page_title: David Levy (Israeli politician)
section_title: Ministerial positions
hierarchical_section_title: David Levy (Israeli politician) / Ministerial positions
caption_attribution_description: Ambassador Shapiro demonstrated that our English language programs open doors to wider U.S. Israel cooperation when he visited Beit Shean December 20. The Ambassador visited an ORT school, spoke at a town hall, and toured Beit Shean National Park. ORT Israel gave an overview of the “Jordan Valley Robotics Education Center, their vision of a regional center to teach Israeli and Jordanian youth about robotics and environmental issues while promoting peace and understanding. Ambassador Shapiro also visited sites associated with efforts to rehabilitate the Jordan River and a peace park promoting Israeli-Jordanian cooperation The visits were hosted by Friends of the Earth Middle East and regional Mayor Jossi Vardi. With support from USAID, community leaders such as Mayor Jossi Vardi as well as Jordanian leaders have been working together in the “Good Water Neighbors project” to help clean up this important joint resource. Their hard work and advocacy has paid off with construction of a waste water treatment plant that will soon remove the sewage. USAID has been partnering with FoEME since 2001, first as part of the Wye River Agreement, and more recently through USAID’s Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM) grant. Photo credit: Matty Stern U.S . Embassy Tel Aviv
context_page_description: David Levy is an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset between 1969 and 2006, as well as Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Immigrant Absorption, Minister of Housing and Construction and as a Minister without Portfolio. Although most of his time as a Knesset member was spent with Likud, he also led the breakaway Gesher faction, which formed part of Ehud Barak's Labor-led government between 1999 and 2001.
context_section_description: From 1977 until 1981, Levy was Minister of Immigrant Absorption in the first two Begin governments. At this time the largest issues he dealt with during his tenure in that ministry were the campaign to liberate Soviet Jews confined to the USSR, and the controversy over the Beta Israel, a group from Ethiopia that had still not received total recognition as Jews at that time.
  Levy's more important role in government began during the formation of Begin's rightist government when the Democratic Movement for Change resigned. On 15 January 1979 he was given the Ministry of Housing and Construction, a post he invested a great deal of time in. Levy held the ministry until 1990, and his policies are controversial for their repeated concessions to the settler movements, which the opposition Labour Party branded pure politicking.
  As Housing Minister Levy was able to make housing more affordable (radical inflation in 1984 produced a crisis as property and rent values plummeted along with the Israeli shekels). While rival Likud members like Defence Minister Ariel Sharon and Health Minister Ehud Olmert were hit by controversies regarding abuse of their positions, and repeated finance ministers fell, Levy remained stable in the Housing Ministry. Through the governments of Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Shimon Peres he remained untouchable.
  Levy was the symbolic leader of the young Mizrahi Likud leaders that included former Kiryat Malakhi mayor Moshe Katzav, later President of Israel, and David Magen, mayor of neighbouring Kiryat Gat. In the Likud Central Committee, Levy commanded a huge portion of the members, and was considered a true candidate to succeed Shamir.
  In 1987, he met Benjamin Netanyahu, then the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.  Levy viewed Netanyahu as a potential spokesman for him in the Knesset, as he was viewed as a master at rhetoric and debating during his career as a diplomat.
  Netanyahu turned down Levy's offer and became a nominal ally of then-Defense Minister Moshe Arens (his former boss when Arens was Ambassador to the United States in the early 1980s). Levy's career was harmed by his perceived pompousnessand shifting policies in regards to the peace process. Levy, who speaks Hebrew, French, and Moroccan Arabic, was not fluent in English, which became an impediment in talks with the Americans.
  Levy's candidacy was supposed to rejuvenate the Likud's Mizrahi voting base, and form a hawkish working class opposition to Labour. Levy's policies on the peace question was moderate relative to Ariel Sharon, Moshe Arens, and almost all other senior Likud figures.
  Again he ran parallel to Benjamin Netanyahu. At that time, right-wing Israelis were launching a long opposition plan to the new prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin (Labour). Netanyahu took a hard-line stand, describing a doomsday scenario of terror at the doorstep of every Israeli. Levy refused to accept Netanyahu as the new Likud chairman. The result was the establishment of Gesher ("Bridge"), Levy's own political party. Levy believed he could draw a mass defection from the Likud of parliament members, and such a disaster would lead senior party members in the Central Committee into a panic that would topple Benjamin Netanyahu. What instead occurred was that only David Magen, a Moroccan politician and former mayor of Kiryat Gat who served as Minister of Economics and Planning in the last Shamir government, broke with the Likud. Though many of Gesher's members were derided by the press as lackeys of Levy, Magen later broke with Levy to join the Center Party in 1998 (then known as "Israel in the Center").
  By Winter 1996, Levy was beginning to break under the stress of his first election campaign outside of the Likud. Since the 4 November 1995 murder of Rabin, Netanyahu was frantically trying to moderate his image from a hard-line demagogue into a skeptic who wanted to slow the pace of concessions to PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Levy's inclusion would somewhat bring him closer to that goal without forcing him to take a clear stand in favour of the Oslo Accords. The oppo
caption: Meeting with U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro in Beit She'an, 2011
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