A UN report last September stated that, since Hamas' 7 October terror attacks, there had been "a record surge in settlement activities" in the West Bank, "including the construction of outposts, roads, fences and roadblocks initiated by settlers with the endorsement or acquiescence of authorities". It also recorded 1,860 incidents of violence (resulting in 20 deaths) by settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank from 7 October 2023 to the end of 2024, as part of a campaign to drive villagers off land. Seven settlers have also been killed.
Benjamin Netanyahu has a long-standing policy of responding to Palestinian terrorism by expanding settlements: in 2011, he called it "they kill, we build". And since 2021, extremist settlers have been part of Netanyahu's hard- right coalition.
How many settlers are there?
Some 737,000 Israelis now live on land designated by the UN as Palestinian. About 500,000 of these reside in the West Bank; the rest are in East Jerusalem. This means that around 10% of Israel's Jewish population resides in settlements deemed by the UN Security Council, most recently in 2016, to have "no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law".
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Palestinian residents of the West Bank – an area less than half the size of Northern Ireland on the western side of the River Jordan – now number 3.3 million. They have lived at least partly under Israeli control since 1967. Scores of settlements dot the area, from north to south; some 800 Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks limit the movement of Palestinians living there.
When did the settlers first move to these areas?
After Israel's crushing victory over Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War, the Israeli government allowed – and encouraged – Jewish citizens to settle in some of the areas it had occupied, in part for military reasons: Jordan had shelled Israel from the hills of the West Bank.
Initially, the numbers were small. Areas of East Jerusalem ethnically cleansed of Jews by Jordan in the 1948 war were repopulated, and Jewish settlements sprang up around the eastern edge of the city in the West Bank. The process intensified when the right-wing Likud party (now led by Netanyahu) took power in Israel in 1977: Ariel Sharon, then a senior minister, oversaw a security strategy intended to crosshatch Palestinian territories with Jewish towns, schools and industrial parks. Despite decades of international criticism, the number of people setting up home in them has continued to grow.
What are their motives?
The first settlers were kibbutzniks resettling Jewish communes destroyed in the war, and religious nationalists occupying lands they believe were given to them by God. Some of the very earliest remained in Hebron after celebrating Passover there in 1968. Many of those who followed wanted to populate the biblical land of Israel with Jews, or fundamentally alter the "facts on the ground", so as to quash any chance of a Palestinian state ever being established.
Today, however, two-thirds of settlers in the West Bank say they're not motivated by religious ideology. Many are driven by practical considerations: cheaper housing; fresh mountain air; good schools; strong communities; easy commutes to Jerusalem (which is just a short drive away from many settlements, along roads that bypass Palestinian areas) or to Tel Aviv.
What is Israel's official position?
Each Israeli government since 1967 has, to varying degrees, supported their establishment and expansion. Israel officially annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and sees the city as its indivisible capital. It deems the West Bank "disputed" rather than occupied territory.
Under Israeli law, about 147 West Bank settlements are officially authorised. Another 224 are so-called "outposts" – this is an estimate from the Israeli group Peace Now, there are no official figures – illegal under Israeli as well as international law, but in practice both tolerated and supported by Israel. Per capita, Jewish residents in West Bank settlements receive more state funding than those inside Israel's borders.
What is Israel's claim to the West Bank?
Jews have lived in the West Bank for millennia; the area is seen as the cradle of Jewish civilisation and is designated by Israel as Judea and Samaria, because it covers part of those Biblical Jewish kingdoms.
But in 1947, when the UN split the mandate of Palestine, its population was largely Arab. The UN gave 56% of the whole mandate area to the new Jewish state, and 43%, including the West Bank, for the new Palestinian state. Arab leaders rejected the plan, and Israel was attacked by its neighbours. The fighting drove some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes (known as the Nakba, "catastrophe"); large numbers of Jews were also displaced, including from the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In 1949, an armistice line, the Green Line, was agreed: it left just 22% of the mandate under Arab, but not Palestinian, control (Jordan had seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Egypt the Gaza Strip). The Green Line is still, in theory, the legal boundary between Israel and Palestinian territories. Israel crossed it in the Six Day War of 1967, a pre-emptive attack, and has held the West Bank since (it left Gaza in 2005). Israel's view is that the Palestinian state did not come into existence in 1948, so Israeli rule there is not an occupation of foreign land; thus Jews have the right legally to own West Bank land.
What control do Palestinians have?
Under the Oslo Accords signed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel in 1993, the West Bank was divided into a patchwork of jurisdictions. Area A (about 18% of the West Bank, including big cities such as Hebron and Nablus, where 90% of Palestinians live) is in theory under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA); Area B (22%, including more than 400 Palestinian villages) is governed by the PA, with Israel retaining security control; while Area C (about 60%) was meant to be gradually handed over, but has been under full Israeli control since 1993; Israel says this is for security reasons. Area C includes all Israeli settlements and most Palestinian farmland.
How will the situation develop?
The settlements look set to grow inexorably. According to Peace Now, at least 59 new outposts – often farms run by armed settlers – have been built since 7 October, and 70 outposts have been legalised. This year, 10,503 settler housing units have been approved in the West Bank. In February alone, Israel laid claim to 1,000 hectares of Palestinian land, for what it called military reasons.
In theory, international opinion is strongly opposed to the settlements, but foreign pressure has subsided. All recent US governments have seen most settlements as illegal, and in theory have supported a two-state solution. Donald Trump backs neither position; one of his first actions this year was to lift sanctions on far-right settler groups and settlers involved in violence against Palestinians.
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