Report highlights costs of occupation for Israeli society

The report, The Price of Occupation: the cost of the occupation to Israeli society, was written by the Adva Centre’s Shlomo Swirski. The author collated a series of economic reports and statistics assessing the spending that has followed Israel’s seizure of the Palestinian territories in 1967.

“The Palestinians, as is well known, are paying a much heavier price,” Swirski acknowledged, “but this fact does not in any way make the price that Israelis are paying any smaller or any less significant.”

The Israeli army has two divisions, consisting of seven brigades, permanently stationed in the Occupied Territories. The exact cost of this deployment is not known, since the Israeli military budget is never made public. The Adva report noted, however, that the budget does reveal special expenditures related to “events in the territories.” These costs totalled US$6.5 billion between 1987 and 2005. Millions of dollars have also been spent on Israeli police and border guards and prisons for Palestinian detainees.

The military costs of occupation are inextricably bound up with the sole source of Israeli investment in the West Bank and Gaza—the development of Zionist settlements. Like military expenditure, the exact cost of these settlements cannot be calculated, because the extent of public funding has always been concealed by Israeli administrations. Funding is typically hidden in budgetary reports for spending within Israel, and as part of the secret military budget.

Last year, Haaretz newspaper estimated that between 1967 and 2003, government surplus spending—that is, funding in excess of what would have been spent had the settlements been constructed within Israel—totalled $10.5 billion. This figure is a conservative one and does not include the value of the settlers’ numerous benefits, such as tax breaks and superior health care and education facilities.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/isra-m12.shtml