Settlements, the West Bank, and the Gaza disengagement
Israeli settlements spread across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to house roughly 750,000 Israelis, while in 2005 Israel removed all its settlers and soldiers from Gaza.
- The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 — Gershom Gorenberg, Times Books (2006)
- Lords of the Land: The War over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007 — Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Nation Books (2007)
- 2025 Report on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem — Office of the EU Representative (West Bank and Gaza Strip, UNRWA), European External Action Service (2026)
- Area C of the West Bank: Key Humanitarian Concerns — UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA oPt), United Nations (2017)
- Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem — International Court of Justice, ICJ (2024)
Settlement began within months of the 1967 war, first under Labour governments, on strategic grounds and at Kfar Etzion, a bloc lost in 1948. In 1968 religious settlers led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger moved into Hebron. From 1974 the religious-nationalist movement Gush Emunim (“Bloc of the Faithful”) pushed settlement into the heart of the West Bank, and after Menachem Begin’s victory in 1977 it became government policy.
- The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 — Gershom Gorenberg, Times Books (2006)
- Lords of the Land: The War over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007 — Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Nation Books (2007)
By 2025 an EU report estimated that more than 750,000 Israelis lived in settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in about 150 official settlements and a fast-growing number of unauthorised outposts.
- 2025 Report on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem — Office of the EU Representative (West Bank and Gaza Strip, UNRWA), European External Action Service (2026)
- Area C of the West Bank: Key Humanitarian Concerns — UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA oPt), United Nations (2017)
- 2025 Report on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem — Office of the EU Representative (West Bank and Gaza Strip, UNRWA), European External Action Service (2026)
Leaving Gaza
In August 2005 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, once the settlers’ champion, removed all 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank, evacuating some 8,000 to 9,000 settlers, in some cases by force. Settlers and their supporters wore orange in protest, and the evacuation remains a trauma for the religious right.
- Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
- Lords of the Land: The War over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007 — Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Nation Books (2007)
- Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance — Tareq Baconi, Stanford University Press (2018)
- The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development — Sara Roy, Institute for Palestine Studies (2016)
Judea and Samaria, with Hebron, Shiloh and Bethel, are the cradle of Jewish history, not foreign land; the territory was never part of a Palestinian state, and its legal status is disputed, not occupied. Settlements also give Israel strategic depth.
- The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 — Gershom Gorenberg, Times Books (2006)
- Lords of the Land: The War over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007 — Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Nation Books (2007)
Groups such as Peace Now, founded in 1978, argue the settlements entrench an occupation that corrodes Israel's democracy and its security, and make separation into two states impossible.
- Lords of the Land: The War over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007 — Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Nation Books (2007)
- The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 — Gershom Gorenberg, Times Books (2006)
Settlements are colonisation of the land meant for a Palestinian state, enforced by checkpoints, a separate legal system and settler violence that the army often fails to stop.
- Area C of the West Bank: Key Humanitarian Concerns — UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA oPt), United Nations (2017)
- Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape — Raja Shehadeh, Profile Books (2007)
Most states and the UN Security Council (Resolution 2334, 2016) regard the settlements as illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and in 2024 the ICJ advised that Israel's continued presence in the occupied territory is unlawful. Israel disputes both.
- Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem — International Court of Justice, ICJ (2024)
- 2025 Report on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem — Office of the EU Representative (West Bank and Gaza Strip, UNRWA), European External Action Service (2026)
Why it matters today
Settlements are the most divisive issue in Israeli politics: for religious nationalists they are the return to the biblical heartland, for critics the obstacle to peace. The trauma of the 2005 Gaza evacuation, and the rockets that followed, shapes how Israelis view any future withdrawal.
For Palestinians, settlements, their roads, outposts and settler violence, are the daily face of the occupation, swallowing land, olive groves and water and making a viable state ever less possible.