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Independent: Israel Housing Ministry 'Funding Illegal Settlements'

JERUSALEM -- Israel has used almost £3.6m to finance illegal settlement construction in the West Bank over the past three years, more than half of it for outposts which the government is formally pledged to remove.

The cash for illegal settlement expansion channelled through the Housing and Construction Ministry was highlighted yesterday in a damning annual report from the State Comptroller, Eliezer Goldberg.

Mr Goldberg said in his report that the that the ministry had spent money on expansion projects which had not been approved by either the Cabinet or the Defence Ministry - and including construction projects where land ownership was still being disputed. His report added that the money had been allocated even as a branch of the Israeli military was investing other funds "to track down and demolish illegal construction" in settlements and outposts.

The report says that from January 2000 to June 2003, the Housing Ministry approved 77 contracts for construction projects in 33 West Bank areas, 18 of them unauthorised outposts. More than half of the funding for illegal West Bank construction went to the outposts. While all settlements on the Palestinian side of the 1949-1967 border are contended by Israel's critics to be illegal under international law, the projects identified by the Comptroller are illegal under Israeli law.