Israeli lawmakers yesterday passed the country’s first state budget in three years in a victory for the ideologically disparate coalition that unseated former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in June.
Members of the Israeli Knesset approved a 609 billion shekel (US$195 billion) spending plan for this year and were to resume debate later in the day on a 573 billion shekel package for next year.
“Celebration day for the state of Israel,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrote on Twitter after the vote.
“After years of chaos, we have formed a government, we have conquered Delta [variant of SARS-CoV-2] and now, praise God, we have passed a budget for Israel,” he added.
The stakes could not have been higher for Bennett, a right-wing religious nationalist whose coalition of hawks, centrists, left-wingers and Islamists controls just 61 of the 120 seats in parliament.
His coalition had until Nov. 14 to get the budget approved to prevent parliament from being dissolved, which would have forced a fifth election in three years.
Israel had not passed a state budget during that time, a symptom of the unprecedented political gridlock that plagued the country from December 2018 until when Bennett’s government was sworn in.
It took until 5am for parliament members to complete the vote on this year’s budget with hundreds of spending measures requiring individual votes through the night.
However, there had been fears that the process might take days with now opposition leader Netanyahu playing the role of spoiler for the government that finally brought an end to his 12 consecutive years in power.
Commentators said that the ease and relative speed with which the budget passed showed that the coalition could hold together even with its deep ideological differences and its wafer-thin majority.
Netanyahu had addressed lawmakers during the debate, accusing Bennett of leading “a government of liars.”
“We must bring down this irresponsible government,” he told lawmakers.
Bennett retorted that the opposition under the former prime minister’s leadership was seeking only “chaos.”
“We want stability,” he said.
It was a budget deadlock that sank the last, short-lived coalition led by Netanyahu and his alternate prime minister, Benny Gantz.
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
North Korea blew up sections of roads in its own territory that are part of links once used to connect the southern part of the peninsula with the north, in a show of defiance after it accused Seoul of flying drones over Pyongyang. North Korea detonated bombs north of its eastern and western borders at around noon yesterday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. South Korea’s military later fired off warning shots within its border, said the JCS, which also confirmed there were no reports of damage in South Korea from the detonations. A video released by the South Korean
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who