Since the start of the Israeli war on Iran, which Tel Aviv called the “rising lion”, and as a result of the serious damage to the buildings on the missiles fired from Iran, the number of Israelis who expanded their tax insurance with the Tax Authority increased.
According to the Tax Authority, approximately 53,000 new insurance policies have been bought since the outbreak of the war. Israeli official compensation is limited to the damage of real estate property and car losses, which prompts people to secure valuable purposes of technical artifacts, luxurious furniture and jewelry in the tax department itself with an additional installment of 0.3% of the value of the secured property, until the ceiling of a million shekels, or securing these purposes with special insurance companies to cover the state’s compensation does not provide for wars losses.
But the rush of people in the post -war on Iran shows the amount of their fear of the war and its damages, especially after the war conveyed the damage of property to a new level. Additional insurance raises compensation for the contents of the house for the individual to 52 thousand and 570 shekels (the dollar equals approximately 3.42 shekels), and the individual couple or parents have the right For jewelry, gold and silver.
War is not a picnic, and certainly not a picnic in a country like Israel, which is now living with pure Western standards. Away from the high military expenditures, what is not talking about it is eteers is the economic cost of the war. Adam Bloomberg, deputy director of economics in the Histadrot, has spoken in a radio interview published by the newspaper “Maariv” that the cost of closing the Israeli economy due to the war is approximately one and a half billion shekels per day.
He explained in this interview that “since the beginning of the operation, the instructions of the internal front leadership were mainly required with an immediate and tight closure of the entire Israeli economy, except for the basic factories, which did not happen until October 7.
Compensation plan
According to the newspaper “Yediot Aharonot”, because of the longest war with Iran than expected, the Ministry of Finance has been drafted to compensate the business sector and compensate companies for hundreds of thousands of workers absent from work due to the war with Iran.
The newspaper wrote that the plan will include compensation for companies that were affected by a decrease in the volume of their business by at least 25%, compensation by 75% for employee wages, and payment of expenses according to the degree of low business volume, the higher the volume of business, the more compensation. This means, according to estimates, billions of dollars from the state treasury.
According to Yediot Aharonot, the owners of the largest 1,000 companies in the economy that are not covered in the compensation plan informed the Minister of Finance that they would demand without any concessions to activate the vacation system for employees, and this means that every absent employee will receive 70% of his salary as was the case during the Korona pandemic.
One of the largest employers in the economy added that “companies that employ thousands of employees are not forced to pay the salaries of a large number of employees if they are unable to attend, for example there are employees who have children under the age of 14. We will in no way agree that the largest companies in the economy remain outside the compensation plan.”
The Knesset Financial Committee has informed that since the beginning of the attack, unprecedented damage, including 25 buildings, was recorded. And that about 40,000 compensation demands have been received since the war on Iran began.
On Monday, the Tax Authority of the Knesset Finance Committee revealed the extent of the massive damage caused by the campaign against Iran. During just two weeks of direct fighting, it was decided to demolish 25 buildings across the country, compared to only one building that was damaged by the same degree during the war with Gaza. It acknowledged the existence of an unprecedented wave of compensation claims from the affected companies. During the discussion, Amir Dahan, Director of the Compensation Department of the Tax Authority, presented a comprehensive picture of the economic damage to now.
He explained that since the beginning of the war with Iran, about 40,000 compensation demands have been submitted, compared to about 70,000 claims submitted since the beginning of the entire war, adding, “Even if the war ends today, I expect to reach 50 thousand compensation demands in this tour.”
5 billion
According to him, the amounts of compensation are very high: “Until now, since the beginning of the war, we have paid 2.5 billion shekels. Since the direct fighting round with Iran in the past two weeks, we have reached about 4.5 billion, and I think we will reach 5 billion. These are sums that we have not seen before in direct damage. The Weizmann Institute and the Bazan Fettle of oil refining in Haifa are two huge events, and we have 25 buildings that must be destroyed. Compared to only one building from the beginning of the war until the Iran tour. “
It should be noted that the losses at the Weizmann Institute alone were estimated at two billion shekels, and it is also difficult to estimate the value of the losses in the Bazan Oil refinery in Haifa.
