The Israeli government allows settlers to exploit land and natural resources that belong to Palestinians. Israel provides preferential treatment to Israeli businesses operating in the OPT while putting up barriers to, or simply blocking, Palestinian ones.
Full Answer
Why does Israel spend so much money on the settlements?
Government spending per citizen in the settlements is double that spent per Israeli citizen in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, while government spending for settlers in isolated Israeli settlements is three times the Israeli national average. Most of the spending goes to the security of the Israeli citizens living there. [46]
Are Israel's settlements legal?
The majority of legal scholars hold the settlements to violate international law, while others have offered dissenting views supporting the Israeli position. The Israeli Supreme Court itself has never addressed the issue of the settlements' legality.
Is Israel's policy of settling in the occupied territory legal?
In 1978, the State Department Legal Adviser advised the Congress on his conclusion that Israel's government, the Israeli Government's program of establishing civilian settlements in the occupied territory is inconsistent with international law, and we see no change since then to affect that fundamental conclusion.' ( Kerry 2016)
What is the history of Israeli settlement policy?
Settlement policy. As early as 1967, Israeli settlement policy was started by the Labor government of Levi Eshkol. The basis for Israeli settlement in the West Bank became the Allon Plan, named after its inventor Yigal Allon.
How does Israel justify illegal settlements?
Israel has justified its civilian settlements by stating that a temporary use of land and buildings for various purposes appears permissible under a plea of military necessity and that the settlements fulfilled security needs.
How does Israeli settlement work?
Though formally a non-governmental organization, it is funded by the Israeli government and leases lands from the Civil Administration to settle in the West Bank. It is authorized to create settlements in the West Bank on lands licensed to it by the Civil Administration.
Is Israel building illegal settlements?
Israel advanced plans for the construction of more than 4,000 homes in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, a rights group has said, a day after the Israeli army demolished homes in an area where hundreds of Palestinians face the threat of expulsion.
Why does Israel have settlements?
Ideological settlers, seeking to maximize Jewish possession of biblical lands, set up settlements such as Kiryat Arba near Hebron. Settlements continued to expand in the decades that followed, and by 1993 there were more than 280,000 people living in settlements (130,000 if East Jerusalem is excluded).
How many settlements does Israel have?
Today they total around 400,000 and live in about 130 separate settlements (this doesn't include East Jerusalem, which we'll address in a moment). They have grown under every Israeli government over the past half-century despite consistent international opposition.
Why does Israel have settlements in the West Bank?
Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: a claim based on the notion of historic rights to this as a homeland as affirmed in the Balfour Declaration of 1917; security grounds, both internal and external; and the deep symbolic value for Jews of the area occupied.
Has Israel stolen land?
Israel has declared at least 26 percent of the West Bank as “state land”. Using a different interpretation of Ottoman, British and Jordanian laws, Israel stole public and private Palestinian land for settlements under the pretext of “state land”.
How has Israel violated human rights?
Israel's continued policies and practices had resulted in flagrant human rights violations and abuses, including brutalisation of children, torture, forcible transfers, and colonisation of land.
Are Israeli settlements in Palestine illegal?
The UN has repeatedly stated Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory are a flagrant violation under international law, the rights experts recalled.
Who were the first settlers in Israel?
3,000 to 2,500 B.C. — The city on the hills separating the fertile Mediterranean coastline of present-day Israel from the arid deserts of Arabia was first settled by pagan tribes in what was later known as the land of Canaan. The Bible says the last Canaanites to rule the city were the Jebusites.
How many Israeli settlements are in Palestine?
From 1967 through 2017, over 200 Israeli settlements were established in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem); their current population is almost 620,000.
What is the current status of Israeli settlements in the West Bank?
From 1967 through 2017, over 200 Israeli settlements were established in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem); their current population is almost 620,000.
Is it ethical to move to Israel?
Despite this polarity, travel to Israel can be ethical, but it is important to be fully aware of the situation there, to balance your trip with a visit to the Palestinian territories, and to ensure that your visit doesn't support the Israeli state but rather local communities and small businesses.
Are there Israeli settlements in Gaza?
