MKs to vote on NIS 31 billion budget increase to fund defense, Gaza aid

By Sam Sokol 10 September 2025, 12:35 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"

Knesset lawmakers are slated to vote this afternoon on hiking the 2025 state budget by NIS 31 billion ($9 billion), most of it to bolster the defense budget, with NIS 1.6 billion ($473 million) in funding for humanitarian aid to Gaza. First voted on by the cabinet last month, the measure is expected to pass narrowly, with some ultra-Orthodox lawmakers who recently left the coalition reportedly intending to either abstain or vote against it.

Following last month’s cabinet vote, MK Moshe Gafni, who heads the United Torah Judaism’s Degel HaTorah faction, appeared to threaten to vote against the increase due to a cut of NIS 481 million ($142 million) in taxpayer money 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.

Haredi schools which do not teach core subjects such as math or science have been excluded from the program, but the money to add them is being set aside until laws are changed to allow the funds to be allocated.

A source close to the veteran lawmaker tells The Times of Israel that Gafni plans on abstaining rather than voting against the budget increase because of the importance of the defense funds involved. Other Degel MKs are expected to follow suit.

UTJ chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf is expected to oppose the budget increase while other members of his Hasidic Agudat Yisrael faction are still undecided, the ultra-Orthodox Behadrei Haredim website reports.

According to Hebrew media reports, Shas’s 11 MKs will vote in favor, despite the party recently leaving the government, though not the coalition. The government recently approved the transfer of NIS 40 million ($11.9 million) in state funding to ultra-Orthodox schools affiliated with the ultra-Orthodox party’s Bnei Yosef educational network.

According to financial daily The Marker, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party is also threatening to oppose the budget increase unless NIS 80 million ($23.9 million) in funds intended for the Settlements and National Projects Ministry, controlled by a Religious Zionism lawmaker, is instead transferred to the Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Ministry, headed by Otzma Yehudit’s Yitzhak Wasserlauf.

Earlier this week, Wasserlauf announced he would vote against increasing the deficit in the cabinet, accusing Religious Zionism head Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of gutting the ministry’s budget while he was in the opposition.