Israeli Settler: Definition, Geography, and Legal Status

An "Israeli settler" is an Israeli citizen who lives in a settlement built on land Israel captured during the 1967 Six-Day War, outside its internationally recognized borders — that is, beyond the Green Line, the pre-1967 armistice frontier. In current usage the term refers almost entirely to the West Bank and, depending on the speaker, to East Jerusalem. Geography of the settlements Following the 1967 war Israel established civilian communities in several occupied territories. Settlements once existed in the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, but Israel dismantled the Sinai settlements after its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt (completed by 1982) and unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Israeli communities also exist in the Golan Heights captured from Syria, but in modern news the label "settler" is rarely applied to their residents. Today the term centers on the West Bank. Roughly 500,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements outside East Jerusalem, with another estimated 220,000–230,000 in East Jerusalem neighborhoods that most governments regard as settlements but that Israel treats as part of its capital — over 670,000 settlers in total as of the early 2020s. These communities range from large suburban cities such as Ma'ale Adumim and Modi'in Illit, to religious and ideological villages, to small hilltop "outposts" that are unauthorized even under Israeli law. See Israeli Settlement: Definition, Types, and the Outpost Distinction for the difference between authorized settlements and outposts. Legal status under international law The legal status of the settlements is the core of the dispute. Most of the international community — including the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the European Union — holds that the settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, whose Article 49(6) prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into territory it occupies. The UN Security Council reaffirmed this view in Resolution 2334 (2016), and in a July 2024 advisory opinion the International Court of Justice found Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful and called for an end to new settlement activity. See Fourth Geneva Convention: Protecting Civilians Under Occupation. Israel rejects this reading. Its principal legal argument is that the West Bank is not "occupied" territory in the Geneva Convention sense because no recognized sovereign state held it before 1967 (Jordan's 1950 annexation drew almost no international recognition). Israeli officials and supporting jurists also cite Jewish historical and religious ties to the land, which they call by the biblical names Judea and Samaria. The geography of the dispute is mapped by the Oslo Accords, which divided the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C; most settlements sit in Area C, which remains under full Israeli administrative and security control. See West Bank: Geography, Population, and Disputed Status.