Kislev, 5768
Dec., '07

On warm winter days, when the winds are not blowing from the west, Israel's metropolitan center, Gush Dan, is covered in a brownish yellow blanket. As my car descends from Karnei Shomron towards Kfar Saba in Gush Dan, I can view the Gush Dan metropolis in all its glory. Only the Azrieli Towers poke out of the cloud of smog.

 

Research has shown that more people die of air pollution related diseases than from both car accidents and terror attacks combined. From my car, it looks like the only safe place to breathe in Gush Dan is from the top of the Azrielli Towers. As I glide into the cloud of smog, I reflexively close my windows and turn on the air conditioner in a futile attempt to breathe a few more seconds of clean air. The blue sky that greeted me when I left my home in Karnei Shomron is now a sickly looking gray.

 

That's it. I am just another motor vehicle in the almost permanent traffic jam on Highway 5 to Tel Aviv. There is no lane for bicycles here, so I am forced to join the thousands of cars idling around me, their engines belching out their contribution to our collective yellow blanket.

 

Israel has a great advantage over other industrialized nations. Its borders are closed and all the cars stuck with me in the traffic jam are Israeli. There is not even one Syrian, Egyptian or Iraqi car in the gridlock. That being the case, the state could give incentives that would mean that most of the cars in any given traffic jam would be hybrid vehicles. Hybrid cars have two engines -- one powered by gasoline and the other by electricity. The electric engine is for driving in the city, while the gasoline powered engine automatically takes over when the car is driving longer distances. If the thousands of cars surrounding me now on Highway 5 all had hybrid engines, things would be looking much better. For one, we wouldn't be burning the gasoline in our tanks just to stand here on the highway. Second, the air that we breathe would be much cleaner and the greenhouse effect that all of this exhaust creates would be reduced. The problem is that hybrid vehicles are more expensive than their conventional counterparts. The hybrid's battery tacks another 5,000 dollars onto the price of the car.

 

I do not think that the state should subsidize hybrid cars. But if it would simply lift the taxes on the batteries and reduce taxes on direct purchase of the cars, they would become an attractive option for the middle class. The middle class is the layer of society that bears the weight of the state on its shoulders. Most of the cars in the state belong to the middle class. These people need cars to get to work and to function normally. The upper class will continue to drive luxury cars and the poor people will continue to ride the buses. But for the middle class that produces most of the state's tax revenues, the tax reduction on hybrid cars would make all the difference. In addition, gasoline is Israel is twice the price that it is in the West (even though its original price is basically the same). So even if the hybrids would initially cost more, the tremendous savings on gasoline would make them a worthwhile purchase in Israel.

 

In the U.S. for example, the government recognized the importance of the hybrids. By lowering taxes on the cars, the hybrids returned the cost of their purchase within two and a half years. In Israel, though, the government is not interested. It still deems the mobility of the middle class a luxury. Furthermore, the taxes on cars and fuel are a government gold mine. The state simply takes advantage of the modern imperative to drive long distances to work and squeezes its citizens for every drop of tax money that it can. Simply put, the state is telling us "The cars you buy will be much more expensive, the fuel prices even double and I insist that you burn as much of it as possible, even though thousands of you will die annually of the effects of the air pollution that your cars create. Why? Because it fills my coffers with money."

 

We are not asking the state to take positive action to maintain the health of our environment, bodies or bank accounts. All that we need is for it to stop interfering.