Settler leaders do not deny the charge.
"We don't give exact information about the new outposts [but] we promised that if the government takes down the outposts, we will put in new ones," said Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a settler spokesman. As for the road map, he said, "we want to stop [its] implementation."
Many Orthodox Jews among the settlers believe Israel has a God-given right to the West Bank. Others believe new settlements are vital to Israel's security, establishing a presence along the roads where Israelis have been killed in Palestinian ambushes and in the hills overlooking their homes.
For Tehila Cohen, a secular Jew from Jerusalem, moving to the West Bank four years ago was a way of fulfilling her dream of a self-sufficient life within a tight, rural community. To her, the Neve Erez settlement is no more occupied Palestinian territory than any other part of Israel.
"If people can live happily in Tel Aviv, and they don't think it is occupied, then I don't see any difference here," she said. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war but never formally annexed it.
Many other Israelis oppose the settlement effort as blocking hopes of peace and, ultimately, dooming their nation as a Jewish state.
And for Palestinians, all Jewish settlements -- the 150 veteran communities where about 220,000 Israelis live in addition to the outposts -- are illegal encroachments on land they claim for their own state.
RSS