The heads of opposition parties warned on Monday that the 2021-2022 state budget that passed at Monday’s cabinet meeting would harm the weakest sectors of the population.
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu told his Likud faction that he had passed many state budgets and what the current government has passed is the worst he has ever seen. He said new taxes were allayed in order to pay for concessions to the Ra’am Party of Mansour Abbas that he called “the Abbas tax,” which rhymes in Hebrew: “hamas Abbas.”
“This bad government has lied to Israel’s citizens and keeps on lying,” Netanyahu said. “Instead of lowering taxes and making life easier for Israeli citizens, they are raising taxes and prices, harming the citizens of Israel.”
Later, in the Knesset plenum, Netanyahu said the government “flip-flopped on raising taxes better than a gold-medal winning gymnast.”
Abbas heckled Netanyahu for what he termed mudslinging against Arab society.
“Mr. Opposition Leader, you invited me four times to Balfour!” he said, referring to the residence of the prime minister.
Shas leader Arye Deri told his faction that the new state budget would harm poor people in the periphery, who he said drink sweet drinks on the Sabbath, and not rich people, who he said drink whiskey and white wine.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett responded to the criticism by saying that his government had accomplished in 36 hours what the governments of Netanyahu and Deri had not done in 36 months. He said that if Netanyahu would have had his way, instead of a budget being passed, Israel would be going to a fifth, sixth and seventh election.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz said there were plenty of new allocations that would help poor sectors, including Israeli Arabs.
“This is not an Abbas tax but a civil obligation,” Gantz told his Blue and White faction. “A man who chose not to pass a budget for personal political reasons and harmed the functioning of the ministries and the state in such a tough time should not criticize a government for bringing a good and responsible budget mere weeks after it was formed.”
Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid said he was proud that the budget passed unanimously in the cabinet and he would talk to the Joint List to get more support for it when it comes to a vote in the Knesset plenum, where it must pass into law by November 4 to prevent an automatic election.
“After the previous government failed to pass a budget because it could not function, resulting in there being three years with no budget passing, it is over,” Lapid said. “This is what a sane government does.”
Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai (Labor) praised the budget for devoting an unprecedented NIS 40 million for outreach to religious pluralism around the world.
Hadas Labrisch contributed to this report.