Israel spent $20bn constructing illegal settlements

Successive Israeli governments have spent $20 billion in constructing illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank since 1967, Israeli NGO, Macro Centre for Political Economics, estimated.

The large investment by Israel over the past 50 years on settlements has made withdrawal from the Palestinian territory a costly proposition, warns the centre.

The estimation does not include the cost of constructing Jewish only settlements in Gaza or additional costs in maintaining 600,000 Israeli citizens in the occupied West Bank, both of which would increase the total figure by a significant amount.

There is no official overall figure for Israel’s total spending on Jewish settlements over the past 50 years, however, each year the finance ministry has published partial figures, amounting to $3.5 billion over the 12 years up to 2015, but the sum does not include investments before 2003.

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Israel is thought to have spent $15.2 billion between 1988 and 2015 alone and the total surface area of settlements construction in the West Bank has doubled in 18 years according to the NGO.

While settlements are illegal under international law no Israeli government, however, has turned its back on the settlers who live in highly protected exclusive neighbourhoods in land that would become part of a future Palestinian state.

The Israeli treasury also foots the bill for government subsidies and financial incentives that settlers receive: on average a settler is thought to receive three times more in public subsidies than a resident of Israel proper within its pre-1967 borders.

This burden, argue some commentators, has contributed to deepening social inequality within Israel in as much as the money goes to settlements and their defence at the expense of social budgets.