Israeli Settlements - Ongoing
Israeli settlements in the West Bank has been for decades at the heart of Israeli Palestinian conflict. The term settlement refers to the Israeli Jewish communities that Israel established after 1967 beyond the Green Line on land occupied in the Six-Day War. During the disengagement program in the summer of 2005, 17 Gaza Strip settlements and four settlements in northern West Bank were dismantled. Today, all settlements are in the West Bank. By the...
more »Israeli Settlements - Ongoing
Israeli settlements in the West Bank has been for decades at the heart of Israeli Palestinian conflict. The term settlement refers to the Israeli Jewish communities that Israel established after 1967 beyond the Green Line on land occupied in the Six-Day War. During the disengagement program in the summer of 2005, 17 Gaza Strip settlements and four settlements in northern West Bank were dismantled. Today, all settlements are in the West Bank. By the end of 2009 there were 120 official settlements in the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem). 290,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements (according to Central Bureau of Statistics data for 2008).
Outposts are, essentially, settlements established by governments of Israel since the 1990s in an unofficial manner. In 1996, the government decided not to build new settlements; but in order to skirt political and international obligations, it established unofficial settlements, calling them "illegal outposts" or "unauthorized outposts." There are estimated 4000 settlers living in outposts.
Many of the settlers are Ideological settlers who chose to live in settlements for ideological reasons, to settle the Land of Israel and prevent implementation of a two-state solution. The majority of settlers, however, are "quality-of-life" settlers who came to the settlements for their low housing prices and relatively high quality of life, rather than for ideological reasons.
On November, 2009 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a 10-month freeze on settlement construction. This decision implies to the construction of new buildings only. Civil Administration sent inspectors to patrol West Bank settlements and enforce the construction freeze orders. Settlers confronted the inspectors in several settlements, trying to prevent them from handing out the construction freeze warrants. Led by settler leaders, a massive public campaign was raised against the government's decision.
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