Dispelling the Myths of the Settlements

The agenda of Israel’s new government is seen by many as a significant danger to the bedrock of Israel’s liberal democracy. This, however, is not limited to the judicial system; it has roots in an issue that has received insufficient attention. The initiative to repeal sections of the 2005 disengagement law to rebuild the Chomesh settlement poses a threat that could lead to a future in which political violence takes precedence over the rule of law. With the bill passing in the Knesset plenum, it is critical to recognize its significance and consider why it will jeopardize Israel’s values and interests.

To start, the bill would create a new Israeli settlement in an area where Israeli law explicitly prohibits it since the 2005 disengagement. The bill would reverse many of the gains made by the disengagement, a diplomatic effort that greatly benefitted Israel and was acknowledged by the international community. It would introduce Israeli civilians into a hostile region that carries negative ramifications for security. We know this precisely because after Israeli settlers began squatting in the area in 2020, tensions soared, and following the death of a settler in 2021, violence between settlers, local Palestinians, and the army exploded. The Jenin area, the quietest in the territories between 2005 and 2020, has since become the center of a new wave of Palestinian terrorism, leading to attacks and loss of life across the country. Enacting this legislation would convey a clear message to the settlers that their actions, which involved forcibly taking possession of private property, resorting to violence against Israeli police and IDF soldiers, and intimidating Palestinian civilians, are acceptable means to attain similar political interests in the future.

The new government’s desire to implement a policy of constructing settlements as a response to Palestinian terrorism is not only illogical, but such measures have failed miserably in the past and continue to do so in the present with violence at an all-time high in over a decade. Israel’s top defense experts agree that while the settlements played a security role in the past, this is no longer the case. Far from helping defend the country, the scattering of Israeli civilians throughout the West Bank now encumbers the work of security forces, drains the defense budget, and complicates IDF work by lengthening lines of defense. Protecting Israeli civilians in the heart of Palestinian territory actually detracts from the IDF’s ability to fight Palestinian terrorism against Israel. 

But much to the pleasure of the settlement movement, this issue has taken a back seat to other controversies, and for them, it’s vital to keep it that way.

Although the State of Israel supported the establishment and growth of the settlements, they are still championed primarily by a small sector of society whose messianic vision is not shared by the vast majority of Israelis.

Why? Because although the State of Israel supported the establishment and growth of the settlements, they are still championed primarily by a small sector of society whose messianic vision is not shared by the vast majority of Israelis. The public is well aware that even after decades, the settlement enterprise has failed to fulfill its three stated goals: 1) change the legal status of the West Bank; 2) achieve economic independence and 3) convince a majority of the public to oppose partition of the land into two states. 

The relative quiet regarding the Chomesh proposal is not indicative of Israeli public support for the settlements but indifference thanks to two intertwined myths that have sprung up around them over the decades. The first is irreversibility: The Jewish settlement project in the West Bank has gone beyond the point of no return, and therefore the settlements can no longer be evacuated. The second is risk of confrontation: Evacuating the settlements would entail a violent clash between state and settlers, which may escalate into civil war. 

To re-engage the public in this debate one must first dispel the aforementioned myths and then offer reason.

Skeptics, who believe the settlements are irreversible, argue that the main reason they cannot be evacuated is the size of their population. This argument is hardly new. It first emerged in the 1980s and has since gained traction in Israeli, Palestinian and international public opinion. Although this vociferous argument is the result of political despair rather than of logical reasoning, it has strongly impacted public opinion. As such, many Israelis have grown willing to accept the settlements, despite the price.

The truth is that the actual number of settlers is not related to whether or not they can be evacuated. However, since this argument has made its way into public discourse, it should be addressed based on figures and facts. In 2022, there were approximately 660,000 Israelis living in the West Bank. Of these, some 220,000 live in East Jerusalem and its environs and would not be candidates for evacuation. Of the remaining 440,000, who make up only 14% of the total West Bank population, most live in what are known as the “settlement blocs.” These areas are adjoined to Israel’s sovereign territory and would not be up for evacuation either. In other words, over 85% of Jewish settlers would stay in their homes under any future agreement. 

Beyond this demographic debate, an economic and legal analysis reveals that the settlement enterprise is much more vulnerable than commonly believed. The early settlers understood this and noted that establishing settlements would not create an irreversible reality. Over the years, the settler leaders have stressed that their project will survive only if they manage to “settle in the hearts”—i.e., win the public over to their cause. In that mission, they have undoubtedly failed. Although the settlements are being increasingly normalized in Israeli discourse, the messianic vision that fuels them is still confined to a subsection of society. 

