{"id":21364,"date":"2012-08-01T20:39:04","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T16:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=21364"},"modified":"2012-08-01T20:39:12","modified_gmt":"2012-08-01T16:39:12","slug":"crossing-the-line-level-of-settlement-spend-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/showcase\/crossing-the-line-level-of-settlement-spend-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"Crossing the Line: Level of Settlement Spend Revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Israeli business publication\u00a0Calcalist broke a major new story<\/a>\u00a0(Hebrew) about a government report which recounts Israeli spending over the Green Line.\u00a0 The document, prepared for the U.S. government (which deducts from foreign aid expenditures monies spent by Israel on settlements), has so far been kept a secret (though\u00a0Haaretz has just published its own short summary<\/a>\u00a0in English).\u00a0 That\u2019s because it\u2019s highly damaging to the government\u2019s contention that the settlements and Israeli investments in them are not the obstacle to peace that the Palestinians and peace activists say they are.<\/p>\n

In 2010, the Netanyahu government increased settlement spending by 38% over the year before.\u00a0 The overall budget grew by only 2.5% during that year.\u00a0 Per capita spending there is higher than the relative number of residents in the Territories (compared to those living within the Green Line) by 80%.\u00a0 Netanyahu invested $250-million on Jewish settlement in that period and $2.5 billion overall from 2003 to 2011.\u00a0 From 1992 to 2001, the government spent a total of $7-billion on settlements.<\/p>\n

Shir Hever, Israel\u2019s premier economist of the Occupation, who does his research for the\u00a0Alternative Information Center<\/a>, filled in for me what the survey omits, which is an eye-opener:<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  1. It doesn\u2019t include East Jerusalem, where almost half of the colonists live (the ICBS considers it part of Israel).<\/li>\n
  2. It doesn\u2019t include interest and inflation for the accumulation of subsidies for the colonies over the years.<\/li>\n
  3. It doesn\u2019t include the security costs \u2013 including the prison system for Palestinian prisoners, the military court system, the Wall of Separation, the Border Police and of course the military presence in the colonies itself. In my estimates,\u00a0security costs are about twice as high as the civilian subsidies.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Also, there are other forms of support which are harder to measure. For example, the Ministry of Housing offers better mortgage benefits in the colonies. The colonists still take out a loan to buy a house, but they pay a lower interest. The economic significance is very large, but it isn\u2019t budgeted in the Ministry of Housing and therefore not reported by the ICBS.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    When confronted with these numbers the settler leadership actually has the chutzpah to claim that these are not investments solely benefiting Jews, but rather spending that will improve the chances for \u201cco-existence.\u201d\u00a0 They actually have the temerity to claim that the spending, which benefits Jewish settlers exclusively, benefits the Palestinians as well, since it includes shared water and power lines, and roads (yes, you heard me,\u00a0roads<\/em>\u2026that apartheid infrastructure that Palestinians may not step foot on).<\/p>\n

    The government\u2019s response too was instructive.\u00a0 It said the claims in the Calcalist report were \u201centirely without foundation.\u201d\u00a0 How do they manage such a statement?\u00a0 Are the numbers wrong?\u00a0 Are there other considerations the report doesn\u2019t take into account?\u00a0 We\u2019ll never find out since the spokesperson didn\u2019t even bother to support the claim with facts or evidence.<\/p>\n

    This is all happening against a backdrop of Israeli budgetary retrenchment, which anticipates increased taxes to pay for higher military spending and a potential military confrontation with either Iran or Syria (or both).\u00a0 It\u2019s embarrassing to realize that the government will be taking money from its citizens within the Green Line and transferring it to an exceedingly small number of citizens (around 10%) living over the Green Line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: The document, prepared for the U.S. government (which deducts from foreign aid expenditures monies spent by Israel on settlements), has so far been kept a secret…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":468,"featured_media":21365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,83,82],"tags":[11323,12955,2622,18306,18311,726,13231,122,3467,18297,18330,8957,2817,18302],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21364"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/468"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}