Minister of Defense Avigdor Liberman's demand for a defense budget supplement of NIS 4 billion or more has not yet been discussed by the professional staff in the Ministries of Finance and Defense. The demand is a political move by Liberman, which has so far been presented to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon.
The Ministry of Finance has been very cautious about expressing a stand on the demands for a defense budget supplement, while calling it a political measure. The Ministry of Finance's professional staff, however, believes that the Kahlon-Ya'alon agreement on defense spending between the minister of finance and the previous defense minister Moshe Ya'alon will collapse if the Ministry of Defense is given a multi-billion shekel budget supplement. For that reason, the Ministry of Finance is truly concerned about the fate of the multi-year agreement, although the Ministry of Defense is meanwhile striving to comply with the commitments made in it. The Ministry of Defense and the IDF feel somewhat uneasy about Liberman's actions only two years after they promised that they would not make any new budget demands until 2020, and would not resume their free-for-all with the Ministry of Finance. Peace between the Ministry of Finance budget department and the IDF chief of staff's financial advisor has so far been kept, as has the trust between the two systems painstakingly built by Kahlon and IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, but it is feared that this peace will soon become a tense truce - like the one prevailing on the Golan Heights border with Syria.
Asked about the origin of the minister of defense's demand for a budget supplement, political sources said that Liberman appeared tense and alarmed. It is no secret that Liberman has been demanding a defense budget increase for several weeks, following recent developments in Syria, headed by the Iranian coalition's victory. Where the Syrian front is concerned, Liberman quickly assumed the role of a prophet of doom. He was the first person in Israel to recognize that Assad had won the war, and also said so in interviews during the Sukkot holiday.
Liberman's basically pessimistic attitude dovetails with the prime minister's well-known and equal pessimism. Together with the tough defense posture that the two men have been assuming, they are both hurrying to the budget spigot every time the intelligence picture becomes gloomier. Liberman, it must be said, had expressed his dissatisfaction with parts of the Kahlon-Ya'alon agreement long before the Syrian-Iranian victory took shape. Shortly after become minister of defense, he already objected to the shortening of compulsory service, among other things, and demanded that the defense budget increase should be linked to the increase in GDP, which would be disastrous for the state budget.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on October 19, 2017
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2017