The Mateh Binyamin Regional Council in the West Bank has disbursed 51 million shekels ($14.6 million) over a five-year period to several unauthorized settlement outposts both within and beyond its jurisdiction, even though such actions are expressly prohibited, Haaretz has learned.

Like all the local councils in the West Bank, Mateh Binyamin operates at a deficit and receives tens of millions of shekels each year from the national government. That means it is in practice using state money to help maintain the outposts.

In 2012, for example, the council received 80 million shekels from the Interior Ministry to cover its deficit and 158 million shekels from various government agencies for welfare, education, infrastructure and the like. The council reported 121 million shekels in revenues for the year. It allocated 13 million shekels for public infrastructure in the outposts, 500,000 shekels for “preserving state lands” and 2 million shekels to the Yesha Council of settlements.

The Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, founded in 1979, has jurisdiction over the Jewish settlements surrounding Ramallah and their approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Several unauthorized outposts are also in its jurisdiction, including Adei Ad, Amona, Bnei Adam, Esh Kodesh, Haresha and Hayovel. But the council also allocates funds to outposts beyond its borders, for reasons that aren’t clear.

The regional councils were once an important conduit for the funds used to build many outposts. But after the publication of the Talia Sasson report of 2005, clarifying the scope of the unauthorized outposts, then-Attorney General Menachem Mazuz prohibited any government agency, from the Housing and Construction Ministry to the local governments, from funding unauthorized construction.

But under a line item called “young communities” in its annual budgets from 2008-2012 (figures for 2013 are not yet available), the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council distributed a total of 51 million shekels to outposts.

“In the young communities there are hundreds of families with thousands of children who are residents of the Binyamin region, and the regional council supplies them municipal services as it does to all its residents,” council chairman Avi Roeh told Haaretz.

A resident of one of the outposts, who did not want to be identified, said: “In contrast to other communities, where the regional council can build a community center, synagogue, or day care center, or fund infrastructure projects, in the outposts it can’t. So what it does is transfer the money to the cooperative association that manages the outpost, so that it’s not a direct transfer for construction activity but to an external body.”