how israeli settlements are built

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Where are the settlements in Israel located?

Israeli settlements are civilian communities inhabited by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Jewish ethnicity, built on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israeli settlements currently exist in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights, ...

Why do we build settlements in Israel?

"Settlement throughout the entire Land of Israel is for security and by right. A strip of settlements at strategic sites enhances both internal and external security alike, as well as making concrete and realizing our right to Eretz Israel."

When did Israel start building settlements in the West Bank?

As early as September 1967, Israeli settlement policy was progressively encouraged by the Labor government of Levi Eshkol. The basis for Israeli settlement in the West Bank became the Allon Plan, [50] [51] named after its inventor Yigal Allon.

What is Israel’s settlement policy?

Israel’s policy of building settlements in occupied territory is one of the core issues of the conflict. This paper provides background on Israel's settlement policy and information about the work being done towards a just peace in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.

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.

How many settlements has Israel built?

From 1967 through 2017, over 200 Israeli settlements were established in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem); their current population is almost 620,000.

Why is Israel allowed to have 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.

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.

Was Palestine a country before Israel?

Israel Becomes a State In May 1948, less than a year after the Partition Plan for Palestine was introduced, Britain withdrew from Palestine and Israel declared itself an independent state, implying a willingness to implement the Partition Plan.

How much land has Palestine lost to Israel?

During and immediately following the state's creation in 1948, Israel expropriated approximately 4,244,776 acres of Palestinian land. In the process, more than 400 Palestinian cities and towns were systematically destroyed by Israeli forces or repopulated with Jews.

Is Israel occupying Palestine land?

BACKGROUND: Palestinian territory – encompassing the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem – has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.

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.

Are Palestinians allowed in Israel?

Since 2008, they are not allowed to live or stay in Israel because of marriage with an Israeli. Israelis who want to visit their partner in Gaza need permits for a few months, and Israelis can visit their first‐degree relatives in Gaza only in exceptional humanitarian cases.

Why is Israel occupying 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.

How many international laws has Israel broken?

SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS: Laws Violated: Israel has violated 28 resolutions of the United Nations Security Council (which are legally binding on member-nations U.N.

Who Owns the West Bank?

With varying levels of autonomy, the Palestinian Authority controls close to 40 per cent of West Bank today, while the rest is controlled by Israel. It is in West Bank that 160-odd Israeli settlements and outposts now exist.

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.

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 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

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 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 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

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.

How many Israeli settlements are there in the West Bank?

There are 126 Israeli settlements in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem), according to the September 2016 report from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. Geographically, these settlements are all across the West Bank. The West Bank is broken down into Areas A, B, and C, according to the Oslo Accords, ...

What are settlements?

Settlements are Israeli cities, towns and villages in the West Bank and the Golan Heights. (We will deal with East Jerusalem a bit later.) They tend to be gated communities with armed guards at the entrances. Why are they settlements and not simply Israeli residential areas? Because Israel is widely considered to be an occupying force in the territories. It is land that Palestinians, along with the international community, view as territory for a future Palestinian state.

Why are the West Bank and East Jerusalem considered occupied territory?

Israel began its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967 during the Six-Day War. Seeing a military buildup in the surrounding Arab countries, Israel launched a preemptive strike against Egypt, after which Jordan, in turn, attacked Israel. Israel annexed East Jerusalem shortly thereafter, unifying the city under Israel’s authority. But Israel has never annexed the West Bank, part of which remains under military law.

Who are the settlers?

This is a very broad question, and requires a fair amount of generalization.

Why are the settlements controversial?

The settlements are built on land the Palestinians and the international community, along with some in the Israeli community, see as a future Palestinian state. Some of the settlements – especially the blocs – may be a part of Israel in a two-state solution through land swaps between Israelis and Palestinians. One concern, expressed by the European Union, and in the past by the US State Department, is that settlement expansion may make a contiguous, whole Palestinian state in the West Bank impossible.

What is the legal status of settlements?

The settlements are illegal under international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention, which concerns civilian populations during a time of war, states in Article 49 that, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

What about East Jerusalem? And what is East Jerusalem anyway?

