https://www.bhol.co.il/news/1247360

That’s 86% of the trips budget, not of the ministry’s entire budget.

The trips budget, indeed.
As for the little dirty tricks in other budgets, I don’t know anything about that… but there’s a presumption…?

It’s also not 86% of the ministry’s trips budget, but 60%. It’s a ministry project whose purpose is to allow students to get to know the Galilee.
https://m.calcalist.co.il/Article.aspx?guid=39119710

"Unlike the Haredi students, whose trips lasted one day, the trips for the other sectors lasted three days and therefore cost more. The funding for a non-Haredi student’s trip was 433 shekels, while for a Haredi student it was 115 shekels. But even when one checks the budgetary cost, it turns out that the Haredi trips cost 5.3 million shekels, 1.5 times the cost of the trips for non-Haredi students, which came to 3.6 million shekels. In other words, yeshiva students received 60% of the budget even though they make up only one fifth of the relevant population."

The 86% is the percentage of Haredi students who participated in this program out of all the students who took part in it (53,300). Haredi students make up about 21% of all students in the post-elementary education system.

I’m not claiming that the situation in the Ministry for the Periphery and the Galilee was necessarily proper, but it’s sometimes worth getting into the details and not being dazzled by the headlines. Especially since there are probably other budgets whose main beneficiaries are דווקא the non-Haredim.

With God’s help, eve of Rosh Chodesh Av 5781

School trips to the Galilee and the Negev help their economic development, since every educational institution that comes to those regions pays for food, lodging, and entrance to sites, and the tens of thousands of students traveling there contribute to the economic cultivation of those regions. In this respect there is no difference between secular, Religious Zionist, or Haredi travelers. Every group of travelers contributes to the growth and strengthening of the region.

The fact that the Haredi share of trips to the Galilee and the Negev is greater than their share of the population teaches us the troubling fact that the secular public is growing more distant from traveling in these areas. It turns out that secular Israelis are becoming psychologically detached from the periphery, and for them the State of Israel is increasingly shrinking into the “ghetto” of “between Hadera and Gedera.” If this process continues, God forbid, we will find ourselves in a situation where the Galilee and the Negev cease to be part of our consciousness as part of the Land of Israel.

The solution should be to increase encouragement for state schools, and perhaps even obligate them, to take more trips in the Galilee and the Negev, as the poet said: “Rise and walk through the land with backpack and staff, and surely along the way you will once again find the Land of Israel. The fields of the good land will accompany you; it will call you to it like to a cradle of love.” Traveling in the Galilee and the Negev will strengthen the youth’s connection and love for these parts of the country.

With blessings, Azriel Tzemach Halevi Kalisher

Paragraph 1, line 3
… every group of travelers contributes…

Paragraph 2, line 1
… that the Haredi share of trips to the Galilee and the Negev…

Only a naive person thinks that other parties do not use similar methods, and the Torah-study settlement cores funded by the Ministry of Agriculture are just one example out of many.