Nestled in the Judean Mountains is the sleepy Jerusalem suburb of Efrat. However, this sleepy suburb is located in what’s known by most of the world as the West Bank, one of the most disputed territories on earth. A significant percentage of the world considers the community that lives in Efrat to be not only illegal but immoral.
Jewish communities in the West Bank are most commonly known as settlements, serving as ground zero of the fight between Israelis and Palestinians. Most people run away from battlegrounds. But despite the danger, Jews from all over the world flock to this region.
Why would someone choose to build their life in the most disputed territory on the planet?
Who is a settler?
The starting point of any conversation about Israeli settlements is first knowing what and who we’re talking about.
For many Palestinians, all Israelis are so-called settlers, whether they’re on a hilltop surrounded by Palestinian villages or living in the heart of Tel Aviv. However, for most of the international community, the term “settler” is defined more narrowly. In general, settlers refer to Israelis living in the West Bank. While the international community sees Israelis living in Tel Aviv as legitimate, the presence of Jews in the West Bank is described as illegal and a barrier to peace.
However, many Israelis don’t see it that way at all, and they’re eager to tell their side of the story.
Despite being 10 minutes south of Jerusalem, Efrat looks like any comfortable suburb. You’d never know its humble origins, 200 people on an empty hillside. There’s a mall that looks like any other around Israel, but then just a few meters away, there’s a fence with a Palestinian village on the other side.
While Efrat is modern, its roots, as well as those of many other Jewish communities in the region, are ancient.
Modern communities with ancient roots
Long before there were Israelis and Palestinians, before nationalism, checkpoints, or security fences, this was the home of the ancient tribes of Israel. The West Bank is a new name for a very old place. Its original name was Yehuda and Shomron (or Judea and Samaria in their anglicized forms), home to the ancient Israelite kingdoms.
This is the land where the Hebrew Bible takes place, marking the beginning of the Jewish people’s history as a distinct community. That’s a powerful motivator for many people who have chosen to build their lives in this fraught and contentious place.
To them, this land is the Jewish people’s ancestral inheritance, a promise from God that has finally come true. That’s why the Hebrew word for settlement (hitnahlut) comes from the word for inheritance (nahalah).
The Jews who live here see themselves as the direct inheritors of our biblical ancestors. This is the land of Joshua, King David, and the Maccabees. The Jewish people’s forefathers and foremothers are buried in this soil. Jewish history is alive here in a way it just isn’t in the modern cities of Tel Aviv or Haifa.
However, only 7% of Israeli Jews make their home in Judea and Samaria. Why is that? The answer has a lot to do with modern political history.
Many of the Jews who arrived in British Mandate Palestine at the turn of the 20th century wanted to build their lives in the Jewish heartland. They started buying land in the Judean Hills, eventually establishing organizations like the Jewish National Fund to expedite the process. But the JNF’s negotiating partners changed a few times.
At first, they were buying from the Ottomans, who had ruled the region for 400 years. Sometimes they cut property deals with wealthy Arab elites. However, when the Ottoman Empire fell, and the British arrived to administer the region, the British authorities imposed new rules regarding land purchases.
The JNF jumped through all those hoops, and that’s how the State of Israel acquired land, such as Eitam Hill. The Eitam was purchased in the 1920s and 1930s as part of the original planning of the city of Efrat in 1984. Today, a new neighborhood is being built on the site.
But if Jews bought this land before the State of Israel even existed, why are the settlements so controversial? For that matter, if they purchased this land a century ago, why did it take so long to actually build there?
The full answer is really long, but the short answer is essentially that the Arabs in British Mandate Palestine started to get worried about all these Jews coming in and purchasing land. A few Jews were one thing, but these guys were talking about building a whole state, and the Arab population wasn’t keen on becoming a minority in what they understood to be their own land.
Tension spiraled, rioting and mob violence forced a few nascent Jewish communities to shut down, and by the 1940s, they threatened to engulf the region.
