Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Trade and Industry Minister Naftali Bennett succeeded in forcing the government into a socioeconomic discourse as a direct result of the tent protests for social justice of 2011. Yet their big test is in whether they will succeed in breaking the state budget pattern in which the defense share reigns supreme. It will be interesting to see how the two will react to the demand to increase the defense budget in light of the increasing number of incidents on the Syrian border, the escalating threats on the southern front, and the never-ending Iranian threat.
Both Bennett and Lapid support cutbacks in defense spending in support of reducing the deficit and preventing cutbacks to the social services budget, or so it would seem based on previous statements they have made. As the well-known Hebrew maxim goes, however, “What you see from there, you don’t see from here.”