Ministers spar over prioritizing funding for outlying settlements
‘It’s inconceivable that Kiryat Gat and Kiryat Malachi are not included’ while some remote West Bank areas are, Amir Peretz says
Haviv Rettig Gur is The Times of Israel's senior analyst.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Environment Minister Amir Peretz blasted the cabinet’s decision on Sunday to include outlying West Bank settlements in a new map meant to direct extra funding to poorer towns and outlying areas.
Peretz said inclusion of the settlements in the National Priority Areas map, which can bring significant government grants, infrastructure investment, tax breaks and other benefits, “contradicts this period of efforts to advance peace.”
The new map counts 600 towns and regions as priority areas, including 90 over the Green Line. Several outlying West Bank settlements were included, some of them for the first time, due to the dangerous security situation outside the West Bank’s major settlement blocs.
The map contains some 20 communities not on the previous map created in 2009, including nine new settlements. Among these are Rehelim and Bruchin, which until recently were illegal outposts. Other new settlements are Eshkolot and Sansana in the southern Hebron hills, Alon Moreh near Nablus, Maaleh Michmash near Jerusalem and Nofim in central Samaria.
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Other new towns include a number of places that took in evacuees from settlements that had been in the Gaza Strip, including Bnei Dekalim, Ganei Tal and Be’er Ganim.
Peretz lamented the fact that a number of poorer towns closer to the economic center of the country were left off the list while the settlements were added.
“It’s inconceivable that Kiryat Gat and Kiryat Malachi are not included in the map because they are close to Israel’s center — despite the fact that their socioeconomic situation is dire — but settlements outside the major blocs that were until recently illegal are included because they face security threats.”
Three settlements were taken off the list: Efrat, the ultra-Orthodox Beitar Illit, both southeast of Jerusalem, and Keidar, east of the capital. The mostly ultra-Orthodox city of Harish, in Wadi Ara, was also taken off the list.
No ministers voted against the map, but four members of the 22-member cabinet abstained: Livni and Peretz, both of the left-leaning Hatnua party, and Yesh Atid’s two dovish cabinet members, Science Minister Yaakov Peri and Health Minister Yael German, a former Meretz mayor of Herzliya.
Livni said at the cabinet meeting that she believed the map should “help shrink social gaps and support settlement around the recognized borders, where the government’s policy is to encourage settlement. But now new criteria are being invented to encourage settlement in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].”
She explained that it was the government’s responsibility to secure West Bank settlements, “but it’s inappropriate to take funds intended to tackle socioeconomic gaps and use them to support outlying settlements in dangerous areas.” National priority funds “were intended to advance the national interest, not political interests.”
“It’s lucky that the founders of Hanita [a kibbutz on the tense Lebanese border] didn’t think like you,” retorted Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, who chairs the pro-settlement Jewish Home party. “It’s true that travel in Judea and Samaria is dangerous, but there are many other dangerous things. It’s important to continue building and strengthening the settlements in Judea and Samaria.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke before the vote, and noted the importance of the inclusion of Jerusalem in the map.
“There is one place that is always ahead of all others — Jerusalem, which is a top priority. Everything we will decide today will apply to Jerusalem,” he said.