Israeli spending on settlements hits 2-decade high

Israeli spending on illegal settlement has skyrocketed by 38% since 2010, reaching a two-decade high of $1.1 billion, Haaretz reported. Historically this level of funding was surpassed only once in 1993 during the post-Oslo boom in Israeli control over the West Bank.

The number of Jewish settlers that the Israeli government has incentivized to live on Palestinian land has tripled since 1993 to more than 342,000 at the end of 2011, according to the Associated Press. That number does not include some 200,000 Jews living in the occupied al-Quds ('Jerusalem'), which Israel annexed from the Palestinians in 1967.

In the past six months alone, according to the UN, there have been 3,437 Palestinians displaced and affected by Israeli demolitions in the West Bank and al-Quds.