While the settler lobby skillfully leverages political power to shape government policy and seize surplus funding, these temporary gains have not made inroads into mainstream Israeli opinion on the settlements. A broad public survey commissioned by Molad, an Israeli research institute, found that Israelis are somewhat sympathetic to the settlers and their cause, and that the settlement movement has managed to cement the myth that Jewish presence in the West Bank is good for national security. However, it also found that most Israelis still believe the evacuation of settlements is the only way to establish Israel’s final border, whether unilaterally or as part of a peace agreement. 

The settlers learned this painful lesson in the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, when the general public remained indifferent to their protestations. All of this is perhaps indicative of the decline of the yearly growth rate of the settlements, which peaked at 16 percent in 1991 and has since fallen hitting 2.24 percent in 2021, according to three recent surveys, extrapolated from Shaul Arieli’s report “Deceptive Appearances.”  Despite these facts, the public continues to be fed the myth that the settlements are growing at an increasingly high rate. 

Although some view the settlement enterprise as a success story, the truth is that after more than half a century, it has failed to attain economic independence and prosper. Most settlers depend entirely on urban hubs within Israel to run their daily lives, and their communities function merely as “bedroom communities.” The organic employment that does exist within settlements is largely provided by regional councils and local educational institutes, which enjoy special government funding. In other words, the entire settlement project relies almost exclusively on the state, which essentially keeps it on financial “life support.” While this fact is lacking from public debate, it means that the government has much more power over the settlements than is commonly assumed. Therefore, as an evacuation strategy, the government does not have to deploy military or police force to evacuate settlements—but only to leverage their absolute dependence. 

Without the state’s massive ongoing support in all areas—financial support, military protection, legal shields and civilian services—the settlements in the West Bank are not only reversible, but also unsustainable. 

Legally, the settlements exist thanks to a convoluted system of laws and regulations tailored to fit the needs of Israeli citizens living in the territories. Although the end goal of the settler movement has always been to extend Israeli law over the entire West Bank, the state has never annexed this territory and its laws do not apply there. Here, too, the popular image is far from reality: A plethora of specialized legislation and administrative-military orders render the settlers equal in legal status to citizens living within Israel proper. The difference between an Israeli living in Hebron and an Israeli living in Miami is a handful of legal acrobatics that can be canceled with surprising ease. 

All this leads to a clear conclusion: Population size is not an obstacle and due to the settlements’ complete dependence on the state, any future government, shall it wish to, will be able to quickly reduce the number of people living in settlements as a first step toward full evacuation. Moreover, due to their exceptional legal status, the government can destabilize the settlements to the point of making it undesirable to move there. The government actually has ample, effective means at its disposal to evacuate the West Bank settlements. 

With that in mind, the relevant question becomes not whether settlements can be evacuated, but how? Where there is a will, there is a readily-available way.

There are three options for the future of the settlements should Israel sign an agreement with the Palestinians or choose to unilaterally draw its final border. One is evacuation by force, like the withdrawals from the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. In that scenario, the government would set a single date on which all preparation, energy and public attention would focus; meanwhile, opponents of the evacuation would respond in a variety of ways, ranging from lack of cooperation to passive resistance and even violent protest. Despite the many disadvantages of this approach, the government may well choose it again in future.

The second option is to leave the settlements in place within a future Palestinian state, based on a pre-agreed outline. With Trump’s “deal of the century” struck off the table, this scenario no longer seems realistic. Neither Israel, the Palestinians, nor most of the settlers would want to leave settlements within the Palestinian territory.

As the first option (forced evacuation) has problematic effects and the second (leaving the settlements in place) is unrealistic, there is a need to lay out the principles of a third option called civil evacuation. This method can bring an efficient and fair end to the settlement enterprise, by utilizing the state’s capacity for organization and cutting the settlements off from their financial life support in an orderly, controlled fashion. The evacuation does not have to be rushed, thereby backing the settler enterprise into a corner. 

