Criticism of the 2016 defense budget approved earlier today by the Knesset Joint Committee on the Defense Budget continues.
The NIS 56.1 billion budget does not fund an anti-tunnel obstacle along the border with Hamas-ruled Gaza, complains MK Haim Jelin (Yesh Atid), a former mayor of the Eshkol Regional Council that borders the Gaza Strip.
The Eshkol area has been hit by thousands of rockets from Gaza in recent years, and residents fear a future conflict will see an increase in Hamas’s efforts to tunnel into their villages and towns to carry out terror attacks.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon “have turned the residents of the Gaza periphery into hostages in the political fight over the defense budget,” Jellin charges.
“The prime minister and defense minister left the [Gaza border] obstacle out of the current budget, and so broke their promise to these residents. The MKs who voted for the defense budget today bear responsibility for the next disaster in the Gaza periphery. The government of Israel continues to lie and to neglect the residents of the Gaza periphery,” he charges.
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