# The Chief of Staff Orders More Troops to the West Bank, and Names the Budget as a Second Front

> Eyal Zamir put a full division on standby over escalating settler and Palestinian violence, while telling the Finance Ministry the army is stretched thin funding it.

- Source: Israel Today
- Canonical URL: https://israeltoday.news/article/zamir-west-bank-troop-reinforcement
- Author: Amir Doron
- Section: Security
- Published: 2026-08-27T10:15:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-27T10:15:00.000Z
- Tags: West Bank, IDF, Budget

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IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir ordered a major reinforcement of troops in the West Bank, placing a standing division on standby for deployment and ordering units and battalions readied to move in immediately. A standing division typically holds tens of thousands of soldiers. The West Bank is normally covered by two divisions, the Judea and Samaria Division and the 96th Gilad Division, and Zamir's order adds a third on call.

The order responds to violence that has escalated sharply in recent months, most of it settler attacks on Palestinians with some Palestinian attacks on Israelis in return. Critics have accused the IDF and Benjamin Netanyahu's government of tolerating or encouraging the Israeli side of that violence, an accusation the reinforcement order does not itself answer either way.

Zamir tied the deployment to money as much as to threat, saying that at a time when the IDF and its personnel are stretched across every front, the military must still contend with budgetary constraints. The Finance Ministry responded that it has funded military operations worth hundreds of billions and that the defence budget has tripled in two years, a rebuttal that leaves the two sides disagreeing about the same number rather than about the tensions the troops are being sent to manage.

The reinforcement order also lands beside a separate dispute between Zamir and Defense Minister Israel Katz, who has demanded Zamir strip former military advocate general Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi of all financial benefits after the Finance Ministry's accountant general froze most of her pension during ongoing criminal proceedings, contrary to Zamir's own earlier decision to allow it. A chief of staff managing an extra division in the field is, this week, also managing a fight over one officer's pension in the ministry above him.

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Originally published by Israel Today. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://israeltoday.news/article/zamir-west-bank-troop-reinforcement.