OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Israeli lawmakers are pressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lift what they call unjustified secrecy over opaque – and rising - funding for settlements on West Bank land Palestinians want for a state. Unpublished official data reviewed by Reuters suggests state spending on settlers rose by a third after Netanyahu took office in 2009 and critics complain that the cost of settlements has long remained hidden in thickets of budgetary convolution. Condemned by U.S. and European allies as illegal obstacles to peace with the Palestinians, settlements face a new wave of hostility within Israel - from taxpayers who suspect the state of handing on their money by the back door to a vocal minority. “I'm a member of the finance committee and I'm telling you, I'm being conned,” said Elazar Stern, who sits in parliament for chief peace negotiator Tzipi Livni's liberal Hatnuah party. “Funds are hidden. Clauses are lumped together so that you vote on an item that is justified and then they slip it in.” Netanyahu dropped his objection to a Palestinian state after becoming prime minister in 2009 but has defended an expansion of Israeli building in the West Bank and rejects the Palestinian view that it shows he is not serious about a two-state solution. While the rise in funding underlines Netanyahu's commitment to keeping some occupied land in any deal with the Palestinians, their cost has become a target of middle-class discontent on the economy that drove street protests in 2011 and last year sent new lawmakers to parliament to challenge the right-wing premier. The drive for transparency, which has support from some of those newly elected critics whom Netanyahu has had to bring into coalition, saw the Supreme Court last week order the Finance Ministry to offer changes in rules for oversight of the budget. The pro-settler chair of the parliamentary finance committee defended the existing process. But a senior government official told Reuters there was some obfuscation - not to misuse tax revenues but to frustrate foreign critics of the settlements: “We are discreet about the figures,” he conceded, “Since there are those who exaggerate and use them against Israel.” There is little prospect of any government giving up major settlement blocs; many who grumble at the cost, or see hardline settlers as dangerous religious zealots, still support the idea of Israelis living in the big, suburban settlements that act as buffers between occupied Jerusalem and the Arab cities of the West Bank. So the dispute may not change the familiar calculus that saw U.S.-brokered talks with the Palestinians break down again in April amid recriminations over the expansion of big settlements. But the row over money has highlighted divisions in Israeli public opinion on the issue and has put settler leaders on the defensive, fearing that especially some more controversial and remote hilltop outposts could be choked of funds. Netanyahu's own finance minister Yair Lapid, a TV anchorman whose new party broke into parliament last year on a platform of cutting government waste, has led criticism of such spending. But support for the settlers among opposition parties has so far outweighed such critics within the fractious coalition cabinet. Agreeing on the total fiscal cost of the settlements, which are home to more than half a million people or some 6 percent of Israelis, is all but impossible, not least since views differ on how they contribute to the costs and benefits of the military occupation of lands seized in the 1967 war against Arab armies. But a portion of state spending on the settlers is added up by the government's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). It includes the cost of building homes and other facilities, special hardship subsidies and providing energy, communications, roads and other infrastructure not needed by the military. This data is compiled for the United States under the terms of a 2003 agreement by which Washington helps Israel with loan guarantees but reserves the right to reduce its pledges by the amount that Israel spends on settlements. In total, $1.1 billion was deducted in 2003 and 2005 from $9 billion of guarantees. The report is not published but Reuters was able to review the CBS data for the past decade or so. It showed spending on a downward trend from 2003 and rising since 2009, when Netanyahu was elected. From 1.015 billion shekels in 2004, it had declined to 760.7 million in 2009 but rose to 1.05 billion ($305 million) in 2012, the last full year for which figures were available. The first three quarters of 2013 showed a steady trend. Netanyahu's office declined comment on the statistics. Asked about the rise in settlement spending, US State Department spokesman Edgar Vazquez declined comment on the data but noted: “We view settlements as illegitimate. We have consistently said that settlement activity is unhelpful and counterproductive to achieving a two-state outcome.” The figures are small in terms of total state spending of 366 billion shekels in 2012, itself 13.5 percent up on 2009. They do not include the likes of health, education and welfare spending on the 350,000 West Bank settlers included in the statistics. The CBS data include 19,000 Israelis in the Golan Heights annexed from Syria and, until 2005, 9,000 settlers in the Gaza Strip. They exclude 200,000 Israelis living on land annexed and incorporated into Israel's Jerusalem municipality. Some 2.7 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. Using another measure, municipal financial reports show that in 2012 the central government contributed 3,630 shekels per head of population per year to support settler towns, two thirds more than the national average of 2,181 shekels per person. “When people find out that there are those who get much, much more because they live in the territories and because a few politicians want to attract people there in order to paralyse the peace process, then they get upset,” said Stav Shaffir, who was elected to parliament last year for the Labour opposition. “This upsets everyone, not just left-wingers. We all pay taxes,” said Shaffir. She challenged the rules for reviewing the budget in the Supreme Court and won a judgment last week giving the Finance Ministry and parliament's finance committee three months to agree to changes that have yet to be worked out. – Reuters
