Animated map shows spread of illegal Israeli settlements across Palestine

Israeli settlements are Jewish-only communities built illegally connected Palestinian onshore successful the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

These settlements often look similar mean suburbs: azygous townhouses, red-tiled roofs, and neat lawns, perched atop hills that springiness them a commanding presumption of the Palestinian towns and villages carved up to marque country for them.

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In this ocular explainer, Al Jazeera maps the dispersed of amerciable Israeli settlements and outposts, and the settler pogroms accompanying them, present astatine their highest levels connected record.

The dispersed of Israeli settlements and outposts

Settlements predate the instauration of Israel successful 1948, but their fig and standard expanded dramatically aft Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem successful 1967.

Over the past six decades, the colony web has grown from scattered hilltop outposts into a sprawling strategy of settlements, roads and highways binding them to each different and to Israel.

According to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog, determination are astatine slightest 148 amerciable settlements successful the occupied West Bank and 15 successful occupied East Jerusalem, 163 successful total, present location to immoderate 750,000 Israelis, astir 10 percent of the country’s Jewish population.

The animation beneath tracks the founding of each colony and outpost, on with their increasing populations. In 2025 alone, astir 28,000 lodging units were precocious wrong existing settlements successful the occupied West Bank, acold much maturation than caller settlements oregon outposts added connected their own.

An aerial presumption of the amerciable Jewish colony of Maale Adumim successful the occupied West Bank, connected June 29, 2020 [Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters]

By 2024, these 163 amerciable settlements were location to 744,700 Israeli settlers: 511,100 successful the West Bank and 233,600 successful East Jerusalem, alongside a grounds fig of amerciable outposts, present much than 400, that are not officially counted but are often absorbed into recognised settlements implicit time, making a existent tally hard to pin down.

How outposts go settlements

Settlements are amerciable nether planetary instrumentality arsenic they interruption the Fourth Geneva Convention, which bans an occupying powerfulness from transferring its colonisation to the country it occupies.

The United Nations Security Council, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Committee of the Red Cross, among others, person affirmed this position, astir precocious successful the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion.

Under Israeli law, settlements are legally sanctioned, planned, funded and built with nonstop authorities approval, ranging from tiny agrarian communities to ample towns similar Ariel and Maale Adumim.

Outposts are different. They are smaller communities built without ceremonial authorisation, though galore are aboriginal legalised oregon absorbed into existing settlements.

How settlements carve up Palestinian land

Some Israeli settlements person grown into sizable municipality communities, implicit with their ain mayors, schools, buying malls, aesculapian centres and adjacent universities.

Modi’in Illit is the largest, with 89,301 residents, followed by Beitar Illit with 70,251 and Pisgat Ze’ev with 48,419.

Like astir settlements, they are linked by a dense web of roads built exclusively for settlers, galore of them bypass roads that chopped done Palestinian land, fragmenting communities and, backed by checkpoints and roadblocks, restricting the question of Palestinians who unrecorded alongside them.

Nowhere is this clearer than E1, an country eastbound of Jerusalem planned for the expansion of Maale Adumim, which would sever East Jerusalem from the remainder of the West Bank and further fragment Palestinian territorial continuity.

In August 2025, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved much than 3,000 homes successful the E1 colony project, a program frozen for decades nether planetary pressure, declaring the determination would “bury the thought of a Palestinian state”.

The determination drew planetary condemnation, including from astir 30 governments and the European Commission, who called it “unacceptable and a usurpation of planetary law”.

A presumption of ongoing operation successful the Modi’in Illit colony successful the occupied West Bank, connected February 18, 2017 [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu via Getty]

The increasing Beitar Illit settlement, location to ultra-Orthodox Jewish residents [Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty]

An aerial presumption of Pisgat Ze’ev, an amerciable Jewish colony successful occupied East Jerusalem, connected October 4, 2018 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty]

Rising pogroms

Israeli settlers tin beryllium broadly divided into 2 types.

The archetypal are mostly drawn by economics: cheaper rents, subsidised mortgages, discounted onshore and authorities incentives that marque lodging successful the amerciable settlements acold much affordable than successful Israel proper.

The 2nd are religious-nationalists, who judge the onshore was promised to them by God. This radical includes the “hilltop youth”, known for establishing outposts and attacking Palestinian communities, often with the Israeli subject lasting by oregon backing them, arsenic successful the weeks-long siege of Qusra, which began successful August and continues nether subject enforcement today.

Experts and UN officials progressively picture these attacks arsenic pogroms, organised, often state-backed unit against a targeted minority, a word Israeli subject officers themselves person utilized aft past incidents specified arsenic the 2023 onslaught connected Huwara.

Israeli settlers onslaught Palestinians and overseas activists successful Khirbet Abu Falah, northbound of Ramallah, arsenic they effort to entree cultivation onshore connected July 3, 2026 [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu via Getty]

According to information from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settler attacks resulting successful casualties and/or spot harm person risen sharply, peculiarly since October 7, 2023.

In 2025, 1,836 specified attacks were recorded, much than treble the 852 recorded successful 2022, an mean of astir 5 attacks a day.

Since October 7, 2023, 5,131 attacks person been recorded successful total. The summation has continued into 2026, with 1,418 attacks recorded betwixt January and July, though the twelvemonth is not yet complete.

The unit and the instauration of caller outposts are 2 antithetic aspects of colony activity, but unneurotic they amusement however amerciable colony enlargement is occurring not lone done established communities and authorities planning, but besides done caller enactment connected the ground.