Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Jewish identity or ethnicity, and were built on lands occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967. The international community considers Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this. The expansion of settlements often involves the confiscation of Palestinian land and resources, leading to displacement of Palestinian communities and creating a source of tension and conflict. Settlements are often protected by the Israeli military and are frequently flashpoints for violence against Palestinians. Further, the presence of settlements and Jewish-only bypass roads creates a fragmented Palestinian territory, seriously hindering economic development and freedom of movement for Palestinians.
Golan Heights settlements (1992)
Israeli soldiers searching a Palestinian in Tel Rumeida, 2012
Israeli settlers in the Ofra settlement, Israeli-occupied West Bank, 2012
Settlement area in the Gaza Strip (March 1999)
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, the Red Sea to the south, Egypt to the southwest, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and the Palestinian territories – the West Bank along the east and the Gaza Strip along the southwest. Tel Aviv is the country's financial, economic, and technological center. Israel’s governmental seat is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is of limited international recognition.
The Merneptah Stele (13th century BCE). The majority of biblical archeologists translate a set of hieroglyphs as Israel, the first instance of the name in the record.
3rd-century Kfar Bar'am synagogue in the Galilee
Jews at the Western Wall in the 1870s
The First Zionist Congress (1897) in Basel, Switzerland