Israel’s parliament gave final approval to the long delayed 2025 state budget on Tuesday, in a turbulent session that showed how lawmakers and the country remain divided over the fate of hostages still held in Gaza and the wider political landscape.
The budget debate took place after Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 23 Palestinians on Tuesday, local health officials said, as the Israeli military expanded evacuation orders to tens of thousands of residents across the enclave.
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed the budget by a 66-52 margin. Failure to approve it by March 31st would have triggered snap elections.
“This is a budget of war, and with God’s help it will be a budget of victory,” finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said moments before voting on the budget began.
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The budget “addresses all the needs of the war – both on the front lines and the home front – until victory”, he added.
The debate took place in a stormy sitting of the Knesset, where families of some of the hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, protested from behind a screen in a public gallery, holding up posters and photographs of their loved ones.
Opposition lawmakers held up signs in the main chamber with “59”, the number of hostages still in Gaza. About 24 of the hostages are believed to be still alive.
Following the budget’s approval opposition lawmakers shouted “shame”, and opposition leader Yair Lapid called the legislation the “greatest robbery in the history of the state”.
“You are stealing the money and the future of Israel’s middle class – the productive public that works, pays taxes, and serves in the army,” he said in parliament, addressing prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.
Ahead of the vote, security forces dragged away protesters who lay across the road leading to parliament to demonstrate over the hostages as well as recent moves to dismiss Israel’s domestic intelligence agency chief and the attorney general.
“There is freedom of expression in the State of Israel, but no one is free to forcibly block the democratic process in the Knesset,” said Amir Ohana, the Knesset’s speaker.
The Israeli military resumed its campaign against Hamas in Gaza a week ago, shattering a two-month ceasefire. Since then, nearly 700 people, mostly women and children, have been killed, the Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry says.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has already been displaced by the fighting multiple times during nearly 18 months of war and is facing worsening shortages of food and water after Israel suspended aid deliveries earlier this month.
On Tuesday, the Israeli army told residents in all northern border towns to evacuate, saying Palestinian rockets had been fired at Israel from the area.
The affected towns include Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Shejaia in Gaza City. Orders were also issued for areas in Khan Younis and Rafah in the south.
Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in the Gaza Strip.
Elsewhere, at least five people have been killed in Israeli shelling of the southern Syrian province of Daraa, local authorities said.
Mr Netanyahu said the renewed offensive in Gaza aimed to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages.
Hamas, which accuses Israel of abandoning a ceasefire deal agreed on January 19th, said it was co-operating with a new effort, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, to restore calm and conclude the three-phase ceasefire agreement.
According to some Hamas sources, there has been no breakthrough.
The return to fighting has led to mass protests in Israel demanding a return to negotiations to bring back the remaining hostages and bodies.
Mr Smotrich had hoped the budget would be approved by the end of 2024, but political infighting among coalition partners delayed the final vote.
The total budget will be 756 billion shekels (€190 billion), or 619 billion excluding debt servicing – a 21 per cent rise in spending over 2024. The defence budget alone will be a record 110 billion shekels.
Israel spent $31 billion (€29 billion) on its military conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon in 2024, and the government vowed to sharply boost defence spending going forward. – Reuters