“The compensation fund exceeded 9 billion shekels before the start of the war. There are still open issues of the war, and the total value of the existing claims is 6 billion shekels. There are still many companies in the north have not made claims, so we do not know their full size. This is a very high cost,” Dahan said.
It is noteworthy that the value of the contents of the compensation fund is 9 billion shekels, and it should be known that 10 thousand and 630 people have been evacuated so far from their homes due to the direct damage to their properties.
Regarding the cost of the war, Nir Kepnes marked at the “Walla” site between the costs of the war on Gaza and its costs on Iran. In his view, it was easy to talk about the cost of the war with Gaza, while this is difficult in the Iranian affairs, as the cost of offensive activity is very high with planes, some of which consume hundreds of liters of fuel per minute, and the same applies to the defense, including the objection operations using the improved “Hitz” missiles, which makes the costs of intercepting the iron dome appear to be cheap.
The economist, Judea Sharoni, wrote on the “Walla” website that “the continuation of” iron swords “and” Gideon “vehicles about a year and 9 months, and it has become long and expensive in the history of Israel, and the last stage is not on the horizon.
He pointed out that “with a budget of about 600 billion shekels, and a gross domestic product of a trillion shekels, even a” force “like us find it difficult to fight a long war with Iran, which is about two thousand kilometers away from us, and has no end date.
Academic estimates
Sharoni quoted the University of Rayachman its estimate that a month war will cost 40 billion shekels, and that the damage to property in the internal front (apartments, cars and home contents) is currently estimated at about 3 billion shekels, and this does not include indirect damage such as companies compensation (estimated at 5 billion shekel Total local.
Added to this is a exception of 20 billion shekels in the defense budget due to the Gideon vehicle operation, and the defense budget for 2025 has reached 110 billion shekels on paper, but spending may rise to 200 billion shekels, which makes the 2025 budget more like a circus on ice, which will be demolished and rebuilt soon.
On the other hand, on Sunday, the Knesset was forced to increase the defense budget by 3.6 billion shekels for the year 2025. This addition consists of two amounts, the amount of 699 million shekels believed to be dedicated to financing food transportation to the residents of Gaza. As for the second amount, it is 2.953 billion shekels, and it was clarified that it is devoted to covering the increase in military expenditures after the resumption of the war on Gaza, in what is known as “Gideon’s vehicles”.
According to economists, the approved additions will raise the annual defense budget to 113 billion shekels. However, this is a small amount compared to expected expenditures after the “rising lion” operation against Iran, which is estimated at tens of billions of shekels, and estimated at the cost of each day of fighting in Iran by about a billion shekels.
The economic newspaper “Calcalist” published that the cost of the war until the end of 2024 increased to more than 142 billion shekels. It also exacerbated the budget deficit by 106.2 billion shekels by the end of 2024.
Adrian Pilot wrote that the cost of the war, including American aid, amounted to 141.6 billion shekels by the end of 2024, according to the public accountant data at the Ministry of Finance, and that military spending reached its climax in December 2023, when it reached 17.2 billion shekels in one month, but in the latest report on the implementation of the budget (January 2025), the number mentioned was 20.5 billion shekels, which means an additional billion shekels were paid this year (until April).
Initial and unprecedented
The Deputy Director of the Tax Authority, Miri Savion, held an interview with Audi Seagal and Davidov on Radio FM 103 last Sunday, and talked about the economic damage caused by the war: “We estimate that the damage already ranges between 4 billion and 5 billion shekels, but these are very preliminary estimates, but they are unprecedented,” this is what she said regarding the bombing Sunday morning after the American attack.
She talked about the evacuation procedures carried out by the state in the affected areas: “In the first stage, people are evacuated to a hotel, or to their families or friends if they want. Those who choose to evacuate alone have the right to obtain compensation of 4 thousand shekels. An application must be submitted, and the application can be submitted online. There is another alternative to our call center, and our calling center employees will help open an application over the phone.”