Over the opposition’s vocal objections, the coalition shepherded the 2025 budget bill through the final reading needed for it to become law on Tuesday afternoon, removing a major threat to the stability of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Lawmakers voted 66-52 in favor of the controversial NIS 755 billion ($205 billion) spending bill, which Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich touted as containing “everything we need to win on the front and on the home front.”

“We promoted measures that will support growth and allow the Israeli economy to maintain its strength and continue to prosper. This is a war budget and, God willing, it will also be the victory budget,” the far-right politician declared.

The legislation’s final reading followed an all-night debate over thousands of reservations filed by the opposition, which were all defeated in a series of votes on Tuesday afternoon.

The government had until March 31 to pass the budget. Otherwise, general elections would automatically have been called.

The total budget — the largest in Israeli history — will be NIS 756 billion ($203.5 billion), or NIS 620 billion excluding debt servicing, for a 21 percent rise in spending over 2024.

The Defense Ministry’s budget alone will be a record NIS 110 billion ($29 billion) out of a total defense budget of NIS​ 136 billion ($36.9 billion), while the deficit is set at 4.9% of gross domestic product.

Israel spent $31 billion on its military conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon in 2024, and the government vowed to sharply boost defense spending going forward.

Recounting the stories of several reservists and displaced families who received tens of thousands of shekels in state funds to help them through a difficult period, Smotrich said that the government “arrived at this budget out of a great sense of mission and responsibility” and “with the backing of Israeli society.”

Opposition leader Yair Lapid, by contrast, termed it “the greatest robbery in the history of the country.”

The budget contains billions of shekels in additional funding for the defense establishment, grants for IDF reservists and their families, subsidies for businesses harmed by the war, and “funding for summer camps and days off for families,” Smotrich said.

The second- and third-most-funded ministries are, respectively, the Education Ministry, which is slated to receive just over NIS 92 billion ($25 billion), and the Health Ministry, which will get NIS 59 billion ($16 billion).

Opposition lawmakers have harshly criticized the government for cutting around NIS 3 billion ($814 million) across various ministries — affecting the salaries of public sector workers such as teachers and social workers while not touching funds for ultra-Orthodox educational institutions and........

© The Times of Israel