more complete solution.”
Israel’s housing crunch has come about largely because the housing supply in the nation of 7.6 million has not kept pace with demand. From December 2007 to August 2010, housing prices jumped an inflation-adjusted 35 percent and rental rates have risen steadily.
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