The United Nations tried to avert catastrophe by voting to split the land into two states, one Jewish, one Arab. The vote passed, but the Arab world refused to recognize it. The attacks on Jewish civilians began the very next day.
For six months, the Arabs and Jews of Palestine duked it out. Then the British left for good, and the gloves really came off. The Jewish state officially declared independence, and five Arab armies showed up to wipe it off the map. They failed, but they did manage to bite off a chunk of territory that the U.N. had earmarked for a Palestinian state, including Judea and Samaria, which were now in Jordanian hands.
The Jordanians didn’t waste any time. While they did not establish a Palestinian state, they did keep this new territory for themselves. But as soon as they took control of Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem, they kicked out or killed the thousands of Jews who had acquired land legally. These days, we call that ethnic cleansing, and a lot of Israelis are quick to point out what they see as a double standard.
“Therein is an assumption that while Palestinians have the right to have land anywhere they want, Jews who purchased land that predated the Israeli state, they have land that belongs to them, don’t have the right to live in the land that they purchased,” Dov, who gave Unpacked a tour of Efrat, said. “That’s pretty bigoted. It would be unacceptable to make that statement towards any other people, so I’m not sure why that’s legitimate to make that statement towards Jews.”
For 19 years, Israel’s borders didn’t include Judea and Samaria, and there was no slipping through the cracks, not if you wanted to stay alive. Visiting Judea and Samaria was a distant dream, and so was reclaiming the lands they had legally acquired decades before.
Jordan made sure that Jews couldn’t even visit their holy sites. The Temple Mount Complex, the Western Wall, the Mount of Olives, and the tombs of the Jewish people’s forefathers and foremothers were all off limits. It wasn’t just Israelis who were barred from visiting; it was every single Jew. The Jordanians even demanded baptismal certificates before they’d let tourists visit these sacred sites, just to make sure that Jews didn’t somehow sneak in.
When Israel took the territory during the Six-Day War, hundreds of thousands of Jews flocked to the holy sites they’d been barred from for decades. Others returned to the land from which they and their parents had been expelled 19 years earlier, and some are still returning, including Eldad, who grew up in Jerusalem but now lives on Eitam Hill.
Eldad’s grandpa was one of the Jews who lived in Judea and Samaria before the establishment of a state. The Jordanian army destroyed their little kibbutz of Ein Tzurim and hauled its inhabitants into a Jordanian POW camp.
“My grandfather, before the founding of the state, founded Ein Tzurim here. I want to follow in his path to settle the land,” Eldad said.
Almost a century after Eldad’s grandpa founded the doomed kibbutz, his grandson is forging a similar path. Israelis like Eldad grew up on the stories of the pioneers who mucked out swamps and built bustling modern cities where there were once only dunes.
But Eldad has no interest in building another Tel Aviv. He wants to break ground on a new community in the Jewish heartland. The vision for the Eitam Hill is ambitious. Their goal is to have 900 homes here, ready to welcome sprawling families, a triumphant reclamation of his historic Jewish land.
Eldad and his friends aren’t just history buffs; they’re proud nationalists, a segment of Israeli society known as the Dati Leumi or national religious. A mix of religious conviction, historical pride, and modern nationalism powers this patriotic and religious identity. They love the people of Israel, the land of Israel, and the Torah of Israel, and these three pillars are inextricably braided together.
But just as it was in biblical times, the land is not quiet. Even at the height of the Israelite monarchy, other nations also made their homes here. Sometimes the relationship between neighbors was peaceful; other times, not so much.
Warriors on the front lines
The 21st century seems to be one of those not-so-peaceful times. So the Jews who choose to live in Judea and Samaria see themselves as warriors on the front lines, taking on the difficult but necessary task of defending the homeland.
“For soldiers, it is also hard, and we are also ‘soldiers.’ Wherever we’re needed, we’ll be there,” Eldad said. Another resident of Eitam added that “every Jew here is another shoulder to carry us on this great journey [of the Jewish people] and this great Torah.”
