JERUSALEM — Israel approved the country’s first national budget in more than three years early Thursday, a milestone in the new government’s efforts to stabilize its grip on power and a setback to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to topple the coalition that ousted him four months ago.
Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight
The predawn action — following three days of debate, an overnight voting marathon and a four-hour filibuster — gives Israel its first fiscal framework since 2018, raising hopes that the country may finally be emerging from an unprecedented period of political tumult and stalemate.
Exhausted lawmakers whooped and hugged following the final passage of the $195？billion funding plan by a two-vote margin at 5:30 a.m.
Story continues below advertisement
“A holiday for the State of Israel,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett exalted in a tweet.
In test for Israel’s new government, rockets from Lebanon fired into northern Israel
Bennett’s fractious coalition of rival parties had faced a deadline of Nov. 14 to approve a 2021 budget or be automatically dissolved. Recent infighting among coalition members, who include right-wing, centrist, liberal and Arab lawmakers, had prompted speculation that Israel’s governing crisis would continue with the fifth national election since 2019.
Advertisement
Instead, Bennett hailed a return to normality.
“After years of chaos, we formed a government. We overcame [the delta coronavirus variant]. And now, God willing, we have brought a budget to Israel,” he wrote.
After lawmakers adjourned for a few hours of sleep, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, was scheduled to take up a 2022 budget later Thursday. That document, too, has cleared preliminary hurdles and is expected to be formally adopted in the coming days, well before the deadline of March of next year.
Story continues below advertisement
Analysts had warned that Israeli governance was going further adrift with each passing month without a budget. Department funding has been largely frozen and long-range planning at a standstill even as the country faced the pandemic, an economic downturn and shifting military challenges around the region. On the eve of the vote, Israel’s central bank urged lawmakers to act now, emphasizing the “tremendous economic importance” of the moment.
Advertisement
But for the right-wing parties that lost power in the summer, derailing the budget was their best chance to fulfill Netanyahu’s pledge to “be back soon.” The long-serving prime minister was criticized for allowing the budget process to falter for years as he clung to office. Late last year, he blocked action on the budget, allowing him to dissolve a power-sharing agreement with Defense Minister Benny Gantz.
Now the leader of the formal opposition after failing to win a majority in March elections, Netanyahu has worked for weeks to derail the new government’s budget efforts. In tweets, rallies and interviews, he has belittled Bennett — his onetime protege — and painted the spending measures as a giveaway to the rich and a threat to Israel’s Jewish majority.
Story continues below advertisement
He highlighted the role of the coalition’s sole party representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, the United Arab List, as a risk to Israel’s security, even though Netanyahu himself had previously courted the party’s leader as a potential partner.
Advertisement
Netanyahu called the budget’s $9？billion boost in infrastructure spending for Israel’s Arab communities an “Abbas tax” on ordinary Israelis, referring to the party’s leader, Mansour Abbas. His allies went so far as to describe the party as the political wing of Hamas, the Islamist militant group that governs the Gaza Strip.
The budget also raises taxes that will affect Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, key members of Netanyahu’s power bloc who depend on public spending to help support lives that prioritize religious study over employment. Leaders of ultra-Orthodox parties accused the government of trying to “destroy Judaism.”
Story continues below advertisement
Netanyahu and members of his Likud party in recent weeks ramped up their efforts to woo conservative coalition members over to their camp, reportedly offering them plum roles in the new right-wing government that could arise if the budget failed and new elections were called. With the coalition’s razor-thin majority, it would only take one defector to create a tie and stymie the budget process.
Advertisement
Netanyahu continued the efforts until the last moment, according to reports from the chamber, buttonholing individual members overnight as the voting continued on more than 700 individual provisions. (At one point, Netanyahu accidentally cast a vote in favor of the budget.)
In the end, all 61 members of the coalition voted to approve the budget.
Story continues below advertisement
Ultimately, Netanyahu’s bellicose rhetoric may have reminded coalition lawmakers who otherwise agree on little why they joined forces in the first place: to end the rule of a leader they view as divisive and destructive.
“The most effective thing he could have done to get this budget passed is what he did: stood at the podium and spewed vitriol,” said Jason Pearlman, a political consultant.
Netanyahu’s failure to thwart the effort ends his best chance to scuttle the coalition any time soon.
Advertisement
“Now it’s a new ballgame,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “He won’t be able to keep up the energy he was able to sustain [for the approaching budget deadline].”
Story continues below advertisement
Political observers will be watching to see if Netanyahu, who is currently on trial on corruption charges, settles into the role of opposition leader, or steps aside to focus on his defense — and perhaps fund it on the high-dollar lecture circuit.
But the 72-year-old remains wildly popular with his party’s rank-and-file, and the choice will seemingly be his alone.
“As long as he wants to control Likud, he can continue,” Plesner said.
An Islamist political party may hold the key to forming Israel’s next government
After more than a decade, Israelis wake up to a government without Netanyahu
Israel’s disparate new coalition splits over law separating Palestinian families in first big test