During a meeting tomorrow, the Israeli government is expected to hold deliberations on changes to the state budget for the current year 2023, claiming that the changes come in the wake of the needs of the war on Gaza.

Although officials in the Ministry of Finance are demanding that the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, not include large sums of money for the coalition parties, Smotrich insists on including them, with the support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Haredi parties, according to what Channel 12 reported today, Sunday.

Smotrich seeks to increase the budget of the Ministry of Settlement and National Missions by an amount of more than 375 million shekels, including a budget allocated to encourage the migration of extremist Israelis to “mixed cities,” such as Lod, Ramle, and Acre.

Smotrich's plan for changes in the current year's budget stipulates an increase of hundreds of millions of shekels in the Ministry of Education's budget, with the aim of "strengthening Jewish identity and culture."

The budget changes plan also allocates 200 million shekels to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank, 35 million shekels to establish preparatory colleges for military service in the settlements and establish random settlement outposts, and budgets to prevent Palestinian construction in Area C.

This comes despite the demands of economic experts on the government to reduce the amount of “coalition funds” as much as possible, including experts from the Bank of Israel.

According to the Director of the Research Department at the Bank of Israel, Dr. Adi Bender commented on Smotrich's plan by saying, "The security situation requires great responsibility in managing the government's budget policy in order to gain the confidence of the markets, which monitor economic developments, including the budget."

Therefore, a balance must be struck between allocating large and necessary budgets to confront the security situation and the need to demonstrate financial responsibility.

The important way to ensure this balance is a necessary change in the scale of preferences in the budget, and by refraining from planning unnecessary spending.”