This has become an increasingly popular perspective in Israel. A 2024 Pew survey revealed that 49% of Jewish Israelis believe that the settlements bolster Israeli security. But security means different things to different people, and the most fervent warriors in Judea and Samaria aren’t fighting solely for Israel’s physical security. Their battle has spiritual dimensions, and they’ll sacrifice a lot for it.
In Yitzhar, a community in Samaria, Unpacked spoke with Ayelet, who described her family’s journey in the community. Ayelet and her husband moved to Yitzhar as starry-eyed teens, full of righteous conviction and boundless energy, which they channeled into building this community. Neither their faith nor their energy has dimmed in the years since.
“Yitzhar, about 22 years ago, had around 80 families. [They were] very, very idealistic, [with] very strong faith in God,” Ayelet explained. “There’s a really strong passion here to love the people of Israel wherever they are. We’re here because we care about the land of Israel, the people of Israel. We feel like we’re protecting all of the Jews we can see from here.”
“Basically, from here, we can see the entire coastal plain,” Ayelet added. “The reason the whole movement to establish communities in Judea and Samaria began is because it’s the heart of the country, and we’re basically protecting that poor coastal strip, which needs guarding. If we wouldn’t be here, then our enemies who wish to throw us into the sea would be here. If there weren’t Jews here, there would be a terror base, similar to what was in miniature in Gaza, but in all of Judea and Samaria, which is a vast area. In terms of size, the Gaza Strip is tiny compared to Judea and Samaria. It’s almost the size of the whole country. So if there would be a terror base here, you can only imagine what would happen to the strip of land there (the coastal plain).”
It’s a compelling argument, one that Israeli leadership has been making in one form or another since 1967. After Israel won the Six-Day War, many in the government assumed they’d trade in their newly acquired territories in exchange for peace with the Arab states.
Many Israelis had no interest in holding onto territory that was home to over a million Palestinians, but Israel’s neighbors had other ideas. A few months after the war, the Arab League released the infamous Khartoum Resolution, clarifying their position on the Jewish state: No recognition of Israel, no negotiation with Israel, no peace with Israel.
The U.N. Security Council must have missed the memo on the Arab League’s position, because shortly after, it also passed a resolution. This one called on Israel to withdraw from all its new territories, and asked every country in the region to give peace a chance.
Every country in the region declined. For them, all of Israel was a colonial settlement that needed to be destroyed. In light of the stalemate, Israelis began to build small communities in the highlands of Judea and Samaria. At first, only the faithful came out to break ground on their new territory.
However, in the late 1970s, a new Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, appointed a settlement czar named Ariel Sharon, who was often referred to simply as “The Bulldozer,” a fitting nickname given both his personality and his aggressive expansion plans in Judea and Samaria.
Soon, these lands were dotted with new and increasingly diverse communities, built on land not purchased but conquered. It wasn’t just the faithful anymore. The government offered significant incentives for Israelis to move to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.
Cheap property, tax breaks, and government subsidies are a powerful draw, especially in a country like Israel that has a high cost of living. The Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria have continued to grow, and there is no sign of slowing down.
Residents who spoke with Unpacked noted that they had a higher quality of life for less in Judea and Samaria, including private homes, prime locations close to central Israel, and a good environment for raising a family. There are practical reasons to live in this area, ones that have nothing to do with ideology, history, or faith, and everything to do with wanting a decent and affordable life.
However, it’s always the loudest and most passionate ideologues who receive the most attention, particularly when they feel threatened. The settlers of Judea and Samaria have often felt threatened, not just by their neighbors, but also by their own government.
In the early 90’s, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords. The terms of the agreement were pretty simple and unremarkable. The Israelis would withdraw from certain areas of the West Bank. The Palestinians would establish a semi-autonomous government and get a taste of what it’s like to manage their own country. If it went well, they’d check back in five years down the line and start talking about building a Palestinian state, not just a more or less autonomous government ruling a fraction of the West Bank.
Many settlers opposed the Accords. Their government seemed to be throwing them under the bus, because if things went well, what would happen to them, to the communities they had built? Would they simply be uprooted and forced to start again?
