Telos Tuesdays | Settlements
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Introduction
Palestinian communities across the West Bank are facing some of the most severe violence seen in decades. More than 40,000 have been displaced in the north from military campaigns targeting refugee communities. The community of Masafer Yatta is on the brink of extinction from repeated, brutal attacks from nearby settlers and IDF units in the area excusing and reinforcing the violence. And all of this as the US is poised to send billions of dollars of military equipment to the Israeli government as it continues its campaign in Gaza.
While this violence is often framed as a campaign against Palestinian militants and terror, much of it is in service of the Israeli settlement project in the West Bank.
Israeli settlements are Jewish-only towns and communities built in occupied Palestinian territory. They are the nexus of much of the direct violence against Palestinians in the West Bank today.
Under international law, these settlements are illegal and a primary obstacle to any negotiated peace. Settlements have long been a contentious issue. During the Oslo Peace Accords and resulting peace process in 1993, settlements were one of the final status issues to be agreed upon within two years of the accords. 32 years later, they are still one of the biggest hindrances to the possibility of lasting peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis. The unrestricted growth of Israeli settlements has rendered the two state solution according to Oslo’s ideals essentially impossible.
Why Now
But more than that, they are an organized system of land expropriation that illustrates and enforces the two-tiered system of rights and privileges that exists across the land. The Israeli settlement project must be understood not just as an obstacle to peace, but as a structural system of violence intended to drive Palestinians from their homes. In this regard, and especially in this moment, that project is succeeding. As peacemakers working towards a more equitable future in Palestine/Israel, it is vital to understand not only this project’s history, but also its present realities and how US policy is enabling its continuation.
In particular, one of the many forces contributing to the rapid expansion of and impunity for settlements is Christian Zionism in the US, which has had disastrous consequences for all Palestinians, and has made the pursuit of peace and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians alike much more difficult.
Last month, 3000 American Christian leaders signed a statement encouraging the Trump Administration to rename the West Bank, “Judea and Samaria” and endorse full Israeli annexation of the territory. Additionally, the Senate recently confirmed Mike Huckabee as the new U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Huckabee holds extreme positions on the region (he has been quoted as saying “there is no such thing as a Palestinian”) and endorses referring to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria. His elevation to the role of Ambassador raises grave concerns about whether the US government can be a meaningful contributor to a just and peaceful future for Palestinians and Israelis.
In this briefing, we’ll explain the history and growth of the settlement project while connecting it to the forces of Christian Zionism in the US.
Contents
- What are settlements and outposts?
- The Numbers
- Settlements Reveal the Apartheid System
- Modern History of Settlements
- Changing Facts On the Ground
- Why do some Israelis choose to live in settlements?
- Settlements and Violence
- US Complicity
- American Christian Zionism
What are Settlements and Outposts?
Settlements are communities of Jewish Israeli citizens living outside the internationally recognized borders of Israel on territory occupied by Israel’s military. Built on the Palestinian side of the Green Line (the 1949 armistice line designating the boundary between Israel and the Palestinian territories), settlements are found in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Before the 2005 Israeli disengagement, there were illegal settlements in Gaza as well, although all 21 were disbanded during the disengagement.
Under international law, it is forbidden for an occupying power to transfer their population to occupied territories or to forcibly transfer occupied populations within that territory. According to most of the international community (with the exception of the US between 2019-2024), Israeli settlements violate this law. For some experts, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, it is not just a violation of international law; it is a war crime.
The Numbers
140 Recognized Settlements
49 New Outposts
Since October 7th, settlement expansion and the proliferation of new outposts has rapidly increased across the West Bank in response to the war on Gaza. A record-breaking 49 new outposts were established in 2024 alone. Plans for over 30,000 new settlement housing units were greenlit in the same time period.
700,000 Settlers
These settlements house roughly 700,000 Jewish Israelis, including 229,000 in East Jerusalem. That’s about 10% of Israel’s Jewish population. These are among the 3.3 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
While all settlements are illegal under international law, there is a difference between settlements and outposts under Israeli law.
Settlements are neighborhoods officially recognized by the Israeli government. These communities receive public utilities and are administered by the state.
