Israel approves national budget

(JTA) — In what was seen as a crucial test in Israel’s longstanding governing crisis, the country’s lawmakers managed to approve a national budget for the first time in more than three years on Thursday.

A failure to do so by a Nov. 14 deadline would have meant the collapse of Israel’s new government and a fifth national election since 2019.

The approval of the fiscal framework marks a victory for the coalition led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett over his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, who sought to undermine parliamentary negotiations as more than 700 individual budgetary provisions came...