Since 1967 there is a growing policy of legal and physical separation between the Jewish and Palestinian populations in the occupied territories.
 
Seven months after the 6-day war, the first Israeli settlement, Kfar Etzion, was established in the West Bank. Only one year later, during the Passover of 1968, several families settled in the Park Hotel, Hebron.

in late 1967 the head of the Ministerial Committee for Settlements, Yigal Alon, began to plan the state’s official settlement map. Between the years 1967-1977, around 30 settlements housing approximately 5,000 settlers were established. The majority of these settlements were established on the eastern margins of the West Bank. This construction intended to satisfy the security ideology surrounding the necessity of an Israeli civilian presence in the peripheral areas. 
 
In 1977, with the succession of a Likud government to power, with Menachem Begin as its leader, the settlement effort begun to focus on the western areas in the West Bank. Dozens of such settlements were established at the end of the 1970’s and the beginning of 1980’s. Such measures constituted a direct effort to prevent a split of the country into two, under the political compromise of two states for two peoples.

Today, more than 280,000 people live in 121 settlements throughout the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem).
17 settlements in the Gaza strip and 4 in Northern Samaria in the West Bank were evacuated during the Disengagement Plan in August 2005.
The settlements cost us at least 556 million dollars per year (about the cost of the settlements see Haaretz special report and an article published in Ynetnews in June 2007). Last report was made by Adva Center on June 2008 "The Cost of Occupation".

To read The West Bank - Facts and Figures - June 2009 - click here.

For the table of population in each one of the settlements since 1967 - click here (according to the Central Bureau of Statistics)

For the table of total population in the settlements since 1967 - click here (according to the Central Bureau of Statistics)

For the table of number of settlers since 1967 - click here

For the table of construction strarts since 1993 - click here

For the table of distance of Settlements from the Green Line - click here

For Information regarding the jurisdiction of the settlements - click here

For the social make up in the settlements (excell table) - click here

To read about Peace Now Settlement Watch Team - click here.

Click here for the Settlements and Outposts in the West Bank - A PowerPoint Presentation of maps and information regarding the settlements and Israel's obligations to freeze all settlement activity and to evacuate illegal outposts (November 2007)