- Population
- 541,000
- Location
- About 150 Israeli settlements in the West Bank outside East Jerusalem: the Haredi towns west of Ramallah and Bethlehem, Ma'ale Adumim and Giv'at Ze'ev near Jerusalem, Ariel and the Samaria hills, Gush Etzion, Hebron and Kiryat Arba, the Jordan Valley; none in Gaza since 2005
Israeli Jews in the West Bank are the settlers: about 541,000 Israeli citizens living in some 150 towns and villages built since Israel captured the territory in 1967, outside East Jerusalem. They fall into three roughly equal camps: ultra-Orthodox families who moved for cheap housing to the two largest towns, Modi'in Illit and Beitar Illit; religious Zionists who see living in biblical Judea and Samaria as a religious duty, in hilltop communities such as Beit El, Shilo and Kiryat Arba beside Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs; and secular commuters in suburbs such as Ma'ale Adumim, Ariel and Oranit. They live under Israeli law, travel on separate roads and work mostly inside Israel, while their Palestinian neighbours live under military rule, and since 2023 a violent fringe of hilltop youth has driven herding communities off their land. Gaza has had no Jewish residents since its 21 settlements were evacuated in 2005, though a movement now campaigns to return.