Most of the settlement movement never had to answer that question, because the Oslo peace process was never completed. The Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria were never uprooted. The Jewish communities of Gaza, however, were not so lucky.
In 2005, around 10,000 Jews lived among 1.3 million Gazans. For Sharon, who was now the prime minister, these Jewish enclaves in Gaza were a never-ending security nightmare. Plus, it was expensive to maintain the IDF presence in Gaza to protect a small number of people.
Eventually, the prime minister decided that leaving Gaza was in Israel’s best interest. The one-time settlement czar who had once spearheaded so much construction in Judea and Samaria was now advocating for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.
The idealists hoped that the withdrawal would serve as a trial run for the Gazans. The Palestinians would manage their own affairs. They’d build a strong society. The West Bank would follow suit. Eventually, two states would flourish side by side, and both Israelis and Palestinians would enjoy self-determination and security.
Instead, Hamas took over, and after decades of rocket attacks and incitement, they upped their game, with the October 7 massacre. For some, October 7 came as a horrific surprise. For others, it merely confirmed what they already believed.
“In Yitzhar, we decided that Arabs are not allowed in here. There is only Jewish labor here,” Ayelet noted. “For example, Yitzhar is a mountain surrounded by six Arab villages. When I say ‘villages,’ I don’t mean cute farmers looking for peace. I mean people whose goal is to hate people of Israel, to murder, to do anything they can to harm the Jewish people. Of course, this is part of a broader movement we see around the world. They are simply against the Jewish people. In the end, there’s nothing to be done. There are two peoples here that can’t make it work, because both of them want the same land, and it doesn’t matter how much of that land.”
Not all Israelis agree. Others work to build bridges between Arabs and Jews. They believe that Israel should be a country that honors all of its citizens. They think that not every single Palestinian has it out for the Jewish people. For them, statements like these are hard to hear because they present an all-or-nothing picture of the situation.
What may be surprising is that many Israelis who want to build those bridges live in the settlements themselves. For example, there’s Leora, a mother, a therapist, a peace activist, and a settler. She came to her community hoping to build bridges with the women right next door.
“When I moved here, my dream was to meet mothers from the villages next to me,” Leora explained. “There are at least four large Palestinian villages that are right around us. And my dream was to get to know the mothers and to hear from the Palestinian mothers what their life is like, how they raise their children, what are their fears, what is the good, what is the bad, to get to know them.”
Leora wasn’t alone. There’s a small but robust movement of Israelis in Judea and Samaria who want to connect to their Palestinian neighbors, who see no contradiction between living in the Jewish heartland and supporting Palestinian rights.
“We come to get to know each other, to hear about each other’s lives, and to be exposed to each other’s stories,” Leora added. “We live in parallel worlds. We live in the exact same area, and it’s like a completely different reality. They also don’t use the same checkpoints as we do. We don’t see what goes on at the checkpoints. When I leave Samaria towards Tel Aviv, I pass through a checkpoint that the Palestinians can’t even access. They go through a different checkpoint. When you meet them, you hear what goes on at the checkpoints, and you understand, maybe it doesn’t need to be this way. Every Jew, wherever they are, no matter where they live, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, needs to be immersed in places of dialogue, of connection, of making peace. All the more so, those who live in Judea and Samaria should be most involved in this.”
Peace can come from unlikely places. Egypt and Jordan were once Israel’s sworn enemies. Now, the two countries have an enduring peace and even cooperation with the Jewish state. It didn’t come from the liberals, but from a right-wing party. The prime minister who appointed Sharon as the settlement czar, who built up Judea and Samaria, also invited the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, to Jerusalem to talk peace. That Egyptian president who had planned the devastating surprise attack that started the Yom Kippur War actually got on a plane to Tel Aviv.
Peace can come from anywhere, and there’s something deeply poetic about a peace movement rooted in Judea and Samaria. This is the Jewish people’s heartland, where their story began, but it has also become the heart of the Palestinian story, two stories now inextricably bound together, and it’s up to both peoples to decide on their next chapter.
