US donors ‘pump millions into Israeli colonies’

Occupied Jerusalem: Private American donors have pumped more than $220 million (Dh807.4 million) into Jews-only colonies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in recent years through tax-deductible donations, effectively subsidising a policy opposed by US administrations for decades, according to an investigation published in an Israeli newspaper on Monday.

The Haaretz daily found that some 50 nonprofit organisations from across the US were raising funds for colonies in the West Bank, an area the Palestinians want as part of a future state, along with occupied east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Israel occupied all three areas in the 1967 Middle East war.

The newspaper said the money’s tax-deductible status means the US government “is incentivising and indirectly supporting the Israeli colony movement,” even though Washington opposes colony construction and views it as an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.

Peace talks collapsed last year and a wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence is entering its third month. Near-daily Palestinian attacks, mostly stabbings, have killed 19 Israelis, while more than 108 Palestinians have been killed. They include 73 people claimed by the Israeli regime to be attackers, with the remainder killed in clashes with Israeli troops.

The Haaretz investigation found that some of the money sent by American donors has gone toward providing legal aid to extremist Jews through an Israeli group called Honenu.

The report also said some of the money was spent on paying the salary of colony leader Menachem Livni, an Israeli jailed in connection with his activities in a radical Jewish group that carried out attacks against Palestinians in the 1980s. The money has otherwise gone to acquiring buildings in the West Bank and occupied east Jerusalem and improving the living conditions of Jewish colonists, the report said.