Israel Matzav

Oh my: Cost of Oslo accords would have financed 50 years of guaranteed income for 'Palestinians'

Research by Moshe Feiglin's Jewish Leadership faction in the Likud party shows that the cost of the failed Oslo accords - NIS 900 billion ($250 billion) and counting - would have financed 50 years of guaranteed income at current levels for each 'Palestinian' who would have left Israel instead.

The failed attempt at regional peacemaking known as the Oslo Process has cost the state of Israel over 900 billion shekels – more than $250 billion – since 1993, and the costs keeps rising, according to a study by the Likud party's Jewish Leadership faction, which is headed by MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud-Beytenu).

By comparison, the total state budget for 2014 has been set at about 400 billion shekels, or about $115 billion.

The numbers came as a shock to the researchers, who recently gave a much lower estimate of the total financial costs of the botched endeavor.

Jewish Leadership's report on the study's results note that the same amount of money would have sufficed for ensuring that 3.5 million Arabs receive the same income that they currently enjoy, for a period of 50 years, in exchange for voluntary repatriation to Arab countries.

Instead of turning Gaza, Judea and Samaria into arms depots and terror hotspots, Israel should apply its sovereignty to all of these areas, settle them, make them flourish, and adopt a policy of reducing the size of the Arab population and isolating it.

The research, which was led by Jewish Leadership's R&D Head, Michael Fuah, examined nine fields of expenditure and tallied up what it said were the minimal costs of the Oslo process to date, as follows:

Transfers of funds to the Palestinan Authority – 88 billion shekels

Added costs to Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) – 37 billion shekels

Added costs to the IDF – 300 billion shekels

Costs to Ministry of Public Security (police) and damage from massive car thefts – 105 billion shekels.

Hiring of civilian security guards all over Israel – 220 billion shekels

Construction of separation fence around territory handed over to the Palestinian Arabs – 4.7 billion shekels

Loss in tourism revenues during peak years of terror – 150 billion shekels

Cost of evicting Jews from Katif Bloc – 9.5 billion shekels

The study also found that more than three times as many Jews were murdered in terror attacks between 1994 and 2012 (the Oslo years) as between 1977 and 1993.

Thank you Uncle Shimon. 

Labels: Gaza expulsion, IDF, Israel police, Oslo accords, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terrorism, PLO, security fence, Shimon Peres, Shin Bet

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:12 PM