Netanyahu government quietly doubled the budget allocated to the West Bank settlements

The cultural centre in the settlement of Ariel. 

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has quietly doubled the portion of Israel’s national budget allocated to Jewish settlements in the West Bank settlements, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said in an interview on Monday.
“During the current government’s term, we doubled the budgets [allocated] to Judea and Samaria. We did it with a low profile, in agreement with the mayors,” Steinitz told Galei Yisrael, a regional radio station based in the West Bank.
The government carried out the moves quietly, so that “elements in Israel and abroad” would not attempt to stymie them, he added. (italics added by AbuP)
Steinitz, who on Monday afternoon received an award from the settlement movement honoring him for his contributions, related to interviewer Kaveh Shafran how he had helped the settlements.
“We are funding three cultural centers in Judea and Samaria – in Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim and Kiryat Arba. We’ve helped the Jordan Valley. We’ve helped the Jewish community in Hebron. Because of my decision to give a special allocation to establish the university in Ariel, despite enormous pressure from the [other] universities against it, the way was paved to getting the Council of Higher Education’s approval.”