Over the last 30 years, eight new settlements have been built and Israeli population in West Bank grew by 330,000
The Jewish population in the West Bank has increased by more than 330,000 people and eight settlements have been built in the West Bank over the past three decades. More than 380,000 settlers currently live in the West Bank, over 40 percent of them outside the settlement blocs, Haaretz has found.
In recent years several politicians have joined the settlers’ leaders talking about the goal of housing a million Israelis in the West Bank as a realistic option. When this happens, they believe it will no longer be possible to divide the area and draw a map of two states, Israeli and Palestinian. Such an extensive evacuation would become impossible, even if the left were in power, they say.
In fact, it would be hard to draw such a map already today, because in the past 50 years the settlements have spread out in the occupied territories, so that nearly 170,000 settlers live outside the settlement blocs.
The Central Statistics Bureau’s figures show that 44 percent of about 380,000 West Bank settlers – not including East Jerusalem – live outside the blocs.
A look at a map from 1968 shows five settlements, sparsely populated, beyond the Green Line. Their establishment was sponsored by the Labor Party, which had decided to settle the West Bank, some said for security reasons. One way or another, Pinchas Wallerstein, the former head of Mateh Binyamin Regional Council and one of the leaders of the settlers’ Gush Emunim movement, believes the settlers owe a considerable debt to the Labor party, in the years prior to the 1977 political upheaval.