What did the Attorney General of the Ministry of Finance really hint at Smotrich? Precisely these days, when the Israeli economy is forced to deal with such a large-scale financial event, the level of chaos in the Ministry of Finance is breaking records every day. Treasury officials, who were not drafted under Order 8 and are currently working around the clock, describe the atmosphere in the corridors of the office as "harsh" and say there is an "atomic mess."
The two recent and interrelated events point to the severe rift that is widening between the finance minister and his ministry officials. The first event surprised the professional echelons of the Ministry of Finance when they were in a management meeting and received pushes about the establishment of a special war team to manage the war budget led by the ministry's Director General, Shlomi Heisler, with members of the team being Head of the Budget Division Yogev Gradus and Accountant General Yali Rotenberg. In the Ministry of Finance, it should be recalled, the senior officials (the Accountant General and the head of the Budget Division) are not subordinate to the Director General of the Ministry, but are parallel to him, and each has his own powers by law. The establishment of such a team effectively subordinates the head of the budget department and the accountant general to the director-general, who is not at all interested in quarreling with senior ministry officials.
Finance Minister Smotrich presents the aid plan, photo: Miri Shimonovitch/GPO
Yesterday, Finance Ministry Legal Advisor Assi Messing rejected Minister Smotrich's decision. According to Messing, this directive cannot be carried out because it is illegal, with the main reason being the granting of decision-making authority in the team to Finance Director General Shlomi Heisler – a position of confidence of the Minister of Finance.
The response of those close to the minister implies that the minister will continue to move forward with his decision, but that senior ministry officials will not want to do things contrary to the law, which is what Messing's opinion implies. In the meantime, the CEO also says in closed conversations that he has no intention of deciding on issues that are not his own. A mess at the height of the war, have we already said?
An interesting point worth noting that went under the media radar is that Messing referred at length in his opinion to the position of deputy CEO, and not for nothing. "The Deputy Director General of the Ministry will not be in charge of the Ministry's units and divisions and of employees who are part of the Ministry's managerial and professional hierarchy.
In addition, the Ministry's Deputy Director General will not deal with issues within the scope of work of officers characterized as "gatekeepers," including the Ministry's legal advisor, the Ministry's comptroller and the Internal Comptroller."
Messing didn't just dwell on it. Many may not know him, but there is a deputy director general in the Ministry of Finance – Israel Malachi. The deputy director general is a purely political appointment of Smotrich, and according to senior ministry officials, he is involved in everything that happens in the ministry, enters the offices, distributes orders, and is "involved up to his neck." It is reasonable to assume that the minister will beep at this as well," Finance Ministry sources said.
According to the sources we spoke with, Malachi is there to deal mainly with the coalition agreements. And this is Messing's thick allusion to Smotrich: a political takeover of the Finance Ministry must be prevented, and if you thought about using Israel Malachi as well as a team to manage the war budget (which according to reports is already estimated at NIS 200 billion), think again. Only the minister did not have time to read 16 pages of Messing's insinuations.
In the meantime, despite the minister's declaration to divert coalition funds to the fighting, they were flowing until the attorney general decided last night to turn off the tap, as the government itself was asked to do. The problem is that the government is already calculating the course the day after the war, and at the same time taking care of its political survival as well as the fighting, and the funds for haredi educational institutions are needed by haredi politicians in order to present any achievement to the electorate.
Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara (archive), photo: Yehuda Ben Yattach
The second event is the expansion of the framework for providing full compensation from 20 kilometers from the Gaza border to up to 40 kilometers, which the finance minister announced this week completely unexpectedly. Although it was made clear to the minister that the state did not have the reasonable economic ability to meet the amount of compensation of this magnitude, and from the point of view of the entire professional echelon in the Ministry of Finance it was clear that up to 20 kilometers were being walked, the minister's representative announced at one of the Finance Committee meetings that the minister had decided otherwise.
The decision was made, of course, without professional consultation with the professionals in the Ministry of Finance. The minister simply committed himself (apparently in order to get ahead of Barkat, who was about to propose a similar solution) and thereby indoctrinated his officials. And what will the mayors of other cities, such as Rishon LeZion or Tel Aviv, say, which were shooting ranges no less than Be'er Sheva? It's no longer interesting.
So what will happen next? Israel Hayom has learned that those officials who were surprised by the minister are going to help him get off the tree and are currently working on a creative solution – so that the provision of aid to Be'er Sheva and Ashdod will only be for October, and this will be justified by the fact that the Home Front Command's directives at the beginning of the war were more restrictive in Beersheba than in the center of the country.
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