Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now likely to form the next government, has formed a secret team to come up with a plan for an austerity budget that will ignite a “total war” with the Histadrut, according to reports in the Israeli media.

According to Globes, “the budget will include cancellation of the most recent pay hike, of 1%, in the collective agreement signed between the state and Histadrut chairman Ofer Eini in 2009. This pay hike will cost an estimated NIS 1 billion. The three men [on Netanyahu’s team] also intend to cancel the tax exemption on advanced study funds, which costs the government NIS 2.4 billion in lost revenues a year. … These two proposals, which will ignite a total war with the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel), will generate NIS 3.4 billion in revenues.”