From 1948 to 1967, Jerusalem was divided by the Green Line, which is the cease-fire line of 1948 between Israel and Jordan. Although the city is now under Israeli governance, the distinction remains.

What is a settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

In the conversation surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is common to hear the word “settlement.” But what exactly is a settlement? This terminology typically refers to the towns and villages established by Jewish Israelis in the West Bank after Israel took control of the area during the 1967 Six-Day War.

When were the first settlements built?

The first wave of settlements, built between 1968–1977, were constructed strategically by the Labor governments in order to have a Jewish majority in areas where fighting was heaviest during the Arab-Israeli wars.

Is the West Bank illegal?

According to United Nations resolutions and advisory opinions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), an arm of the United Nations, the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal as they are thought to be occupied territories, and are therefore inconsistent with international law.

When did Israel legalize settlements?

During the 1970s, Israel's Supreme Court regularly ruled that the establishment of civilian settlements by military commanders was legal on the basis that they formed part of the territorial defense network and were considered temporary measures needed for military and security purposes.

When did the Israeli Supreme Court rule on settlements?

In 1978 and 1979 the Israeli Supreme court, prompted by the new government policies, ruled on two important cases that set out the requirements for Israeli settlement legality under international law.

What was the Israeli law in 1967?

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 Israeli Foreign Ministry, was asked to provide a memorandum regarding the status in international law of proposed settlement of the territories, which he subsequently addressed to the Foreign Minister Abba Eban on 14 September 1967. He concluded that short-term military settlements would be permissible, but that "civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention," adding that the prohibition on any such population transfer was categorical, and that "civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention ." It follows from the presence on files of these notes, Gershom Gorenberg argues, that the Prime Minister at the time, Levi Eshkol, knew that Israeli settlements in the territories Israel had just occupied would violate international laws and that by that time Eshkol had been actively engaged in exploring the possibility of settling the newly conquered region. Meron's unequivocal legal opinion was marked top secret and not made public.

What did Ronald Reagan say about the settlements?

Notwithstanding the Hansell opinion, the official US position had been that the settlements are "an obstacle to peace". In February 1981, Ronald Reagan announced that he didn't believe that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were illegal. He added that "the UN resolution leaves the West Bank open to all people, Arab and Israeli alike". Hoping to achieve a peace deal, he nevertheless asked Israel to freeze construction calling the settlements an "obstacle to peace". The permissive attitude taken by America accelerated the pace of Israel's settlement programme. Reagan's view on the settlements legality was not held by the State Department. The George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations did not publicly comment on the legality of Israeli settlements, but spoke publicly against them. Since the Clinton administration, the U.S. has continued to object to the settlements, calling them "obstacles to peace" and prejudicial to the outcome of final status talks. Although President Barack Obama and diplomatic officials in his administration have stated, "the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," in February 2011 the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have declared the settlements illegal. In December 2016, the U.S. abstained on a Security Council Resolution that declared that Israeli settlements are illegal and deemed their continuing construction a "flagrant violation" of international law. In abstaining, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power stated, "Today the Security Council reaffirmed its established consensus that the settlements have no legal validity. The United States has been sending a message that settlements must stop privately and publicly for nearly five decades." This position was United States policy and had been stated by Secretary of State John Kerry and by the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Obama administrations. In November 2019, the Trump administration expressly repudiated the Hansell opinion and stated that the United States considered the status of the settlements as being "not inconsistent with" international law. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said: "The hard truth is that there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace." However, Pompeo added that "the United States Government is expressing no view on the legal status of any individual settlement."

What article of the Geneva Convention is against the settlements?

Hansell concluded that the settlements are "inconsistent with international law", and against Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Hansell Memorandum found that " [w]hile Israel may undertake, in the occupied territories, actions necessary to meet its military needs and to provide for orderly government during the occupation, for the reasons indicated above the establishment of the civilian settlements in those territories is inconsistent with international law."

Why did Israel take control of the West Bank?

It has been argued that Israel took control of the West Bank as a result of a defensive war. Former Israeli diplomat Dore Gold writes that:

Which country has always affirmed the de jure applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention?

The International Committee of the Red Cross in a declaration of December 2001 stated that "the ICRC has always affirmed the de jure applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the territories occupied since 1967 by the state of Israel , including East Jerusalem".

