Netanyahu decides on more moderate defense cuts

Finance Minister Yair Lapid\’s 2013-2014 budget proposed to cut NIS 4 billion from the defense budget, but after meeting all throughout the day and well into the night on Sunday, the security cabinet decided to only cut NIS 3 billion from the defense budget.

"Today I will ask the cabinet and government to approve a moderated cut of approximately NIS 1 billion, that will not come at the public\’s expense," Netanyahu said at the opening of Monday\’s cabinet meeting.

Sources familiar with the negotiations said the approximate NIS 1 billion will be taken from Treasury reserves.

Opposition leader Shelly Yacimovich (Labor) called it strange that the government suddenly found a billion shekels reserved in order to prevent defense budget cuts, while they couldn\’t be found to prevent increasing VAT or cuts in the Education or Welfare Ministries.

"The Finance Minister must immediately reveal what other \’reserves\’ the government has and explain his order of priorities in how he uses them," Yacimovich said.

According to the Labor leader, "experience shows that time and again, in practicality, the Defense Ministry gets its budget back – not only what is cut, but more than that, without any in-depth discussion."

"Here too, any pretense of new politics melted away, after Lapid led his voters astray," she stated.

The full cabinet is expected to vote later Monday on the budget proposal, after the security cabinet reconvenes at noon to conclude negotiations on the defense budget.

Though most ministers are expected to vote in favor of the budget, Environmental Protection Minister Amir Peretz hasprotested its effects on the poor and Tourism Minister Uzi Landau said he would vote against it over plans to cancel theVAT exemption for foreign tourists.

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon said the ultimate decision on the defense budget rested with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and said the main question was over how many years the cuts would be spread out. He worried, however, about financial repercussions for workers in the defense industry.

“I am concerned that defense industry workers will be sacrificed, because it is much easier to cut from acquisitions than from the IDF itself,” Danon told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday night. “The defense [representative] offices abroad cost a small amount. That is not where the big cuts will come from.”

Even if it passes on Monday, Danon said, Lapid’s budget will go through many changes before it is given final approval in the Knesset.

Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett said that despite the ongoing threats to Israel, the Defense Ministry needed to share in the fiscal cuts.

“Nobody thinks there isn’t fat to cut from the Defense Ministry,” Bennett said at a Knesset Finance Committee Meeting in the morning. “I know the threats against Israel are real threats, but for 65 years Israel has been under threat – first it was [Egyptian president Gamal Abdel] Nasser, then Saddam Hussein, then [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah,” he said.

Lapid’s predecessor at the Treasury, International Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, echoed Bennett’s sentiment.

“Not only is there room to make cuts from the security budget, but in fact there’s no choice,” Steinitz said in an Army Radio interview. “Syria, Israel’s strongest traditional military rival in the Middle East, is going through a very difficult time, and is less of a threat than in the past.”

Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Subcommittee for Human Resources and Training chairman Omer Bar-Lev (Labor) called for Lapid to cut the defense budget.

“Our power is the man in the tank and not just the tank. Therefore, I suggest that the finance minister, prime minister and defense minister help the man in the tank win and cut the defense budget,” Bar-Lev said on Sunday. “Not in a reckless and drastic way, and without harming the IDF’s ‘long arm,’ which is important in facing the Iranian threat, but other things, and not just the fat, can be cut.”

He said a strong society was just as important as national security and the home front’s strength was worth an additional armored division.

“A strong society is one with equal education for all, good health services in the periphery as in the Center, and where citizens can enjoy reasonable housing without needing to invest most of their income in it for most of their lives,” Bar-Lev said.

MK Eitan Cabel (Labor), also on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense subcommittee, said cuts to the defense budget were one of the few things for which Lapid could be congratulated.

“Now, the prime minister comes and says he’ll back Lapid in all of his actions against the middle class and weaker populations, but will reexamine the defense budget cuts,” Cabel wrote on his Facebook profile.

According to the lawmaker, canceling the defense cuts would “add to the great harm to all of us.” He called on Netanyahu to allow the cuts to stand.

Yesh Atid faction chairman Ofer Shelah pointed out on Friday that if the NIS 4b. defense budget reduction was not authorized, “the missing money will have to come from somewhere else,” and the Finance Ministry will have to cut “where it can, not where it needs to be done.”

Shelah wrote on Facebook, however, that if the Defense Ministry made cuts in manpower, pensions and projects that did not fit with real security needs, then the Finance Ministry would be able to put money back in places that were cut by 2015.

“In my opinion, this is the fair way to look at the budget,” he wrote, “not through populist yelling that the Finance Ministry can’t harm citizens, but by trying to decrease the harm to some areas at the expense of others, and taking the necessary steps so the market and citizens will be in a better situation.”