Israel’s flagging Public Diplomacy Ministry will be shuttered and its budget transferred to rehabilitate communities near the Gaza bordered, the cabinet decides via a telephone vote.
Minister Galit Distel Atbaryan quit her post five days into the war, after failing to release any meaningful explanatory content after Israel suffered the largest single-day loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust in a devastating attack by Hamas, and entered what is expected to be a protracted war with the terror group.
The cabinet decision says that the office’s unused budget, NIS 9.4 million for 2023 and NIS 14.4 million for 2024, will be redirected to the new Tekuma Authority, charged with restarting life in the battered western Negev.
The Tekuma Authority will also receive the defunct ministry’s 29 full-time employee allocation.
The decision will soon be brought to the Knesset, to finalize the ministry’s dissolution.
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From the Liveblog of
Sunday, October 22, 2023
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