Outposts are rogue settlements started by one or two families, or young Israeli men who build small ramshackle huts on Palestinian land. They are not recognized by the Israeli government, though many later receive recognition and approval.
Outposts are founded on stolen Palestinian land and built without building permits. In some cases, families and/or young people will bring caravans or outfitted shipping containers to hilltops they see as strategic land to occupy, usually surrounding Palestinian villages and farms.
One of these groups is known as the Hilltop Youth, a movement of young Israeli settler extremists who attack Palestinians and Palestinian property. They are responsible for much of the direct violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, in addition to constructing illegal outposts. As more Israelis move into the outpost area, the greater the chance it will eventually be ‘legalized’ by the Israeli government. Outposts can grow to several hundred or a thousand residents before gaining this recognition. Many outposts gain legal recognition by being recognized as “neighborhoods” of already established settlements.
Photo from Aljazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/16/ten-maps-to-understand-the-occupied-west-bank
In the past year, the rate of settlement expansion has skyrocketed as settler violence against Palestinians has increased. Most recently, the Israeli Higher Planning council has approved more settlement construction plans in the past three months than in all of 2024. In 2024, 9,971 settlement housing units were approved. Between January 1 and March 19, 2025, 10,503 have already been approved.
This exponential acceleration has been made possible due to changes to the approval process. Previously, every step of settlement approval required the Israeli Minister of Defense’s approval. In November 2024, (following Donald Trump’s election) Prime Minister Netanyahu shifted planning council meetings from quarterly to weekly, accelerating the approval process. As the world is distracted by the genocide in Gaza, Israeli policy is to expand settlements as rapidly as possible.
Settlements Reveal the Apartheid System
In contrast to outposts, which easily gain legal recognition, Palestinians who have lived on the land for generations are often denied permission from Israel to build. As family and community needs increase, construction often moves forward in spite of a lack of permits, which are nearly impossible to receive. These buildings—homes, wells, and more—are regularly demolished by the Israeli government.
These differences are exemplary of the unjust two-tiered apartheid system (see our Telos Tuesday on apartheid) that treats legal Palestinian residents and illegal Jewish settlers differently.
As these settlements expand, Palestinian growth and movement is increasingly restricted.
Israeli settlements fragment Palestinian communities by building neighborhoods and roads only accessible to settlers, cutting farmers off from their fields, and restricting Palestinian freedom of movement. These settlements are often strategically placed to control hilltops, access to water, and land suitable for agriculture. Not only do these settlements consume a higher proportion of natural resources (arable land, water), their positioning is intended to make these resources off-limits to Palestinians. This keeps Palestinian towns from being able to expand and develop naturally and dependent on Israeli government structures and foreign aid.
It is not only the land and natural resources of the West Bank that are under Israeli control; even the tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, the semi-autonomous governing body in the West Bank, are controlled by Israel and regularly withheld. As a result, the Palestinian economy is kept from the kind of independence and ownership it needs to flourish.
Without an independent and self-sustaining economy, Palestinians are forced into cycles of dependence for work and aid. With farmland occupied and building projects forbidden, many Palestinian farmers and laborers find themselves in a catch 22 situation. With no other options in which to earn a living, some make the impossible choice to work for settlement construction or farming projects.
Ultimately, the outgrowth of this system is a flourishing Israeli society and a hindered and obstructed Palestinian one living side-by-side—a reality best described as a system of apartheid. The continued growth of settlements shifts “facts on the ground,” a process meant to establish domination and control beyond possibility of reversal.
Modern History of Settlements
Following the 1947-1949 Nakba/War of Independence, Jordan controlled what became the West Bank and East Jerusalem, becoming home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from across the region fleeing the new State of Israel. Meanwhile, the land’s Jewish population, including indigenous and centuries old communities, were expelled from areas under Jordanian rule.
During the 1967 war, Israel conquered vast amounts of territory, tripling the area under its military control—including Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. This began what is called “the occupation,” a system where Palestinians are subject to Israeli legal and military control. Today, these areas ultimately remain under the control of the Israeli military.
