From the Liveblog of
Sunday, July 7, 2024
Cabinet approves NIS 500 million budget cut to fund aid to displaced residents
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
The cabinet approves a half billion shekel ($135 million) budget cut across a range of government ministries in order to redirect funds toward aid for displaced residents of the north and south.
This includes tens of millions of shekels from the health, welfare and education ministries.
The discussion of the budget cuts comes less than a week after the Knesset Finance Committee allocated hundreds of millions of shekels in “surplus” coalition funds to government ministries — including several deemed superfluous by the Finance Ministry.
The Prime Minister’s Office did not directly announce the cuts, instead announcing the extension of government aid to residents of southern communities within a range of seven kilometers (4 miles) of the Gaza Strip and 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Lebanon.
A spokesman for the PMO did not immediately respond to an inquiry regarding why these coalition funds were not used for the displaced.
Asked for comment, a spokesman for the opposition Yesh Atid party decries what he calls “a reckless government that distributes funds to itself at the expense of the middle class, the reservists and the taxpayers.”
The Times of Israel Community.