JERUSALEM, June 12 -- Israel's government has set in motion the largest settlement expansion of recent decades, a plan to finance 61 new settlement sites across the occupied West Bank with mobile homes, roads and utilities installed before planning procedures conclude, and sequenced deliberately to beat a possible early election that could take the checkbook away.

The cabinet referred the centerpiece, an allocation of 1 billion shekels, about $338 million, to the security cabinet for a vote scheduled Sunday, after separately approving roughly 152 million shekels, some $51 million, for planning and regulatory work covering dozens of settlements and outposts, Al Jazeera reported, citing the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now. The m...