Carrying out any agreement will take more than a few days—it will take several years, estimated at anywhere from five to fifteen from the resumption of negotiations. The state will have ample time to prepare for the complicated tasks it will face, chiefly laying the groundwork for absorbing the evacuated settlers within its territory: preparing land for construction, farmland, community frameworks, schools, jobs and a mental health support system. Once the conditions are in place, the government will be able to start the civil process, which includes gradually scaling back the state’s special grants and subsidies to the settlements until they are entirely canceled, offering benefits from the beginning to settlers who agree to leave of their own accord, canceling the orders and specialized legislation that apply to Israeli citizens in the West Bank, preparing physical infrastructure at the designated sites for relocation within Israel, and finally redeploying the IDF along the final border.

Multiple public opinion surveys have found that most settlers will cooperate with such a policy and agree to leave in advance—both because most of them did not move to the West Bank for ideological reasons, and because most are law-abiding citizens. If the circumstances change, the public mood will change with them. As in the past, the settlers may very well come under public pressure to leave willingly, and those who do so will receive sympathy and support.

What if the evacuees resist? The images of settlers barricading themselves on rooftops in the Sinai settlement of Yamit in 1982 and in the Gaza settlement of Kfar Darom in 2005 have become a powerful collective memory for Israelis, thanks to active efforts by the settler movement to turn the evacuees’ pain into a national trauma. As a result, although resistance on the ground did not put a major dent in either evacuation, fear of a violent confrontation between civilians and the army continue to feed the public imagination.

This fear continues to inform the myth that the settlements cannot be evacuated. In reality, the state and the settler enterprise share an interest in generating such a heartrending scene. Both parties, each for their own reasons, wish to turn the evacuation into a visual drama and sell it to the public as such. There is no real need for evacuation to take such a drastic and dramatic form. Civilians do not have to be evacuated within the space of a few highly televised sensationalist moments that generate ratings that lead to great potential for conflict. By managing the withdrawal as a staggered process, the state can avoid many of the flaws that marred previous evacuations. An evacuation based on civil and administrative measures rather than military might is not only more likely to succeed, but also it is more ethical with regard to the settlers and by extension healthier for Israeli society as a whole.

Clearly, this step would meet resistance from extremists, some of it aggressive. It is hard to assess whether they are in the hundreds or thousands, but some will undoubtedly refuse to leave. It is this group that the public fears. 

Indeed, the threat of civil war, sometimes issued explicitly and at other times implied, is a major strategic success of the settler movement in its battle over public opinion. Yet while foreseeable extremist resistance should not be taken lightly, it should also not be blown out of proportion. These are the same threats issued for years before both the Sinai and the Gaza disengagement. The opposition these settlers would put up may be more than a hindrance, but they are hardly a force that could overthrow the IDF and would not be able to prevent the evacuation or plummet Israel into any form of a civil war. In fact, the opposite is true, as seen by the events in Huwara and Chomesh; leaving the settlements in place and turning a blind eye to those living on the eschews of Israeli law has only increased violence and loss of life, and is more likely to drive the country into endless civil violence and the potential for a third intifada.

From a security standpoint, while the settlements would be evacuated the military will remain and be redeployed along the new line until the Palestinians lay down arms against Israel. The conflation between the military occupation and the settlement project must be abandoned. The settlements are not the first line of defense. How do we know this? Because wherever the IDF aren’t, they aren’t.

In actuality, the evacuation of Northern Samaria proved that it was possible to leave the settlements while still protecting Israel’s security. Unlike Gaza (where army and Israeli civilians were completely removed and violence persists) or the majority of the West Bank (where army and civilians remain and violence persists) the model in northern Samaria, where there is army but civilians were removed, was proven a success in that the once hostile area became the quietest and least violent region in the territories for 15 years after the disengagement up until extremist settlers started illegally squatting in the area in 2020. This fact is another missing from the public discourse and is the chief reason as to why the settler right have mobilized all institutional power to revoke this specific disengagement law. They haven’t tried to revoke the Gaza disengagement, rather they’ve gone after the successful model in an effort to further cement the myths that keep their project alive. 

With the disengagement repeal bill passing, it becomes increasingly evident that avoiding this discussion and its practical implications only serves to benefit extremists. Dispelling these myths and adopting a radically distinct approach to tackling the difficulties of evacuation through civilian and administrative measures may prompt the public to re-evaluate the current government’s measures, its security policies and any future proposals of this nature that will no doubt lead to more bloodshed.

Samuel Hyde is a writer/researcher based in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is the editor of the book “We Should All Be Zionists” by Dr. Einat Wilf and is currently co-writing a second book with Wilf titled “Political Intelligence.”