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.