Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

25 Illegal Jewish Settlements in Occupied West Bank Get Israel Army Protection

One quarter of all illegal West Bank outposts are regularly guarded by Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

These 25 unauthorized outposts are guarded by a special force tasked with “community protection.” Soldiers from the force typically spend a full week at a time guarding and protecting the outpost where they are stationed.

Every professional army officer who does not serve in a front-line unit must spend one week a year protecting these settlements. They must do a regular tour of duty in the West Bank, the Jordan Valley or the Kerem Shalom region near the border of Gaza and Egypt.

Protection duty is assigned to both regular and reserve officers. In 2010 and 2011, for example, numerous reserve officers were assigned to guard the unauthorized Givat Assaf outpost, where some 30 families live.

Other illegal outposts where reserve officers are stationed include Givat Dagan, which according to the NGO Peace Now has some 30 residents; Eshtemoa in the south Hebron Hills, which has some 40 residents; and Mitzpe Yair, where eight families live.

For more, go to Haaretz

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.