ISRAEL Gap between rich, poor gets wider, report says

Nearly half of Palestinians live in poverty, the World Bank said.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- More than one in five Israelis lived in poverty last year, and the gap between rich and poor in this formerly socialist country continued to widen, according to government statistics released Tuesday.
The data released by the National Insurance Institute drew fresh attention to the policies of Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has aggressively cut public spending, including welfare payments, as part of an ambitious economic reform program.
The institute said that 1.4 million Israelis, or 22 percent of the population, lived below the poverty line in 2003. That compared with 20 percent the previous year.
"Israel is becoming poorer and poorer," said Yigal Ben Shalom, director general of the insurance institute, which administers government pension and welfare programs.
The report came as the World Bank issued separate statistics showing an economic crisis in the neighboring Palestinian areas as the result of four years of fighting with Israel.
The World Bank said nearly half of Palestinians live in poverty on less than $2.10 a day. It cited Israel's "closure" policies -- a series of restrictions on the movement of Palestinian people and products meant to boost Israeli security-- as the main cause of economic hardship in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
While the violence has hit the Israeli economy as well, especially the tourism sector, officials said the jump in poverty had much more to do with government policies.
Netanyahu, targeting Israel's bloated public sector, has aggressively cut government jobs, slashed social spending and sought to privatize state-owned industries. These policies reversed decades of generous handouts, including child subsidies, aid for single mothers and retirement social security.
Although recent data indicate the economy is slowly recovering, poorer Israelis continue to struggle. Unemployment is more than 10 percent.
, and many of the available jobs are part-time or minimum wage.