Last week, an agreement was reached regarding a multi-year plan for the defense system and the IDF within the state budget. On the face of it, this was significant news for the IDF, which in recent years has operated without a multi-year budget and an approved work plan.
The defense budget is set at an average of NIS 68 billion per year for five years.
But the security system had to compromise.
The first area is the additional powers that will be granted to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in the civil administration and settlements in Judea and Samaria.
The second area is the issue of the pensions of the permanent employees, who will no longer receive a bridging pension from the state after the age of 60, and between the ages of 60 and 67 will receive an allowance from their pension fund.
compromise.
Ministry of Defense, photo: Gideon Markowitz
This is a welcome compromise between the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Finance after years of difficult exchanges between the parties on the issue.
But those who are affected by it are permanent servants in a relatively narrow age group, who on the one hand have already passed the second "organizational gate" in the IDF, that is, they have passed the age of 35, and tied their fate with the army, and on the other hand, they enlisted in the army at the end of 2003, so they In the accrual pension track, and not in the "obese" budgetary pension track.
Most of them are officers in the rank of lieutenant colonel between the ages of 35 and 38, who most likely will not leave the IDF before the age of 42. These are mainly generals or former generals, squadron commanders, and commanders of missile ships and submarines.
The officers that in times of war the State of Israel embraces and supports.
But now, they feel cheated and betrayed.
"We were sold," said many of them last weekend.
"The top of the IDF sits in its ivory tower with the fat budget pensions, and is not affected by this move.
"So they 'knocked us off', sold us lentil bait and violated what they had promised us for years. This could have been a completely legitimate move, if they had told us this in advance, when we enlisted permanently or when we reached the second organizational gate (at the age of 35). But in an instant That the injury is retroactive, contrary to every promise given to us throughout our service, is illegitimate."
The lines are missing
These officers report difficulty in keeping their subordinates in service.
At the beginning of the month, we published in "Israel Hayom" that in 2022, 613 officers at the rank of major and a larger number of officers at the rank of captain left the IDF voluntarily.
In the counter sector the situation is no less serious.
Those who are familiar with the conduct of the IDF know that the majors lead the execution of tactical tasks and write the work plans, but today their ranks are lacking. Hence, in some units and formations, officers with the rank of lieutenant, aged 22-23, are promoted to the rank of captain, and are filled with the positions of major , with conditions of Major.
The abandonment of the majors in the IDF,
In order to deal with the lack of manpower, as part of the agreement with the Treasury, the IDF insisted that an outline be drawn up to increase the salary of the young officers, in order to convince them to stay in the service. It is clear that in 2023, an officer who works around the clock and barely sees his family, cannot live on a salary of 6,000 or 7,000 shekels per month.
But even after the increase, the salaries will not be high in relation to the wages in the economy, and it is clear that those who remain in the army do not do so because of the money, but mainly due to the meaning and sense of mission.
The ones who stand in the way, and convince some of the officers to stay in the IDF, are the unit commanders, the lieutenant colonels who will be affected by the compromise in the budget.
From the end of 2003, those officers were explicitly told that their economic rights would not be compromised, and that they would receive a bridging pension like the servants who preceded them, only their salary would be slightly lower, because they would receive the pension from the age of 67 not from the state treasury, but from their personal pension fund, like any citizen .
Oral promise
No one knows at the age of 22 that he will remain in the IDF until retirement age, so the advantage for the servants was that, unlike their predecessors, they could leave the army at any stage of their military service, with a pension fund as in any normal workplace.
Many of them debated whether to stay in the army or retire, and some did retire (this is one of the reasons for the manpower problem), but the former commanders of those who did stay, managed to convince them to stay due to a sense of meaning, contribution to the country and personal development.
It is not clear on what basis the top of the IDF promised to all the servicemen who enlisted from the end of 2003 that they would receive a mediation pension from the state until the age of 67, when this was not officially regulated by law or regulations. But the fact is that this promise was given, even if verbally. And now, Those servants explain that their private pockets will be hit by about a million shekels per person, as a result of the compromise.
The Ministry of Finance proposed to increase the wages of young people significantly now, at the expense of pensions.
The IDF, for its part, agreed to start a pilot on the subject in two formations, but the army's top brass fear that this way it will be easier for officers to leave the army at earlier stages.
This may be the solution for the future, but the commanders on the cumulative pension track claim that this decree cannot be applied retroactively, and violate the promise given to the individual by the IDF as an employer. In this context, they point out that they are servants, not regular employees, and therefore their ability to protest is limited.
In recent days, the criticism has also reached the top of the IDF, which intends to go on an "information campaign", to which the same officers refer dismissively. The IDF also claims that the alternative was to damage the "increases of the Chief of Staff", the damage to which was comparable to the amount of money that the servants will lose starting from Gil 60. The IDF also states that the servicemen will receive a promise that if, in their pension calculations at age 60, a situation arises where their monthly allowance is lower than the allowance they received from the state until age 60, the state will make up the difference.
One way or another, another solution is needed for the pension issue of the permanent employees, which will not further undermine the confidence of the permanent employees in the system.
Against this background, it is possible that a possible solution should be the definition of an "intermediate generation" of servants aged 35 and over, who will receive what was promised to him from the day he joined the permanent position.
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