How much money goes to Israel's settlements each year?
A new report reveals the disparities in government spending between the settlements and the towns in the country’s periphery, reflecting Israel's policy priorities since the 1967 Six Day War.
Of the thousands of clauses in the Israeli state’s annual budget, allocations to settlements in the territories remain the most concealed — a kind of state secret. While allocations to education, welfare and security are (to a certain degree) public information, no one in Israel has been able to decipher the secret of settlement allocations.
So how much money is distributed to the settlements every year? Who holds the purse strings? And is the money transferred to the settlements over or under the table?
Conventional wisdom holds that we are talking about billions. Full disclosure of the amount is liable to enrage the world, since the international community regards the settlements as illegal entities built on conquered land. Not only is the world likely to protest, but the Israeli public would, too, if they knew the true amount transferred to the settlers, and at whose expense.
We have to be honest and admit that settlement allocations reflect the state's priorities.
