What is a "Jewish Settlement"?

Factual Questions
21

Well, if you want an uninformed take on the situation (and anything I could easily find on the web would be pro one side), the basic situation appears to be:

  1. Israel is occupying land taken in conflicts but not formally annexed.
  2. There can be no reasonable justification for taking this land purely because no individual owned/s that land and whether or not it was/is barren.
  3. There is a valid (not legal) reason to settle the land. Get enough people in it over time and, when a peace settlement is finally hammered out, you will be able to point to the area and say that the people living there now want to join Israel. Even if you don’t insist on keeping the settled areas, you still get a bargaining chip.
  4. Even if 90% of the settlements are in out-of-the-way places (and I’m not saying that they are), you can still target certain areas that are strategically important. In fact, you’d be stupid to build (or allow to be built) all of the settlements in strategic locations, as it makes your underlying motives transparent.
  5. In addition to the property cost and greater Israel motivations mentioned, I would imagine that some of the more right wing (religious?) organisations in Israel provide funding in some form (I suppose that this is probably just an extension of the cost motive).
  6. So your average settler would tend to be more religious than the national average. They would tend to be more political than the average. They would tend to be more patriotic (used in a neutral sense) than the average. Then there’s the normal pioneer profile (i.e. more risk takers).
  7. There has been a history of settlements theat pre-dates the formation of Israel (obviously, as all of the Jews in Israel in 1948 had not been there in 1900). So there’s also a feeling of belonging, history, pride, duty etc.
  8. I believe that the settlements are residential (presumably with some level of local commercial facilities). Generally (outside of collective farms), settlers tend to commute to work.
    Just trying to get back to the OP. None of the above are politically motivated (in that the undercurrent of the above is probably anti-Israel in law or moral right (if such a thing exists), but I happen to be pro-settlements when I think of the situation from a perceived Israeli perspective).
22

I would like to know what a modern “Jewish Settlement” is like. Simple question, surely someone here must know.

23

Paul, you might find this thread enlightening - curwin lives in one, and describes it a bit.

24

Collounsbury:

I’m assuming that this was in response to what I said, Collounsbury. I want to point out that I was merely saying that in response to someone questioning why any Jew would have wanted to move there, given the danger in the area. I was making the point that until September 2000, Jews considering moving there didn’t have a sense of danger (at least not more so than in Israel proper). I was not commenting on whether or not the settlements were justifiable.

Chaim Mattis Keller