Isaac Herzog, leader of Israel’s Labor party, recently stated that “from 2009 to 2014, Israel invested 10 billion shekels [$2.5 billion] in Judea and Samaria. That’s a huge amount of the state budget.” This assertion echoes an oft-repeated talking point of the Israeli left: that Israel spends more money per capita on its citizens outside the Green Line than on those within it. The claim, writes Evelyn Gordon, is patently false:
[A]ssuming . . . that [Herzog] meant 10 billion a year, not 10 billion over the course of five years, that still amounts to only 2.5 percent of the state budget. According to data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, however, there were 341,800 Jewish settlers in 2013 (the last year for which data are available), out of a total Israeli population of 8.1345 million. In other words, settlers account for 4.2 percent of the population.
Thus if the government is spending 10 billion shekels a year on the settlers, their proportional share of the state budget is 40 percent less than their share in the population. And most of that money would be spent regardless of where they lived, since all Israelis are entitled to healthcare, education, defense, and various other government-funded services.
Read more on Evelyn Gordon: http://evelyncgordon.com/does-israel-spend-more-on-settlers-than-other-israelis-no/