Government adding billions to budget, including for Gaza aid, as war costs mount

By Sam Sokol 19 August 2025, 1:38 pm

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Sam 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"

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, pictured outside the Knesset in Jerusalem on August 18, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

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

According to the Kan public broadcaster, the bulk of the increase will go toward defense spending and will be accompanied by an across-the-board cut of 3.35% of ministerial budgets, save for the Defense Ministry budget. The cuts are set to go into effect at the beginning of the new year.

The controversial NIS 755 billion ($205 billion) state budget was passed in March. Earlier this month, as Israel faced overwhelming global criticism due to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich acknowledged that the government would transfer billions of shekels from Israeli public coffers toward the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Smotrich had previously opposed the entry of any assistance to the enclave, saying it fueled Hamas.

The vote will come after National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Education Minister Yoav Kisch said in a joint statement this morning that they would oppose the budget proposal unless it includes funding for security at educational institutions in the coming school year.

“At a time when the Finance Ministry wants to expand the budget for humanitarian aid, it is harming the security of our children,” Ben Gvir says in a statement, calling such a move “a disgrace that cannot be accepted.”

The changes to the budget are also opposed by the Knesset’s Haredi parties, which left the government last month amid a dispute over the conscription of yeshiva students.

According to Kan, the new cuts include most of the funds set aside for Haredi schools’ eventual inclusion in the government’s New Horizon program, which funds work in small groups between teachers and pupils and bumps up teacher salaries, among other initiatives.

In a statement, United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf threatens to oppose additional funds for Settlements and National Projects Minister Orit Strock in the Knesset plenum over the issue.

“It is unacceptable that the education budgets for children of the ultra-Orthodox community are cut again and again in favor of a budget whose goals and purposes are shrouded in fog,” he says.