Settlements Without Settlers

If you build it, it doesn't mean they'll come

The current government has approved 103 settlements that are changing the map of the West Bank. This is nearly double the 127 settlements that Israel established and legalized in the West Bank from 1967 until the formation of the current government. There are also more than 300 outposts in various stages of legalization, more than half of which have been established since October 7th, 2023, while around 60,000 housing units have been approved since the government took office. In total, the current government has invested at least NIS19.8 billion (roughly $6.5 billion) in settlement development and infrastructure. It’s no surprise, then, that in July 2024, National Missions Minister Orit Strock said: “For me it is like a period of miracles. I feel like someone standing at a traffic light…and then there is a green light.” Today, then, there are more than 470 “settlement points” (in the words of a recent Ha’aretz article on this issue), whose aim is to block the creation of a Palestinian state under any circumstances.

As a result, settlement jurisdictions form around 10.7% of Area C of the West Bank (which makes up 60% of the total), although this falls to around 1.75% if defined solely as the physical built-up area (i.e. excluding the unbuilt area within the perimeter fence/patrol road), and 3-3.5% if including the unbuilt land within the area controlled by the settlements (these figures are taken from Israel Policy Forum’s July 2023 report ‘An Unsettled Question’).

It is important to note that there are some who are less convinced of the significance of these new settlements. For example, Dr. Shaul Arieli, who heads the Tamrur-Politography research group focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said: “In the short term, the 103 new settlements are largely a bureaucratic bluff, an attempt to create future infrastructure. Many of them are splits of neighborhoods and outposts that have been legalized, not additional construction or demographic additions.” This final point is crucial. Arieli argues that over the past 20 years there has been a gradual decline in the overall migration balance to the settlements, and that during the current government’s term there has been a negative balance, i.e. more people are leaving than arriving.

Most settlers live in blocs that are relatively close to the Green Line, with around 365,000 people living in 52 settlements that are bunched together, forming around eight percent of the West Bank’s territory. According to 2021 population data from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, 270,000 (58%) of West Bank settlers live in the top-10 most-populated settlements, which includes Ariel, Ma’ale Adumim, and the two large Haredi cities of Modi’in Illit and Beitar Illit. By contrast, around 12,000 Jewish settlers live in the Jordan Valley.

While it has fluctuated, growth in the settlements has generally been higher than ‘Israel proper,’ with a figure of 2.24% in 2020 compared to 1.8% in the rest of Israel. This figure is based both on migration to-and-from settlements and the rate of natural growth, i.e. the difference between total births and deaths over a set period. Natural growth has often been used as the justification for settlement expansion. But, as in the rest of the country, some settlements’ natural growth has been far greater than others. The two most populous settlements are Modi’in Illit and Beitar Illit, Haredi cities located next to the Green Line and with the highest birth rates. Between 2009 and 2020, they accounted for around 35% of the total settler population growth, contributing heavily to a settlement fertility rate of five births per woman, compared with 2-4 births everywhere else. As a result, with a mean age of 19.2, the settler population is also younger than the rest of Israel.

As mentioned, though, over the last two decades, there has been a gradual decline in migration to settlements, and in 2020 there was overall negative net migration for the first time. Viewed through this light, the settlement project has been a failure. As agriculture minister in 1977, Ariel Sharon published a document titled ‘A Vision of Israel at Century’s End,’ which set a target of settling two million Jews in the West Bank by 2000 (at the time Israel’s total population was around three million), and in November 1982, a World Zionist Organization spokesman told the New York Times that Israel planned on settling 400,000 Jews in the West Bank within five years and 1.4 million within thirty years. The settlement population has still reached nowhere near these numbers. Ironically, the greatest period for settlement population growth was during the Oslo years, when the settler population roughly doubled, and ironically again mainly because of migration rather than natural growth. Now, Smotrich is the latest to try to transform the West Bank’s demography, with a stated target of doubling the West Bank settler population from around 500,000 (which was reached for the first time in January 2023) to one million.

In reality, though, relatively few Israelis want to move to the West Bank. Nearly half of the West Bank settler population is made up by Modi’in Illit, Beitar Illit, Ariel, and Ma’ale Adumim, meaning that the remaining amount is a little more than the population of Rishon LeZion, a significant number, but hardly earth-shattering. Viewed through a strictly demographic lens, then, the settlement project can be judged a disappointment, at least when compared to the lofty visions mentioned in the previous paragraph. The reason for this, I think, is fairly obvious: The West Bank is a significantly more dangerous place than the rest of Israel because most of the people living there are Palestinians who are unsurprisingly hostile to Israeli rule. To put this in further perspective: In 1967 the Palestinian population of the West Bank was roughly 660,000 and today is thought to be somewhere between 2.6 and 3 million (the exact figure is heavily contested). In other words, just like in the pre-state period, natural Palestinian growth has far outstripped Zionist migration, but unlike during the pre-state period there is now a Jewish state where this is not a problem.

Right-wing politicians can talk about Judea & Samaria being forever part of Israel until the cows come home, but if it remains a conflict zone most Israelis won’t want to live there. While there has been an increase in ‘quality-of-life settlers’ close to the Green Line, this doesn’t extent to hilltops deep in the West Bank, which remain sparsely populated. And while international pressure isn’t going to lead to a two-state solution anytime soon, the bans on settlement products and sanctions on violent settlers will help to dissuade normies from living there, irrespective of their politics. Even Lindsey Graham, who was buried this week, said that the two-state framework is the only solution that will prevent Israel’s isolation, and there is little prospect of international opinion changing its mind on this issue.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Israel is going to be forced out of the West Bank in the forseeable future. As Gush Emunim said in 1980: “our hold over a stretch of land does not depend on the size of the population inhabiting it, but on the size of the area on which the population leaves its imprint.” The recent government moves described at the start of this article mean that Israeli control of Area C is deeper than ever, with some seeking to break the Oslo Accords and expand into Areas B or even A. But, as we saw last Friday with the shootout in the Palestinian village of Tal, this policy will lead to increased friction and violence. The IDF has itself alluded to this, with Maj. Gen’ Avi Bluth, head of the IDF Central Command, telling a March 2026 cabinet meeting that the settlement policy was stretching manpower: “This is your policy, but it requires security and a full protection package, because the reality on the ground has completely changed—and that requires manpower.” As a result of recent tensions, the IDF has increased its West Bank deployment by two to 26 battalions, but one of the main problems is that the settlements are expanding too quickly for the army to secure them.

Settlement activists are nonplussed by these warnings. They either think that the new settlements can defend themselves or they welcome greater tensions because they hope it will allow them to do in the West Bank what Israel did in Gaza. They are also unconcerned about threats of international isolation, either because they think these are exaggerated or they believe they will strengthen their movement. What they haven’t managed to do yet, though, even with the most right-wing government in Israeli history and the “miracle” provided by October 7, is to convince Israelis to move to the settlements in numbers that would challenge the Palestinians’ demographic dominance of the area. There is little sign of this changing in the near future.