According to the report of the Security Council Commission established under resolution 446 (1979): "Between 1967 and May 1979, Israel has established altogether 133 settlements in the occupied territories, consisting of 79 in the West Bank, 29 in the Golan Heights, 7 in the Gaza Strip and 18 in the Sinai.
What was Israel before 1948?
In 1517, the Ottoman Empire conquered the region, ruling it until the British conquered it in 1917. The region was ruled under the British Mandate for Palestine until 1948, when the Jewish State of Israel was proclaimed in part of the ancient land of Israel.
Where are the Israeli settlements?
Israeli settlements currently exist in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights. East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights have been annexed by Israel, so residents are treated equivalently to the rest of Israel under Israeli law.
What are the settlements in East Jerusalem?
East Jerusalem settlements (2006) Golan Heights settlements (1992) Israeli settlements, or Israeli colonies, are civilian communities inhabited by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Jewish ethnicity, built in violation of international law on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israeli settlements currently exist in ...
How many settlements were there in the Gaza Strip?
Before Israel's unilateral disengagement plan in which the Israeli settlements were evacuated, there were 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip under the administration of the Hof Aza Regional Council. The land was allocated in such a way that each Israeli settler disposed of 400 times the land available to the Palestinian refugees, and 20 times the volume of water allowed to the peasant farmers of the Strip.
What was the Allon Plan?
It implied Israeli annexation of major parts of the Israeli-occupied territories, especially East Jerusalem, Gush Etzion and the Jordan Valley. The settlement policy of the government of Yitzhak Rabin was also derived from the Allon Plan.
How was Kiryat Arba established?
According to a secret document dating to 1970, obtained by Haaretz, the settlement of Kiryat Arba was established by confiscating land by military order and falsely representing the project as being strictly for military use while in reality, Kiryat Arba was planned for settler use.
What territories did Israel control?
It took over the remainder of the Palestinian Mandate territories of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, from Jordan which had controlled the territories since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, which had held Gaza under occupation since 1949. From Egypt it also captured the Sinai Peninsula and from Syria it captured most of the Golan Heights, which since 1981 has been administered under the Golan Heights Law .
How does settlement affect the economy?
Settlement has an economic dimension, much of it driven by the significantly lower costs of housing for Israeli citizens living in Israeli settlements compared to the cost of housing and living in Israel proper. Government spending per citizen in the settlements is double that spent per Israeli citizen in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, while government spending for settlers in isolated Israeli settlements is three times the Israeli national average. Most of the spending goes to the security of the Israeli citizens living there.
When did Israel take over the West Bank?
The West Bank was occupied by Israel in 1967, and much of the world considers all Jewish settlements there illegal under international law. Most settlers, however, live in settlements permitted under Israeli law.
What village did the Palestinians protest?
Palestinians from the village of Beita have protested the settlement and thrown stones at Israeli soldiers.
What happens if the new prime minister backs the settlers?
If the new right-wing prime minister, Naftali Bennett, backs the settlers, he will alienate the leftist and Arab members of his coalition. If he permits them to be evicted, he will allow the Israeli right to paint him as a turncoat. An eviction could come as soon as Sunday, but could be delayed by legal proceedings.
What issue did the bloc come together on?
The bloc came together on a single issue — the need to remove Mr. Netanyahu — but governing has quickly proved harder work.
Who was Benjamin Netanyahu's partner?
To win a parliamentary majority large enough to push his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, from power, Mr. Bennett and his centrist partner, Yair Lapid, assembled an ideologically incoherent alliance that ranges from leftists who oppose settlement expansion to hard-right politicians like Mr. Bennett who support building settlements across the occupied West Bank.
Who is the professor of political science at the Open University of Israel?
“The opposition is sniffing around to find the issues that will embarrass the government and create cleavages within it,” said Tamar Hermann , a professor of political science at the Open University of Israel. “They are incessantly looking for a spoke to stick into its wheel.”.
Is Evyatar illegal in Israel?
But Evyatar, built without permission from the Israeli state, is illegal according to Israeli law.
Where are the settlements in Israel?
Most of the settlements are in the West Bank, an area that Israel controls but never has formally annexed.
What was the Israeli government's goal after the 1967 war?
