The Israeli Ministry of Finance said that Israel has incurred up to 125 billion shekels ($34.09 billion) since the start of the war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.
The ministry added that Israel recorded a budget deficit of 19.2 billion shekels ($5.2 billion) last December, noting the high expenditures to finance the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
It seems that these are the direct costs of the war without taking into account the repercussions caused by the war on various aspects of life in Israel. Two days ago, the Israeli economic newspaper “Calcalist” said that the cost of the war on the Gaza Strip amounted to about 250 billion shekels ($67.57 billion) until the end of 2024. .
The newspaper relied on estimates from the Bank of Israel, and explained that the amount includes “direct security costs, large civilian expenses and revenue losses, but not everything.”
The newspaper described this cost as “heavy” and reflecting the “failure” in the war on the Gaza Strip, explaining that this requires “the need for a significant increase in the budget of the Israeli Ministry of Defense during the next decade.”
She said, “This (future) budget consists of purchasing more planes, helicopters, armored personnel carriers, and large quantities of weapons and ammunition, as well as investing in people or the Israeli soldier himself.”
The newspaper added, “The failure of the Israeli army in the war on Gaza did not stop at this number, as it was preceded by a number of human losses and wounded, in addition to the families and families of the injured who were affected morally, and some of them mentally as well.”
She pointed out that “the talk about the war numbers and its results comes against the backdrop of talk about the committee examining the security and defense budget,” known in Israel as the “Nagel Committee” after its chairman, Yaakov Nagel.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza that left more than 155,000 Palestinians martyred and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.
On May 30, 2024, Calcalist published a report in which it expected the costs of the war on Gaza to reach 250 billion shekels by 2025.
The newspaper pointed out that “the revenues from natural gas in the Mediterranean were supposed to go to the Ministries of Health and Education, but it seems that they will go to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.”
It indicated that the Nagel Committee recommended that the required addition to the Ministry of Defense during the next ten years would be 275 billion shekels ($74 billion), meaning an addition of 27.5 billion shekels ($7 billion) per year.
On January 7, the Israeli newspaper “Jerusalem Post” quoted the committee’s report as “proposing to increase the defense budget by up to 15 billion shekels annually ($4.1 billion) over the next five years.”