Following the 1967 war, Israel quickly moved to establish its hold over the territory of the Golan Heights by settling Jewish Israeli communities over the remains of ethnically cleansed Syrian Arab villages. This followed the pattern that had been established during the Nakba in 1948, where Jewish Israeli towns were built over the ruins of Palestinian communities in what became the State of Israel. The establishment of settlements and Jewish Israeli towns provided a justification within the Israeli government to illegally annex the occupied Golan Heights in 1981 (see our recent Telos Tuesday on the Golan).
A similar thing happened in occupied East Jerusalem. Following the 1967 war, Israel began a massive campaign of illegal settlement construction throughout Palestinian neighborhoods, eventually using the growing Jewish settler population as pretext to annex the city in 1980. These settlements continue to help Israel justify why it should remain in control of all of Jerusalem. Jewish Israelis living in settlements in East Jerusalem have more rights and privileges than Palestinian residents, who are not Israeli citizens and instead hold permanent residency.
Changing Facts on the Ground
This method of using settlements to justify control has been a successful tactic that Israel also employed throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Even before the 1967 war, Israel had been developing behind-the-scenes plans to support movements of Israeli Jews interested in settling in its newly captured territories. Settler movements like Gush Enumim, inspired by religious convictions, had spent years preparing for the moment they could move into the West Bank. These settler movements found a useful alliance in the political and security aspirations of the Israeli state suddenly in control of newly occupied territories.
Incentives and funding, often from sectors of the Jewish diaspora and American Christian Zionist groups, flowed to groups willing to build Jewish communities in Arab and/or Palestinian areas such as Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula and East Jerusalem. By changing the “facts on the ground” Israel uses settlements to justify control and potential annexation of all the Palestinian territories.
Why Do Some Israelis Choose to Live in Settlements?
There are a variety of reasons why Jewish Israelis might choose to move to settlements, ranging from the ideological to the pragmatic. For some, the desire is driven by religious or political ideology based on the belief that God has deeded all of the land of the West Bank to the Jewish people. Settling in the place where Judaism was born and the events of the Bible played out is seen as a God-given right and a fulfillment of prophecies of Jewish return. In these communities, international law is subservient to the spiritual laws of God, and there is little interest in any negotiated peaceful solution which includes a Palestinian state in the West Bank or qualms with perpetual occupation.
For other settlers, the reasoning is purely economical. Housing costs in cities like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa have skyrocketed in recent years. Many settlements, because of their government subsidies and locations away from urban centers, offer cheaper housing for families. Settlers can get more space for less money, and settlements look like attractive suburbs. Many new Jewish immigrants to Israel, including recent Ukrainian refugees, find themselves directed towards settlements where housing is more readily available than within Israel proper.
Settlements and Violence
In addition to being illegal under international law, settlements by their very existence are inherently violent. They have been the cause of direct violence, but also have justified expanded Israeli state violence against Palestinian communities with deadly consequences.
The rapid growth of Israeli settlements, including in the heart of cities like Hebron and Jerusalem, from their beginning led to violent confrontations with Palestinian residents. As Palestinians were forced from their homes, often violently, Israel built complex infrastructure to service the settlements that sprung up in their midst. From highways and military bases to electrical grids and water carriers, Israel built infrastructure to sustain these new communities that were inaccessible to Palestinians.
While located within occupied Palestinian territory, all this infrastructure gives the impression that these new settlements are actually a part of the state of Israel. As a result, the IDF is deployed across the West Bank and East Jerusalem to protect Jewish Israelis and their property. Settlements and settlers provide the justification for active military control and presence across the occupied territory. Without the presence of settlers and settlements “needing” protection, there wouldn’t be the justification for such expansive IDF control and presence.
Beyond Israeli state violence, settler violence directly against Palestinians has been on the rise, especially in recent years and since October 7th. Movements like the Hilltop Youth and other extremists target Palestinian land, livestock, and property, setting cars and buildings on fire and destroying olive groves and farmland. Violent settlers attack Palestinians unprovoked and have recently unleashed a campaign of terror on Palestinians, especially in vulnerable communities. When the IDF is called in response to the violence, at best they passively watch as settlers go on violent rampages. At worst, they join in the attack and/or arrest the victims who have been targeted. While this is a long-standing pattern of violence, a few notable examples of egregious attacks have included repeated pogroms in towns like Huwara and Um al Kheir, attacks on Oscar award winning co-director Hamdan Ballal, and the fatal shooting of a farmer harvesting his olives.
