From the Liveblog of
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Northern, Gaza border councils fight budget cuts; Bennett: ‘Coalition takes care of itself, abandons its people’
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 regional councils of the communities along Israel’s northern and Gaza borders write to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protest the cutting of budgets “intended to restore and strengthen the frontline areas of the State of Israel.”
The representatives of the Confrontation Line Forum, Sdot Negev Regional Council and other local governmental bodies urge the prime minister and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to spare these programs from the broad three percent cut to all ministries, with the exception of the Defense Ministry, that was announced this week in order to bolster the defense budget.
“We ask you, the prime minister and the finance minister, to exclude [this] funding from the cuts, and to ensure that the funding intended for the rehabilitation and development of the confrontation line areas and the Gaza perimeter will be maintained in full,” they write.
The local officials argue that these funds are not for “ordinary development” but rather “are intended to enable a long-term rehabilitation process, the return of full civilian life to an area that was hit in an unprecedented way, and the building of a stable infrastructure for growth, security, and community resilience for years to come.”
The civilians living in these areas are still suffering under an ongoing security threat, with many living in fortified rooms for long stretches, and cutting these budgets “could delay vital projects that are already in the planning and execution stages and create budgetary uncertainty” precisely when it is necessary to strengthen these hard-hit regions, the local authorities argue.
Sharing the letter in a post on X, former prime minister Naftali Bennett says that “while the residents of the north were sheltering under heavy barrages of fire, government ministers cut their rehabilitation and protection budgets,” noting that this was on the same day that the government approved “5 billion shekels of coalition funds for the [Haredi] draft dodgers.”
“And now, the heads of the councils on the confrontation line are forced to beg the government to return the money they so desperately need. A government with inverted priorities, that takes care of itself and abandons its own people,” Bennett writes.
Pushing back on his own government’s move, Otzma Yehudit MK Yitzhak Kroizer, chairman of the Knesset Internal Affairs and Environment Committee, writes a letter to Smotrich signed by nine coalition and opposition lawmakers to demand that the budgets for the northern communities be exempted.
“The northern settlements are grappling with a complex and ongoing security reality. The budgets designated for rehabilitation, for strengthening civilian resilience, and for regional development are not luxuries; they are a top national necessity,” he writes on X.
The Times of Israel Community.