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How much money goes to Israel's settlements each year?

A new report reveals the disparities in government spending between the settlements and the towns in the country’s periphery, reflecting Israel's policy priorities since the 1967 Six Day War.

Palestinians ride on a donkey near homes in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim, near Jerusalem November 13, 2013. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday his peace negotiators had resigned over the lack of progress in U.S.-brokered statehood talks clouded by Israeli settlement building. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK - Tags: POLITICS SOCIETY ANIMALS) - RTX15BNX
Palestinians ride on a donkey near homes in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim, near Jerusalem, Nov. 13, 2013. — REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Of the thousands of clauses in the Israeli state’s annual budget, allocations to settlements in the territories remain the most concealed — a kind of state secret. While allocations to education, welfare and security are (to a certain degree) public information, no one in Israel has been able to decipher the secret of settlement allocations.

So how much money is distributed to the settlements every year? Who holds the purse strings? And is the money transferred to the settlements over or under the table?

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