According to recent data published by the Ministry of Finance, in 2024 alone, the Israeli government spent approximately 101 million NIS on operating private security companies that guard around 3,000 settlers living in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem such as Silwan, the Muslim Quarter, Ras al-Amud, and others. This amount is equivalent to about 3,000 NIS per month (!) per settler.
Private security guards man permanent posts established in most settler homes and accompany children and families from their homes whenever they leave—to work, school, extracurricular activities, or any other destination.
A private guard escorts a settler child in Silwan
East Jerusalem Security Budget
The budget for securing settlers in East Jerusalem is effectively controlled by the settlers themselves. Each year, settlers take over additional houses and properties in Palestinian neighborhoods, and the Ministry of Housing is compelled to fund security for these new locations. Thus, the settlers’ security budget continues to grow and inflate without any formal decision or directive from the political leadership—rather, it is dictated by the settlers, who create facts on the ground.
The Ministry of Housing has several budget regulations pertaining to the funding of private security for settlers in East Jerusalem, which have changed over the years. In recent years, these include:
- Budget item 29010248: “Security in East Jerusalem”
- Budget item 29010249: “Enhanced Security in East Jerusalem”
- Budget item 29010254: “New Tender for East Jerusalem Security”
An examination of these budget lines comparing the original budget to actual spending shows that in nearly every year since 1997, actual expenditures significantly exceeded the approved budget.
* Not including additional tens of millions of shekels in multi-year budget commitments (authorization to commit).
The data was gathered from the Ministry of Finance’s “Fiscal Digital” files and the “Budget Key” website. (In 2020, no original budget data was available due to the government’s collapse and continuation of the previous year’s budget).
Regular Budget:
In 2019, the original budget was 44 million NIS, but actual expenditure reached 91 million NIS (208% implementation).
In 2021, the original budget was 64 million NIS, actual spending was 85 million NIS (133%).
In 2022, the original budget was 34 million NIS, actual spending was 83 million NIS (246%).
In 2023, the original budget was 68 million NIS, actual spending was 107 million NIS (157%).
In 2024, the original budget was 38.6 million NIS, actual spending was 101 million NIS (262%).
The 2025 original budget stands at 93.2 million NIS.
Authorization to Commit:
In addition to the regular budget, the government has almost annually spent tens of millions of shekels in “authorization to commit,” a type of budget that spans multiple fiscal years and is not included in the regular annual budget.
Authorization to commit amounted to: 42 million NIS in 2019, 100 million NIS in 2021 and 31 million NIS in 2023.
It is worth noting that in the last seven years, such authorizations were never approved in the original budget in advance—they were added during the year.
From 1997 through the end of 2024, the government has spent more than 2.6 billion NIS on securing a small group of settlers in East Jerusalem.
A Private Company Instead of the Police
The provision of security for settlers in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem by the Ministry of Housing began under Ariel Sharon, who served as Minister of Housing in the late 1980s. Sharon then established an entire mechanism for transferring Palestinian properties in East Jerusalem to settler organizations and decided that the Ministry of Housing would fund their private security.
To this day, the Ministry of Housing continues to fund and manage the East Jerusalem settler security project, even though the police are the body officially responsible for the safety of Israeli citizens, even though security is not within the Ministry of Housing’s expertise, and despite the significant issues involved in deploying armed private actors in a volatile area like East Jerusalem.
There have already been cases in the past in which civilians were harmed by security guards during clashes, such as the case of 17-year-old Milad Ayyash, who was shot dead by fire coming from the settler building “Beit Yonatan” in Silwan, and Samer Sarhan, who was shot by a guard in Silwan.
Many housing ministers have tried to end the anomaly of the Ministry of Housing’s responsibility for security duties in East Jerusalem since the 1990s, but without success. In 2005, then-Housing Minister Isaac Herzog appointed a “Public Committee to Examine Guarding and Security of Compounds in East Jerusalem,” chaired by Maj. Gen. (res.) Ori Or (“The Or Committee”).
The committee examined how settler security in East Jerusalem was being handled and unequivocally concluded that, for operational, security, economic, and legal reasons, full responsibility for securing the settlers should be transferred to the Israel Police.
Despite the committee’s recommendations and efforts by Herzog’s successor, Minister Tzipi Livni, the government—under pressure from settler organizations—decided to block the recommendations and instead resolved to continue providing security through private guards under the Ministry of Housing.
Housing Minister Ariel Atias also attempted at the time to transfer responsibility for settler security to the Israel Police, but to no avail. The East Jerusalem settlers have a vested interest in preserving the current convenient arrangement in which they receive round-the-clock private security at the state’s expense, and they exert pressure to prevent transferring this responsibility to the police.