Israeli settlement of the West Bank is untenable, and framing it as inevitable just makes matters worse.

By Elia Leibowitz

In honor of the Ninth of Av, my friend Yossi Sarid wrote a lamentation for the State of Israel. He included excerpts of the writings of another intellectual, Meron Benvenisti, who preceded Sarid in making gloomy predictions about Israel's future. Indeed, Israel of 2012 should be the subject of regret, as in "Weep sore for him who goes away" (Jeremiah 22:10). In this case, the ones going away are the passengers aboard the modern-day Titanic, better known as Israel, whose captains do not see the iceberg ahead if they stay on course. While the gloomy mood and sorrow in Sarid's essay are fully justified, his lamentation is based on two mistaken theories.

On August 2nd, 2012, Yedioth Ahronoth (Hebrew print edition) published a powerful article looking at the financial bonus that settlements enjoy compared to areas inside the Green Line.   The article comes on the heels of Peace Now's publication of an analysis of the budget and a plan to save billions by reducing some benefits to settlements. 

The translation is by Israel News Today (INT).

Bonus for Settlements: NIS 1,059,988,790

Yedioth Ahronoth (p. 4) by Gad Lior and Yuval Karni -- While the middle class is bowing under the weight of  rising taxes and an expected cutback in the budget of the government ministries, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was asked about the special budgets transferred every year to the settlements.  "These are negligible amounts," Netanyahu said, "it's a drop in the ocean."  But an examination of the data shows that the amount in question reaches over NIS 1 billion per year--hardly a "negligible" amount.

By Thomas L. Friedman

I'll make this quick. I have one question and one observation about Mitt Romney's visit to Israel. The question is this: Since the whole trip was not about learning anything but about how to satisfy the political whims of the right-wing, super pro-Bibi Netanyahu, American Jewish casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, why didn't they just do the whole thing in Las Vegas? I mean, it was all about money anyway -- how much Romney would abase himself by saying whatever the Israeli right wanted to hear and how big a jackpot of donations Adelson would shower on the Romney campaign in return. Really, Vegas would have been so much more appropriate than Jerusalem. They could have constructed a plastic Wailing Wall and saved so much on gas.