📰 1.5 Billion for Roads: Tax Breaks and Asphalt for the Settlements
The Israel Tax Authority has notified residents of 64 West Bank settlements that starting next month they’ll receive a 7% income tax credit, retroactive to January, under a law pushed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and MK Zvi Sukkot together with the Yesha Council.
The benefit applies up to roughly 146,000 shekels in taxable income per year and is being implemented now, with instructions to employers to update payroll software and issue retroactive refunds.
The law squeaked through just before the government turns into a caretaker; the timing makes sure the money is locked in before the cabinet loses full budgetary power.
At the same time, the outgoing government is set to approve a plan for new roads, access routes and “security infrastructure” for dozens of additional West Bank communities, with a price tag north of one billion shekels split between the Defense and Transportation ministries, as part of a larger multi‑year road blueprint for the territory.
Among the beneficiaries are four settlements evacuated in the northern Samaria disengagement, now getting fresh tarmac as a kind of historical reversal.
Smotrich brands this package a “settlement‑security revolution” designed to “kill the terrible idea of establishing a terror state in the heart of Israel,” framing asphalt and tax relief as counter‑terror tools rather than annexation by infrastructure.
On the other side of the political spectrum, a Democratic Party candidate calls it “daylight robbery”: instead of money going to rebuild the north and the south, it goes to already affluent settlements, and there is “no line this government won’t cross.”
A government on its way out still has time to entrench fiscal privileges and road networks for one group of citizens, but not to prioritize bombed‑out border towns. The budget pen keeps moving even as the mandate clock runs out.
On the same day that money and concrete are being lined up, the ground reality looks uglier. Fresh clashes break out between Jews and Arabs around Yatta in the South Hebron hills; Palestinian reports accuse a group of Israelis of setting fires in civilian agricultural land near Turmus Ayya north of Ramallah, and another group of settlers of beating a Palestinian in Beit Furik east of Nablus.
It’s three flashpoints in one day, three variations on the same pattern of nationalist violence.
Put together, the fiscal‑settlement move in Jerusalem and the friction incidents in the hills form one picture. While the state apparatus is busy paving roads and handing out tax breaks to selected communities, simultaneous local violence in that same space gets no comparable institutional attention.
The reports mention no arrests, no indictments, no prosecutions for the arson and assault — a conspicuous absence against the backdrop of how quickly economic decisions are made for the very same area.
#israel #westbank #settlements #taxBreaks #roads #violence #fakeRuleOfLaw
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The Israel Tax Authority has notified residents of 64 West Bank settlements that starting next month they’ll receive a 7% income tax credit, retroactive to January, under a law pushed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and MK Zvi Sukkot together with the Yesha Council.
The benefit applies up to roughly 146,000 shekels in taxable income per year and is being implemented now, with instructions to employers to update payroll software and issue retroactive refunds.
The law squeaked through just before the government turns into a caretaker; the timing makes sure the money is locked in before the cabinet loses full budgetary power.
At the same time, the outgoing government is set to approve a plan for new roads, access routes and “security infrastructure” for dozens of additional West Bank communities, with a price tag north of one billion shekels split between the Defense and Transportation ministries, as part of a larger multi‑year road blueprint for the territory.
Among the beneficiaries are four settlements evacuated in the northern Samaria disengagement, now getting fresh tarmac as a kind of historical reversal.
Smotrich brands this package a “settlement‑security revolution” designed to “kill the terrible idea of establishing a terror state in the heart of Israel,” framing asphalt and tax relief as counter‑terror tools rather than annexation by infrastructure.
On the other side of the political spectrum, a Democratic Party candidate calls it “daylight robbery”: instead of money going to rebuild the north and the south, it goes to already affluent settlements, and there is “no line this government won’t cross.”
A government on its way out still has time to entrench fiscal privileges and road networks for one group of citizens, but not to prioritize bombed‑out border towns. The budget pen keeps moving even as the mandate clock runs out.
On the same day that money and concrete are being lined up, the ground reality looks uglier. Fresh clashes break out between Jews and Arabs around Yatta in the South Hebron hills; Palestinian reports accuse a group of Israelis of setting fires in civilian agricultural land near Turmus Ayya north of Ramallah, and another group of settlers of beating a Palestinian in Beit Furik east of Nablus.
It’s three flashpoints in one day, three variations on the same pattern of nationalist violence.
Put together, the fiscal‑settlement move in Jerusalem and the friction incidents in the hills form one picture. While the state apparatus is busy paving roads and handing out tax breaks to selected communities, simultaneous local violence in that same space gets no comparable institutional attention.
The reports mention no arrests, no indictments, no prosecutions for the arson and assault — a conspicuous absence against the backdrop of how quickly economic decisions are made for the very same area.
#israel #westbank #settlements #taxBreaks #roads #violence #fakeRuleOfLaw
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