Thursday, 02 August 2012 11:20 Palestine News Network
On Thursday, 2nd August, Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahranot reported that the budget allocated by the Israeli authorities to support settlement construction reached a one billion and fifty-nine million NIS in 2012.
Daily newspaper reports that the special budget is paid to the settlements, in addition to the public expenses of the government, which are paid to settlers as citizens of Israel.
There has been an increase in the budgets allocated for the settlers despite their percentage makeup of the total population of ‘Israel’ remaining constant in the recent years.
The data issued by the Department of Statistics for the Peace Now movement showed that the statements of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, dismissing the budget as small, are totally incorrect.
According to the newspaper, in 2002 the number of settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (before the withdrawal from Gaza) was 212 thousand settlers. They formed 4% of the total population, while in 2010, number of settlers has reached 311,000 settlers but the proportion of the total population has remained constant.
