2023 budget preparation resumes without extra funds for settlements

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich may have to give up on some NIS 400 million for security purposes in the West Bank in the 2023 amended budget as preparation of the bill continued on Monday in the Finance Committee.

The process was stalled on Sunday when Smotrich was told by the Finance Ministry’s professionals and legal counsel that he could not use the funds for the stated purpose because they were sourced from coalition funds and the finance minister had not gone through the necessary process to approve such funds for use.

Smotrich initially claimed that these particular funds had already been approved before the war, but when that didn’t help, he tried to approve them through a phone survey of the government’s ministers on Sunday evening. He was, however, told by legal counsel that this too was not possible.

Another possible source for the funds would be from the Interior Ministry and the National Missions Ministry budgets, but that would require separate approval from the cabinet because it wasn’t part of the amended budget the ministers voted on.

The finance minister attacked the opposition and even employees in his own ministry for the trouble in approving the funds, accusing them of causing the delay. Aside from calling officials in the Finance Ministry antisemitic, Smotrich also accused the opposition of running a “campaign of incitement against settlements in Judea and Samaria” because of its heavy resistance to the amended budget’s utilization of coalition funds.

An explosive committee meeting on budget changes, settler security

The Finance Committee went back to debating the changes in the budget in an explosive meeting on Monday as the bill is expected to pass its second and third readings in the Knesset on Wednesday.

Local authority heads from the West Bank attended the meeting and attacked the MKs present because of the exclusion of the West Bank funds from the issues discussed in the meeting.

The authority heads accused the government of discriminating against settlers by not giving them the funds that Smotrich promised them. This is despite the fact that security needs of Israeli towns and cities inside Israel are generally covered by the National Security Ministry while the security needs of the settlements in the West Bank are covered by the Defense Ministry.

Meanwhile, the opposition is demanding that the coalition funds in the amended budget, which are planned to be used for unregulated ultra-Orthodox education, “family purity” counseling, and “Jewish identity” among other uses, instead be used to supplement funds where needed for evacuees and the health system.

Members of the coalition, such as Economy Minister Nir Barkat, also expressed opposition to the amended budget. Barkat originally said it would cause significant damage to the economy. On Sunday, he announced his support after he was promised more than NIS 200 million for his ministry.

At the same time, however, Likud MKs Hanoch Milwidsky and Eti Atiah threatened to oppose the budget if it didn’t include full reimbursement for employers’ contributions for their employees’ needs during the war.