What is a Settlement?

Settlements are illegal Jewish-only communities built by Israel for its citizens on territories it occupied in 1967. According to B’Tselem there are 124 official settlements [1] in the West Bank [i] with approximately 350,000 residents in 2013.

What is the legal status of Israeli settlements?

The establishment of settlements by an occupying power in occupied territory violates international humanitarian law which is the body of law governing situations of armed conflict and military occupation.

Did the peace process stop or slow settlement construction?

It has often been stated that the premise of the Oslo “Peace Process” was an exchange of “Land for Peace.“ Regardless of questions about whether this was ever an adequate premise from which to build a just and lasting peace, given the centrality of control over land to the negotiating process it is reasonable to expect that the peace process should have required a complete halt to all Israeli settlement expansion and land confiscation.

Case Study: Har Homa

Prior to 1996, Jabal Abu Ghneim (Abu Ghneim Hill) was a forested oasis and a popular picnic destination for Palestinian families from Bethlehem and its surrounding villages.

Are there benefits to living in or opening a business in a settlement?

Israeli citizens are heavily incentivized by the Israeli government to move to settlements. Included below are a few examples of some of the many benefits provided to settlers and settlements by the Israeli government. [x]

How do settlements perpetuate inequality, discrimination, and violence in the occupied Palestinian territory?

While Palestinian communities and settlements are physically located side by side, they exist in what Human Rights Watch has called a “two tier system of laws, rules, and services...

What can you do?

Support boycott and divestment campaigns targeting companies that support settlements: Ahava, Sodastream, Motorola and Veolia are all the targets of active boycott and divestment campaigns. Support these campaigns which aim to end corporate support for Israel’s settlement policy and thereby contribute to ending settlement growth and construction.

Why do settlements matter in the West Bank?

Why the locations of settlements matter. Settlements are scattered across the West Bank in a way that makes a contiguous Palestinian state impossible, while in Jerusalem the Israeli government has built settlements around the city to consolidate control over it.

When did Israel start a law to confiscate Palestinian property?

In 1950, Israel introduced the Absentee Property Law to confiscate the property of the 800,000 Palestinians who were forced to flee their homes between 1947 and 1949, due to the Nakba. The law encompassed those Palestinians who were displaced to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, or to neighbouring countries.

How do they impact Palestinians?

Besides being built illegally on private and public Palestinian land, settlements impact the day-to-day life of Palestinians in many ways.

How many Israelis live in Israel?

Today, between 600,000 and 750,000 Israelis live in these sizeable settlements, equivalent to roughly 11 percent of the total Jewish Israeli population. They live beyond the internationally recognised borders of their state, on Palestinian land that Israel occupied in 1967, comprising East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

How many Israeli colonies are there in the occupied Palestinian territories?

There are three main types of Israeli colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories, all of which involve seizing Palestinian land and are all illegal under international law.

Why does Israel have a policy of demolition?

While building homes for settlers, Israel employs a policy of home demolitions to restrict the expansion of Palestinian communities on the pretext that homes were built without necessary permits, while refusing to issue them.

What was the Jewish settlement in the 1880s?

In the 1880s, the community of Palestinian Jews, known as the Yishuv , amounted to three percent of the total population. They were apolitical and did not aspire to build a modern Jewish state.

Overview

Land ownership

Housing costs and state subventions

Number of settlements and inhabitants

Character: rural and urban

History

Geography and municipal status

Types of settlement

What Are Settlements?

Why Are The West Bank and East Jerusalem Considered Occupied Territory?

Where Are The Settlements?

Who Are The Settlers?

What’s The Difference Between Settlements and Outposts?

Why Are The Settlements Controversial?

• The settlements are built on land the Palestinians and the international community, along with some in the Israeli community, see as a future Palestinian state. Some of the settlements – especially the blocs – may be a part of Israel in a two-state solution through land swaps between Israelis and Palestinians. One concern, expressed by the European...

See more on cnn.com

What Does President Donald Trump Think of The Settlements?

What Is The Legal Status of Settlements?

What About East Jerusalem? and What Is East Jerusalem Anyway?

What About The Golan Heights?