Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Israel Boosts Defense Spending by 10%

Israel will increase its 2015 defense budget by 6 billion shekels ($1.6 billion) or more than 10 percent to 57 billion shekels, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.

The 50-day Gaza conflict which ended last month has underpinned hefty budget demands by the Defense Ministry.

With Israel also preparing for a possible confrontation with arch-foe Iran and trying to manage a weakening economy, the budget standoff had stirred speculation that Finance Minister Yair Lapid could quit the cabinet.

Lapid, a centrist partner in the conservative premier’s government, had balked at proposals for a bigger increase in defense funding, fearing knock-on tax hikes.

Netanyahu’s statement, issued after talks to head off a fiscal crisis in the governing coalition, said that in addition to increasing the defense budget by 6 billion shekels the government would pay out 7 to 8 billion shekels to cover the costs from the 50-day Gaza war.

“It was also decided that the deficit target for 2015 in the draft budget that will be brought before the cabinet will remain at 3.4 percent and will not include raising taxes,” the statement said.

The total outlay on the 2015 defense budget and Gaza war still falls about 8 percent short of the 70 billion shekels sought by the Defense Ministry.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.