"Yigal the Printer"

A stolid, jowly man whose face seems lugubriously appropriate to Israel's dire economic straits, Yigal Hurvitz, 62, who resigned as Finance Minister on Sunday, seems to thrive on political notoriety. Month after month, he had focused attention on himself in the Israeli Cabinet by challenging virtually every discretionary item of the government's planned 1981 budget. His goal: to pare public spending, hold unemployment to a tolerable 41/2% to 5% and, somehow, simultaneously bring the annual 140% inflation rate down to double digits by the end of the year. Understandably, he was not always thanked for his tightfistedness. However, Hurvitz had won many of his economic battles with his colleagues with almost regular use of his most lethal political weapon: a credible threat to resign and take his tiny, three-man Rafi faction into opposition, which in turn could bring down the government.

The approach proved to be popular. His decision to hold firm on pay hikes for teachers, for instance, earned him the grudging admiration of many Israelis.

In fact, he failed either to lower inflation or to cut the budget. Nevertheless, he topped political polls in the country as the best choice for Finance Minister. Often less appreciatively, his Cabinet colleagues jocularly referred to him as "Yigal the Printer" because of his policy of increasing the money supply as a means of keeping the economy moving.

"I have not always enjoyed political support," says Hurvitz, adding wryly: "If I could have lowered the defense budget--even to the level of NATO say--I would have been king."

In fact,. Israel's defense budget, which amounts to nearly 30% of the country's GNP, has traditionally been almost sacrosanct. Thus when Hurvitz tried to cut military spending by 10% to $2 billion for 1981, he provoked anguished howls not only from the defense community but also from Prime Minister Begin, who has uneasily held a second portfolio as acting Defense Minister ever since the resignation of Ezer Weizman last May. One result of Hurvitz's stand: Begin's Cabinet so far has been unable formally to vote on the entire 1981 budget at all. If it had acceded to Hurvitz, it would have angered the right and caused genuine security anxieties in the population as a whole. If it rejected Hurvitz, treasury officials clinically predicted that, at the present rate of increase, Israel's inflation could hit 300%--the sort of figure heretofore associated with the Weimar Republic.

Hurvitz's toughness and resilience reflect a spartan upbringing and an earlier career as a successful businessman. He is a first cousin of former Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and, like him, grew up on a pioneering agricultural settlement at Nahalal near Haifa. After a wartime stint as an artilleryman in the British Army's Jewish Brigade, Hurvitz turned his hand to investment. He bought into a farm cooperative, moved on to one small dairy products company after another and demonstrated an unusual knack for turning unprofitable ventures into money earners. Says his brother Amos, a Knesset member of the opposition Labor Party: "I really don't know how Yigal came to this kind of thing. His major mistake as Finance Minister was to take the job in the first place."

Israelis, in fact, were all the more surprised by the choice when Begin named him Finance Minister because 13 months earlier Hurvitz had resigned his previous post as Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism in protest over the Camp David peace agreement. He made no apologies for his opposition to the accord, but Begin nevertheless brought him back as Israel's economic police chief, as it were. Hurvitz scored a notable success last April when he managed to seal a pact with Israel's major labor federation, the Histadrut, to set a graduated ceiling on wage claims until April 1982. Nevertheless, he worries about the government's chances of bringing inflation under control. Says he: "Inflation is like a cog and in Israel it's very well greased."

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