Israel cabinet approves 2025 wartime budget

Israel's cabinet on Friday approved a 2025 national budget, a wartime financial package that far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said supported the country's ongoing wars and encouraged economic growth.

For more than a year, Israel has been locked in a war with Hamas in Gaza, and since September it has been fighting the Lebanese group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"The main objective of the 2025 budget is to maintain the security of the state and achieve victory on all fronts, while safeguarding the resilience of the Israeli economy," Smotrich said.

The budget, totalling about 607.4 billion shekels ($162 billion), includes a nine billion shekel package to support reserve soldiers.

It will now move to the Knesset, or parliament, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition holds a majority, making approval likely.

Netanyahu welcomed the cabinet's approval of the budget, saying Smotrich had put together "an important, difficult but necessary budget in a year of war."

Additional allocations would be made for the defence ministry, as the military fights the two wars, as well as Iran and the groups it backs.

"This budget will help and support the needs of the war so that it will lead to a victory that will allow the strong Israeli economy to grow and prosper for many years," Smotrich said.

The budget projects a fiscal deficit of about 4.3%.

But former prime minister and key opposition leader Yair Lapid criticised the budget, saying it would "increase the expenditure of every family in Israel by 20,000 shekels per year".