JERUSALEM -- Israel needs to work out the 2013 budget as soon as possible, as the country is still functioning on the budget for 2012, but the task is challenging more than ever, analysts said.

The budget for 2013 should have been voted on by the parliament by the end of October 2012, however, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to call for early elections that month the parliament was subsequently dissolved.

That means that Finance Minister Yair Lapid has very little time to draw up a practical budget plan to accommodate a number of new programs, which were put forward after the social protests in 2011.

Analysts note that in some cases, Lapid chose the easy option of increasing revenue by raising the Value Added Tax (VAT) from 17 to 18 percent. However, the middle class argued that spending cuts and tax increases are targeting them instead of the wealthy, contrary to Lapid's campaign promises.

On Saturday night, 12,000 people took to the streets in several cities across Israel to protest the government's economic policies.

"Of course it's the middle class that is going to bear most of the burden of closing the budget deficit. That's always the case," Prof. Moshe Justman of the Ben-Gurion University in Negev told Xinhua on Sunday.

Although Israeli economy escaped the global financial crisis rather untouched, Lapid has inherited an economy that needs to see the budget trimmed by 3.6 billion U.S. dollars.

Lapid, with no formal education in economics or previous political experience, has to rely on the opinions of his advisors. Some analysts said that it will be easier for Lapid's opponents to question his policies. For example, Lapid wants to slash the defense budget by 280 million dollars, but defense officials instead wants to add another 140 million dollars.

Prof. Benjamin Bental of the University of Haifa said that the previous government hadn't obeyed the law on budget spending -- which stipulates that when there is no budget then the government should go with the last approved budget and spend every month one twelfth of that particular budget -- but simply authorized huge projects.

Prof. Gideon Rahat of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem said there will be a number of changes to the new budget before it is presented to the parliament for a vote.

Rahat said that Lapid has been using a strategy called "putting the goat," in which a proposal is added to something despite that the player knows the proposal may not go through, so as to "show responsiveness to the criticism."