“A mountain of money lies among the terraces of Judea and Samaria. This involves hundreds of millions of shekels in lease fees for the land that the state (of Israel) simply neglected to collect from settlements in Judea and Samaria established by the Settlement Division from the 1970s until now.” This quote and many others like it appeared this week in a voluminous series of articles and editorials in the Israeli press about the report that State Comptroller Joseph Shapira released on July 17. Commentators and reporters covering military and economic affairs clucked their tongues disparagingly at the “egregious misconduct” that the comptroller uncovered. They used big, bold headlines to draw attention to the biblical phrase that he cited to describe the absence of law and order in the Jewish settlements of the occupied territories: “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6)
These are the main points that Shapira, a retired judge, wrote in his report:
