In the early hours of Monday morning, while most Israelis were sleeping, the Knesset finally passed the 2026 state budget, raising defense spending to unprecedented levels amid the war with Iran and earmarking billions of shekels to Haredi educational institutions and other priorities of the governing coalition.

During the course of the evening, lawmakers spent hours voting on a series of so-called “reservations,” most of them objections to the budget submitted by opposition lawmakers, which were roundly defeated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.

However, shortly after midnight, as lawmakers’ focus began to fade, the coalition inserted a surprise reservation onto the agenda to allocate approximately NIS 800 million ($255 million) to ultra-Orthodox programs and institutions, including yeshivas.

Because reservations are typically filed by the opposition as a procedural tactic to delay budget votes, opposition MKs appeared to treat the measure as routine and automatically backed it, failing to notice that the coalition was also supporting the amendment. The added funding ultimately passed by a lopsided 107-4 vote before lawmakers appeared to realize their error.

In total, according to a tally by Channel 13, the move — which followed the recent approval of hundreds of millions of shekels in coalition funds for Haredi education — further expanded already-boosted allocations to Haredi educational institutions by more than NIS 1 billion, from NIS 4.1 billion ($1.3 billion) to NIS 5.17 billion ($1.65 billion).

The vote came after the ultra-Orthodox parties agreed to support the budget despite the coalition’s failure to pass the bill they demanded enshrining blanket exemptions from military conscription for yeshiva students.

The allocations to Haredi budget priorities appeared to deliver funding that Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara blocked due to the lack of ultra-Orthodox conscription.

Baharav-Miara and the Knesset opposition have spent considerable efforts to block Haredi educational budgets in light of widespread draft evasion among yeshiva students and a lack of state-mandated core curriculum studies at........

© The Times of Israel