The Israeli military has claimed that large budget cuts agreed by the government last week will ground much of the air force and leave the army at its weakest since the Yom Kippur war 30 years ago.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon scaled back the size of the reductions during an 18-hour Cabinet meeting considering ways to revive an economy that is collapsing under the weight of three years of war.
Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, usually a hawk on military matters, had sought much deeper cuts by the army on the grounds that the United States and British occupation of Iraq had diminished the external threat to Israel.
”In the wake of the changes on the eastern front, and the removal of the Iraqi threat, it certainly is possible to make much deeper cuts without taking any security risks,” Netanyahu said.
”The rejection of the Finance Ministry’s proposal will make deep cuts in other ministries’ expenditure necessary, which will painfully affect education and health services to the public.”
Nonetheless, Sharon insisted on further reductions to Israel’s extensive welfare programmes, already under attack from Netanyahu’s plans for benefit cuts, privatisation and mass layoffs.
The army will lose about 12% of its budget, reducing military expenditure next year to $7,7-billion.
Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz argued vehemently against the cuts, saying that they would compromise Israel’s ability to defend itself. The army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, told the Cabinet that the budget would leave the military at its weakest since before the 1973 war.
The army said it would be forced to stop calling up reservists, who provide much of the manpower to enforce the occupation of Palestinian territories. The cuts would also put off the purchase of new tanks and freeze development of a new missile.
The air force chief, Major General Dan Halutz, grounded all military flights from November except for ”operational sorties” to defend Israel’s borders or against the Palestinians.
But there was widespread scepticism about the military’s claims that it would be critically weakened by the budget cuts, particularly when the brunt of the economic crisis is being borne by Israel’s increasingly impoverished workers.
Unemployment has surged to about 10% in the worst economic crisis in 50 years, largely the result of the past three years of intifada. Welfare payments are to be reduced by 5%, and cuts in the education budget could see thousands of teachers dismissed.
Israel’s trade union confederation, the Histadrut, has threatened a general strike against the budget. As part of the protest it is also considering a plan to introduce cuts in the number of hours that government offices are open.
”Since the police will not let us surround the government complex with workers, we will cut off the water and power supply, phone lines and other services of all Cabinet ministries,” said Eti Peretz of the Social Workers’ Union.
Netanyahu has been struggling to narrow a large budget deficit, equivalent to 6% of gross domestic product.
Sharon told the Cabinet that reducing the budget deficit is crucial to ensuring a $9-billion loan guarantee from the US, which Israel desperately needs to be able to borrow money at a preferential rate.
”This is the most critical budget for the state of Israel this past decade,” the prime minister said.
But the US is already threatening to cut the loan guarantee by an amount equivalent to Israel’s spending on expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied territories in breach of Sharon’s commitments to the White House.
n Meanwhile, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s security adviser, Jibril Rajoub, on Wednesday said that the Israeli government has spurned indirect offers of a ceasefire, but that a more concrete offer would be forthcoming.
”There must be a mutual ceasefire based on an end to violence on both sides, Israelis ending their aggression against the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority implementing a ceasefire in its territories,” he said.
The Israeli government has said it is not interested in another ceasefire following the collapse of the last one after just seven weeks, and that it is instead looking to the Palestinian Authority to tackle ”terrorist organisations” such as Hamas. — Â