The Knesset began what is set to be a 33-hour debate on the 2021 and 2022 state budgets on Tuesday morning.
On Wednesday night, the MKs will begin voting on some 600 items relating to the 2021 state budget, its accompanying economic arrangements bill and then the 2022 state budget.
Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly violated coalition agreements and refused to pass a budget, leaving Israel without a state budget for over three years.
The order was set because the 2021 budget must be passed to prevent the government from falling. The voting is set to end by Friday morning.
Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman told the plenum that Israel waited three and a half years to pass a budget, and he is glad it is finally happening.
He said it was symbolic that the budget debate was happening on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which declared British support for a Jewish homeland in mandatory Palestine under its control.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett with Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman during a vote on the state budget in the Knesset last month. (credit: OLIVIER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)
Liberman posed with members of his Yisrael Beytenu faction in the morning to celebrate the moment.
Knesset Interior Committee chairman Waleed Taha (Ra’am – United Arab List) told the plenum that it is the first time the Israeli Arab sector is truly included in a state budget.
Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas confirmed a report that he insisted on an allocation of NIS 100 million for the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) sector, due to a long-standing alliance between religiously observant Jews and Muslims in the Knesset.
In an interview with KAN Radio, Abbas revealed that he negotiated with opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu on joining a Likud-led government. He said the Likud had urged him to persuade the Religious Zionist Party to enter a coalition with him.
The Likud has denied Abbas’s charges.
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