The Minister of Finance arrived at the Finance Committee meeting - a riot broke out at the site (Knesset Spokesperson's Office)
The Knesset plenum is expected to begin tomorrow (Monday) with a marathon of discussions and votes towards final approval of the state budget for 2023 and 2024 and the Arrangements Law. The plenary sessions will begin a week before the coalition's final deadline for approving the budget, and against the backdrop of threats by some Knesset members to vote against it, as part of demands for an additional budget for ultra-Orthodox education, the Ministry of the Negev and Galilee, and the Jewish National Identity Authority.
Meanwhile, these crises vis-à-vis Agudat Israel, Otzma Yehudit and MK Avi Maoz have not yet been resolved, but the coalition stresses that the talks will continue until the final vote. According to the predetermined schedule, the plenary session will open at 9:00 A.M., when the chairs of the Knesset committees will present the budget and the sections of the Arrangements Law. At the end of their speeches, a discussion will begin that will last more than a day, until Tuesday at 20:30, during which opposition MKs or ministers, deputy ministers and Knesset members from the coalition will speak.
The Prime Minister will speak first, followed by the Minister of Finance. The Knesset plenum (Photo: TPS, Yoav Dudkevitch)
On Tuesday evening, just before voting begins, the prime minister, finance minister, opposition leader and finance committee chairman will each speak for 10 minutes. The marathon voting will begin immediately after that and is expected to continue until Wednesday evening, unless the opposition lifts some of its reservations and brings forward the final vote on approving the budget to noon or morning. The state budget stands at NIS 484 billion for 2023 and NIS 514 billion for 2024.
That's hundreds of votes in the plenum, late at night and early in the morning. In the past, there have been cases of Knesset members confused in voting, which created chaos for a coalition that had to amend the votes or move on with defeat against the opposition. This time, the coalition enjoys a majority of eight Knesset members against the opposition, assuming that all Knesset members vote in favor of the budget and do not abstain or oppose.
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Demands that the budget of his ministry be compared to that of the Ministry of National Missions. Yitzhak Wasserlauf (Photo: official website, Assi Efrati GPO)
The coalition has several budgetary demands that have not yet been resolved. Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf of Otzma Yehudit demands that the sum of coalition funds received by the Ministry of the Negev, Galilee and National Initiatives that he heads, which currently stands at NIS 450 million, be compared to that of Minister Orit Strock's Ministry of National Missions, which is estimated at NIS 1.3 billion.
The person who led the struggle against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the chairman of Wasserlauf's party, Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The latter demanded a solution from Netanyahu, but so far has been blocked by opposition on the grounds that the budget frameworks are not being opened and that "there is not one more unnecessary shekel." The Agudat Israel faction is also threatening to vote against the budget and that one of its ministers will resign from the government and return to the Knesset. The party is demanding that the commitment in the coalition agreements for the education budgets be fulfilled, so that from the beginning of 2023, an additional NIS 600 million. Over the past two days, talks have been held around these demands, but so far there has been no solution.
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Tags
- State budget
- Otzma Yehudit
- Knesset plenum
- Arrangements Law