That’s me driving towards an authorized outpost deep into the West Bank.
This is disputed land I’m driving on.
And when I got to the outpost I expected the family I was meeting to hit me with an earful
of ideology and a sermon on the Jews deserve this land more than Palestinians.
Instead, we played music, ate the food from their land and talked more about perks of
living in the desert.
Close to Jerusalem, the best view, the best weather, close to my parents.
Excellent. It's perfect.
These people don't own guns. They don't lock their doors.
I visited 15 settlement to find out what motivated people who are on the forefront
of one of the world's most protracted and difficult conflicts.
west bank is home to 2.2 million arabs and seen by the international community as part
of a future Palestinian state, but there are more than 400,000 Israeli settlers living
here now, about 5% of Israel’s population.
You can learn all about how they got here in the first part of this series.
Many The first Jewish settlers who trekked out here 1967 were driven by an strong ideology
to claim the this land for Israel.
But things have changed quite a bit since then.
[People talking in English]
Spend ten minutes in the settlements today and you can sometimes feel like you could
just as easily be in a New Jersey suburb.
[Guys talking about baseball]
We're out here to play a game and gave a good time.
Clean roads, big houses, quality parks, good schools, close-by shopping, a university.
You ask people why they moved here and instead of the original mission to push forward the
Israeli state, you hear things like..
Great educational system. There's a very nice country club.
We wanted to be in a bigger place.
It's a great place to raise kids.
This is such a beautiful view and it's our land and we love looking at it all the time.
We were looking for a Jerusalem suburb that we could afford that was a manageable commute.
Close to Jerusalem..Extremely close to Jerusalem.
The quality of life is so much better. It has nothing to do with politics.
Having a bit more quiet.
Most people here work in the city. Then you come back here at night or in the afternoon.
And it's just relaxing and quiet.
Between the puppet show, the bumping Bar Mitzah party, and a hundred other examples of seemingly
ordinary suburban life, it’s hard to remember that these settlers
are living at the edge of an intense conflict.
My wife and I had certain criteria.
One was we wanted to walk out our back door and be hiking in 5 minutes.
There is still ideology here.
Many residents of these communities feel connected to the settler’s original mission to resettle
the hills of ancient Judea and Samaria, which they call…
"The cradle of our entire civilization"
But ideological motivations for living out here are usually 4 or 5 items down on the
priority list, with quality of life reasons being the main drivers.
To tell if you my ideological motivations were the major motivations to move over
I won't lie. That wasn't one of the major things. I wasn't looking to make a statement.
I was trying to find a place that would be a good place, a safe place
for us to raise our kids, and this was the choice.
It wasn't at all something that was one of the criteria but it ended up being a real perk.
Course the hard core back-to-the-land settlers still exists.
Here I am with a guy who doesn’t want his name or face in my video.
He lives on an outpost, illegal even to the Israeli government.
There’s no baseball league or bagel shop in his community.
God promised to us that this is our land. And we can grow here if we listen to him.
This renegade culture of taking over hilltops once characterized the settlement movement.
But now, the zealous ideology that started the movement has been diluted by more practical
factors like house prices and the quality of schools.
This real estate ad for a settlement community I think perfectly captures the blend of quality
of life motivations with a hint ideological fervor sprinkled in:
"If you've always had a deep yearning for Jerusalem,
Now is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Not only to stand within its gates
but to build the home of your dreams there.
The tranquility of a picturesque setting and crisp mountain air with all the benefits of Jerusalem.
Ramat Givat Zeev is adjacent to the city of Givat Zeev and is connected to Jerusalem via two main highways.
But make no mistake. Threre's still a conflict here.
An occupation of land that has enormous impact on the lives of Palestinians.
It sounds paradoxical, but this just seems like the safest place in the world.
One of the reasons life in many settlements is so peaceful and pleasant is that the government
invests proportionally more public money into the settlement communities than it does mainland
Israeli communities.
Schools in the settlements receive better funding than mainland Israeli schools in the
form of better salaries for teachers and other educational benefits.
Nearly one third of all subsidized housings in Israel is in the settlements even though
only 5% of Israelis live there.
In the past the government ran a mortgage subsidy program that made living out here
much cheaper than mainland Israel.
Things like public transportation are also cheaper for settlers than mainland Israelis.
An Israeli think tank found that the government spent around $950 on each West Bank resident
in 2014, more than double what it spends on people living in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
The settlement enterprise has become a fixture of Israeli institutions and society -- which
helps explain why you don’t need to be an ideological activist to want to live there.
I can't hide the quality of life that people are enjoying here ok?
I can't hide the fact that people are moving from the United State from very luxurious homes
and choose to live in Efrat..
And their not suffering in Efrat. They are managing to maintain a similar quality of life.
On top of government support, lots of the gyms, theaters, and parks in the settlements
are funded in part by American donors with ideological motivations.
So what you end up with is attractive communities that feel totally normal and livable but that
are built with an ideological mission and carry heavy political significance.
even unauthorized outposts that are illegal under Israeli law enjoy support from the government.
Like this government-provided soldier to protect the community, a playground built by the government
as well as public waste and recycling collection all in a place that is deemed illegal by the government.
My house, the government built it [laughs]
[Laughs] that's a fact.
These places are connected to public water and electricity.
They’re totally supported in spite of being “unauthorized".
We have here everything from internet to water to electricity. Like everywhere.
But often to appease the international community,
the government still tries to appear tough on unauthorized settlements.
Back on the illegal outpost, my contact tells me the authorities show up once every year
or to knock down a settler’s house and then take a picture of it to show the world they
don't allow illegal outposts.
But in reality they clearly do.
Since 1967 there has been government support from both right and left wing parties in Israeli
politics which both have separate reasons for supporting the settlements.
And while this support is not the only or even the main reason settlements are growing,
but it has surely helped turn the settler experience into a mainstream, livable, and
often enjoyable situation.
The original mission of the settlement movement was to claim land deep into the West Bank,
preventing a Palestinian State.
Here are the Palestinian population centers, and here are the settlements.
Any proposal for giving palestinians their own state now has to take into account the
hundreds of thousands of Israelis living deep into the West Bank.
No one seriously considered it possible to remove all 400 thousand residents.
And while negotiations are in a stand still,
Israel keeps issuing permits and settlements continue to grow.
These whole peace talks are like two guys negotiating over a pizza,
while one of them is eating a pizza.
Just a few weeks ago the housing minister announced that he foresees this region down here
growing from seven thousand residents a half a million in the next 10 years.
Israeli settlements are one of the most universally condemned issues among the international community.
But no matter what you think of them, it’s hard to imagine them going away any time soon.
What did you think that I was living in?
You thought that I was living in some sort of tent? riding camels?
What did you have in your imaginary picture of the settlement movement?
There are half a million people living out here in solid homes.
Before 1996 there were only 100,000 Jews living over the Green Line. Today we're approaching half a million.
And that number is just growing.
The jewish people have come home. That's not going to change.
In this video I talked to a lot of settlers whos motivations were more practical than ideological.
In the next video I'm going to go to Jerusalem and talk to the settlers who are at epicenter of the conflict.
Settlers whose motivations are much more ideological.
I also wanted to point out that I talked to a lot of American settlers.
15% of settlers are American.
I also talked to settlers from Holland, Russia and all over the place.
The West Bank really is full of settlers from all over the world.