On Aug. 5, the front page of The Marker, Haaretz’s economic supplement, suited the mood of the Ninth of Av Jewish fast day. Almost all the headlines prepared the public for the economic fast to begin the day after the war in Gaza ends. The main headline cited economists who expect that Finance Minister Yair Lapid will be forced to abandon his flagship program: eliminating the VAT on the purchase of a first apartment. Experts predict that cuts to the budgets of ministries focused on civil affairs in order to increase the defense budget will only exacerbate the already difficult state of the economy. Another headline reported, "Israeli parents to extend 'sardine protest' against overcrowded classes." Government hospitals are complaining about their growing deficits and say that they will be hard-pressed to provide regular services, while "Israeli airlines seek government aid to cover tourism losses from Gaza conflict." The heads of local and regional councils in the south were sent to beg for funding as "Residents on Gaza border bemoan lack of bomb shelters."

It doesn’t take an economist to explain that cuts to civil budgets will increase inequality in the Israeli market, which already suffers from chronic inequality, according to the Gini coefficient, which the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development uses to measure inequality. Israeli society, which was established in a spirit of partnership and mutual responsibility, has become an unequal one, split between rival camps. Economic disparities affect mainly manual laborers, traditionally one of the weakest sectors of the population after new immigrants, Palestinians and immigrant workers. Disparity also affects groups that acquired education in the belief that this would lead to economic security, but were disappointed.

Inequality is not just a consequence of the market mechanisms that dictate the rules of the game in most developed states. It depends also on the willingness of the establishment to deal with it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did more than anyone to worsen the problem during his tenure as finance minister in the early years of the last decade. While enacting reforms that included slashing income tax, corporate taxes, property taxes and in many other domains, thereby making the rich richer, he simultaneously cut the budgets of local authorities, unemployment payments and assured income supplements for the unemployed. He dealt a hard blow to welfare services, child benefits and support for single mothers. For the sake of economic efficiency, the Israeli public was then asked to give up tenure at work, the right to organize in workers unions and various other support mechanisms.

This week, Jonathan Anson of the Department of Social Work at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev observed that the weaker segments of the population that will have an especially hard time bearing the economic burden of this war will support the very government that pushes them to the poverty line. At a lecture he delivered during an emergency conference of Social Workers for Peace at Tel Aviv University on Aug. 4, Anson presented a graph that displays the affinity between the average salary of men in Jewish towns and settlements and the level of support among local residents for nationalist parties during the 2009 elections. He found a correlation between lower salaries and the tendency to vote for parties that advocate resolving problems through force.