How many settlements are there in the west bank

Fastest growing settler demographic: Ultra-Orthodox. Only , settlers lived in predominantly national-religious communities in , while , lived in secular or mixed communities. Altogether some , settlers were living in ultra-Orthodox settlements in By this year some 65 percent of the settlers inhabited urban settlements. In addition to the government policy to expand the West Bank towns, new immigrants, especially from the former Soviet Union, also contributed to this.

It also explains the increase of inhabitants in the towns — the people looking for apartments came to the towns. She says the towns in the West Bank were built on land close to urban centers within the Green Line. I think that may be the main reason for such intensive growth. Billig on the other hand thinks this explanation is too simplistic. Today the construction in the settlements is different, she says. They are the spearhead today and there are very many of them.

The veterans knew how to play the political game and manipulate the political system. The hilltop youth have no relations with that system, nor do they have any political rationale. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is planning to effectively annex parts of the occupied West Bank in what would be a major - and highly controversial - act. It is a chunk of land located - as the name suggests - on the west bank of the River Jordan and bounded by Israel to the north, west and south.

To its east lies Jordan. The West Bank has been occupied by Israel since the Middle East war, but decades of difficult on-off talks between Israel and the Palestinians - both of whom assert rights there - have left its final status unresolved. Between 2. The West Bank excluding East Jerusalem is also home to some , Israeli Jews who live in settlements and smaller "outposts" built under Israel's occupation.

The vast majority of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law, though Israel and the US under the Trump administration dispute this interpretation. Annexation is the term applied when a state unilaterally proclaims its sovereignty over other territory. It is forbidden by international law. A recent example was Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in Mr Netanyahu has said the plan is "not annexation", although it involves applying Israeli sovereignty to the parts of the West Bank which contain Jewish settlements, as well as most of a swathe of land along the West Bank's boundary with Jordan, known as the Jordan Valley.

The move could result in some 4. Mr Netanyahu has said Israeli sovereignty will not be applied to Palestinians in the Jordan Valley, and reports say the same exclusion will extend to Palestinians in other annexed parts of the West Bank. However, the Palestinians seek the whole of the West Bank - to which they claim an historical right - for a future independent state, along with the Gaza Strip.

Any annexation by Israel, they argue, would leave Palestinian areas fragmented and the Palestinian people with considerably less land for a country of their own.

Israel claims historical and religious rights to the West Bank as the ancestral land of the Jewish people. It also says its presence there - especially in the Jordan Valley - is strategically vital for its self-defence. It says settlements are not an obstacle to peace and that they would remain part of Israel under any peace deal with the Palestinians, whether they are annexed now or not.

Mr Netanyahu has long championed the settlements and through annexation wants to remove any doubt as to their fate, something which strongly appeals to his political base. Until recently, Mr Netanyahu would have faced solid opposition among the international community to such a move. According to the anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now, Israel in pushed forward plans to build 9, settlement homes, roughly the same levels as and The figures are more than triple the level of settlement planning during the final two years of the Obama administration.

It generally takes several years for settlement construction to go through the planning process and win the necessary bureaucratic approvals. That means that actual construction should begin to take off this year, according to Peace Now. In Streetwise Hebrew for the Times of Israel Community, each month we learn several colloquial Hebrew phrases around a common theme.

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