The growing terror of settler violence, as meticulously documented by human rights organizations, is not just an unfortunate by-product of the Israeli settlement project. It is not just the acts of a small group of extremists who physically attack Palestinians. The entire system of settlement exists to push Palestinians from their land by any means necessary. The desired outcome is as much land for Jewish-Israelis with as little Palestinian presence as possible. As such, Palestinians are continually displaced and forced into increasingly dense population centers as they are denied the legal building permits to expand to accommodate population growth.
US Complicity
Israel’s settlement project hasn’t been happening in a vacuum. While the US has historically endorsed a two state solution and condemned settlements, no administration has done enough to materially protect the viability and thus possibility of a real Palestinian state or enforced consequences for the Israeli government as it expanded settlement construction.
The closest we have come in recent years was in 2024 when the Biden Administration sanctioned individual violent settlers and members of the Hilltop Youth movement. One of President Trump’s first actions during his second term was to lift sanctions specifically targeting far-right individuals and settler-organizations who have been involved in violence against Palestinians, including assault, arson, and property damage. Failing to hold Israel as a US ally accountable to international law, including by potentially conditioning military support on ceasing settlement expansion, has equaled tacit support for the project and for the violent attacks on Palestinians. Given the US government’s capacity to shift realities on ground through its diplomatic and financial leverage, it is hard to avoid a direct line of American complicity in both Israeli state violence and individual settler violence.
American Christian Zionism
Some of the greatest material and political support for settlements comes not from Jewish groups, but from American Christian Zionists (see our FAQ on Evangelicals and Israel/Palestine). Within versions of the Christian Zionist framework, the Jewish people must return to the land of Israel in order for Jesus to return and establish his millennium reign. As a result, Christian Zionist communities give tens of millions of dollars to Israeli settlements every year to facilitate the gathering of the Jewish diaspora in the region.
While not every Christian who supports Israel is motivated by an end-times geopolitical analysis, all Christian Zionists see Israel as unique among modern nations and believe it holds a special place in God’s plan. In this understanding, the land of Israel/Palestine is not a place where Palestinians deserve an equal life of dignity and freedom, but rather a tool to be manipulated for their own theological beliefs and desired outcomes. With organizations spanning millions of members, American Christian pro-Israel groups utilize their influence over American politics to enact their religious convictions through US policy.
Today, many of our administration’s top figures hold Christian Zionist views or have demonstrated a willing commitment to fulfilling the aspirations of Christian Zionist lobbies. As mentioned, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has stated, “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement.”
Similar viewpoints are becoming mainstream in Congress. NY Rep. Claudia Tenney started the “Friends of Judea and Samaria” caucus in the House of Representatives to advocate for Israeli ownership of the West Bank and officially change the name of the West Bank to Judea and Samaria in government documents. The move prompted support from influential Christian leaders.
This portends greater risks to Palestinian communities and the possibility of a future of true justice, security, and freedom for all who call the region home.
Conclusion
In order for there to be a future of freedom, dignity, security, and human rights for Palestinians and Israelis in equal measure, the settlement project has to be stopped. International law exists for our collective protection. The international exculpation of Israeli settlements sets a dangerous precedent for contexts beyond Israel/Palestine.
The current apartheid system that treats Israelis and Palestinians differently and infringes on Palestinian rights to life, land, and freedom is not a pathway to a just peace that is anchored by the truth of our mutuality. Only a political system that provides equal measures of dignity, security, freedom, and human rights to Palestinians and Israelis can provide the kind of just peace that all of us long for on behalf of our friends and family in the region.
The US government has the opportunity to be an honest broker for that peace by refusing to stand by as settlers harass and expel Palestinians from their land. Through conditioning arms sales to respect for international law, reinstating sanctions on violent Israeli settlers, and advancing policies that challenge impunity for settlement expansion, the US government can expand the possibility of true justice and peace.
As peacemakers, we have the responsibility and opportunity to communicate our priorities to our elected leaders and champion the rights of those who are often not heard. Violence, displacement, and impunity are how we got here. Mutual flourishing, justice, and accountability are how we get out.
