30 Aug 2019; MEMO: Israel Foreign Ministry is bankrupt, according to one official, quoted in a report by Yedioth Ahronoth.
The report stipulated that the Foreign Ministry’s officials were informed earlier that there was no budget to host delegations or guests from Israel. Thus, official meetings were cancelled, and employees were asked to “come up with solutions.”
According to a report published on Yedioth Ahronoth’s website, Thursday, the crisis the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is going through has worsened, to the extent that some employees hosted delegations or guests at their own expense.
One diplomat was quoted saying: “The Foreign Ministry went bankrupt,” adding that some employees have paid money from their personal accounts, as they felt embarrassed in front of delegations and guests.
In other cases, the ministry’s staffs were forced to cancel meetings with guests due to their inability to provide them with coffee or soft drinks.
A Foreign Ministry official confirmed that a meeting with the staff of a foreign embassy in Israel and a guest from abroad was cancelled due to the crisis.
The ministry also faced difficulties in providing a budget for hosting a senior African official who was supposed to arrive in the country next week.
In another case, an Israeli research organisation hosted by the Foreign Ministry in a study day was asked to bring food with it because there was no hospitality budget.
At the weekend, the ministry informed the diplomats that it would not be able to provide them with notebooks, claiming that the ministry cannot afford the notebooks, which cost less than 15 shekels each.
