This topic explores how Israel has used Jewish settlement as a pivotal strategy to control, disrupt, and radically transform the Jerusalem geopolitical landscape. Launched directly after Israeli's occupation of the city in 1967, the process of settlement building is fundamentally predicated on the dispossession of Palestinians and the destruction of their collective fabric and communal capacity—cities, villages, neighborhoods, and individual homes.
Featured in This Topic
Villagers in al-Walaja report that they are under assault.
Organized settler attacks backed by the Israeli military are forcing Bedouin communities to flee.
How Jewish settlers are now swarming rural Palestinian villages around Jerusalem, aiming to empty them
Like E1 east of Jerusalem, E2 will devour large swathes of the Palestinian West Bank.
Jewish settler presence is expanding in Sheikh Jarrah.
The Umm Haroun neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah is threatened.
Sheikh Jarrah is being besieged.
A new demographically motivated bill seeks to fulfill the vision of a greater (Jewish) Jerusalem
An interactive map of the greater Jerusalem region, strengthening the connection between the urban core and the settlement periphery
Massive dislocation and geospatial alterations expected for Palestinians in the central West Bank
To make way for a new segregated road, 200 Palestinian families had to lose their livelihoods.
Israel’s most recent settlement proposal in East Jerusalem would further cut off the city from the remainder of the West Bank.
Israel is rapidly advancing settlement plans across East Jerusalem; 2023 seems sure to be a record-breaking year.
From 1967 to 1993, successive Israeli governments laid the foundations for an expanding settlement enterprise to Judaize Jerusalem and its surroundings.
A collaboration becomes a symbiosis.
The Story in Numbers
150
Number of state-authorized settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem [1]
140
Number of settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem [2]
15
Number of state-authorized settlements within the Israeli boundaries of East Jerusalem [3]
680,000+
The Israeli settler population across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as of 2022 [4]
350,000+
A conservative estimate of the Israeli settler population in the larger Jerusalem region (more than 50 percent of the total Israeli settler population in the West Bank) [5]
220,000+
The Israeli settler population within the Israeli-imposed Jerusalem municipal boundaries (approximately a third of the total settler population in the West Bank) [6]
35
Percentage of Palestinian-owned lands of the area of occupied East Jerusalem (within the municipal boundaries) that Israel has expropriated for Jewish settlements [7]
13
Percentage of the land of the area of occupied East Jerusalem (within the municipal boundaries) that Israel has allotted to Palestinian use, despite their being nearly 40 percent of the population [8]
Notes
[1] This number is based on a cross-check calculation using the following sources: Mohammed Haddad, “Mapping Israeli Occupation,” Al Jazeera, May 18, 2021; Charlie Hoyle, “Interactive Timeline: The History of Israeli Settlements since 1967,” The New Arab, November 20, 2019; “Jerusalem,” Peace Now; “Settlements,” B’Tselem, January 16, 2019.
[2] This number is based on a cross-check calculation using the following sources: Haddad, "Mapping Israeli Occupation"; Hoyle, “Interactive Timeline”; “Jerusalem”; “Settlements.”
[3] See The Three Israeli Settlement Rings in and around East Jerusalem: Supplanting Palestinian Jerusalem, Table 1.
[4] Haddad, “Mapping Israeli Occupation.”
[5] Based on numbers from Haddad, “Mapping Israeli Occupation”; Hoyle, “Interactive Timeline.”
[6] Haddad, “Mapping Israeli Occupation.”
[7] “Israeli Settlements and International Law,” Amnesty International, 2019.
[8] “Israeli Settlements and International Law.”
The network of settler-only roads around Ramallah and northern Jerusalem is expanding.
Israel is swiftly implementing the E1 settlement plan, foreclosing Palestinian contiguity in the West Bank.