Israeli Cabinet Approves $2.8 Billion Budget for Potential Strike against Iran

The Israeli army conducted exercises in the Golan Heights on Feb. 15 (AFP)
The Israeli army conducted exercises in the Golan Heights on Feb. 15 (AFP)
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Israeli Cabinet Approves $2.8 Billion Budget for Potential Strike against Iran

The Israeli army conducted exercises in the Golan Heights on Feb. 15 (AFP)
The Israeli army conducted exercises in the Golan Heights on Feb. 15 (AFP)

The Israeli government approved a multiyear draft general budget, to include an increase by around USD2.8 billion for a potential strike against Iran, following 36 hours of deliberations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted of approving the budget, saying that an agreement was reached on a multi-year plan for the security services and the army.

He pointed to the importance of the agreement, which he said was made unanimously with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, “with a little help on my part.”

Netanyahu explained that the budget would bring about a change in the course of military service, and in rewarding soldiers for service. He said that it would provide the appropriate financial reward for soldiers and officers, while shortening the period of service in order to reduce the period of engagement in the labor market, which he said constituted a tremendous change for Israel’s security and for the Israeli economy.

The budget approval comes two days after Ted Colbert, president and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, announced in Tel Aviv that Israel had requested the purchase of 50 F-15EX aircraft, and the modernization of all F-15 fighters.

Israel is planning to ask the US to sell its new 5,000 pound GBU-72 bomb to the Israeli army. The bomb weighs 5,000 pounds and can be used to strike underground Iranian nuclear sites.

The Israeli army had obtained USD1.5 billion in the 2021 budget to purchase weapons for the possible war with Iran. This year, it requested an additional USD3 billion, of which it obtained USD2.8 billion.



ICC Opens Inquiry into Hungary for Failing to Arrest Netanyahu

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
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ICC Opens Inquiry into Hungary for Failing to Arrest Netanyahu

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)

Judges at the International Criminal Court want Hungary to explain why it failed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited Budapest earlier this month.

In a filing released late Wednesday, The Hague-based court initiated non-compliance proceedings against Hungary after the country gave Netanyahu a red carpet welcome despite an ICC arrest warrant for crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.

During the visit, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced his country would quit the court, claiming on state radio that the ICC was “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”

The Hungarian leader, regarded by critics as an autocrat and the EU’s most intransigent spoiler in the bloc’s decision-making, defended his decision to not arrest Netanyahu.

“We signed an international treaty, but we never took all the steps that would otherwise have made it enforceable in Hungary,” Orbán said at the time, referring to the fact that Hungary’s parliament never promulgated the court’s statute into Hungarian law.

Judges at the ICC have previously dismissed similar arguments.

The ICC and other international organizations have criticized Hungary’s defiance of the warrant against Netanyahu. Days before his arrival, the president of the court’s oversight body wrote to the government in Hungary reminding it of its “specific obligation to comply with requests from the court for arrest and surrender.”

A spokesperson for the ICC declined to comment on the non-compliance proceedings.

Hungary’s decision to leave the ICC, a process that will take at least a year to complete, will make it the sole non-signatory within the 27-member European Union. With 125 current signatory countries, only the Philippines and Burundi have ever withdrawn from the court as Hungary intends.

Hungary has until May 23 to submit evidence in its defense.