Israel spends $ 564 million a year on settlements
| | News | 30 September 2003 |
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One of Israel's most closely guarded secrets is the amount of funding that is channeled to the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Now, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz is presenting a nearly complete picture of government expenditure on the settlements, adding up to more than US$ 10 billion since 1967.
From mid-July to mid-August this year, during the period of the cease-fire, information was leaked to the Israeli media about non-military investments in the territories of about US$ 180 million, including subsidies and tax breaks for settlers, the construction of roads to new settlements, and incentives for prospective settlers.
Such leaked documents are rare, though, and do not answer the question as to how many extra billions the State of Israel spends each year on the 231,000 settlers residing in the territories.
The Ha'aretz investigation, conducted during the past three months, answers this question for the first time as no prime minister or finance minister, from either the Likud or Labor parties, has ever bothered to do so. No economic institution, governmental or non-governmental, has made an attempt to look into the issue either.
On the contrary, every effort is made to conceal or camouflage the figures. The Labour coalition governments of the 1970s initiated this policy of hiding the settlement budgets from the scrutiny of critical Israeli and foreign observers, and the subsequent Likud governments adopted the same policy.
In researching the report, Ha'aretz reporters spoke with dozens of senior treasury officials and key political and economic leaders, and collected many relevant documents, in an attempt to bring together the complete picture. Haaretz also gleaned information from a pamphlet published by the Accountant General's Division of the Finance Ministry, which summarizes the amount of funding by various government ministries to local authorities - including those in the territories - in 2001.
Read the Full Report by Moti Bassok and Ha'aretz Staff. See: The extra civilian price tag: at least NIS 2.5 billion a year.
Source: Ha'aretz
Published on 30 September 2003 by RISQ
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