JERUSALEM: The Israeli government’s budget headed for parliamentary approval Wednesday, a key test that will largely determine whether Prime Minister Nafatali Bennett’s ideologically disparate eight-party coalition remains in power.
Israel has not passed a state budget in three years, a symptom of the unprecedented political gridlock that plagued the country from December 2018 until June when the Bennett government was sworn in.
His coalition has until November 14 to get the budget approved or Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, will be dissolved, forcing new elections.
“We are at the finish line and before us are exhausting days and long nights in the Knesset, but the budget will pass,” Bennett said ahead of a cabinet meeting Thursday.
The government has proposed a 609-billion shekel ($194-billion) spending plan for 2021 and 573 billion shekels for next year.
Bennett’s government secured preliminary approval for a spending package in September, a technical step that allowed Knesset committees to scrutinize the proposals.
The committees were due to wrap up their reviews on Wednesday evening, when a general parliamentary debate on the package could commence.
The formal voting process may not begin until Thursday or later and the approval process could take several days.
Bennett told lawmakers that “passing the budget should be treated as the biggest, only challenge in the next few days.
“This is the mission, and we need to meet it.”
Bennett’s government — which includes right-wingers, centrists, doves and Islamists — controls just 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.
It was a budget deadlock that sank the last, short-lived coalition led by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his alternate premier Benny Gantz.
Gantz accused Netanyahu of deliberately blocking the budget’s passage to force an election, which the premier hoped would secure him and his right-wing allies an outright Knesset majority.
But Netanyahu came up short in the March vote for the fourth time in two years, paving the way for Bennett and Yair Lapid, now the foreign minister, to forge a coalition.
There have been widespread reports that Netanyahu, now the opposition leader, has been encouraging hawks within the government to vote against the budget, in hopes of triggering its collapse.
“We are pulling the country toward stability and there are those who are pulling it toward chaos, to more elections,” Bennett said Thursday.
On Tuesday night, hundreds of right-wing protesters gathered in Tel Aviv to denounce the “corrupt” budget, charging that it harms ultra-Orthodox Jews and lavishes spending on the Arab community.
But a lawmaker in Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, David Bitan, told army radio he expected the budget to be approved.
The government has approved nearly $10 billion in funding over five years to improve socio-economic conditions for Israel’s Arab minority, while hiking some taxes that the ultra-Orthodox argue will affect them the most.
Israel government’s fate hangs on key budget vote
https://arab.news/m6622
Israel government’s fate hangs on key budget vote
- Israel has not passed a state budget in three years
- The government has proposed a 609-billion shekel ($194-billion) spending plan for 2021 and 573 billion shekels ($184-billion) for next year
Trump heads to UAE as it hopes to advance AI ambitions
- A string of business agreements has been inked during Trump’s four-day swing through the Gulf region
DOHA: US President Donald Trump was due to end a brief trip to Qatar with a speech to US troops on Thursday then fly to the United Arab Emirates, where leaders hope for US help to make the wealthy Gulf nation a global leader in artificial intelligence.
The US has a preliminary agreement with the UAE to allow it to import 500,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips a year, starting this year, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
The deal would boost the country’s construction of data centers vital to developing artificial intelligence models.
A string of business agreements has been inked during Trump’s four-day swing through the Gulf region, including a deal for Qatar Airways to purchase up to 210 Boeing widebody jets, a $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the US and $142 billion in US arms sales to the Kingdom.
The trip has also brought a flurry of diplomacy. Trump made a surprise announcement on Tuesday that the US will remove longstanding sanctions on Syria and subsequently met with Syrian interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
On Thursday, Trump will address US troops at the Al Udeid Air Base, which is in the desert southwest of Doha and hosts the largest US military facility in the Middle East. He then flies to Abu Dhabi to meet with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and other leaders.
AI is likely to be a focus for the final leg of Trump’s trip.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration had imposed strict oversight of exports of US AI chips to the Middle East and other regions. Among the Biden administration’s fears were that the prized semiconductors would be diverted to China and buttress Beijing’s military strength.
Trump has made improving ties with some Gulf countries a key goal of his administration. If all the proposed chip deals in Gulf states, and the UAE in particular, come together, the region would become a third power center in global AI competition after the United States and China.
Trump had dangled the possibility of making a side trip to Turkiye to join Russia-Ukraine talks before returning to Washington, but a US official said on Wednesday that the president would not make that stop.
Two Israelis, one pregnant, wounded in occupied West Bank: authorities
- Bruchin is an Israeli settlement built on West Bank land without the Israeli authorities’ approval which was retroactively legalized by the Israeli government
JERUSALEM: Two Israeli civilians including a pregnant woman were wounded on Wednesday when shots were fired at their vehicle in the occupied West Bank, according to Israeli authorities.
An Israeli army statement said “a terrorist opened fire on an Israeli vehicle” near Bruchin, an Israeli settlement in the center of the Palestinian territory considered illegal under international law.
“Two Israeli civilians were wounded” in the attack and are being treated, the statement added.
The Beilinson hospital said a woman taken there was pregnant.
“Medical teams are currently fighting in the traumatology ward to save the life of the woman and that of her fetus,” a hospital spokesperson said.
Emergency services had earlier said the woman driver, who was aged about 30, was “in a critical state with gunshot wounds.”
A male passenger around the age of 40 was “in a grave state,” emergency services added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “deeply shocked by the horrific terrorist attack against a woman in advanced pregnancy and her husband.”
“This abhorrent incident precisely reflects the difference between us, who desire and bring life, and the reprehensible terrorists, whose goal is to kill us and destroy life,” he said in the statement released by his office.
Since the beginning of the Gaza war, sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the West Bank has seen an upsurge in violence.
Bruchin is an Israeli settlement built on West Bank land without the Israeli authorities’ approval which was retroactively legalized by the Israeli government.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory are considered illegal under international law.
US-backed aid group to start work in Gaza by end of May
- The newly created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation will instead distribute aid in Gaza from so-called secure distribution sites
UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON: A US-backed humanitarian organization said on Wednesday that it would launch operations in Gaza by the end of May and has asked Israel to allow aid to start flowing into the enclave now under existing procedures until it is set up.
No humanitarian aid has been delivered to Gaza since March 2, and a global hunger monitor has warned that half a million people face starvation, a quarter of the enclave’s population. Since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, aid deliveries have been handled by international aid groups and UN organizations.
The newly created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation will instead distribute aid in Gaza from so-called secure distribution sites, but said Israel’s current plan to only allow a few such sites in southern Gaza needed to be scaled up to include the north.
“GHF emphasizes that a successful humanitarian response must eventually include the entire civilian population in Gaza,” the foundation’s executive director, Jake Wood, wrote in a letter to the Israeli government.
“GHF respectfully requests that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) identify and deconflict sufficient locations in northern Gaza capable of hosting GHF operated secure distribution sites that can be made operational within thirty days,” he wrote.
He asked Israel to facilitate the flow of enough aid “using existing modalities” until GHF’s distribution infrastructure is fully operational, saying this is essential to “alleviate the ongoing humanitarian pressure, as well as decrease the pressure on the distribution sites during our first days of operation.”
US security firm UG Solutions and US-based Safe Reach Solutions, which does logistics and planning, would be involved in the foundation’s operations, said a source familiar with the plans, speaking on condition of anonymity.
UN, AID GROUPS CONCERNED
Following the GHF announcement, the International Committee of the Red Cross said concerns about aid distribution remained.
“Humanitarian aid should not be politicized nor militarized. The level of need among civilians in Gaza right now is overwhelming, and aid needs to be allowed to enter immediately and without impediment,” said ICRC spokesperson Steve Dorsey.
Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid, which the Palestinian militant group denies, and is blocking humanitarian deliveries until Hamas releases all remaining hostages.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said earlier on Wednesday that Israel endorsed what he called “the American humanitarian plan.” Israel’s mission to the UN did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wood’s letter.
Iran to hold nuclear talks with Europeans this week
- Friday’s meeting will follow the latest round of Oman-mediated Iran-US talks on Sunday, which Tehran described as ‘difficult but useful’
TEHRAN: Iran will hold a fresh round of nuclear talks with European powers in Turkiye later this week, its Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
The talks with Britain, France and Germany would be held in Istanbul on Friday, ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said, quoted by state news agency IRNA.
French diplomatic sources gave the same information, but there was still no word from Berlin or London on the meeting which was originally slated for earlier this month but postponed.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the talks would be held “at the level of deputy foreign ministers.”
The European nations — known as the E3 — were among the world powers that negotiated the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal along with China, Russia and the United States.
Donald Trump, in his first term as president, effectively torpedoed the accord in 2018 by unilaterally withdrawing the US.
Since returning to office in January, Trump has revived his “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran, backing nuclear diplomacy but warning of military action if it fails.
Iran has held several discreet meetings on the nuclear agenda with the E3 since late last year — most recently in February in Geneva — ahead of indirect negotiations with Washington that began on April 12.
“While we continue the dialogue with the United States, we are also ready to talk with the Europeans,” Araghchi said.
“Unfortunately, the Europeans themselves have become somewhat isolated in these negotiations with their own policies,” he added, without elaborating.
“We do not want such a situation and that’s why we have continued our negotiations” with them, he said.
Friday’s meeting will follow the latest round of Oman-mediated Iran-US talks on Sunday, which Tehran described as “difficult but useful” while a US official said Washington was “encouraged.”
Iran and the United States have so far held four rounds of talks, the highest-level contact in years between the long-time foes, since the US abandoned the 2015 nuclear accord.
Western countries, including the United States, have long accused Iran of seeking to acquire atomic weapons, while Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
European governments are currently weighing whether to trigger the “snapback” mechanism under the 2015 deal, which would reinstate UN sanctions in response to Iranian non-compliance — an option that expires in October.
On Tuesday, Trump criticized Iran’s leadership, regional role, alleged mismanagement, and threatened to slash its oil exports if nuclear talks fail.
“Iran’s leaders have focused on stealing their people’s wealth to fund terror and bloodshed abroad,” said Trump at a Saudi investment forum.
He reiterated his willingness to “make a deal with Iran” but threatened to impose “massive maximum pressure,” including driving Iranian oil exports to zero if talks failed.
Araghchi dismissed the remarks as a “very deceptive view” of Iran and blamed US sanctions, pressure and both military and non-military threats for hindering the country’s progress.
Jordanian King discusses Gaza with UK national security adviser
- King Abdullah emphasized the urgent need to reinstate the ceasefire in Gaza
- He commended the UK’s role in promoting stability in the region
LONDON: King Abdullah II of Jordan met UK National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell at Al-Husseiniya Palace to discuss regional developments on Wednesday.
King Abdullah highlighted the significance of the relationship between Amman and London and the cooperation in various sectors, including defense, during the meeting that Crown Prince Hussein also attended.
He emphasized the urgent need to reinstate the ceasefire in Gaza, resume the flow of humanitarian aid and rebuild the Palestinian coastal enclave without displacing its residents, the Petra news agency reported.
They discussed the current events in the occupied West Bank and new developments in Syria. King Abdullah commended the UK’s role in promoting stability in the region, Petra added.
The meeting was attended by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, the director of the King’s office, Alaa Batayneh, Ambassador to the UK Manar Dabbas, Director of the General Intelligence Department Maj. Gen. Ahmad Husni, and British Ambassador to Jordan Philip Hall.
