A last-minute agreement between the government and medical residents would be a godsend for the public health system. At the same time it would cast a shadow over the government's ability to maintain social order, the absence of which would lead to a collapse of labor relations in the economy and society. Young doctors are the salt of the earth. They are our beloved children and there is no Israeli that doesn't want them to be satisfied. But the average Israeli also knows that you can't run a country when the decisions of the government, Knesset and High Court are treated merely as suggestions from one sector of society. Get the Israel Hayom newsletter sent to your mailbox! The authorized representatives of the Israel Medical Association signed an agreement that may not be fair to residents, but neither was it rammed through behind their backs. There was a strike followed by legal debates and complex negotiations, but those displeased with the outcome say they "couldn't care less" about any of that. The serious repercussions are that finished business is never finished, that you can shake hands with the finance minister and his staff, sign an agreement and then continue the fight, relentlessly issuing threats to the point where the prime minister is called on to intervene. This is a recipe for anarchy. This doesn't mean there is no place for the prime minister to get involved in labor disputes. Not in all of them, but in some. In those worthy of his intervention, it needs to happen before a binding agreement is signed. When the rot and corruption grow to the extent they have today, with threats continuing after an agreement was reached, the prime minister must instruct the finance minister from afar as to what is permitted and not permitted, but must himself stay in the shadows. The media will criticize him and call on him to intervene. That would be bad for the current conflict and the next one and the ones after that. It's easy to buy into the illusion that if we just solve the doctor's crisis the economy will return to its former state of calm. But that's a fairy tale. The tycoons' lobbyists, the ultra-Orthodox and the defense establishment are working to jeopardize the implementation of the Trajtenberg committee recommendations. Trajtenberg on Tuesday warned the Knesset Finance Committee that in the future Israel will not experience a deluxe non-violent protest movement as it did this summer. Next time the protest will be much more aggressive. But the ultra-Orthodox are out for themselves. They want housing in equal measure for kollel sitters [married men who study in yeshiva full time] and for khaki-clad combat soldiers sitting in tents. Anyone who watched television Tuesday saw that the economic tsunami is only beginning. Ofer Eini [chairman of Israel's powerful labor federation] is threatening a nationwide general strike if the problem of contract workers is not resolved (and this is indeed a scandal rooted in the excesses of swinish capitalism). No one seems to be able to tell the government when to dig in its heels. Perhaps the government should stand up to the doctors? Perhaps against the tycoons? At some significant and painful juncture Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have to make it clear that the government knows how to stick to its guns, and that the word "resolve" is part of its lexicon.