In 1968, they drove from Jerusalem to the West Bank city of Hebron, where Jews had been driven away by Arab armies in 1929; checked into a hotel and didn't leave. As the group's leader, Rabbi Moshe Levinger, told an interviewer years later, the objective was to reclaim land that was part of biblical Israel: "Jews are entitled to have it," he said.
What Is a Settlement?
Cranes hover at a construction site in the Israeli settlement of Ramot, built in a suburb of mostly Arab East Jerusalem. AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images
Why are there settlements in the West Bank?
Opponents see the settlements as part of an intentional Israeli strategy to take over the West Bank permanently. To them, the settlements' presence throughout the area gives the Israeli military a justification for being there as well, and makes it impossible for the Palestinians to ever really have an independent nation. They see the settlements rising in the hills around Palestinian cities — and the security buffers of empty land around them —as evidence that their chance for independence is fading. Additionally, they see the hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks that the Israelis have created to thwart terror attacks on the settlements as restricting Palestinians' freedom of movement [source: BBC News ].
What does the settlements represent?
To the Israeli government and supporters of the movement, including many people in the U.S., the settlements represent Israelis returning to live in places that once were part of ancient Israel, and where Jews lived in the centuries that followed. But to the Palestinians and much of the rest of the world — including 14 nations belonging to the U.N. Security Council who voted in December 2016 to condemn the settlements — they violate international law and are a major obstacle to the long-elusive vision of a two-state Israeli-Palestinian solution.
How many Israelis live in East Jerusalem?
Add to that another 200,000 Israelis who live in East Jerusalem and about 20,000 in the Golan Heights — areas also seized in the 1967 war that Israel eventually annexed — and you've got roughly 600,000 Israelis or 10 percent of Israel's 6.3 million Jewish citizens living outside Israel's pre-war borders [sources: Myre and Kaplow, BBC News ].
What is the holiest site in Judaism?
This shot of Jerusalem shows the Wailing Wall in the foreground, the holiest site in Judaism, with the gold Dome of the Rock in the background, the third most-sacred site in Islam. Daniel Zelazo/Getty Images
How did Israel legalize settlements?
Israel legalises such outposts or settlements by deploying a draconian interpretation of the Ottoman law that if the land was not cultivated for several years in a row it would become the property of the state.
What law does Israel use to claim land?
Israel uses the Absentee Property Law to claim the lands it forced the Palestinians to abandon in the 1948 and 1967 wars. It also deploys a range of tactics to declare all unregistered lands – left out by the Ottoman and British occupiers and believed to be two-thirds of the West Bank – as possible “state” land.
Why are there outposts in Palestine?
Analysts say all outposts are a backdoor to keep claiming Palestinian land after Israel committed to freezing settlements in the Oslo Accords in 1993. In early May, more than 50 Jewish families packed their bags and moved to a hilltop in the West Bank in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Why are Palestinian lands confiscated?
Palestinian lands are also confiscated in the name of archaeological and tourism purposes , and if they are bought from Palestinians it is almost always through coercive measures, Peace Now noted.
What percentage of land does Israel control?
It said the Israeli state controlled 93 percent of all land, including in East Jerusalem, and has delegated the task of managing these lands to a state agency – the Israel Land Authority. But this body is dominated by the Jewish National Fund whose “explicit mandate is to develop land for Jews and not any other segment of the population”.
What was the promise made to the settlers?
Instead of being reprimanded by the state for illegally confiscating land that did not belong to them, the settlers were made a promise.
When did Israel put the land registration process on hold?
Anwar Mhajne, an assistant professor at Stonehill College and a political scientist specialising in international relations, said in 1968 Israel put the land registration process on hold, allowing it to label any unregistered land as state land.
