Asia

Home page

Asia

Netanyahu: Israel's economy, security 'intertwined'

23 September 2014 02:13 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. A stable economy and a strong military are both at the core of Israel's nation-building aspirations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

"We came to the country to build and to be built. In order to build our country, we need a strong economy and security. These are inseparable," Netanyahu told a meeting of the Israel Defense Forces' top brass, symbolically held in the Negev Desert on the eve of the Jewish New Year.

The remarks seemed to be an effort to defuse recent tensions over the defense budget, exacerbated after Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yair Lapid, who is also a member of the security cabinet, reportedly agreed over the weekend that military spending next year would be supplemented by 6 billion shekels (1.6 billion U.S. dollars) -- about half the sum the Defense Ministry had requested.

On Sunday, Netanyahu's cabinet sought to discredit claims that the civilian sector was again getting the short end of the stick, approving a 900 million dollars multi-year aid package for boosting southern Israel's local economies, touted by Netanyahu as the largest ever in the country's history.

"It's easy to dispense promises to everyone, but it is much more difficult to conduct a responsible policy," the prime minister conceded.

"Over the years we've managed the economy correctly and responsibly, and the results are readily apparent because the Israeli economy has received high marks from international markets, " he said, in reference to Standard & Poor's announcement Saturday of its decision to leave Israel's credit rating unchanged at A+, citing the government's conservative fiscal policy.

However, the security threats Israel currently confronts require "a considerable increase" in the defense budget, Netanyahu said.

"I'm responsible for both economy and security, and these are the considerations that have guided the state budgets that I've passed until now, both as finance minister and as prime minister," he said.