Israel’s Parliament Greenlights Record USD271B Budget for 2026

(MENAFN) Israel's parliament greenlit the country's 2026 national budget in the early hours of Monday, enshrining an unprecedented defense allocation even as opposition lawmakers branded the fiscal plan the most egregious act of financial misconduct in the nation's history.

The Knesset passed the budget on its final reading by a margin of 62 votes to 55, according to media.

At 850.6 billion shekels — equivalent to roughly $271 billion — the spending plan earmarks a record 143 billion shekels ($45.8 billion) for the Defense Ministry, the single largest military budget in Israeli history, Hebrew-language media reported.

Lawmakers raced to clear the vote ahead of a legally binding Tuesday deadline, as a failure to secure parliamentary approval would have automatically dissolved the government and triggered snap elections.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid led the charge against the budget with blistering rhetoric, writing on X, the social media platform owned by US billionaire Elon Musk: "The greatest theft in the history of the state has been completed."

Lapid sharpened his attack in a follow-up post, saying: "They took the money from reservists and gave it to draft dodgers. They robbed working people and gave it to the corrupt."

The budget's passage comes against the backdrop of the active US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, a conflict that has dramatically accelerated defense expenditure in Tel Aviv while stoking regional instability and deepening political fault lines at home.

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