Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was set to approve a NIS 31 billion ($9 billion) increase to the 2025 state budget on Tuesday, NIS 1.6 billion ($473 million) of which will go toward humanitarian aid for Gaza, the Kan public broadcaster reported.

According to Kan, the increase will primarily go toward defense spending and will be accompanied by an across-the-board cut of 3.35% of ministerial budgets set to go into effect at the beginning of next year.

According to Ynet, the ministries with the larger budgets will lose more to this change, with the National Security Ministry set to face the biggest cut.

The publication added that the government’s budget commissioner, Yogev Gardos, suggested cutting down the coalition’s discretionary funds by NIS 3 billion rather than making sweeping cuts to ministry budgets, but he was shot down by  Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

After it was passed in March, the controversial NIS 755 billion ($205 billion) budget was lauded by Smotrich, who declared that it had “everything we need to win on the front and on the home front.” Earlier this month, the far-right politician acknowledged advancing the transfer of billions of shekels from Israeli public coffers toward the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza, after having previously opposed the entry of any assistance to the Hamas-ruled enclave.

National Security........

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