This would be my thread. I’m sure many here would be thrilled to know that we moved from our home in the Shomron (a/k/a the West Bank) to Beersheva earlier this year. Many would still consider where we are now as “occupied territory,” but that’s a question for a different time.
The eighth most populous city in Israel. Is that good? 
Did you buy a house, or do you rent?
I believe Ramira’s point was that Israel within the 1948 borders is no longer a subject of international dispute, here in the 21st century. The Negev Desert is that southern triangle thing, simply put. It’s within the 1948 borders and hence is outside the topic of this thread.
The nonviolent Arab activist compared to Gandhi was a guy named Mubarak ‘Awad. He was deported from Israel against protest from the US State Department. They kept the violent Palestinians around to fight with, but the Gandhian was making them look bad, so they had to send him far away and never let him back in to the land of his birth.
Regarding the OP, the POW of many (if not most) Israelis is that it needs the settlements as much as a hole in the head, them being established by an utterly messianic sect having a similar eschatology as Evangelicalism (final steps of who gets to Heaven being obviously different)
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There are plenty of settlers who’re completely secular. Both Yigal Allon and Yitzhak Rabin, who played a big role in establishing original settlements, were secular leaders.
Israel is helping California set up desalination plants.
I understand the need for a small, emerging country to grow and expand. Especially if they are significantly improving the existing land with settlements and farming.
How long that continues is a decision Israel will have to decide.
Alessan?
Yigal Alon, true. Yitzhak Rabin, no. He bitterly fought with Peres (who was his defense minister) on this issue in his first stint as PM. Later, in his book, he called Peres “an untiring saboteur”. One must not forget that Zionism, even in its most secular form, had a Messianic component, maybe even subconscious.
Of course there are some secular settlers and plenty of ultra-orthodox settlers. However, most live very close to the “green line”. Most important is that they are more of of a “quality of life” type. The ultra-orthodox are there because of an immense shortage of affordable housing inside the green line. But the great majority of them do not live there due to a very strong ideology.
These are very coarse generalizations.
The hard-core settler nucleus consists of maybe 50K people, but they have many supporters of diverse shades of semi-passivity.
Thank you thank you thank you! I recognized the user name as soon as I saw it.
We bought a 3 bedroom apartment.
It’s a long thread. Did you say you moved there because it was safer than the US?
There were two threads quoted, both about the same topic. I believe what you’re looking for was in the other thread.
That being said, after seeing the amount of recent crime (shootings and homicides) in Baltimore (where we came from), I would say that yes, I feel safer here - both in our new home in the city, and our previous home in the Shomron. The street crime here is far less than in the U.S.
Hey, Beersheba is a nice place - a decent working-class city surrounding a vibrant college town, in the middle of a beautiful desert landscape. My brother lives there, too. He’s getting his MBA at Ben-Gurion, but he’s bought an apartment, so I think he may be planning to stick around a bit.
How many does it need? At a rough guess about as many as it takes to defend itself from the millions and millions of hostile Arabs determined to push all Jews into the sea.
Let’s move this over to GD.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
So if they build enough settlements then they can get rid of that expensive military?
How does further pissing off said Arabs while expanding into hard to defend regions prevent this.
To me expanding settlements sounds like Machiavelli 101. If you want to keep a territory you’ve conquered, the best thing you can do is move a bunch of your people over there,
The historical method, practiced by the Romans and empires before them is to move the residents out and move your citizens in.
We’re very happy here. We’ve got a great location right next to the old city.
Rabbi Google says that the old city was rebuilt as it was in the 8th century. That must be very interesting to visit.