Haaretz: Escalation with Iran and Hezbollah cost Israel more than $5 billion
The Israeli Haaretz newspaper spoke about the increasing economic costs for Israel, in light of the escalation with Hezbollah and Iran, stressing that the budget will be violated for the third time this year, while the government hasn’t prepared to expand the confrontation.
Haaretz said that the recent escalation with Hezbollah and Iran caused costs estimated at 10-20 billion shekels (between more than 2 billion and 620 million – 5 billion and 241 million dollars).
Haaretz stressed that these additional costs are even before the potential damage to tax revenues and before the question mark over 18 billion shekels (more than 4 billion and 717 million dollars) in aid money from the United States, the arrival of which is uncertain.
This comes after Standard & Poor’s, the world’s largest credit rating company, announced on October 2 an immediate downgrade of the credit rating of the occupying entity, adding a negative outlook, a few days after the double downgrade by Moody’s credit rating agency.
In this context, the Bank of Israel estimated in May that the costs resulting from the war will reach 250 billion shekels ($66 billion) by the end of next year, including military expenses and government expenses, such as housing for thousands of settlers who fled the north and south.
This is equivalent to about 12% of Israel’s GDP.
It seems that these costs will increase further as the war expands, which will increase the bill of the occupation government and delay the return of settlers to the north.
