Word: hurvitz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...startling recovery of Begin and his Likud coalition was due in part to Labor's overconfidence and failure to mount an aggressive early offensive. The departure from Begin's Cabinet of such prickly individualists as Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, Defense Minister Ezer Weizman and Finance Minister Yigal Hurvitz helped to give the coalition the illusion of unity, even if some critics saw it more properly as a vacuum. Newly appointed Finance Minister Yoram Aridor had added an undeniably popular move by reducing excise taxes and import duties on luxury items like color television sets and autos. The "Aridor...
...years in office. The issue had originally seemed relatively benign: a pay raise for the country's 65,000 teachers, approved earlier by a blue-ribbon committee. In the Cabinet, however, the salary question provoked a collision between two stubborn antagonists: Finance Minister Yigal Hurvitz, who was determined to forestall any new wage spiral that would further boost the country's 140% hyperinflation, and Education Minister Zevulun Hammer, who felt equally committed to the teachers. Each vowed to resign if he lost the battle, taking precious parliamentary votes with him. Thus either way Begin's coalition would...
...debate in the Cabinet dragged on for 7½ hours as both sides sought to stave off the inevitable. At one point, one of Begin's aides reminded Hurvitz in a note that his resignation would help bring a Labor Party successor. Hurvitz scribbled back: "Yes, I know things will be worse, but I don't want to be responsible for the economic collapse." Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, who is renowned both for histrionic outbursts and for an unyielding determination to plant more Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank, lashed out at Hurvitz. Said...
...control over his Cabinet. From the first, it had been a patchwork quilt of first four and then five different parties. Many of Begin's ministers were chosen not so much on the basis of capability as on patronage. Cabinet sessions became notorious for squabbling and name-calling. Hurvitz was the sixth Cabinet minister to resign, setting a new precedent even in a country used to coalition governments...
Israelis, in fact, were all the more surprised by the choice when Begin named him Finance Minister because 13 months earlier Hurvitz had resigned his previous post as Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism in protest over the Camp David peace agreement. He made no apologies for his opposition to the accord, but Begin nevertheless brought him back as Israel's economic police chief, as it were. Hurvitz scored a notable success last April when he managed to seal a pact with Israel's major labor federation, the Histadrut, to set a graduated ceiling on wage claims until...