Overview
Legal arguments
Almost all international lawyers and every state but Israel regard the Geneva Conventions as part of customary international law, implying all states are duty bound to observe them. Israel alone challenges this premise, arguing that the West Bank and Gaza are "disputed territories", and that the Conventions do not apply because these lands did not form part of another state's sovereign territory, and that the transfer of Jews into areas like the West Bank is not a government act but …
Background
Shortly after independence, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the fundamental principles of international law, accepted as binding by all civilized nations, were to be incorporated in the domestic legal system of Israel. In the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights. Theodor Meron, at the time the Israeli government's authority on the topic of international law and legal counsel to the Israel…
Status of the territories
Although all areas in question were captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel has treated them in three different ways:
• "East Jerusalem"—Jerusalem and its surroundings were envisioned as an international area under United Nations administration in the 1947 partition plan, which was accepted by the Jewish Agency but rejected by all Arab nations. In 1948, Jordan captured and annexed the eastern half o…
International legal opinions
At present, based on the result of numerous UN resolutions that cite Article 49 of the Geneva Convention, the consensus view of the international community is that Israeli settlements are illegal and constitute a violation of international law. According to the BBC, as of 2008 every government in the world, except Israel, considered the settlements to be illegal. In November 2019, the United States said that it no longer views them as inconsistent with international law.
Unauthorized or illegal outposts
In two cases decided shortly after independence (the Shimshon and Stampfer cases) the Israeli Supreme Court held that the fundamental rules of international law accepted as binding by all "civilized" nations were incorporated in the domestic legal system of Israel. The Nuremberg Military Tribunal had already determined that the articles annexed to the Hague IV Convention of 1907 were customary law, recognized by all civilized nations.
See also
• Israeli law in the West Bank settlements
• House demolition in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
• International law and the Arab–Israeli conflict
• West Bank Areas in the Oslo II Accord
Notes
1. ^ Playfair 1992, p. 396.
2. ^ Albin 2001, p. 150.
3. ^ Quigley 1999, p. 72.
4. ^ ReliefWeb 2016.
5. ^ Beaumont 2016.
Overview
Israeli settlements, or Israeli colonies, are civilian communities inhabited by Israeli citizens, overwhelmingly of Jewish ethnicity, built on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The international community considers Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
Israeli settlements currently exist in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), …
Housing costs and state subventions
Settlement has an economic dimension, much of it driven by the significantly lower costs of housing for Israeli citizens living in Israeli settlements compared to the cost of housing and living in Israel proper. Government spending per citizen in the settlements is double that spent per Israeli citizen in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, while government spending for settlers in isolated Israeli settlements is three times the Israeli national average. Most of the spending goes to the securit…
Number of settlements and inhabitants
As of 2022, there are 140 Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including 12 in East Jerusalem. In addition, there are over 100 Israeli illegal outposts in the West Bank. In total, over 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem, with an additional 220,000 Jewish settlers residing in East Jerusalem.
Additionally, over 20,000 Israeli citizens live in settlements in the Golan Heights.
Character: rural and urban
Settlements range in character from farming communities and frontier villages to urban suburbs and neighborhoods. The four largest settlements, Modi'in Illit, Ma'ale Adumim, Beitar Illit and Ariel, have achieved city status. Ariel has 18,000 residents, while the rest have around 37,000 to 55,500 each.
History
Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied a number of territories. It took over the remainder of the Palestinian Mandate territories of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, from Jordan which had controlled the territories since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, which had held Gaza under occupation since 1949. From Egypt, it also captured the Sinai Peninsula a…
Geography and municipal status
Some settlements are self-contained cities with a stable population in the tens of thousands, infrastructure, and all other features of permanence. Examples are Beitar Illit (a city of close to 45,000 residents), Ma'ale Adumim, Modi'in Illit, and Ariel (almost 20,000 residents). Some are towns with a local council status with populations of 2,000–20,0000, such as Alfei Menashe, Eli, Elkana, Efrat and Kirya…
Types of settlement
• Cities/towns: Ariel, Betar Illit, Modi'in Illit and Ma'ale Adumim.
• Urban suburbs, such as Har Gilo.
• Block settlements, such as Gush Etzion and settlements in the Nablus area.
• Frontier villages, such as those along the Jordan River.
Resettlement of former Jewish communities
Some settlements were established on sites where Jewish communities had existed during the British Mandate of Palestine or even since the First Aliyah or ancient times.
• Golan Heights – Bnei Yehuda, founded in 1890, abandoned because of Arab attacks in 1920, rebuilt near the original site in 1972.
• Jerusalem – Jewish presence alongside other peoples since biblical times, various surrounding communities and neighborhoods, including Kfar Shiloah, als…