Settlements are actually very left-wing (economically speaking)
The ideological evolution of the Israeli left contains a profound economic paradox. In contemporary political discourse, particularly among the self-styled liberal intelligentsia writing for outlets like Haaretz, intense moral outrage is frequently directed at any expansion of the settlement enterprise. A prime example is the fierce pushback against a plan by an Israeli socialist youth movement to found a new kibbutz-style community in the Jordan Valley. Commentators viewed such initiatives as an intolerable expansion of the occupation and a betrayal of progressive values – the Haaretz editorial read: “Leftists aren’t settlers. The place of the left is in a determined struggle against all settlements.”
It’s comfortable to write this from a nice office in Tel Aviv. Yet, in its rush to condemn the geopolitics of the West Bank, Haaretz ignores the reality that the heavily subsidized settlement enterprise functions as a highly socialist economic ecosystem, while Israel proper has devolved into a hyper-capitalist playground of exorbitant rents and crushing living costs. How can cosmopolitan Israeli “leftists” be so divorced from the economic roots of the term? This blind spot stems from a fundamental misunderstanding prevalent in Western and Israeli progressive circles: the false conflation of economic socialism with liberal values like democracy, freedom, and human rights.
At its founding in 1948, Israel was deeply rooted in socialist architecture. The economy was dominated by the Histadrut, state-controlled infrastructure, and agrarian kibbutzim. Decades of neoliberal reforms, privatization, and high-tech globalization have thoroughly dismantled this system. Today, major metropolitan areas like Tel Aviv and central Jerusalem feature some of the most prohibitive rental markets and highest costs of living in the OECD.
In contrast, the state-sponsored infrastructure of West Bank settlements mirrors classic socialist economic engineering. Through massive government intervention, the state absorbs the financial burdens of daily life for its citizens in these territories. Settlers receive tax breaks, subsidized land development costs, and municipal balancing grants that artificially compress the cost of living. For a working-class family, a settlement offers what the capitalist core inside the Green Line cannot: affordable space. The chance to buy a home, subsidized community infrastructure, and a collective safety net. Whether the liberal left admits it or not, the settlement mechanism is deeply, well, leftist, economically speaking: state-directed wealth redistribution designed to insulate a certain population from market forces.
The fact that West Bank socialism is driven by ideological fervor and funded by taxpayer money made inside Israel is irrelevant. Socialism is not inherently fair, nor is it synonymous with humanitarianism. In progressive commentary, “socialism” is often used as a vague shorthand for things like equality, empathy, and respect for international law. But economic socialism, at its core, is simply the state control, direction, or heavy subsidization of resources, production, and distribution. It says nothing about who qualifies for those benefits, nor does it guarantee broad political rights.
Socialism can be exclusive, nationalist, and deeply authoritarian. History is replete with examples of non-democratic, illiberal socialism that achieved high levels of state-directed economic equality while trampling on human rights. The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc nations operated under total state control of the economy, providing guaranteed housing, healthcare, and employment to their citizens, while operating as brutal, totalitarian police states. In Israel itself, the kibbutzim were exclusionary and ideologically puritanical communities that operated according to rigid laws irrespective of personal choices.
As the Haaretz editorial itself admits, a socialist youth movement building a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley is a continuation of a historical pattern. It represents an attempt to build a collectivist, state-supported sanctuary for an in-group. Haaretz condemned this as part of a prolonged institutional effort to “ethnically cleanse” the West Bank of Palestinians. But by conflating such settlement projects with the hilltop youth and “settler pogroms,” Haaretz ignores the class dynamics and skyrocketing prices driving interest in settlements and fails to provide any suggested economic solutions to discourage it.
The reality is that the Israeli state has created a system where socialist economic security – funded by Tel Aviv’s taxpayer money – is effectively exported to the occupied territories, while raw, punishing capitalism is left to reign at home. Until the liberal left untangles its own conflation of economic systems with moral virtues, it will remain blind to the fact that for some Israelis, the settlements might offer the only way to live reasonably well without a high-wage profession or inherited wealth.
Endless moralizing, virtue signaling and references to vague international law won’t prevent the expansion of settlements, even under a more liberal government. Instead, Israeli “leftists” need to insist that socialism be brought back inside the Green Line. That is – they need to actually become left-wing.