The settlers’ number belies their political weight. Of 10m Israelis, around 460,000 live in the West Bank (not including east Jerusalem). Most live in urban settlements near the pre-1967 border where they have been lured by cheap housing. In any peace deal, it is assumed that these “settlement blocs” would be absorbed into Israel. In return, chunks of land currently within Israel would be swapped into the new Palestinian state.
More problematic are the smaller settlements deep in the West Bank that would have to be dismantled. Most of their residents are religious ideologues who comprise less than 2% of Israel’s population but enjoy wide and fervent support. Parties representing them did well in the 2022 election, helping return Mr Netanyahu to office; indeed, he depends on them for his majority. They have been lavishly rewarded. Five ministers are settlers.
Their power was clear on January 28th when 12 ministers attended a convention in Jerusalem calling for the re-establishment of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip after the war. Mr Netanyahu said this was “unrealistic” and promised that Israel had no intention of doing so. But he did not prevent ministers from his own Likud party from attending the conference, where speakers called for the reoccupation of Gaza and for the 2.3m Palestinians living there to be displaced.
Even after Hamas’s attack on October 7th, only a quarter of Jewish Israelis support such a plan, according to a poll carried out in November. But settler representatives, who are already signing up families to settle in these would-be new outposts, have consistently proved capable of moving government policy in the West Bank in their favour. For over half a century they have challenged governments, including those on the right, by building deeper into the West Bank, eventually getting retrospective government support.
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