A recently published document by the Settlements and National Missions Ministry has shown that there are some 650 Israeli youths living mostly in illegal outposts in the West Bank.

The figures come from a call-for-applications document issued by the Settlements Ministry on May 27 this year, outlining how settlement regional councils can apply for ministry funding under a program supposedly designated to help at-risk Israeli youths in the illegal outposts in the West Bank.

The Peace Now organization, which campaigns against the settlements and which discovered the document, said, however, that the money made available specifically for residents of such outposts was instead just another way for the state to fund these illegal enterprises.

State funding for illegal settlement outposts is particularly controversial, due to the large-scale, systematic involvement of outpost residents in attacks against, and harassment of, local Palestinians, which have resulted in deaths, injuries, and the displacement of dozens of Palestinian communities since the current government took office in December 2022.

Critics such as Peace Now allege that the violence is part of a coordinated campaign to expel Palestinians from Area C of the West Bank, which is being supported and funded in numerous ways by the state.

The majority of the 650 youths listed by the Settlements Ministry as living in outposts likely live in the estimated 204 illegal farming outposts spread across the West Bank, 130 of which were established since the current government entered office in December 2022.

The youths, often school dropouts, do volunteer work on these farms, regularly taking sheep and goats to pasture in large tracts of land in the West Bank, where they frequently, and deliberately, clash with local Palestinians.

According to Peace Now officials who discovered the........

© The Times of Israel