Amid a massive surge in violence by extremist settler activists in the West Bank in recent weeks and months, the government has approved some NIS 50 million to provide security equipment for illegal settlement outposts established by such extremists.

The money has been allocated through “Coalition Funds,” discretionary funds allocated by coalition parties to their funding priorities which are approved alongside the state budget, but which are not subject to clear criteria.

The funds will be used to purchase critical security equipment and infrastructure for illegal outposts, which are often run and inhabited by the extremist settlers responsible for violence and harassment against rural Palestinian communities.

The funds will also be used for the construction of roads to enable access and development of such outposts.

The left-wing Peace Now organization has described the funding, which has been a feature of the current government’s various avenues of support for illegal outposts, as critical to ensure the existence and viability of such wildcat settlements.

The NIS 50 million for the illegal outposts is just one budget line from a total of NIS 395.5 million shekel allocated in the coalition funds to the Settlements and National Missions Ministry headed by Minister Orit Strock. These funds are in addition to the approximately NIS 1.3 billion allocated to the ministry in the formal state budget.

Illegal outposts are settlement dwellings that have not received approval from the cabinet. According to Peace Now, fully 191 outposts have been established under the current government, some 130 of which are farming outposts that use livestock to assert control over large areas of West Bank land.

Although the outposts themselves are illegal, the Attorney General’s Office has approved the allocation of funding for security equipment for these illegal settlements on the basis that they are portable and do not require building permits.

In recent years, government funding for outposts from coalition funds has included all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), floodlights, night vision goggles, drones, communications equipment, camera posts, fire suppression trailers, water trailers and generators.

ATVs and drones in particular are used by illegal farming outposts to patrol and conduct surveillance over the land........

© The Times of Israel